"What kind of person is the sort who will jump through expensive and inconvenient legal hoops to get the right to carry a gun?"

Someone who wants the protection of the law to give him the legal excuse he needs to run around armed in public without supervision.

"What kind of person is the sort who will simply buy one on the street or steal one?"

Every gun fancier I know has bought a gun "on the street", including myself. I have inherited several from relatives and friends, and bought some commercially, with no paper trail, and disposed of them in the same way (strictly legally, I might add). Most gun people deal extensively with undocumented and untraceable firearms, although they are not necessarily illegal, that counts as "acquired on the street (or gun show)". And for all I know, at one time any of those guns may have been stolen.

"More likely...statistically..."

Killing and dying are not stochastic or quantum phenomena. The more guns are available, the more people die in accidents, domestic anger, and crime. Even legal firearms can be stolen by, or sold illegally to, a third party. Individual cases mean nothing, it is the collective damage of a nation awash in guns and gun perverts that is crippling. Denying unlimited and unregulated guns to legal users may not totally prevent their aquisition by illegal ones, but it will reduce the number and circulation of firearms which certainly will reduce the carnage. You don't let minors play with fireworks, you don't sell repeating carbines to the Dakota, and you shouldn't let redneck boys play with guns.

Illegal users get them easily because there are so many, so cheap, and they are so easy to find outside the law, and because private businesses are so eager to manufacture and market them while they look the other way. Do you really expect me to believe someone legally mass marketing military-type firearms thinks they are all going to suburbia or family farms for home defense. Don't insult my intelligence. There's money in this trade, that's why it is flourishing.

So Martin has an image of a black hand holding a Glock.

BFD. I have pictures of myself holding guns, and even some porn shots of the guns themselves (for insurance purposes). So what? Did Martin have it with him that night? Did Zimmerman have his with him? I bet no one looked on HIS phone for gun pictures. Jesus Christ, TB, how stupid do you think I am?

Don't lecture me on gun ownership, law or psychology TB. Remember, I am familiar with them and have owned and used them for years, and I am perfectly at home in the gun culture with gun people. But for me guns are a tool for a specific purpose, not a proof of my manhood or an ideological statement, or a business opportunity.