As an American who came of age in the 1970s, it's bonkers to me too. The level of paranoia you discuss is real, but it's also new from my perspective.

Much of it stems from constant gun violence, and I understand that for sure, even though the average American is unlikely to be touched by gun violence.

But it happens so frequently in our large country that we hear about it all the time.

When I was growing up, hardly anybody owned a gun unless they needed it for work or recreation. (Like target shooting and hunting, which were uncommon in urban areas. Well, hunting is still — obviously — uncommon in Urban area, lol.)

Even people who owned guns did not own semi-automatic assault rifles. Well, a close neighbor of ours owned one of those with a special federal permit when I was 12 years old. I remember everybody thought that was a little cool but kind of weird.

Nobody thinks it's weird anymore. Semi-automatic assault rifles fly off the shelves everyday, coveted by gun owners, who make up an increasingly large percentage of our population.

That's certainly enough to inspire fear! Realistic fear. The more realistic fear is the increasing number of people who are packing concealed handguns on their person.

I don't know what the answer is, but the more people who own guns, the more people who die of gun violence. It's just inevitable. Then more people buy guns to protect themselves from that violence.

We desperately need to find a way out of this deadly spiral of gun ownership.