In your last line you admit fear is meant to smother rational debate.
Congratulations, you fit the profile, you are part of the problem you set out to attack in your article. The answer to your last question how can so many Americans be behind both more guns and more background checks is simple. We know guns are dangerous, we don't want to get rid of them but we would like to make sure they're staying out of the hands of people who again and again we find out should never have had access.
You cannot open a rational debate with a school massacre of small children by an outsider, conflate every school shooting with that level of violence, and then say "but I'm the rational one." 99% of school shootings are an extension of violence in already happening in the neighborhood. They are crime related. That's not to say we should write them off, but the way to handle them is entirely different from the way we should handle things like Newtown. One is about someone who has gone off their rocker, and should have been in a mental institution and the other is about day to day policing and efforts to keep our youth from participating in crime at all.
Not happy there you blithely sensationalize the green tip 5.56 round the ATF wanted to ban under a handgun law. The problem here is no rational person would call it a handgun round. It is a rifle round with a few very expensive custom made pistols for it. It really isn't anything more than a regular 22 caliber round with more oomph in the cartridge. The same caliber as the popular plinking round kids learn on. It has no special armor piercing properties other than its speed. That would be the black tip round which is both rare and already restricted to military use only. Furthermore under this argument you'd have to ban all rifles and all rifle ammunition as they all have the same or better characteristics where body armor is involved. To make this even more insane, body armor has advanced since the bill was passed in the 1980's and can now stop rounds like the 5.56 green tip.
I know it all seems like low hanging fruit, but one of the perks of having so many bad black rifle thingys floating around your society is that the society tends to understand how they work much better.
As to talking to stupid people about what women need for protection, why not try talking to the survivors, while they aren't all together on whether they should carry, I am sure they will object to being called "young, hot little girls" and I am just as sure you could have found a less sensational quote that didn't paint every gun owner as a mental loon.
You know who else won't rest no matter how far they go with guns the Brady Campaign, they won't rest until guns are outright banned or legislated so badly that they are effectively banned. Interestingly enough you have pretty much stolen their arguments and printed them as your own.
Congratulations, you fit the profile, you are part of the problem you set out to attack in your article. The answer to your last question how can so many Americans be behind both more guns and more background checks is simple. We know guns are dangerous, we don't want to get rid of them but we would like to make sure they're staying out of the hands of people who again and again we find out should never have had access.
You cannot open a rational debate with a school massacre of small children by an outsider, conflate every school shooting with that level of violence, and then say "but I'm the rational one." 99% of school shootings are an extension of violence in already happening in the neighborhood. They are crime related. That's not to say we should write them off, but the way to handle them is entirely different from the way we should handle things like Newtown. One is about someone who has gone off their rocker, and should have been in a mental institution and the other is about day to day policing and efforts to keep our youth from participating in crime at all.
Not happy there you blithely sensationalize the green tip 5.56 round the ATF wanted to ban under a handgun law. The problem here is no rational person would call it a handgun round. It is a rifle round with a few very expensive custom made pistols for it. It really isn't anything more than a regular 22 caliber round with more oomph in the cartridge. The same caliber as the popular plinking round kids learn on. It has no special armor piercing properties other than its speed. That would be the black tip round which is both rare and already restricted to military use only. Furthermore under this argument you'd have to ban all rifles and all rifle ammunition as they all have the same or better characteristics where body armor is involved. To make this even more insane, body armor has advanced since the bill was passed in the 1980's and can now stop rounds like the 5.56 green tip.
I know it all seems like low hanging fruit, but one of the perks of having so many bad black rifle thingys floating around your society is that the society tends to understand how they work much better.
As to talking to stupid people about what women need for protection, why not try talking to the survivors, while they aren't all together on whether they should carry, I am sure they will object to being called "young, hot little girls" and I am just as sure you could have found a less sensational quote that didn't paint every gun owner as a mental loon.
You know who else won't rest no matter how far they go with guns the Brady Campaign, they won't rest until guns are outright banned or legislated so badly that they are effectively banned. Interestingly enough you have pretty much stolen their arguments and printed them as your own.