People in my family love guns. They fucking love them. My Dad has guns all over his house “just in case”. Other members of the fam have multiple guns, like 4 or 5. None of these people live in high crime areas. Almost all of my family lives in lily-white super safe suburbs/bedroom communities. There are no gangs, there are no drug dealers…they live in safety. They all have arsenals for “protection” though. What the fuck?

That may be the ostensive reason, but really they just love love guns. They go to shooting ranges and are often buying new and exciting firearms. My brother in law even loads/fills his own bullets. We had a family reunion and one of the family/bonding activities was shooting. They often post on social media about their trips to the gun range and how many rounds they’ve fired off. Guns are fun for the entire family!

Whatever gene determines one’s love of guns, I didn’t get it. We grew up in a rural area where guns were just a part of life. Gun safety and use were taught at a young age and having them around wasn’t a big deal. As kids, we knew we weren’t allowed to touch them and they were only for emergencies. Their only real use was hunting and protecting the livestock from predators. There wasn’t the focus then on protecting yourself from rampant crime. They weren’t something9 generally used for fun and hijinks, they were tools. I don’t remember there being this weird obsession with them and the Second Amendment. Hmmm…wonder why…

^{The National Rifle Association wasn’t a huge lobbying group when I was a kid. They had a magazine and you could take gun safety classes through them but they were legit low key. In the later 1970’s it started lobbying for gun rights after the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed. The NRA, being funded by gun makers and not gun owners, began trying to control and limit legislation about guns. “After 1977, the organization expanded its membership by focusing heavily on political issues and forming coalitions with conservative politicians, most of them are Republicans.”}

So, now any attempt to alter or modify the laws around guns is fought tooth and nail by the gun lobby. They’ve convinced their followers to fight as well under the guise of the government taking their guns. Remember Charlton Heston’s “Pry my guns from my cold dead hands” comment. We used to have an assault weapons ban, which actually was effective. They didn’t kick anyone’s door in and take their gun…they just stopped selling new ones. if you already had one, well, you had one. It was effective at limiting the number of military grade weapons the public had. Thanks to the NRA, Congress let that ban lapse, and we all know how well that’s working out for our country.

This when the narrative around guns changed and we got such pithy slogans as “Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun” Suddenly crime became a huge issue. Now, we’ve always had crime and levels tend to remain somewhat static and statistically, most of us won’t be victims of violent crime. but the propaganda of the Right made it seem like shit was just out of control. We need guns to protect ourselves from the marauding bands of super-predators out to do us harm. There has always been a racial element to this narrative of uncontrolled crime. The NRA has used the fear of black and brown criminals to fuel gun purchases by white American who really don’t need them.
You heard me. The vast majority don’t need a gun. There are exceptions of course, but the average American…nope. Of all the people you know with guns…how many have actually ever used one effectively to protect themselves? I would gather very few. Again, statistics point out how very rare that is. Most folks never shoot their guns anywhere other than a range. So you have this hugely dangerous deadly tool your never going to use that makes you and your household inherently less safe.


For example;
People who report “firearm access” are at twice the risk of homicide and more than three times the risk of suicide compared to those who do not own or have access to firearms.
The vast majority of accidental firearm deaths among children are related to child access to firearms — either self-inflicted or at the hands of another child.
More than 75 percent of first and second graders know where their parents keep their firearms and 36 percent admitted handling the weapons, contradicting their parents’ reports
Fun for the whole family. Guns in your home do not make you safer. Study after study after study proves this out yet we still cling to the idea that they do. Because the NRA and it’s proponents have sold you that lie…as they sell you the guns that reinforce it. We have vastly more guns and more gun deaths than any other country in the world. The makers of guns have created a mythos and entire culture around their products that keeps you buying them. Y’all are being played.
** Opinions are mine and I’m not going to argue about this shit. You can think I’m wrong and I can think you’re a crazy gun nut. MURICA!