Buelldozer

Yeah, I totally use my training hammer to be prepared to use my real hammer when the time is right. I also have a set of training screw drivers to be prepared when I need to take my computer apart for cleaning. And to be proficient with the air canister I have a training canister.

I have hammers for driving nails, 12 shaped hammers for doing body work, rubber hammers (mallets) for banging on softer materials, and 4 different sledge hammers weighing between 3lbs and 50lbs. I also have screw drivers in sizes from itty bitty eyeglass / watch to computer to jumbo. I also have air canisters, a 3 gallon pancake air compressor, and 50 gallon shop sized air compressor. You use the correct tool in the correct way to accomplish the job. Your attempt at making a false equivalence is rejected.

Your individual experience may be sensible for your specific scenario, but it’s not sensible for the vast majority of gun owners.

So in the first half of that sentence you admit your own argument is false, or at least not universally true. It IS sensible for at least some gun owners to have different firearms for different purposes. As for the 2nd half you do realize that there are between 15 and 16 million hunters in the United States, right? This is not a small number of people.

It might be sensible for a BSDM practitioner to build a sex dungeon, it doesn’t mean a sex dungeon is sensible for everyone having sex.

Okay first off, false equivalence again and second…what’s wrong with sex dungeon? They’re pretty easy to build if you have the right tools. :)

Edit: In case it’s not clear I’m approaching this as a semi-friendly conversation.

Close, but the best estimates are there are 470 million guns in US civilian hands.

That’s the the lower boundary. The real number is probably closer to a billion.

You have to remember that untold millions of firearms were sold before anyone really started keeping track, no federal authority was keeping track before 1968ish, and that firearms will easily last a century if they are not fired too often and given even a minimum amount of care.

I myself inherited several pre-'68 firearms that would never have been counted. My 90 year old father in law has a dozen or more that he inherited or bought (western ranching family) that are still functional despite being manufactured over a century ago!

To put a fine point on the issue; into the 1970’s you could buy firearms off the shelf at hardware stores or even CoD via mail order. 470 million is a low number.

You don’t need a shotgun, a handgun, a concealed carry gun and a whole other set of guns for hunting and whole other set of guns for the shooting range etc. That is not sensible, that is just someone wanting a whole lot of guns.

What you described in the first sentence is entirely reasonable, you just don’t understand it.

Here’s an evaluation based strictly on cost.

My hunting rifles cost something like $2 per round or more to fire. If I want to go to the range and practice technique firing 50 to 100 times is normal. This is a cost of $100 to $200 dollars.

My plinking, or training, rifles on the other have a cost of about 4 cents per round to fire. So now a practice day at the range is below $5.

However I cannot hunt with a training rifle, it’s caliber is far too small.

It’s the same with shotguns and handguns. The heavier ones are necessary for real activities but they cost a lot to train with. The smaller caliber ones are much less expensive to train with but aren’t useful for real work.

What you are missing, IMO, is that firearms are tools and people who use their tools tend to own more than one of each.

I say this as strong 2nd Amendment advocate; firearms aren’t the cause of our violence they are a symptom. The truth is that the United States is a violent country and it always has been.

Still, if you start tearing the Gun Homicide rate apart you’ll quickly run into some problematic details.

You may not but many others DO.

Content like this is why I come here.