Why Nearly All of America’s 400 Million Guns Have Got To Go

If others won’t say it, I will: We do not need all these guns in our society — and there are very strong reasons to get rid of almost all of them.

Let’s face it: Many armed Americans are deathly — and irrationally — afraid of others. And so they have become a menace to the rest of us.

According to a 2021 Gallup Poll, as many as 88 percent of gun owners are apparently terrified of being harmed, since they say the guns are for self-defense.

Yet very, very few gun owners end up defending themselves and their families from the sort of random crime they fear. According to The Trace, fewer than 3 percent of gun owners ever use a weapon in self-defense, and apparently some of those involve misrepresentation of what actually happened in order to paint the shooter in a good light.

Of course, the media — especially, but certainly not only, the likes of Fox — have played a large role in convincing an element of our society that they are in constant mortal danger. It’s totally false, but if all you do all day is consume random horror stories, your grip on reality becomes distorted. That is one reason for the current insanity, and we in the media need to acknowledge that and fight against it.

And of course the GOP probably would not hold any significant power in this country if they did not psychologically terrorize their base.

It seems that most people who “threaten” gun owners are not actually threats at all. And it is those innocent people who are dying.

Recent days brought fresh examples:

Teenager Ralph Yarl, 16 — seen in photos playing his saxophone in school — who was picking up his twin younger brothers in Kansas City, MO, accidentally went to the wrong house. When he rang the doorbell, the homeowner, an 84-year-old man, came to the door and fired on him twice, shooting him in the head and in the arm, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury.