I hear what you are saying loud and clear...but you do not live in a society where one side get's their way all the time. We live in a society of all sorts of people with different beliefs about their personal safety. The problem lies, we cannot distinguish the kook from the responsible gun owner and it frightens people. I care about whether I am scary to others who live in society with me. No one has ever said anything about banning guns...they are a big part of our economy and ingrained in our culture. No one even wants them banned. We just need to be able to talk about solutions to problems as they arise without it getting hostile and unreasonable. Organizations like the NRA stir people up and place a barrier between reasonable conversation. When kooks and criminals outnumber the good folks, then I would consider walking around strapped. The "rambo" spirit must stop. It is embarrassing gun owners like me. I could never get my CC because I am subjected to background checks every year and would be ashamed to defend it because I may be lumped into the Ted Nugent or extremist mindset of gun owners. Responsible gun owners are participatory in gun violence solutions, not start immediately screaming "gun grabber" and shut down. These folks are disturbing..
Oh dear, where to begin...
1. Yes there are people who'd like to pretty much ban all guns. Some have said so on record. Not a majority view, but enough in positions of power to be worrisome.
2. If you're more worried about what someone would THINK of you (having a CCW permit) than of considering whether you might need one and what the consequences of needing it and not having it could be, you aren't thinking on this matter seriously enough. Therefore maybe you're right, maybe you should stick with pepper spray.
3. Why is a CCWer "scary", when 99% of the time you won't even know he has a gun? Concealed, remember. You've probably been around lots of folks and thought "what a nice person" and were totally unaware that they had a gun on them. Why be scared? Most of them would act to protect you if possible if something bad happened. We're not your enemy. Packing a gun doesn't make reasonable law-abiding persons more dangerous to innocents. The presence of guns doesn't make reasonable people just "snap".
4. Does the NRA engage in a certain amount of "scarism" to drum up support and cash? Yup, they do. However, their positions are not entirely unreasonable... there ARE politicians and lobby groups working night and day to curtail gun rights and the only counter is to work night and day to support same... thus the NRA and its millions of members, not to mention the GOA, RKBA, JPFO, SAS, and so on...
5. Yes, responsible gun owners are participatory in gun violence solutions... as long as those solutions do not violate the 2A, do not infringe on the law-abiding more than the lawless (hint few gun laws qualify) AND if the laws in question will actually have a substantive effect on criminal violence (again, very very dubious for most proposed new laws).
5A: Most pro-gun folks have become very cynical about the anti-gun elements in government, with good reason. Many times we've compromised and were told "just this and no more"... and the ink was barely dry before the anti's were pushing their NEXT even more restrictive agenda-item. Terms like "common sense gun control" and "gun safety" have been misused to cover up laws that would ban entire categories of guns which are NOT commonly used in crime! The pool of trust has been peed in too often and we find we are rather disinclined to compromise any more... the anti's have given us no reason to be and plenty of reason to distrust them, and to expect them to abuse any power they are given.