Richard AmmonThe bigger hoax is that even if every adult had a gun they would not be “protected”. It’s a hysterical myth that having a weapon makes one shielded from being shot. The vast majority of gun owners do not carry them to work, to church, to a nightclub, to school, in their car or truck. A person is not likely to be shot with a gun in their hand. There is no protection from lone-wolf shooters; even if a person owns five handguns and three semi-automatics. Being shot at home (where guns are kept) is extremely unlikely (except when children play with one.)
Just as we strain to update social attitudes about homosexuality into a modern world, so too must change attitudes about gun ownership. Possession of weapons was a useful idea in the 18th century when there was war on US soil with England. There is no war now here–except that of our own imagining.
Guns are killing weapons made for no other purpose–and they happen to make a lot of money. That’s why the gun makers say they are good for business.
So where is the protection? I bet at least some the victims and families of Orlando had guns. What good did they do? Most people do not want guns and find them repulsive and frightening and dangerous to be near.
Tell me an incident in which a threatened person was saved because they carried a gun. This is the worst kind of social paranoia, fear of being injured or killed. Gun ownership is a terrible rip-off by an industry to make lots of money from a freaked-out public that is kept freaked-out by mass killings and hysteria from fear-ridden NRA adherents who blindly believe that a gun is a protection device.
