President Franklin D. Roosevelt once said during World War II “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Perhaps Americans have never had so much fear as today. This fear is not from an outside entity but from other Americans and Latino immigrants. Other Americans fears include fear between blacks and whites, and within each race.
An obvious but mostly wrong conclusion is the regular media who carefully avoid race and gang affiliation which would mean non-gang people shouldn’t be overly concerned about their safety. Right wing cable news can’t get through a news cycle without trying to scare their audience into mistrust and fear of almost everyone and their government. Their underlying ideas are you must buy at least one gun to defend yourself and your family because they are coming after you!
They are coming after you apparently means going to the wrong car in a parking lot, knocking on the wrong door, or driving up the wrong drive way. Other reasons for someone to shoot another person is taking a shortcut through an unfamiliar neighborhood while carrying groceries, jogging on a street too often, pushing a harasser away from your family, or chasing a basketball into a neighbor’s property. The last was a little girl and the father trying to shield her from more bullets.
Far Right people and the Far Right media constantly make people think their own government is going to take your gun away from them, so they go buy one! Some states promote having a gun while others which want to restrict access are subverted by the easy access neighboring states.
Of course the gun lobbyists and manufacturers are at the root of those fears. Remember: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Commentary About the Blue Marble 
Everyone takes the precaution of wearing a seatbelt, even though the auto crash fatality rate is 13/100k. Is it really irrational fear to arm oneself, when the violent crime victimization rate is 370/100k?
People wear seat belts because of the law and vehicle warning system drives then nuts until they buckle up. If guns weren’t so accessible violent crimes would be as low as those countries which have banned those guns.
…Chuck
You ignored my point about there being a legitimate fear of victimization.
In any case, the vast majority of crimes are committed with handguns — are you suggesting we ban those?
We have a fear of victimization because we have allowed we have allowed millions of guns to be sold to people who have an irrational fear. A gun owner is hundreds of times more likely to be shot with their own handgun than to use it against someone else. Also, the majority of people killed each year need only one bullet.
Nutty or criminal people wants much more than my nine-shot proposed magazine. See my previous essays on the subject.
…Chuck
“A gun owner is hundreds of times more likely to be shot with their own handgun than to use it against someone else.”
Where on earth did you get that nonsense? The CDC estimated between 500,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year. The Gun Violence Archive records around a dozen accidental deaths of lawful gun owners annually. Most gun deaths are suicides, but anyone who’s not suicidal is a no risk from a gun.
Before you poo-poo people’s fears, you might want to talk to, say, the increasing number of minority women in big cities who’ve bought a gun in the past three years. You also happen to be talking to someone who’s been a victim of a crime, and whose life was saved thanks to a gun.
Around 60% of gun deaths are suicides or 65 each day. You are more likely to be shot with your own gun than someone else’s and more likely for a confrontation to escalate to shooting than fists or walking away. Allowing people to carry or have a gun away from home is asking for trouble since most people are likely to hit someone behind their target as two NYC cops did. They hit the gunman 6 times out of 19 shots but nailed 2 people across the street.
I have zero likelihood of committing suicide with a gun, because I am not suicidal. Even were suicidal ideation evenly spread across the population, there are 20k gun suicides /year, out of ~ 80 million gun owners. You work out the odds.
How many concealed carriers, out of the ~ 20 million licensed ones, have ever missed and shot an innocent bystander?
This is not a snarky question: have you ever shot a gun? Do you personally know anyone who regularly does?