Originally posted by: Garet Jax
Originally posted by: nan0bug
An open question to all those who are against having guns at home -- If I can respect your reasons for not wanting guns in your household, why is it so difficult for you to respect what I want in my household?
This is the crux of the discussion, isn't it? Here are some of the reasons (in my mind). Since guns are so prevalent in society a good portion of people have them.
People are known to do stupid things under the right circumstances. Everyone has a breaking point or a set of buttons that can be pressed to where they do things less than rational (road rage is an example).
If they have easy access to guns, then those stupid things have the potential for being escalated. There are a ton of murders every year that were crimes of passion that would probably have been less serious had the there been no guns around.
At a minimum, people are less likely to die from other wounds than they are from gun shot wounds. Ideally, the person comes to their senses before commiting any crime.
Without easy access to guns, those stupid things are just that stupid.
This is exacerbated by people's mentality to "one up". If criminals knew that almost no one had guns, then they would be less likely to carry them and would be less likely to feel the need to use them if they did carry them.