I wanted to jump in here and provide some of my own perspective in light of recent events and posts. For context, I am male Mid 30s. I have been shooting guns since around 9 years old, and a gun owner all of my adult life. I shot for my university shooting team, I was a campus leader for the Empty Holster Project, and a Project Appleseed Instructor. I still compete to this day. I have long been a defender of the 2nd Amendment, as far as even alienating friends and family in the past, much to my regret. I have held many political beliefs over the years. Some will call me a flip flopper or spineless or whatever, but I call it growing. We should be able to learn and grow from things like our upbringing, our education, our life experiences.

To anyone that is looking to see if all gun owners are what many gun owners think that you think we are.

• watching innocent children get murdered sickens us and many of us are willing to do much to help fight this massive fucking problem.
• Some may claim that we have offered solutions to school shootings, but we really haven't, and for the most part, these "solutions" are just putting bandaids on the scratches near a gaping wound.
• For many gun owners, the idea of advocates for gun control supporting laws that they dont really understand the implications of is very grating. For example, the idea of simple AR15 bans makes no sense because there are many many other guns that are NOT AR15s but are just as deadly in the wrong hands. To put it in perspective, its like when women get justifiably enraged when men try to write laws concerning women's reproductive rights. (obviously not an equal comparison but Im just trying to paint a picture).
• Being the victim of a mass shooting, surviving a mass shooting, or losing a loved one to a mass shooting does in fact give you a very rare and unfortunate perspective on a situation no one should have to experience. I will not be the one to tell you to "Fuck off", because I value your opinion and I want to have the conversation with you.
• Gun owners have been burned by anti gun politicians in the past under the guise of compromise, and understandably may be hesitant to listen to your ideas, but please understand that the conversation needs to be a two way street. Gun owners have justifiable concerns about many of the ideas from the anti gun crowd, but not all of us are here to stonewall the conversation. Compromise is part of life, but compromise is a 2 way street.
• Some might call raising the issue of guns when there is a tragic shooting, but honestly is there a better time? It should fucking hurt to talk about why and how our children are being murdered. Many gun owners refuse to talk about it any other time.
• Some of us do support things like universal health care/mental health care, or requiring gun owners to lock up guns that aren't in ones direct control, or plenty of other reasonable things.

To the people in this sub all the time, this isnt me preaching to the choir, this is me trying to remind many of you here that you arent in a homogenous bloc, you need to look outside the echo chamber sometimes. Gun owners arent all republicans or democrats or nazis or commies. Gun ownership and self defense is a human right and many of us will not agree with you on nearly everything else in life, but that's part of being an American.

Please, lets have the conversations.