Well, they are pretty fun to shoot. It’s an activity you can do alone or with friends that’s challenging, just like archery or bowling. In rural areas they’re

Well, they are pretty fun to shoot. It’s an activity you can do alone or with friends that’s challenging, just like archery or bowling. In rural areas they’re almost ubiquitous because they’re used for hunting, animal control (I’ve personally killed a probably-rabid skunk, rabbits that kept getting in the garden, etc.), and self defense. If a man or two break in to my house I might, and I stress might, have a chance against them unarmed. My wife would not. Our neighbors are far enough away where nobody would hear her scream, and even if she managed to call 911 they would probably take 5-10 minutes to get here. I had an old classmate and his company do the tiling in our living room a few years ago. A year or two after that he got deep in to meth and ended up breaking in to a girl’s house, tied her up, and raped her all night while threatening to kill her baby. I was happy I keep a pistol in the nightstand after hearing about that, and I make sure my wife trains with it a couple of times a year. There’s also the whole “keeping the government in check,” and “the second amendment protects the first,” lines of thinking, but I think that’s why some people are adamant about the second amendment itself - not guns.