So, it’s a game then? The person whom it is aimed at (pardon my Swanky grammar) gets a fighting chance if he guesses right? Or wrong..

Yes Quaker, that’s exactly what I am saying.

Excuse me while I pick up my eyes which just rolled out of the back of my head.

So if you shoot at a target, you’re not using it correctly because it didn’t kill something? That doesn’t make much sense does it?

When did we decide that guns are less a grim tool to be respected and rarely used and more like a fun toy, and why don’t we all see how that could be a problem?

Why is it a “grim tool” and when did society determine they should be rarely used? Seriously, I submit that it’s not gun owners that are the problem with regard to how guns are perceived in the general public, but people such as yourself that have this mindset that guns are some kind of sinister creation.

Visit a gun range some day. You’d be surprised to find that just about everybody is an everyday person like yourself, not some wild eyed conspiracy theorist seeing black helicopters.

But people don’t love their coins, stamps, and comic books the same way gun collectors love their guns.

You’ve obviously have never been to a comic book convention.

Your last four words illustrate my point. Why is it “cool” to own something which, when used correctly, kills something? When did we decide that guns are less a grim tool to be respected and rarely used and more like a fun toy, and why don’t we all see how that could be a problem?

And why are guns valuable? Why don’t people collect antique sewing machines–an invention far more useful and with less moral baggage–with the same frequency?

Look, I understand the collection fetish as a general thing. But people don’t love their coins, stamps, and comic books the same way gun collectors love their guns.

The problem is in your question Spider. The majority of gun owners don’t consider guns to be “instruments of death and mayhem.” They only become that in the wrong hands.

Some people collect rare guns as they are quite valuable and often have had famous owners (for instance, somebody paid $29000 at auction for a gun once owned by Elvis Presley). Somebody else got their hands on a gun owned by Bob Dalton of the Dalton Gang. There’s history there.

Others collect an assortment of guns because quite simply, they’re fun to shoot (not at people but at targets on a range) or just cool to own. Hell, there are people that own cars they’ll never drive.

As for the culture itself, why do people go rock climbing (and I’m asking in this in the context of the “gun culture”, not with regard to gun violence so please people, don’t start in with, “You can’t kill others while rock climbing!!”), or go bungee jumping? Why do some people get airlifted to a top of a mountain and then ski down after only seeing the terrain from the air? Why do people go base jumping?

Well, that’s all right then.

If his classmates had been properly armed with some serious ordnance they could have easily out-gunned him.

The gun culture, however, is another story. Why on Earth are so many of us obsessed with owning multiple instruments of death and mayhem? The idea of “protecting my family” gets less credible unless you know for a fact that your family is being attacked by wandering hordes of barbarians.

The “assault rifle” they claimed he had is a freakin’ HI-POINT Carbine. It’s a cheapo $250 rifle you can get by mail-order. It shoots cheap pistol ammo, and the only magazines available that work right are 10-round factory-made magazines. It isn’t an “assault rifle”, heck, it’s barely a RIFLE.

Assault rifles are full-auto military hardware — machine guns. This is a basic, pistol-ammo carbine, suitable for learning on and maybe some home defense. It’s not a military weapon. It’s not “high powered”…it shoots PISTOL ammunition.

This whole thing is a piece of nonsense propaganda of the first magnitude. Even the grenade is a homemade thing he put together with some black powder and some BBs. It’s not a military grenade, like the stories make you think.