You're preaching to the choir.
I own guns, and I know how to use them. I own the same pistol I was trained to use in the military. I have them for self defense against criminals.
I'm talking about the obsession with guns, the love affair with firepower, the idea that the first thing you reach for to solve a problem is a gun, not that it should be the last thing you use. That goes way back, and it is very much an American thing. I was not brought up like that. And I think I know why, it goes back to those "well-regulated militias" our colonial antecedents organized to protect themselves from Indian raids and slave revolts.