re: #86 uncah91

Ex: Why would anyone need/want a semi-automatic gun?

Look at a how hunters have been portrayed in popular culture from the movie Bambi forward…

Asking why a dangerous device is needed suddenly becomes a presumption of mental illness? Methinks someone doth protest too much.

re: #82 William Barnett-Lewis

Your apparent presumption that all gun owners are inherently psychotic.

I sense a certain hypersensitivity on the part of some.

Good.

The analogy to smoking is a good one. They are addictive entertainment habits that have a chance to cause harm or death to both self and others. Banning either outright is not possible and probably too heavy handed. But over the past few decades smoking has become less and less socially acceptable, and people have become less and less willing to tolerate it around them. Guns will be somewhat different, because they have a much smaller chance of killing someone and because cigarettes have never been treated as magic totems of freedom, but if America is to end its crazy gun addiction, it must become similarly less socially acceptable.