What would you think of making this a required safety feature?

[Rahul]

Why would not having handled a gun be ignorance on the subject that we're actually talking about? Granted, it's ignorance about how it feels to fire a gun and so on, but you can't even confirm I'm ignorant about the mechanics of the things. For all anyone knows, I could have a detailed schematic of every handgun ever made stored up in my head.

Which is, again, secondary to the issue of gun safety and whether these contentions we're dealing with are realistic or not. I don't need to have fired a gun to exist in the reality I do, where having one on hand has been completely unnecessary for me and everyone I know, in my entire life.

Well, it's not that Esquilax. I'm not a gun nut and I don't even have a gun in my house. But I grew up with guns everywhere. My parents had them, all my friend's parents had them, etc. Me and my buddies would grab guns and go wandering in the woods all the time.

I've seen responsible gun owners and lived with guns everywhere but somehow people were still managing not to kill themselves or family members with them.

If your only exposure to guns are reading all the terrible things that happen from time to time then of course the only reaction anyone would have to the idea of gun ownership would be negative.

As an example I really loath Islam. I don't like any religion, but I harbor especially harsh feelings toward that religion. Years ago I was watching a youtube video where someone put every violent, messed up verse from the Koran on. And one guy was in the comments saying how fucked up it was to do that. And you know, I had to agree.

Imagine someone filming everything you do for 5 years and then making a montage of every idiotic thing you did for those 5 years. Stripped off of nothing but the negative, of course people would get a seriously warped view of what kind of person you are.

The news and mass media does the same thing to gun ownership in America.