system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:People in rural America claim that guns are necessary for their way of life. How do rural residents of countries with stricter gun laws get by?
gpt
So, the only place where this really is the case is Europe. Europe has no predators or other large and dangerous animals; they've all been killed off over the millennia of humans living there.

By comparison, North America has wolves, bears, mountain lions, moose, bison, and elk, all of which can cause pretty extensive damage to personal property, can can easily harm or kill people. In addition, there are a large variety of pest animals (like coyotes) that aren't a direct threat, but can cause all sorts of damage if they can't be driven off with firearms.

In addition, Europe is pretty heavily urbanized, such that the police really aren't that far away, ever. Take, for example, Cherry and Sheridan counties in rural Nebraska, which are out in the middle of nowhere, have essentially only ranchers living in them, and (combined) are **roughly the same size as Slovenia**. So yeah, we have local police forces (and we're not talking LAPD all-black military-grade equipment police forces, but Jim-bob and his beat-up second-hand pickup police forces) who are responsible for territories the same size as entire nations. Out there, you need to be able to protect yourself, because the police may take *hours* to get to you, and that's in *good* conditions. This same part of the country averages *feet* of snow in the winter, and it only get's worse as you go further north.

Finally; even Europe allows rifles with relatively few legal hangups, and rifles are what rural gun owners really want to have access to, which shouldn't be a problem given how few people are actually killed with rifles in any given year.