I understand and get where the American culture and identity of firearms comes from but you’re not living on the frontier now, and the times of having a armed civilian militia for the benefit of invasion defence has long passed since at the very latest August 6 1945.

There is no denying firearm ownership on the scale of the USA is detrimental to society and public saftey, the issue is, the opportunity to have reasonable discourse on the subject has long passed. Defence of property or family is not a valid argument to have a firearm if firearms are not commonly held (which they are in the USA) Because you defend your property with firearms anyone willing to rob or steal will have to be armed themselves which creates lethal conflict in a shoot first of get shot scenario, and in states with the death penalty if you’re the one getting shot first your family’s future could be pretty bleak.

There is absolutely no reasonable argument for almost unrestricted firearm ownership when that freedom means more school children have been killed in mass shootings in the USA than any mass killing including terror attacks in the whole of Europe in the last decade. How can one begin to defend that?