A lot of people are scared shitless of guns. Why? Because they've fallen prey to what I call the "Pitbull Fallacy". If you ask a typical suburbanite what they think of pitbulls, they are likely to say that they hate them, that they are dangerous, vicious beasts, and they would not want one anywhere near themselves or anyone they care about. Which is pretty much their opinion of guns too.
Yet...
They do not know anyone who has owned one.
They have not spent any meaningful time around one.
The only time they hear about them is when they do something horrible and their entire opinion about them is formed by these exposures - not the millions of encounters that people have with them every day when they do no harm at all. Their fear is irrational, but it is visceral, and their response is a desire to eliminate the world of them.
Neither pitbulls nor firearms are bad. It is the people who handle them that make them so.
Comments