this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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European here. I will never even be remotely able to understand the fascination Americans have with guns and the normalization that goes with it.
To me, guns are tools that have no positive use. Firing a bullet at some target cannot accomplish anything useful, and worst case, it will do harm. So in your picture, I cannot see anything I could ever feel some kind of love for. It's as irrational and weird to me as loving a nuclear bomb.
Trying to take guns away from Americans is like trying to convince Germans to accept a speed limit on autobahns - it's become a sacrosanct right so ingrained in people's minds that no matter the cost, they will not allow it to be taken away from them.
Humans are weird.
Hunting. Your refusal to see that guns have some modicum of value just demonstrates, to me, that you're unwilling to even see it from a different perspective.
It's also interesting how simply describing the way I think about guns will almost inevitably trigger someone to say that it's some fault that lies with me, it certainly cannot be the guns, right?
And the fact that yes, there is that one use I can and do understand, does that somehow make guns generally acceptable? How many of the American gun owners are actually hunters in percent?
Those few percent are enough for you to blame some kind of character fault in my person for me not being able to unconditionally love guns? Can't you see that this is a still a bit weird?
You said guns have no positive use. And now you walk it back and say yes, there is a use you understand. To me that just leaves the door open to more potential uses.
I'll tell you, I am very much pro gun control. I want it to be hard to get them. I don't necessarily even believe in the whole home defense thing, and jokingly suggest often that the best defense is a bright flashlight. We probably agree on a lot.
I'm not attacking your character, just your lack of sincerity. When you make statements like you did in your first post that are hyperbolic, it erodes your position.
People have hobbies. I'm not a gun fetishist. I'm a gun owner. Outside of my outright telling someone that I am, they would have no idea. I don't wear camo. I don't have NRA stickers on my car. I don't make quips about guns don't kill people I kill people. But I don't besmirch people liking weapons as a hobby, in the same way I don't besmirch dudes who are into swords.
Sorry you feel that way. I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise, but we can say the exact same thing for a lot of hobbies (golf, soccer/football, other environmental damaging hobbies).
I just think they're fun to shoot. I don't have any illusions that I should be walking around with guns on the daily as I am unlikely to ever have the training to safely draw on a threat, but just going to the range and making some pew-pew at targets is fun as hell.