Thank you Joshua, I believe, for me, you pursue a calm, rational and objectively motivated premise in your article. As a rancher I own a pistol (rare animal euthanasia) and an AR-15 (feral hogs literally rooting my house yard, obviously rabid raccoon or coyotes so thick and bold they are approaching chicken yard daytime). I’m not a classic pacifist, and in my experience any situation that escalates to the point of lethal violence is inherently barbaric and so outside any conscious norms that it defies categorization or simplistic characterization. Consciousness and rational logic is to not get to that circumstance to begin with. Toting firearms into ordinary low risk situation (such as church or grocery store), to a peaceful political rally or for that matter to a riot (even being at a riot unless as a uniformed law enforcement whose training and job is deescalation and control) probably represents sociological fraying of a healthy and civil society. Collective consciousness evolution toward being grown up and compassionate is a solution and that solution is not connected to symptomatic simplistic fear based attachment to firearms or controlling and unthinking phobia of them.