[digamma]

Originally Posted by thesloppy

For the record, and full transparency my life has been affected by gun violence pretty significantly. I've said it plenty before but I wouldn't expect y'all to memorize my personal history, and I don't mean it as an argument trump card, or conversation stopper, so much as I hope it better explains where my perspective/passion comes from: My dad killed himself with a shotgun, my cousin was murdered by a mentally ill co-worker with a hunting rifle, and my friend works for the school system up here and had to clean children's brains off the wall after the Roseburg massacre. Your mileage may vary.

I do think it says something about our gun culture that, even entirely discounting the nearly constant barrage of dead folks in the news, we've also got multiple folks in here who have lost loved ones to gun violence and mass murders, friends and family that they will never see again, and yet this discussion (just like the national one) still somehow ends up being framed as if it's gun owners who are in danger of potentially losing access to something they value.

Thanks for sharing your story again. It matters.