i was hoping to give you my idea of what i think our gun culture should look like, hoping you would respond in kind. but the more this drags on the more it seems obvious to me that you don't want any change, despite what are obviously (to most people) some common sense changes we can make to our laws. as a result, i feel obligated to defend myself in a couple of places to your response but otherwise i feel like we won't get anywhere with this at this point in time, especially if your response to what i think is a calm and rational post is to tell me i'm delusional and insane....

i think my point is best summed up with the bolded section above. if it wasn't clear before, i hope it is now. and if it's not clear, it's the absolutism of "the only thing that stops a bad guy...." that i truly object to in the statement.

no, it is meant to discourage people who are not serious about being responsible gun owners. i said it before, i find owning a gun to be a bigger responsibility than the gun culture makes it out to be. or at least, it should be treated as such. i'm fully aware that there are very few places where waiting periods are enforced anymore, but again, this was my attempt to go back to the beginning and try to get you to understand what my ideal gun culture would look like so that we could begin a separate dialogue of how we could reach an agreement over this issue. maybe it was too much to hope for; i know the back and forth going in circles of react and reaction wasn't really getting us anywhere but maybe that's because there's nowhere to go....

telling hillary clinton to "suck on my machine gun" is not "prone to rudeness". there was a time when threatening public figures was taken seriously, now it's just a shrug and "oh, that wacky guy ted nugent! boys will be boys!" tell me you'd feel the same if he had issued a vague threat to assassinate GWB the same as he did for Obama? i've told you how those kinds of comments are perceived and you tell me i'm delusional for wanting them to tone it down and stop making threats and spinning these paranoid visions of nightmarish hellscapes where it's kill or be killed. so, i can denounce these comments all day till i'm blue in the face, it obviously won't make any shit of difference because nobody on your side of this debate thinks my opinion is worth anything.

it's like having a friend you hang out with and he starts yelling racial epithets at random minorities walking by. do you just laugh with him and join in? if some other random stranger calls your friend out for being a racist asshole, do you attack them and defend your friend or do you tell your friend he's being a racist asshole? right now, the most public faces of the gun culture are pissing people off left and right. your response seems to be to look the other way and/or join in and laugh alongside them.

i know you probably don't care about the polls which show that a large majority of people who claim to be NRA members are solidly for the current legislation on guns passing through the senate. but you're going to sit there and tell me that the NRA represents all gun owners when it is increasingly obvious their statements are in direct contrast with their membership's wishes.

so, if you want this conversation to continue i am willing to listen to your idea of what you think America's gun culture should look like and we can pick it up from there. i'll even take it off-board if you prefer not to clog this thread up anymore. but i will also say that i'm pretty sure i'm not delusional and i don't appreciate you using such language when i'm not saying anything much more radical than the NRA's own positions on these things some 30 years ago.