Why did I do such a 180 on guns?

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214. Thank you taverner for a great post

I used to believe we could have a rational discussion with gun owners who considered themselves reasonable, at least the ones who say they only want a gun for hunting and one gun in their home for "self-defense." After living through hundreds of thousands of killings and reading thousands of "studies", newspaper editorials, posts, and comments from our elected officials, I no longer believe we will ever find common ground. After visiting Louisiana where every "debate" ended with the need for more guns, and how much safer we all would be if everyone was armed, I came home to Colorado to find pandemonium at gun shows and the CBI with a two-week backlog of 13,000 background checks and needing a half million dollars just to process the gun buys since the Newtown tragedy.
And in liberal, sane Boulder our local paper has a letter today from a woman who, after attacking our "transformational" President, says: "Sorry, frothing-at-the-mouth anti-gun nuts, but the Second Amendment has never been about duck hunting. It's the inalienable right of free people to defend themselves against despotic government (and lunatics). There's a term for countries where only the military and police have guns: Police State. They can be very safe places to live until the government comes for you."
My only hope now is that we will elect people who have the guts to stop listening to the specious arguments of gun lovers, stop taking money from the NRA and gun manufacturers, and stand up to pass laws which will stop this lunacy. I hope there are enough truly reasonable citizens who will back them.