Individuals cherish the right to possess guns for many reasons. As exemplified in my early years in a small Wyoming community, recreational use was paramount – hunting and target shooting. Guns were owned as a matter of course, people enjoyed them and the community at large did not feel threatened by them.
Use by criminals, injuries and death from tragic accidents and suicides, although shocking and tragic, were dealt with tangentially as social problems resulting from careless or abusive use of weapons rather than as bases for passage of extreme gun control laws. Circumstances differed in large urban areas, where recreational use was uncommon, but my sense is that people there looked to the police for protection from gun-wielding criminals rather than to personal weapons possession.
Now the front-line reasons citizens at large want to own and carry guns are more variable and complex: Thwart government oppression (as cited in the op-ed “Without gun rights, there is no America[1],” Salt Lake Tribune, June 10). Protect against gun-wielding gang members and other criminals and life-threatening aggressors. Pure enjoyment of the heft and feel of the finely crafted hand guns and rifles. The thrill of the kick and resulting impacts of firing them. And, finally, more deep-seated ego enhancing factors such as feelings of power and self worth.
The upshot of all this is that there has always been a gun culture in the U.S. But it is has changed from one of acceptance of a tangential role of gun ownership to one of gun proliferation for the reasons discussed above and the promotional efforts of the NRA and other gun proponents.
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