Here’s a story about a guy I knew when I lived in Seattle. He grew up in rural Illinois. His father was a pig farmer. My friend went to college and became a computer programmer and got a good job in Seattle, where he earned a lot of money.
He was a First Amendment guy. He owned a gun, not because he was worried about criminals breaking into his home. He owned a gun because he didn’t trust the police. He told me that in his small-town high school, the kids who became city police or county sheriffs or whatever were the stupidest most-fucked-up kids in his school. He owned a gun because he didn’t trust cops. He thought cops were idiots and he might need a gun to defend himself.
Having said that, I should mention that he and I spent a lot of time sitting in a Seattle bar, drinking beer and playing backgammon. I won more money from him than I lost because I took risks. His brain (trained to program computers) made him be logical. He didn’t like to take risks. I beat him at backgammon by taking risks. I’ll admit I sometimes took a risk and lost. But I’ve never owned a gun.