I was asked why I love guns, by someone who has an instinctive revulsion towards them.
That's a rather important question.
Aside from the fact that they are by far the most effective means of self defense, and defense of others, and that I have used them for such purposes multiple times?
Aside from the fact that they are used for such purposes millions of times every year?
Aside from the fact that it is enormously fun and satisfying, to develop skill in using them, and in competing with them?
They are one of the finest examples of both human mechanical craft, arts, and precision... and in their use, of our martial arts.
They're very interesting pieces of machinery. Moreso, they embody a fascinating set of interactions between machinery, chemistry, physics, and human performance.
Aside from what I love about them as objects, and as tools...
... There's the inescapable fact that, before guns, most of humanity, throughout most of history; were ruled by hereditary warlords and despots; trained from birth in, and oppressing the people by, main force; which they maintained a monopoly on (no matter how you might want to pretty them up, calling them nobility and royalty, lords and kings and emperors).
... and if by some means we returned to a world without guns, we would be so ruled once again...
Without guns to secure and protect them... there is no freedom, there is no justice, there is no liberty, there are no individual rights...
...There is only slavery, and the tyranny of the strong over the weak, and the many over the few.
I would love it to be otherwise, but history has proven over and over again, that it is not.
Throughout all of history, the only thing that has ever successfully prevented, resisted, or overthrown tyranny; without immediately replacing it with a different tyranny.... has been an armed, educated, and free populace.
Guns are literally the only reason why modern relatively stable and nontyrannical governments can exist at all.
They are the ultimate protection for the weak, and the minority, against the strong, and the majority.
The gun IS modern civilization.
