I grew up in Australia, thinking Americans were crazy for their obsession with guns. In the past year my opinion changed completely, after seeing the US states with high gun ownership like Florida and Texas are some of the few places in the world where this authoritarianism hasn't taken hold.
I'm not sure those states are good examples when their governors were happy to impose restrictions on private businesses and remove their freedom of choice wrt proof of vaccination - to the complaint of the Cato Institute, no less.
The US is a bit different than portrayed. Even in Illinois, most of the state is hard red. They have “2nd amendment sanctuary counties”. Masking, gun laws, etc aren’t followed in the country, even suburbs.
Honestly, there’s a good reason people in Illinois believe their elections are stolen (there’s lots of historic proof). It’s an open secret that the democrats steal the state. If you ask around, almost everyone believes it.
To be fair, Illinois has jailed a significant number of governors lol
