since it's mostly criminals shooting police.

Link to tweet

Is that a legitimate purpose for owning a weapon, whether firearm or other? When I go out jogging, I carry pepper-spray. It isn't very entertaining.

yourself and your family. The cops will make a nice report and draw pretty outlines around your bodies.

The argument implicit in the OP, which I see again and again, is that guns can only be for hunting, collecting, target practice, or murder. There is no other possible use.

Is romanticized by many gun owners and of course by people wanting to sell guns. It also revolves around racist fears of "thugs" and "the bad part of town"

But that is the go to argument in this age. Self Defense. It is as if we live in some post apocalyptic hellscape with demons around every corner. Home invaders slavering for a chance to bulldoze down our front door and rape our pets and steal our stuff.

Thousands for defense and not one penny for a 3 inch dead bolt.

The odds of using a gun in self defense are incredibly low. The number of gun owners that can use a gun in self defense is also very low.

There is a sense of hubris in the gun culture that makes them feel ennobled by the mere possession of a gun. It is as if the chunck of metal or plastic is a talisman that gives them an aura or rectitude.

This unearned feeling of superiority is on exhibit here. Law makers, their staff, members of the police who try to craft gun laws "know nothing". Yet these experts and their friends in the NRA have done fuck all to correct the problems they see in the proposed legislation; because their plan is to kill any gun law. Because slippery slopes frighten them as much as an icy hill frightens a bad driver.

Of course the result is that their absolutist stance will lead to a backlash that will cost honest gun owners more than we can know.

"to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it."

That's pretty rich when almost daily I hear gun controllers say, "This is what we want -- for now. We'll go for more later."

When New York passed the "SAFE" Act, the most restrictive package of state gun laws in the nation, one lawmaker said "And there's more to come." And yet we're told that there is no slippery slope.

The gun control movement seems to be unaware that "compromise" means that each side gives a little. Taking less is not equivalent to giving a little.

How does one earn a feeling of superiority?

So there are no thugs or "bad parts of town"?
Home invasions never occur in the "good parts of town"?

3 inch deadbolts don't work on windows and glass. But I guess I should "bunker up" so you can be assured your smug assumptions and fuzzy assertions about self defense are vindicated.

Those who would disarm a populace are the ones with an unearned feeling of superiority; that fear and distrust their fellow citizens to act responsibly and within our existing laws.

You do not need to live in fear of your fellow humans. The sense of hubris that allows you to attribute the lowest of motives and motivation to your fellow citizens is alarming.

if you are a freedom fighter, asshole, or hobbyist.