It's interesting to have the take on it from different perspectives. You are in a unique position being from America of having first hand experience, yet you can now also see the Australian culture and why they don't get it. I'm from an even more conservative culture (Britain) where even our police never used to carry guns. So I find the Australians are a bit more comfortable with guns than us, aplthough it's more with using them in regards to hunting than serif defence.
To often we have pre-conceptions of what other cultures are like, usually from media. Or we take a toddlers view that they must be like us so why don't they think three same way as us? What we think is bad, must be universally bad, so any culture that thinks otherwise must be bad.
Thank you for the American's eye view on this, it certainly puts it more into perspective and your experience with the Australian culture probably helps with putting it in a way we're more likely to comprehend.