Man, I started writing a snarky reply and ended up rambling. In the interest of showing what I normally discard when I'm staying silent, I've added it in spoiler tags below. Be glad I'm usually keeping myself constrained. The forum would end up drowning in huge vapid walls of text. Best to ignore it.
Anyway, let's just say I'd rather live in a world where at worst I had a small security beeper or whistle on my person, not carry a weapon for self defense. Normal run of the mill peeps should just live in peace, earn a modest living and consensually fornicate furiously with loved ones instead of bothering with the small stuff. That's what police and laws are for. We only have one life to live, so why waste it. We're no longer in the dark ages of humanity, even if we still have a long way to go (and despite our best efforts to devolve into Stone Age savages again).
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Sigh... It's the same old Spiel.
Shooting targets at the range: cool, why not. Loud, smelly, and really depends on who's running the joint. Still, kinda fun, especially if there's exotic weaponry to test or watch or when you can track your advancements. Doubly fun if there's a modest gambling/gaming aspect, with high score tables and punishments for whiffing and whatnot. That can be really fun. I'm more of a paintball/laser tag guy because why take a risk if you don't really need to (and harmlessly shooting guys in the groin is funny), but whatever. People willingly throw themselves out of planes with a flimsy piece of cloth attached to their backs, so... To each their own. Fun things are fun. Not gonna judge.
Hunting: if you eat or sell what you shoot, then OK. If you are responsible for a piece of land and need to do population control of pests, OK. Still hope you're gonna use the bodies for something, but it's not always possible. I completely lack empathy for those drive by shooters or "sport"/trophy hunters though. That's a life, you ass. If you have to kill, then at least give it meaning. And no, mounting their stuffed carcass on your wall and throwing away their meat isn't that.
Keeping a gun for self defense: eh. Frankly, when public safety is consistently so utterly terrible that you have to arm yourself and take matters in your own hands, then your government and society as a whole has failed you on a pretty fundamental level. Protest your local representative to pay, train and equip your police officers better, and lobby for more police officers on the streets and internal reviews to catch those so-called bad apples.
But OK, if you must, just lug around that chunk of metal, if it gives you peace of mind. Just make sure you follow all regulations, and that you actually have it at the ready instead of hidden away somehwere. No baddie is gonna wait for you to dig through your trousers or waddle over to the ugly (and thus hidden away) gun safe. And honestly, if you miss and hit an innocent, then that's entirely on you, so you better have insurance or a fat bank account. The baddie is likely broke as fuck, so no dice there. At that point nobody is gonna care who started it.
Keeping a gun to defend your country from external threats, or defend yourself against your country in case of bad gubbermint...: Especially if you have no proper training and aren't part of some organised corps... I'm sorry, but are you overdosing on Hollywood movies? Have you looked at what even a third rate potato army has at their disposal nowadays. It didn't work when we Germans tried the Volkssturm, it didn't work when ISIS and all the other terrorist organisations got their asses kicked all the way through the Middle East, so why would it suddenly work now. Civilians in a war are not actors. They're background noise while the big guys duke it out.
These are trained professionals with a nigh-unlimited supply and support infrastructure, and they are using equipment that can liquefy your innards far more efficiently and quickly than you can ever hope to, even if you were to start guzzling bleach right now. What the fuck are you gonna do against an APC, tank or heli? Hope the crew will laugh themselves to death when you plink at them with your Glock? Absolute best case is you will annoy them a bit before they step on the gas and squish you into a pancake.
Heck, just group up with a couple of like-minded fighters and see how your ragtag bunch of heroes will fare against an ordinary squad. And how long it takes until the kiddie gloves are off and the big metal is called into action, even if you unexpectedly manage to survive an encounter or two.
Also, have fun with your non-resistance life from then on, e.g. reaching into your clothes to grab identification papers when asked for them at a checkpoint. You think US police are trigger happy now, wait until it's all soldiers with orders to catch insurgents instead and a bunch of wounded back at the base. Loads of civvies are gonna be made into sieves in a shoot first ask questions later precautionary manner.
Also, why crash the blowjob-to-MRE exchange rate. Face it, the supply situation is gonna be bad. It's a war after all. The only ones with a somewhat stable supply of resources will be in either army. If the civvies are perceived as constant threat, they will be dealt with mercilessly. If they cooperate and are just minding their own business in between bouts of shouting and star(v)ing, they might even be able to nab a handsome high ranking soldier and live the high life, maybe spy a bit on the side if that's your kind of thing. Worked pretty well in post-WW2 Germany. Loads of us Krauts even found their partner for life. Well, some. The rest just squirted out some bastard kids and went on with their lives. Still, it put food on the table, cigarettes in the mouths, and chocolates into the kids. Give and take.
So yeah. I don't understand this me against the world stuff. The world is big. You stand no chance in a 1:1 fight. Also, it's never gonna be a fair 1:1 fight anyway. Life's a bitch.
I fully support learning to shoot. It's just like swimming. Or driving. Or reading. Or maths. Foreign languages. Whatever. You never know when you are going to need it. So yeah. Take a gun, learn how to shoot it, how to maintain it, how to carry it. Learn all the useful little tidbits. Just in case. But after that, discard it and continue living your life without any delusions of grandeur. Also, train yourself and learn some self defense. That's always useful. Knowing when to run and when (and how) to deliver a hit to the groin of your opponent is an important skill.
