Guns are more restricted. But people do have them, legally and not. A lot of the differences that might make good answers here are subtle and complex since things just work differently here—we homeschool and it's a bit different, but it does work out OK.

In general there's a bit less, like, theoretical freedom? like Absolute Freedom of Speech isn't beat into everyone's head as some divine precept. But our experience is that there's way, way more actual freedom. (And health freedom made it into the constitution here, unlike in America!) Here, when the authorities are doing something to you, you tend to know it. And they do less stuff to you. Things like cops actually taking the situation into account and having human compassion when there's a violation. When there are extenuating circumstances they relax enforcement like human beings.

There's strong social pressure to do what the group does, that connects somewhat to the soviet years. That is a challenge sometimes. Handy to be the crazy Americans so we have a social excuse to question things. I know there are some people who resent us for that kind of thing, but the culture is very libertarian and people generally let us do what we need to do.

School is definitely a frontier where the DS types were moving in on Russia. We saw some textbooks from the west that definitely sent the message that the west was the cool place and the hideous movies are the starting point for western culture. It's nothing like American schools but the west was definitely making inroads there. It will be interesting to see what happens on that front now. We homeschooled in the US and homeschool here too—there are some good groups that help our children socialize and get Russian-language coverage of school subjects. Other expats could answer better about what the school experience is like here.