I've written about this and mentioned it before here but I used to be rabidly pro-gun, waved the NRA flag, die-hard libertarian anti-government blah blah blah. I believed that statistics against guns were skewed by the media, guns were the only thing between citizens and big government and so on. I even listened when other pro-gun people tried to convince me that many victims in the statistics were gang members shooting each other so that really shouldn't count...
I've grown up a hell of a lot since those days.
As life moved on and things changed I gradually got more moderate on the issue thinking that gun laws weren't all bad and maybe there was a middle ground but I'm beginning to think that less and less but now I've done nearly a 180, I don't think a middle ground is possible.
As I stepped back from the whole gun-nut thing and started seeing it more from the outside than on the inside as I had been I began to see that It's really a movement of sociopaths, murder fetishists, gun profiteers and those who have delusions of being a gun slinging hero when "TSHTF", people who really don't give a shit about anyone but themselves and who fantasize about shooting the first person who comes for their gun. I'm amazed at the sick stuff I saw and heard at many gun shows including the overt racism and the culture of conspiracy theories and ignorance.
Seeing how the pro-gun organization's PR have responded to multiple-school shootings, the 9 year-old who shot the instructor with an Uzi and the "guns everywhere! I'm gonna carry my AR-15 in public and f*ck you if you don't like it" folks I'm just sick about ever associating with any of it, though the pro-gun thing seems to have gotten even more unhinged over the years.
So one of my great regrets in life is all the time I wasted being a gun-nut and associating with these people when I was young and easily influenced.
I guess my point in posting this is I am wondering if there are others out there with a similar story here. People who have come around on the gun issue after being extreme or a hardliner.