There was an employee here in PHX that was caught with a handgun going through security a few years back. Reappeared at work some six months later, so depending on the circumstances you can apparently save your job in such a situation, it might just take a while and take a few hearings to sort everything out, and presumably some dollars...
There are a number of good reasons for owning firearms (besides being a fun and informative hobby), and there are a plethora of types and rounds that are conducive to each. The main reasons as I see them are:
1. Practical necessity - Some folks, albeit not too many, use firearms in the course of doing their jobs, such as hunters, ranchers, gunsmiths, and law enforcers. Guns as a part of American culture probably has something to do with the centuries of people settling ever Westward into vast, often unfriendly and unforgiving frontiers into which without a musket or rifle life would have been very hard. America is still a relatively young country.
2. Recreation - skeet shooting, target practice, hunting, educating folks and young people in safety and responsibility, civics and the law.
3. Self defense - a properly-trained person can successfully save the life and limb of him/herself or others in dangerous circumstances, or halt the committing of a felony in progress, ideally without ever having to fire a shot. Desperate or deranged(high) people can be very dangerous, if not completely psychotic, with zero regard for the consequences. Now I choose not to carry concealed or otherwise and thankfully I've never needed to. In my home however I refuse to be a victim.
4. Communal defense - securing, if necessary, an area or neighborhood in coordination with others to protect from looters or hostile elements in such a scenario where there is a breakdown of law and order. Katrina, anyone? This is also quite popular in Syria at the moment.
5. Guarantor of political liberties - Just as with one's own personal safety, the individual holds final responsibility for the retention of his or her political rights, those Mr. Jefferson and pals termed inalienable and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and its amendments. The fact of the matter is, compared to most the world's population and all of human history, your average American enjoys an near unprecedented range of freedoms, personal, religious, political, economic, geographical, etc. We've set up our institutions to protect these liberties as they conduct our business, by saying that the first job of government is to do exactly that. The problem with this is, which history teaches and even the Founders understood, is that all entities, especially governments, understand only to increase their influence and powers once granted or conceded are hard to reclaim. Regardless of who it is "coming for them", the bottom line is do you love your liberties enough to defend them, with your life if necessary? Those liberties were purchased with blood in the first place, people often forget this.
Whether you like guns or not, the Second Amendment upholds the right of citizens to retain those powers that come with gun ownership. One is of course free to decline to practice that right, but he or she does so at their own peril. While it is not a uniquely American phenomenon, the American conceptualization of gun ownership, the heritage, historical experience, personal and political justifications for it etc. is pretty unique, and perhaps not readily intelligible to one foreign to it. Just my aught-two cents...
~ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ~
B)
