[Glice]

I think it's a very weak form of politics that can't propose to alter a culture. Looking to GB, there's a load of things that were engrained in our psyche that have been eroded. We don't actually drink the tea of the stereotype, that's an imperialist-era hangover. Pub culture until about ten years ago was smoking, fighting, pub games and largely woman-less; thanks to a series of Labour legislation changes around health and booze taxation, a pub's more likely to be a bistro type affair with free wi-fi and young mothers drinking shit 'Italian' coffee in the afternoons than it is somewhere for men to go and complain about their Missus.

Similarly, British football culture is very different now. Thanks to a more sophisticated policing of crowds, seated stadia and more punitive measures for football violence, the idea of going to a game for a fight with the other team is severely diminished. There are still remnants, but it's by no means what it was in the 60s and 70s; further, football crowds are no longer primarily populated by working class men.

I would entirely agree that altering gun culture in America isn't going to happen soon; I wouldn't agree that it's impossible. If we take my example of pubs, it is possible to remove fetishised objects like cigarettes from an 'engrained' culture; they'll still stick around in some form, but smoking levels and related health problems have been severely reduced thanks to the (EU-imposed) smoking ban.

I don't think it even requires any notion of changes being 'radical' - health care reform is finally moving in the States - it's not an ideal system, but it is a definite step in the right direction. It's taken a strong leader with a lot of popular support to force through those changes, and they're not as huge as I think the left would've liked, but things can change. So far as I can make out, in spite of a fairly large public and political resistance to health care reform, they have taken place and no-one has rioted.