After reading a number of different sources about the various gun bills and concealed carry initiatives that currently circulating a common thread among those opposed or on the fence is their fear of guns.

These people actually believe that a firearm is suddenly going to turn honest, reasonable, citizens into rampaging lunatics. That a piece of machinery is the missing ingredient between normal discourse and mayhem. A disagreement with Boss would suddenly be a gunfight. If neighbors kids are on your lawn then start shooting. This is such a juvenile assessment it surprises me that educated people could take such a position.

Obviously these people got all of their firearms knowledge from the media. If you have ever watched the media botch a story about something you have particular expertise in you will understand that they botch everything they report on. They are experts in "journalism" which apparently means distilling all the facts away from a story. Now that the media is essentially an exercise in editorial punditry the situation has gotten worse.

The media would have you believe that pulling the trigger is the same thing as hitting the target. Hollywood and TV make people believe that marksmanship is about as difficult as eating soup. By coupling these two things together they can make assumptions like magazine capacity is the same as body count and rate of fire means deaths per second.

Fear and ignorance are tightly coupled. You can't fix peoples fears until you can fix their ignorance. Joe correctly points out that the best way to do this is to give people direct experience with firearms - take them to the range. Cry foul when ever the media botches a gun story, and be able to back it up with facts.