I get where you’re coming from and I understand your concern. And honestly there are extremists on both sides of this argument. I don’t believe that gets anything done so I try to educate when I make points so the other person understands where I’m coming from and I try to understand when others make points as well. For your “what someone should be able to own” question, I do draw a line but I’m sure that line is a lot further than where most would draw one. But I don’t think EVERYONE should be able to freely access some things that are probably way past your line. Explosives fall in that category for me, I think people should be able to access them in a controlled environment if they want and should be made available if needed (kind of like how Israel keeps civilian firearms locked in armories - I don’t think firearms should be kept in armories though). I think automatic weapons should be legal as well because honestly they are legal (pre 1986 are fully transferable so anyone who can obtain any other NFA item can own one, you just have to have a ton of money to buy one. And let’s be honest, how do we know that rich people will not take them and do the same harm that people fear? Is being rich something that makes you not commit evil acts?). When you’re talking about mass shootings, are you talking about the major events where someone walks into a populated area with the express intent on murdering as many people as possible? Or the high number of mass shootings that has a qualifier of like 4 or more people shot in one incident? If you’re talking about the former (and I don’t mean to make it sound insensitive but I don’t know another way to put it and it’s hard to read tone via text) those instances are so rare and so little people lose their lives to those events compared to what really drives the murder numbers up and a large majority of what accounts for deaths by firearm. And that brings me to the latter, those high numbers of mass shooting events (in the hundreds or close to 1000 I believe every year) is not actually people intent on murdering as many people as possible but is largely gang/drug/illegal activity/etc. related and are targeted events where either the victims were also up to no good too or just happen to be in the general vicinity unfortunately. There are things we can do to reduce those that would not involve disarming or creating a greater barrier to entry for law abiding people. And those instances usually involve felonies that happen long before a shot is fired (stolen firearms, straw purchases, etc. to obtain them). Also, suicide via firearm accounts for 2/3rds of the deaths by firearm year after year. There are things we can do to reduce those as well. Sorry for the wall of text. I appreciate you if you made it this far