I always thought the sole reason the system hasnt been changed yet is a political & economical rather than a rational one, since the weapon industry and lobby
Is it just NRA and Gun industry lobbying? We see this a lot, anti-gun folks often portray the pro-gun argument as being advanced by the NRA and not by the millions of 2A loving citizens who actually support it. This is such a dishonest backhanded approach to discussing the topic, painting pro-gun people as a faceless drones of a large organization that does not actually represent the American people when the opposite is actually true. The reality is that guns and gun rights are phenomenally popular; the NRA is a huge organization of 5 million (real) people, /r/guns has 150,000 subscribers, Americans bought 10 million guns in 2011 and 16 million in 2012. A lot of Politicians in this country know not to go after gun rights not because the faceless behemoth of the NRA will come after them but because the American public will vote them out of office (as goldmerridew mentioned below). That is another thing about gun rights supporters: we are passionate about our cause, we get out there and contact our representatives, we vote, protests, and perhaps most importantly we give money to our cause. It is widely believe that the 1994 "assault weapons" ban cost Democrats 50 seats in congress, that is how strongly Americans support the 2A.
Recently the state of Colorado passed a gun control law package prohibiting certain types of weapons, quickly the regular citizens of that state organized and amassed enough signatures to get their state senators recalled and instated new pro-gun politicians. This whole time while the citizens were mobilizing to get their views accurately represented do you know what the opposition was doing? Accepting tons of money from out of state New York Billionaire Michael Bloomberg in order to directly defy the will of the citizens of Colorado. True story and exacly the opposite of the false stuff the average gun control supporter is lead to believe.
Americans want their guns and it is the inhuman elite career politicians like Feinstein who support SOPA and the NSA that want to disarm the American people. What bothers me most is they have managed to convince the ignorant it is the opposite.
IRL: Gun rights is grass roots, gun control is $5K a plate pearl necklace gala. Just like almost any other rights versus control argument.
I feel that people who feel the need to always carry a weapon to defend themselves if they must, are not driven by rational arguments but rather by emotions, especially fear (as was mentioned in the article already)
Ah yes, these thousands upons thousands of examples of people carrying guns and then using them to fight off a rogue emotion, not a rational fear like a person who intends to harm you weapons or no:
Keep in mind that not everyone is a healthy upper class white male from a good part of a good town in a good province in a good country. In some places, violence and crime in a lot more common than you know it to be and people who live a life different than your own will choose to go about it in a different way.
the free distribution of firearms is main origin of that fear as you have to assume that everybody could always carry a weapon and might try to harm you. By allowing guns for everyone, pressure is enacted on everyone not carrying a gun to "gear up".
This really isn't the case at all. Sounds like something a 15 year old would think.
If you are carrying it is actually generally assumed that you are proficient and "one of the good guys". I have only ever heard of people deciding to carry guns to protect themselves from other conceal carriers in these hypotheticals proposed by people who don't like guns. It's been 30, 20, 15 years in a lot of states where they have had legal conceal carry all this time and while there have been a few isolates incidents society continues to march on as the safest things have been in the history of forever, even if we are left in a hypothetical blood wake from a hypothetical killing season leading into a hypothetical travesty. The hypotheticals continue to come and warn of "the wild west" and "streets red with blood!" (who is fear based and emotional now?) but things continue to just be pretty okay, even if my rifle grip juts out at 90 degrees as opposed to a more socially responsible 45-30 degrees.
I have a theory too actually, I have a theory that you probably consider yourself anti-gun because you never had a chance otherwise. If you live in country with a lot of gun control you will really never be able to experience a lifestyle of healthy access to arms so there is very little reason to be pro-gun as it will just cause internal strife so you and the other %98 of your countrymen all subconsciously chose (what a coincidence!) to be anti-gun so you can simply conclude that the guns you can't have would suck to have anyway (another coincidence! Lucky!). Much like the classic fox thinking the grapes sour because he can't reach them.