Guns, gun laws, and gun owners...

For a moment or two, let's put aside the semantics, and the Second Amendment (which couldn't anticipate today's world) and the hackneyed rants about rights, and security, and protection and all of the rest of that bafflegab, and just for a moment or two, let's look at the differences between those with guns and those without guns.

When I was a gun owner, I didn't have to be particularly nice to those whom I considered to be 'assholes' because I knew that with one controlled squeeze of my trigger finger, I could blow that bastard away forever. I didn't have to take any shit unless I wanted to, because I had the ultimate solution handy.  Never mind that I would likely spend the rest of my life behind bars if I used that solution; the fact is, when we lose our temper and just want someone gone, we often don't stop to consider the consequences until too late. Luckily, I never went that far, but I did succeed in mouthing off a lot, and proving myself to be
that very kind of 'asshole' that I myself so despised.

After I came to my senses, so to speak, with a little help from a couple of friendly neighborhood policemen, and got rid of my well-oiled Walther, and my treasured Browning and some rifles including one with a scope that was deadly
at 200 yards, it wasn't very long until I suddenly realized I had to re-learn all about interpersonal relationships if I intended to interact with the rest of society
in the usual everyday ways. I couldn't rely on my trigger finger and a well-oiled handgun to protect me if my big mouth got me into serious trouble. So I had to learn to play nice, and get more familiar with the meaning of compromise and
diplomacy and tact. Concepts that were quite foreign to me until then.

It worked out very well, and nobody got killed, or arrested, or even really angry
because by using a more intelligent approach, matters never came to that. And
I'm not going to lecture on the subject of what's wrong with guns, or any of that. Guns are fine if you're in a war zone, but otherwise, intelligent people don't need them in everyday experiences if we learn to use our heads instead of our tongues or fingers, and avoid situations likely to provoke violent confrontations. But you won't learn to walk unassisted until you throw away those crutches, and take a deep breath, and stand on your own hind legs, and mind your mouth, and try to respect the other person's right to a point of view which may differ from yours. In other words, change your psychology from being gun-oriented to being people-oriented. It worked for me.