I just wanted to take a bit to expand on things, for you /u/fuckthat101.

What you said in your comment really does resonate with me, and I understand your point.

But let me attempt to illustrate a particularly dark point in my life. We had just disarmed an Iraqi family, which means we were given intel about a house that housed potential insurgents, and they needed to have their guns taken away and the inhabitants interrogated. Now, in Iraq basically every household had an AK-47. Par for the course, it's an incredible tool and enabled the average Iraqi to defend his household, among other things. Mostly it sat unused in a corner, just like millions of other households.

Word got around the neighborhood that the Americans had been talking to this family, and the locals started to wonder if the family had been giving up their sons. No doubt, some in the neighborhood were insurgents, but this particular family seemed to be on the straight and narrow. No ill will. Good people.

A couple days later we ran through again. The family we had just disarmed had been murdered. Every, single, one of them. Even the fucking 3 year old girl. Just because they were talking to us, the enemy. To this day it makes me nauseous, seeing that little girl's grey body.

If those people still had the means to defend themselves, would they be ok? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. All I know is that I felt complicit in their murder, and I wish they had the chance to defend themselves.

I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say to you anymore, just that life isn't black and white. The comment you left me is heartfelt, but unfortunately naive. And that's no slight against you, you come off to me as a genuinely good person, concerned with others' well being.

But I will be damned if I am to be disarmed, just as many Americans feel. No one can guarantee that I will not be forced to capitulate to some invading army, only to have my family slaughtered. No one. That is why I fight for my right to own my firearms.