Quote Originally Posted by Posh View Post
Guns make you feel powerful and for people with no power whatsoever, it can be a rush, even if you don't use the item in question for deciding if someone can can continue to live. The psychological component of being around a gun, holding gun, pointing a gun at something or someone, cannot be ignored. I held a $100,00 Purdey rifle in England which in addition to being as beautiful as any sculpture I've seen was also deadly. I find it very difficult to see a piece of art that also doubles as a thing that destroys a life; art was never meant for one living creature to kill another living creature.

If you're a weak, disenfranchised, ineffectual or scared person, having a gun, which gives you the ultimate power, which is the power over life and death, is a feeling that a lot of people actuallyy enjoy. That's scary to me. I would think hard before being around someone who enjoys owning lots of guns, holding guns, shooting guns and all that. I'm automatically wary of that person, which I don't forsee changing. And I don't mean an adult who sharpshoots or clay shoots; those people aren't shooting living things.
These feelings of power are the very reason kids should be educated about guns when they are young, so that they understand that while a firearm gives them a lot of potential power they also carry heavy consequences for misuse.

One of my dad's friends has a Class III license, so he can legally own just about anything... I've gone out shooting with him, the only gun he's ever handed me that I got any sort of "rush" from, just holding it, was a Thompson, and that was more of a "holy sh*t, I'm holding the same kind of gun as Al Capone" type thing. I've gotten to shoot MP5s, AKS 74s, M-16A1s (fully automatic as apposed to 3 round burst), even an M2... I'd be lying if I said it wasn't fun to pump rounds into an empty hillside, but I never had any feeling of power, and I have a feeling if it wasn't such a rare thing to be able to do that, it wouldn't even be fun. The reason is I've been brought up around guns, they're a necessary fact of life on a farm (use 'em to shoot ground squirrels who chew through irrigation lines, buggers cause a metric sh*t ton of damage), and I know the consequences of using them against other people... if you exercise that power that a gun grants you, chances are things aren't going to work out well for you.