Finding the Middle Ground?

I occasionally find myself going over to the dark-side of social media - I have, on more than one occasion, caught myself looking at the different pages of anti-gun groups like the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign. I feel that if we want to make a compelling argument for the rights of gun owners, we must understand what the other side's viewpoints are. Anyone can sit there and say "YOU'RE WRONG and I'M RIGHT," but nothing ever gets resolved with this method. I see ignorance on both sides of the argument. Gun control activists see gun owners as a bunch of irresponsible, law-breaking thugs and rednecks who want nothing more than to use their guns to provoke violence at every turn. Gun rights activists see the other side as uneducated, naive, constitution-hating liberals who only want to take away their guaranteed right to self defense. The interesting part of this is, we all want the same thing! We all want to see the end of unnecessary violence.

There's always a shred of truth behind all stereotypes. Of course, gun control activists don't hate the Constitution, nor are all gun owners irresponsible. But guns are a hot topic of late. There could be a gruesome chainsaw murder in a quite town in Kansas, but we'll never hear about that from mainstream news sources. However, if a gun accidentally goes off and strikes a person in the toe, the media marks that up as another mass shooting and the entire anti-gun population erupts into one giant hate-filled rage mass. When the hate-filled rage mass descends on social media channels, the gun owners of the U.S. get defensive (pardon the pun). Pro-gun people see that the person who accidentally fired a round was acting irresponsibly and press for more gun education. The other side refuses to see this as a learning opportunity and want to remove the gun in question from everyone due to one person's action. They want confiscation. 

This reminds me of a scene from the movie classic, Full Metal Jacket. The movie follows a group of Cadets who are at boot camp and training for deployment to Vietnam. During this time, one of the Cadets breaks a camp rule by bringing food into the barracks. From then on, if that Cadet did anything worthy of punishment, the entire squad would have to share in his punishment. After breaking several rules, the squad had enough of being punished for his mistakes and turned against this particular Cadet and initiated him by hitting him repeatedly with bars of soap in pillow cases while he slept. Gun ownership is exactly the same! Law-abiding gun owners all cringe when we see someone acting irresponsibly with guns. When we hear of a young child who accidentally shoots his/her sibling with their parents' gun that wasn't stored properly, we want to bludgeon said parent with a pillowcase filled with bars of soap...numerous times. We don't believe it's fair to be held accountable for someone else's actions...and it's really not. 

The anti-gunners see a person being irresponsible with a firearm and immediately think that every gun owner is as irresponsible as the perpetrator.  

The part I can't wrap my head around is that the anti-gun community seem to completely ignore the person who uses a gun for harmful purposes. Every time something bad happens and a gun is involved, the Brady Campaign kicks things off with the headline: "Another victim of gun violence" and then continue to talk about how "the gun" murdered two people in an alleyway in South Chicago. They completely miss the most important part of the story - the person. 

How could we have stopped this person from committing a crime? 
**This is where our opinions differ.

Anti-Gun Response: Remove the deadly tool that the bad guy used in hopes that he cannot/will not commit crime.

• This answer to me is like saying, "Let's revoke Vin Diesel's driver's license so that he can no longer drive so fast and furiously."

Pro-Gun Response: Use an equally deadly tool to defend yourself and others from the bad guy.

• Make criminals think twice about pulling a knife on you and have the ability to take control of the situation at hand.

For me, the choice is easy. I feel that a majority of people that are anti-gun don't know much about the tool that they want to ban. It's often very apparent. I'd love to have a conversation with a person that has experience with guns AND is still against civilian ownership of firearms. Those people are in short supply. I wonder why?

Which side do you stand with?