in modern countries think that theirs is the best place to live.

(disclaimer: I have never claimed America to be the greatest nation on Earth, and the idea of a greatest nation is one I regard with the highest indifference). 

Peasants. 

There are some great geographical features here; mountain ranges, deserts, valleys, beaches, lakes and rivers, the Great Plains, forests, the Everglades, etc.

I have been offered a couple of jobs in the USA and did seriously consider moving there but decided not to for family reasons. During the times that I have worked there for short periods (never longer than three weeks at a time) the one thing that I found I could not cope with was the food... it was so boring - everything seems to be either fried or grilled, everything is served with fries and the portion sizes are ridiculous - of course that would be different if I was living there permanently as I would be cooking for myself. If there was one thing that would put me off it would be the inherently ingrained gun-culture, as this makes no sense to me. During my last visit someone said to me: "You Brits, you're not allowed to own guns right?"... to which I replied "Well no that's not right, we're allowed to own guns, we're just not permitted to carry them everywhere we go."

Then, there's the mentally ill issue. 

No one knows when a mentally ill person or a ticking time bomb is going to snap. No one.

Also, no one knows what that person will do when they snap.

They may grab a gun or they may drive their car into a crowd of people. No one knows.

As far as food and booze? Well, you have to eat and to quote Zappa, "America Drinks & Goes Home".

One thing that needs to be addressed is private sales at gun shows where there is no background check and the buyer takes immediate possession of the firearm. This should not be allowed to happen.

As far as military grade weapons, it is illegal for a private citizen to own a fully automatic weapon.

This law goes back to the "tommy gun" gangster days in the thirties.

The "assault rifles" that you see in gun shops just look military or tactical but they do not function any differently than a standard rifle.

We had Michigan. 

The challenge is not finding good food (until my last visit that was relatively easy), the challenge was finding food that wasn't fried or grilled. Admittedly I was in Texas when I threw down that challenge to my work colleagues and the best they could come up with was pizza.

I think it was referred to as The Dig.

We were there to take the Sam Adams brewery tour which was very interesting.

We sampled several products that day.  

My thoughts exactly. I knew that New England was famed for its baking but (naively perhaps) assumed this was only for sweet dishes... but of course there's Boston baked beans (though a tad too sweet for me, I prefer a nice French cassoulet with pork, confit duck and sausage)

It's bizarre that you could only find fried and grilled food, though of all the states, Texas would be the one. Near the coasts (including and especially the gulf coast), boiling is especially popular. Baked, sauteed, steamed, and roasted foods are very present as well. You're talking about the country that celebrates Thanksgiving, for which baked or roasted turkey, boiled mashed potatoes, and steamed corn and vegetables are traditional items.

If I have learnt one thing in my seven years on this forum it is never to get involved in gun-control arguments with an American. Have guns and no controls or have technically thousands of gun laws it makes no difference to me, I live 5,000 miles away. The issue is not of controls or lack thereof but of culture, as that is what differentiates the USA from the rest of the western world it terms of gun ownership and the scary gun-death and other gun-related crime statistics you have, and in light of reaction to recent events I don't think that will ever change. 

Do you have restaurants that serve roast diners 365 days a year?  

I'm pleased to learn these alternative cooking methods exist in the USA and yep, Texas was not the best place to start looking, however I did have similar issues with the food in California (LA and SF). As I said if I were living in the USA permanently this wouldn't be a problem but when you are staying in a 3-star hotel and living out of a suitcase for three weeks solid then you can only eat in the restaurants in the locale where you're staying... and after two weeks of essentially eating fried/grilled/barbecued/stir-fried meals every day it all got a bit too much for my fay British constitution and I would have crawled across the desert for a steak and ale pie with boiled carrots and mashed potatoes (I don't like pasta so Italian is off the menu and I really don't like curry so that excludes Indian restaurants)

By 'bun' do you mean like char sui bao? Steamed bread rolls filled with barbecued meats?

Or do you mean dim sum?

Yeah, some times they can be overly sweet. Chinatown in London's Soho produces some fine char sui street food.

To be honest Jim, there aren't any other than your perception of how it was back then if this giraffe is anything to go by:

In the fifties I was a kid in the Midwest and it was common for every household (that I knew of)

to have a rifle or shotgun.

My Dad had the shotgun that belonged to his Dad and when I was seven I would play with it 

outside (unloaded of course and we lived on six acres). 

Now, this wasn't Mayberry, RFD and there was crime and there were occasional murders but

seldom, if ever, with multiple victims and never anything like the mass killings today.

a large vegetable garden. behind the house was the garage and my Mom's chicken pen.

The back acres were open field where I used to play for hours.

Looking back, it was a very good time and place.

I was born in Springfield, Missouri and moved to California when I was seven.

We were still within the city limits (barely) and the treat was to go uptown on Saturday.

Springfield had a town square very similar to Back To The Future. There were big trees

and park benches in the center with stores on all four sides.

We didn't own the land either. It belonged to my aunt and uncle who had moved to St. Louis.

I envy you. I said earlier that if all of my family wasn't here I would move someplace more rural.

I live a few miles north of Orange County and I've in this area since 1957.

A lot more people and cars now though.

You betcha those numbers I found in a simple google search didn't tell the whole story, because the whole story is much worse:

Five events in twenty years does not count as the rare event you recalled it to be. One event in fifty-five years is one too many. Sure something has changed, so something must change to counter it. In the long term that means resolving whatever are the root causes (and I suspect they are many), but bearing in mind that school massacres are only 36 out of 136 such rampage killings the obvious common factor is the weaponry used and ease in which the perpetrators can obtain them. 

Jazz

Grand Canyon

Rattlesnakes

- no smoking in restaurants, elevators, hotels, busses, cabs, subways, pretty much anyplace other human beings might be inclined to breathe.  Most European countries I've been to seem more like the U.S. thirty years ago as far as maturity of public health policies, especially as regards smoking.

- roads and garages big enough for the cars that use them. 

 

- being able to drive just about anywhere I want without paying a toll (granted, this is less viable in the Northeast).

 

- air conditioning.

 

- water (and other drinks) with ice in them at restaurants.

 

- diversity.  Other countries may talk a good game but we've been all-in since day one, and have more countries and cultures represented among our citizenship than anywhere else on the planet. 

 

- Fahrenheit, pounds, miles, gallons and acres.  Screw being like everyone else.

 

I am of course grateful to live in a well off, developed country but there are more of those than just the US (though some dont seem to know this)

Many of my non American friends, including on this forum, have often blasted the huge amount of wealth the US owns, but I always was quick to point out most of that was owned by relatively few, and in fact the middle class here gets worse off each year. 

No one really took it seriously pre 2009 but now at least such things have become mainstream discussion. 

And ya know, we have the $1 trillion in student debt, young people graduating into difficult markets with 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars in debt.