Guns are useful for defending yourself from a home invasion

[hunter]

46. You seem to have Hollywood slow motion fantasies of the gun violence sort.

I prefer romantic comedies myself, and occasionally subtle science fiction fantasies where space-time warps around me and I don't get hit by bullets.

Hmm... that's my actual experience with both flying bullets and shrapnel.

Nah, let's be real, it's just stupid luck. I've got no mutant superpowers.

Having experienced a few rough situations involving guns, not once would ME holding a gun in my hand have improved the overall outcome of the conflict.

Guns have a strong propensity for turning resolvable human conflicts into horrible irresolvable tragedies.

Worst case, you're the dude who shot your teenage daughter's secret boyfriend because you assumed he was a rapist, you're the one who shot your wife in a fight, you're the one who shot the harmless drunk who walked into the wrong house, you're the one who shot yourself because you were having a bad day, you're the one whose kids grow up to be gangsters or neo-nazis.

Here's how gun violence usually is: BAMBAMBAM! and then, if you are not suddenly dead or bleeding, you are looking around thinking

It doesn't much matter if you are armed or not.

I live in a community that ranks very high in gun violence for any so-called "first world" nation, and even in this gun crazy U.S.A.. We're somewhere in the top 25 for U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000.

Most of it is gang vs. gang violence, police vs. gang violence, and far too many police shootings of unarmed people behaving strangely.

Civil people here tend to loathe "gun cultures" of any sort.

My great grandmas were all wild west hunting-fishing-fighting-fierce women. The families of their descendants are still matriarchal. There is zero tolerance for fools with guns. A fool and his guns are soon parted. As a child I witnessed my mom literally grab a gun from a stranger, unload it, and smash it beyond repair. The fool was screaming he was going to sue her as he ran away. Whoopee... He never did.

My mom also took away her mom's guns when grandma became a danger to herself and others. Her mom eventually had to be removed from the home she fully owned and had fortified, in a battle with police and paramedics that lasted hours, with grandma throwing things, cussing in the foulest ways you can imagine, hitting, kicking, and eventually biting as they strapped her to the gurney and drugged her.

As my mom and my sister were cleaning my grandma's house afterward, a big job because grandma was a hoarder, they found another gun and some ammunition that my mom hadn't found when she took away grandma's other guns.

Maybe my grandma had forgotten where she'd hidden the gun, but I like to think that even though she was increasingly insane and anti-social, that she simply never wanted to shoot anyone, good guy or bad guy.

Most people turn into idiots when they're holding a gun. Many people who love guns are full time idiots. I include the vast majority of cops in these assessments.

If my grandma hadn't already been known by the police for her eccentric behaviors, and had she not been white, I suspect the police would have simply shot her dead.