I’m honestly very glad things worked out for the best for your family, and I take you at your word that the 20-gauge likely made the difference.
I’ve also got scary stories involving crime, guns, and my family.
In the summer of 2020, a 9mm slug came through one of our windows.
In the winter of 2021, just across the street from a city park full of people sledding, skating, and playing pick-up hockey, my daughter and a friend, both 15 at the time, were mugged by two pistol-brandishing teenagers who appeared to be well under the age of 18.
Nobody was hurt either time, but it is very difficult for me not to conclude that European-style gun laws and corresponding much lower prevalence of guns in the USA would very likely have kept my family out of harm’s way. I’m also pretty confident that far more American children are killed or injured by firearms in domestic violence, as bystanders to gun violence, in mass shootings, by accident, and by suicide than American children who are protected from harm by defending themselves with a firearm from an assailant or being defended by an adult with a firearm from an assailant.
Freedom? (1) As has already been pointed out, I don’t think anybody on either side of the aisle seems to be coming for anyone’s long-barrel shotguns, (2) several red states have child-access laws, and (3) although it may be technically an open question as to whether minors have Second-Amendment rights, precedent and the analysis of historical regulations that the Supreme Court has (insanely, IMO) required courts to apply to review of gun laws does not seem to favor an extension of Second-Amendment rights to minors.
The freedoms to have my vote for someone other than Trump count, to protest, and to not have someone I love unnecessarily die from an ectopic pregnancy, to name just a few examples, mean a lot to me. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.
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