Jim, it's incremental, the sad thing is that's it's always a fight. People who propose gun control or other limits usually ask for compromise. Well, they have NOTHING to compromise, it's the gun owner who is always doing the compromising. Anti gun people will try ( and are doing it ) make gun ownership as inconvenient and expensive as possible. It's sad, really.
As as side note, my kids get a little upset with me when we watch a scary movie. I shout out "shoot him, shoot him!" when the bad guy is ready to cut someone up or otherwise do the innocent some harm. With proper application of a .45 to the bad guy, there would be no movie. LOL
Both are very true.
I did not realize the extent of it until I moved to Arlington VA. There are 8 million people in the DC/Baltimore metropolitan area and not many are going to be gun owners, fewer still are going to own a handgun and fewer still are actually going to own a hand gun and shoot it. DC is a non starter and MD is practically the People's Republic of California when it comes to gun ownership. But even across the river in NOVA, there is not widespread support for gun ownership as shooting is such a PITA that people are just not going to get involved in it. Southern VA (in the actual south as opposed to govland, is a different story.)
In South Dakota in the small town where I grew up in the early 70's it was not uncommon for a 3rd grader to take their new bb gun or even .22 to school for show and tell. No one ever got shot and it is no real surprise as the use of firearms and the responsibility that went with them were taught rather than avoided.
Before I moved here I had a 200 yard range 20 yards from my back door, so shooting was a daily thing. Shooting clubs hosting tactical rifle and pistol matches were common and considered community events and hunting was time honored tradition.
however, when you translate that to the voting booth, 8 million people here will easily out vote several states like South Dakota where the whole population is under 750,000 and the majority of them are still not active shooters and it means nothing to the non gun owner to vote pro gun control as they are giving nothing up.
The irony of course is that I never really felt the need to carry a gun in SD for protection purposes, because violent crime is very low - in part because the population is still, on average, pretty well armed. Here, I have noted the murder and assault rates are highest in DC, where basically no guns are allowed and certainly no handguns, they are slightly lower in MD where guns are less restricted but where concealed carry is rare and they are very low in VA where both Concealed and open carry of handguns is allowed. More access to guns by the gneral public = lower crime rate? What an interesting concept, but it makes sense, because if I were going to mug people, DC woudl be my first choice as no one is going to be armed.
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+1 on the "shoot him!' comments during scary movies. A .45 or a 12 ga in the house and someone trained to use it would deal with about 99% of the scary home invasion crime plots on TV as well as, of course, zombies, aliens and your basic Jason style bad guys.
