Why do Americans think guns are the solutions to everyday problems?

Please. Those who have guns fall into perhaps two of three primary camps:

A] out-of-control youngsters raised in poverty for whom gang culture is a next-door phenomenon. Being young, the ability to think past bedtime tonight is still largely unformed.

B] Adults who collect guns, treasure them, keep them in gun safes, spent time at firing ranges, – – fill in your own blanks.

C] Hunters.

I’ll omit other, much smaller groups such as hit men, adult criminals, or those whose jobs require them to carry, such as police.

Suicide is what it is. In the USA guns do more of that for the simple reason that they’re often handy. Guns don’t cause suicide. Just to get that straight.

Casual murder, the banal kind found among the first group above, happens with small arms that were obtained through theft, or bought after being stolen. Other ‘casual’ do murders take place, but the largest bucket is this one.

Psycho murder, the attention-getting kind, represents a tiny fraction of murders in the USA but of course also sells newspapers, hence comes instantly to mind when called up by folks who don’t like guns.

I’ll subdivide class B into carry and don’t-carry. Among the ‘carry’ set, stories abound of having used that fact to interrupt a crime, or prevent one.

SO – HERE WE ARE AT THE BOTTOM – some countries have no direct connection between the present and a (fairly) recent past in which owning a gun wasn’t unusual. Here in the USA owning guns is still not that unusual. Now please review whatever thought guided writing your question, and re-think it.

PS – I don’t own a gun. I live in an area where the class of people who regularly abuse guns, i.e. for other-than-legal purposes, seldom walk by. My issue isn’t with guns per se so much as the crazy argument from ignorance that underlies the anti-gun debate:

“I don’t know why you’d ever want one of those things, so you should listen to me
and get rid of them!”

That, my friends, is the classic argument from ignorance. Not based on facts, but on trepidation founded by misinformation and buttressed by a commitment to ignorance.