Grew up in Poland, which has one of the lowest gun ownership rates in the world - pretty close to North Korea and Japan. Not just owning them, but even having any interest in firearms or their history, would be frowned upon, basically a "red flag".

It wasn't until much later that I realized that Poland's restrictive gun laws and the lack of a gun culture - something that seemed just like a part of our national identity, a point of pride - was essentially a product of a hundred years of "partitions" (where the country did not exist as a sovereign entity, with the territory occupied and governed by Austria, Germany, and Russia); and then, in the post-WWII years, the Soviet control of its "satellite state". And that although most of Europe is fairly anti-gun, our neighbors in Germany had a ton more.

Anyway, now living in the US.