So, what, exactly, is the gun culture?

[sofa king]

36. I am repeatedly accused of being a "hugger."

I don't like guns, don't carry guns, don't own guns, do not feel I need guns, and hope I never have to use one violently. I do not think guns are well-regulated, and I want that to change.

I do, however, insist that whatever else is the case, guns shall be omnipresent in American culture for hundreds of years to come, because there are tens of millions of them hidden away or stored and not registered. Worse, in less than a decade people will probably be able to manufacture firearms and ammunition from within their own homes using 3D printers. Soon even the countries that currently have decent gun control will be unable to stop the proliferation of firearms.

The public will never be disarmed, and attempting to do so, or even talking about, or allowing our opponent to tell uninformed voters that we're talking about it, has the opposite effect.

Note for example that the ammunition plants have been in continuous 24/7 production since the beginning of this year, meaning that while a background check bill can't reach a floor vote in the Senate, gun owners have stockpiled enough ammunition to fight a war in the first four months of this year alone--the exact fucking opposite of what we want. That is what is actually happening, right now.

So we as a society had better come to terms with the fact that guns and gun violence will not be addressed by outlawing guns, but by better regulating them as the Constitution demands and more importantly, by figuring out how to find and help crazy-ass fucking people, who are the real problem.

Just because it used to be an NRA slogan doesn't mean it is not true: some people can turn into killers who use the tools available to them to kill. They will never run out of tools or diabolical ideas, but we might be able to stop a lot of the rampages by finding and treating these people before they pop off. That is how we are going to temper gun violence, someday.

When I say this, when I pop the balloon of others here by pointing out that "getting rid of guns" will never happen because of the nature of the problem, when I insist that functional knowledge of how guns work and what they do is the key to their effective regulation, I get called a gun-lover, every time, as I will this time.

And that's fine. If I allowed myself to listen to believers, rather than thinkers, I'd still be going to church.