I am going to get a lot of criticism for this, but it has to be said: the gun culture in the United States absolutely absurd. It is absurd when twenty first graders are shot in school and we shrug it off. It is absurd when a man in a movie theater is shot for texting his daughter. It is absurd when people defend gun ownership by declaring self-defense from the "tyranny" of the government. Let's be perfectly honest here. If the government wanted to take your guns away, they could do it quite easily. If this government is truly as tyrannical and malicious as right wing nuts proclaim, then there is no amount of ammunition and no assortment of assault weapons that can stop the most powerful military in the world from stomping you down. Your masculine "you'll have to pry the gun out of my dead hands" mentality is childish. If we need to resort to armed individual rebellion to maintain our republic, suffice it to say that our republic no longer exists.