"A Perceived Conclusion"

The reason behind "Fact, fiction and the gray" " Liberty, Freedom and being "ok"" "The crack whore conundrum" and "Annie, get 'chur guns!!!" is to point out that the way we attack every lion in our lives is not based on factual evidence. They are based on some scientific evidence but mostly on our experiences and how we attacked them before.

If your lion is "what if I just throw myself off this cliff?" Then you may well be able to calculate your speed at impact but the fear you have for proximity to the edge is based on horror stories told to you and played out in your brain.

Further if your lion is to stop gun violence you will fall back on the stats and scenes from media and those played in your mind.

You "know" yelling and calling people idiots "will" bring about the change. The problem is your attack is misguided, yelling and belittling only deeper entrenches the opposition's view.
If yelling and protesting worked the Vietnam War would have ended before it started.

What needs to be seen is the underlying need to possess a gun on the first place.

If it is out of protection the question needs be asked what makes them so afraid they need a pistol, an assault rifle or rifles in the first place.

To attack this perceived need as anything other than brilliant is to not understand how the brain works.

To get them away from this factual need you need to help them into the reality that life, mostly, isn't. To help them to be comfortable enough in their skin to be able to see the lethality as a negative.

Their existence is likely in a state, imagined or not, of stress hormones. For them this survival state and the Adrenaline which sharpens their mind makes their reality of the "facts and figures" irrelevant to them. They have already built in a safeguard for their lion's sharp teeth.

To get the guns away the reality of safety needs to be increased.

A move, in media, towards inclusion and a reduction of the plots wherein guns are the only and right answer. Education built around the reality of readily available weapons designed for death and nothing more to help to move everyone towards a better reality from an early age. That a foreign policy built around "yelling and calling people idiots" at the end of a gun, is designed to bring about later conflicts and that it never is a road towards peace and a better life.

We need to build a society that can see that buying a gun to protect from people who are in turn are buying them doing the same is screwing Freedom, Liberty and being "ok" into an early grave.

Saying "no" or you shouldn't doesn't take into account that it is a FACT they need the guns.

Try to attack your lions with a larger perspective and perhaps the Worldwide problem of guns, drugs, differences can be changed for good.

Good luck out there,
Robert Peters