The funny thing about guns is that you could never know that there's anything funny about guns if you only listen to the people who want to outlaw them.
You would never know there's anything fun, or responsible or intelligent about guns unless there was a fun, responsible and intelligent gun culture. That gun culture would disappear or go underground leaving laymen even more clueless, if guns were banned in America. This is the consequence of the old cliche that if you outlaw guns, the only people who will own them are outlaws. This kind of disappearance of knowledge happens. It's a case of 'the old man died with the recipe' and it can happen in any sort of law-abiding culture when the law prohibits.
Of course the people most vulnerable to the destruction of knowledge are those who have no experience in the subject matter. I don't think it takes a PhD to recognize that most people who oppose the ownership of guns for private citizens are private citizens who have never owned or fired one.
I support the ownership of guns as a logical consequence of my principly held belief that human beings have the right to make life of death decisions. I also believe that only the proper training with guns will make people responsible with them. But we know that a large plurality is not properly trained. The implication is that there are indeed gun nuts, and nuts with guns. But so there are too with automobiles. Training hasn't stopped drunk drivers.
We may have drunk drivers, because drinking is legal and driving is legal. So there is a presumption out there that some people are responsible enough to buy, own and use alcohol. The same presumption holds for automobiles. And our legal system properly defends our liberty and encourages responsibility by regulating cars and alcohol as well as specifying punishments for their abuse. The same is true with guns, as it should be.
Oh. OK so here's the real funny thing. Imagine that through gun control, we lost the fun, responsible and intelligent gun culture, rather in the same way we lost sharecropping and migrant farming culture. Wouldn't it be fascinating to require immigrants to "do the jobs Americans won't do"?
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