The US is a big place, it depends on where you are. Where I grew up half the boys in my class would go deer hunting with their fathers. While gun violence was rare, guns were not. Now I live in Boston. Here there's literally the toughest gun laws in the country. There a very few legal guns in the city (and most of the illegal ones gravitate towards area of higher crime such as Roxbury), in fact a lot of the people I work with are even troubled with the fact that I know how to operate one. Its a different culture.