I hate people who treat them like some toys and fantasize about them. That makes me think they are in some sort of death cult. That they found socially acceptable way to love violence.
I would still get one for safety but it is a tool made for specifically one thing. To pierce the skin and rip through the inner organs of a person.
They can serve a good purpose but they are fundamentally grim tools of pain and suffering. They shouldn’t be celebrated and glorified in their own right, that is sick. They can be used to preserve something precious but at a price to pay.
The thing is, using the gun for killing is exactly the correct one. That’s the intended purpose. Then you may threat to use it correctly as a means of protection.
But there are other ways. Gun rights are almost universally revoked throughout Europe, for example, and barely anyone fears for their close ones, because of a working police and professional army, as well as, exactly, less access to guns that could be used to perpetrate violence.
As the result, banning guns normally leads to a decrease in the number of homicides and assaults.
Honestly the bigger factor is social cohesion and combating criminogenic factors. While far from perfect, European societies are doing much better here than a proudly hyper-individualist US.
Also true, but having wide access to guns is one of those factors, even though it’s not the whole story.