Fear of Guns - desparate niche?

Yeah - and maybe put up some sort of site discussing the issue of hand gun safety, laws for the various states, and a directory of hand gun safety trainers in various locations.

Mabye even a few videos - going over the safety basics - and then have links to products for hand gun safety.

So explain to me how that's a bad thing:confused:

Myself I'm not afraid of guns, but having been shot before I sure do pay attention when I'm around someone who has a gun.
Many of my friends are hunters and a few are gun collectors.
They don't make me nervous at all because I know them and I know they have respect for firearms and what they can do.
When I'm around someone I don't know well who has a gun on them I tend to get a little nervous.

Sal, the only way I've ever come up with is to be someplace else when that person gets the urge to kill. The problem is, in most cases that's impossibly hard to predict.

Guns don't scare me. Gun owners with no respect for what the gun can do scare the hell out of me.

Back in Nebraska, I belonged to a gun club, and one of our annual events was a community gun show. We personally checked every firearm that came into the building, and it was petrifying how many "unloaded" guns had cartridges in the chamber.

As for protection...

According to our county sheriff and the highway patrol officer that spoke to our Hunter Safety classes, the best firearm you can have for personal protection is a 12 gauge pump shotgun. Just working the action is such a distinctive sound that if an intruder hears it coming out of the dark, it can freeze them. You don't even have to aim, just point it in the direction of your target.

One thing they both stressed was being familiar enough with the weapon of choice to load it in the dark under stress. There should be no need to keep a loaded firearm in the house. One demonstrated that the average firearm can be loaded and ready to use in less than 30 seconds - less than ten with practice.

The other thing they stressed was never pointing a firearm at anything you don't intend to shoot. That means that if you don't think you can actually pull the trigger, you have no use for a gun for protection. You're more likely to have the gun taken away from you and used on you.

Sorry about that... I get going and it's hard to put on the verbal brakes.

To the original poster - this is only a desperate niche if people who have this phobia want to get past it. Otherwise, it's just another phobia...

Like you pointed out, "People killed way before there were guns," you will never stop some people from killing...but you can be serious about locking them up. Crime goes down proportionate to the consequences rising.

Deterrents work when used, problem is... society doesn't have the stomach to use 'em anymore.

That's all I'll say on the subject.