The gun violence statistic is suspect, however, regardless, 2.5 million crimes are thwarted each year in the US most without a shot being fired. This is a famous study by Kleck in the mid 90s. It was widely refuted, however, no new empirical evidence was cited in support of those detracting.

That's like a porn actress criticising sex.

Yes we have issues. Some of us are trying to deal with them. So what? Other nations are far worse, but the UN does nothing...
The UN is a useless waste of time money and space. We should stop funding it and tell them to find a new home. When something needs policing in the world those blue helmets are impotent...

If the UN does nto like us, which seems to be the case. I would suggest that they move out.. Also, when they need a bunch of soldiers to "keep the peace" somewhere they could in stead of relying heavily on US solders in Blue hats they could put blue hats on some nice Iranian soldiers, also it seems like its time for the other veto power nations to man up. So, get some blue hats for Chinese and Russian soldiers. Now, I know there are those who would suggest that this would somehow make us weaker. I would suggest that not wasting our money to solve other peoples problems does nothing to make us stronger and more economically viable. So, while we would not be wasting money on transport and Humvees we would still be shipping lots of software, entertainment manufactured goods and grain to anyone who has something to trade for it in return..

I do too, and I don't care whether the UN criticizes us.

The criticisms on guns are simplistic, I think. We don't know how many violent crimes never happen because the would-be perp is afraid of guns . We also don't know that guns and violence are causal correlated; maybe some third factor causes us to have open gun laws and violence. Also, the stand-your-ground laws just say you can defend yourself; they're not a license for everyone to act as freelance police officers. The right to defend yourself seems basic.