• ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Do you believe gun ownership is as prevalent on that side as the right?

    In rural areas, I’d say it’s even. In some parts of the country, even in non-rural areas it’s not a large divide. Many people have reasons for owning firearms, and the kinds of people that own them are as diverse as their reasons for wanting them in the first place. I myself am anything but right wing, and my first gun was purchased in and owned for many years in a large city. When I lived rurally, pretty much all my neighbors had guns, though I did not by that point (they assumed I did too, and I never indicated otherwise, so they spoke of it freely).

    I gave it up for non-political reasons, but as an ex-gun owner who was a gun owner prior to all this craziness, I can tell you that NON-political gun owners are not shouting about their gun ownership and in general, don’t want anyone to know about it. I know I never did. Whose business is it but my own whether my home is armed or not? And if I do have a house full of guns, I also have a very attractive collection of theft targets I do not want to advertise. And even if I’m not armed, do I want anyone to know that for sure? No. Best to keep everyone guessing on all counts. Were I not writing anonymously, we would not now be having this conversation. But none of that will ever make the news, and never has, because it doesn’t rile anyone up in either direction.

    Again, you’ve made the mistake of believing the media coverage you hear and assuming breadth of coverage equals breadth of real-life example. It does not. There are MANY more sane individual, non-political or liberal gun owners than you can imagine in the US. They’re just not talking about it or bringing media attention to it.

    I should probably add, before you bring statistics into it, that gun ownership has only in the last couple of decades required real registration and tracking. When I bought and sold mine, I sold them through private sales, again decades ago. If some state thinks I still have a gun and wants me to produce it, all I have for them is a notarized bill of sale signed by both parties, and then they’re on their own, lol. There are a VAST number of untracked firearms in this country, owned by people who do not want to talk about them.

    This is the kind of nuance that a mind attracted to authoritarianism just can’t understand.