Why do Americans love Guns so much?

Actually our murder rate is low compared to a lot of countries with restrictive weapons laws....Brazil, South Africa and Mexico come to mind. Plus, our murders with firearms tend to be associated mostly with the drug trade and 'warfare' between criminal gangs. 'Murders' also tend to restricted to certain parts of certain cities, and young men associated with gangs and the dope trade kill and are killed far more than young women associated with those same gangs. Young black men tend to kill each other more often white men, and Latinos tend to kill each other with firearms less often than asians per capita. Oddly, black men do not commit suicide with a firearm as often as white men and women in general rarely use a firearm to commit suicide. I bring this up because here in the US some states have very restrictive firearms laws and others very lax laws. The difference in firearm offenses tend to be about the same state to state so the argument that the 'firearm itself' is the problem doesn't jibe with the objective reality of the situation. Given that in states like Arizona where firearms are practically unrestricted and any adult without a criminal record can legally buy one, if the firearm itself led to murder it would follow that there would be no difference between men and women, rich and poor, black, white, latino and native Americans when it came to murder with a firearm....yet there are huge differences that can't be explained by legal ownership of a firearm. As far as 'self defense' with a firearm there are several thousand reports that an intended victim, when he or she exhibited a firearm the attacker abated his attack even though no shot were fired. While this issue gets kicked around by people a lot and everyone has their own take on the issue the reality of it is that possession of firearms by law abiding citizens pose no particular danger to the public at large...just stay out gang territory and out of the dope trade and chances are you'll never actually see a firearm or hear a shot fired.