Anyway, it is a pleasure to see a young man with his own mind who is courageous enough to adapt his opinions to reality rather than adapt his perception of reality to his opinions.

That said, it is with considerable shame that I must admit that I, too, was pro-gun-control, for a time. But then, in 10th grade, my father took me to a gun (and militaria) show. To my surprise, the only flags displayed in the arena were the flag of the United States and the flag of the State of Maryland (hung from the ceiling, as they often are in stadiums and arenas) – no nazi flags or pointy hoods or anything silly like that. And there were even minorities there (besides the Asian guy at the “made in China” tables, where literally everything for sale was made in China). Since then I’ve gone to as many gun shows in the DC area as possible. But that wasn’t quite enough to fully convince me of the silliness of gun control philosophy.
In 11th grade I took AP US History, and near the end of the year, we had several debates. We were formed into groups of four, each group assigned a topic (at random), and split into teams of two to research and debate the topic (the teams also assigned at random). The topic my group was assigned was gun control, and the team I was assigned to was the pro-gun-control team.
During the course of my research, I found it especially difficult to find credible statistics supporting gun control; whenever I looked deeper into statistics that seemed promising, I always found that they were either presented in a misleading (often bordering on downright dishonest) way or they had some other terrible flaw that the other side would no doubt use to rebut my argument. When reading court decisions and opinions by legal authorities, I found myself thinking things like “boy, this Scalia guy’s a dick, but on this I have to admit he’s got a point.” So eventually I gave up on gun control, and, as a result, my efforts at finding evidence to support my argument in the debate. I went to class that day with nothing but a few notecards and a lot of rhetoric and psuedo-sociology.
Needless to say, we lost the debate. But although my team lost, I like to think of that day as a victory for America, because facts, reason, and intellectual honesty won the RKBA side another convert…or five…
And so it was that I became the gun-owning Maryland liberal, and 19-year-old (for now, obviously) college kid, that I am today.

As for the 19-year-old college kid mentioned in the original post, I’d say he’s got some research to do, but, due to a lack of intellectual honesty on his part, he probably either won’t do it or he’ll only examine sources that agree with his preconceptions.

And I appologise for the long comment, but I suppose here it’s warranted since I am bringing a unique and relatively important perspective to the discussion… :-)

From what I hear, there actually are quite a few gun owners in Europe, particularly Spain and Germany.

I’ve met an anti-gun professor, however I think I could have hammered the RKBA into him. He was not “virulently” anti-gun, just passively anti-gun (his reasoning: guns cause harm, therefore guns are bad).

I’ve also met a pro-gun professor, so I guess it balances out.

Who is teaching these folks to HATE the NRA?

And second: can you imagine a college student who is consumed with empowering the police and the G. W. Bush administration to the exclusion of common people?

It’s a crazy world!