Excellent point. Gun ownership for hunting, shooting coyotes that threaten livestock or for home protection is part of the culture in places like Montana and Wyoming. Also, you don’t have the lethal combination of dense urban population and lots of guns.

As a kid in western rural Kansas, I lived not far from where the Herb Clutter family was robbed and murdered in their farm home in 1959. That’s the murder Truman Capote wrote about in the book and movie, In Cold Blood.

I never heard whether the Clutter family had a shotgun or two around the house. Most farmers do. If they did, they didn’t get a chance to use them. But they were killed by a shotgun and having their throats slit.

Buyers frequently identify “safety” and ability to “defend” oneself as a motivator for gun ownership, yet, completely ignore data which suggests that these things are far more likely to be used against the owner and/or by someone OTHER than the owner in a situation unrelated to personal self-defense.

So, if you’re a rational thinker wouldnt you place fear of ownership ahead of a crook breaking and entering? And, if you are NOT a rational thinker, should you be allowed to own a gun?

Having said that, those who choose to reside in remote rural settings have a very different set of considerations from those of us who reside in modern suburbia.

Had the mother of the shooter in Connecticut lived, she should have been guilty of criminal negligence. However, that is a lower level of liability than what I’m talking about for the girlfriend and straw buyer situations, where letting the guns into the hands of somebody who shouldn’t have them is intentional.

Those who are chasing this cosmetic are distracted from the real problem(s).

Criminal liability is already in place but inconsistantly enforced.

Civil liability is a growing concern for those who procure firearms through legitimate channels.

Besides having enough cops on the street and allowing extraordinary measures like “stop and frisk,” the key is to deal with gun trafficking. How do we do that? By having the data and technology to trace every gun used in a crime back to the last person who legally purchased the gun and holding that person civilly and criminally liable (with allowances for authenticated, non-preventable gun thefts).

California as a “model” is suggested – but with little or no statistical evidence that this “model” would have changed the results. As a solution to the original problem, it is assumptive. Current laws are time and time again, demonstrated to have been ignored in a majority of gun-violence-related instances.

Indiduals who (I consider – largely) paranoid as a group, defend their right to own firearms – in part – as a matter of self-defense. There is something circular and amiss when irrational fear is used as a basis with which to rationalize ownership of deadly force.

Large capacity magazines have no useful purpose in the practical shooting sports. Most everything else used to differentiate “assault weapons” is largely a cosmetic distinction without a meaningful difference.

The cosmetics so frequently promoted in the media to identify an “assault weapon” are, largely, the result of advances in materials and design of the same functionalities that have existed for many decades. Attempts to legislate “assault-style weapons” have repeatedly failed for this very fundamental reason.

I’m a shooter, I once was a card-carrying member – but opted out when the NRA began to make paranoia an integral part of their political argument. I enjoy the shooting sports (but have no desire to take the life of any living being). I am of the opinion (and data supports my belief) that possessing a firearm does little/nothing to improve my personal safety and may even be a threat to my immediate family.

An individual who purchases a long-rifle or even handgun as a form of “protection” and who resides in modern settings, is ill-informed as to the risk/benefit of these devices in close-quarters self-defense situations.

Oh please. That was in a couple of Vietnam war movies. But the drill instructors didn’t use that corny bit even when I was in basic training more than 43 years ago. Yes, they insisted that we use the terms “weapon” and “rifle” instead of gun and found ways to make us pay if we screwed up. But, honest, they didn’t do the “this is for fun” bit. Anyway, we are civilians.