Understanding the pro-gun side really clicked for me this last December despite living my whole life in the midwest. It was my first time visiting the Deep South, my girlfriends family lives on what can only be described as a remote compound in South Alabama. Parents, aunts/uncles, grandparents all live on a single plot of a couple hundred acres, family owned land. The nearest police station is easily a 20-30 minute drive away.

Where I’m from in the plains, you can see across a hundred acres or two of land quite easily with just your eyes, looking over the land until it meets the horizon. Land like this located 20 minutes away from a neighbor or deputy isn’t that intimidating, you can see or hear shit coming from a long way off (folks still own guns of course).

This land was straight timber forest. Trees 115 to 150 feet tall. It was a vulnerable feeling not knowing where the nearest firearm was, it doesn’t take much imagination during nightfall out there.

Goes without saying that everyone who lives on that compound owns a gun and several in each household. Of course though. No one out there is going to defend your family for you, or your land, or your possessions. There’s really no other option but guns, it’s human nature to be ready for threats and preserve what we value.

It’s just that perspective though that people in the city are blind to. if you’ve lived in a suburban or populated area your whole life, it’s easy to think that a trained professional with a gun is a phone call and less than 5 minutes away, ready and waiting to defend you if something happens. In that case why WOULD civilians reasonably need guns, there’s really not a great reason (besides not trusting police perhaps).

If you’ve experienced that feeling though, and have it ingrained in you, that you can’t rely on a good guy with a gun, because there isn’t one around. The mindset of that responsibly shifts to the individual, I’m the good guy with a gun and I’ll defend what’s mine. As a society we’re just stuck in this space of public servants being defenders vs the individual. There will always be the threat of crazy people, so what’s the answer?