Seasoned gun owners and new shooters talk about why they take the right to own a gun seriously.  MANCHESTER, N.H. — “A gun is a tool,” said the instructor to his class on a snowy Saturday morning in downtown Manchester. He was teaching 24 women how to safely carry, clean, load and aim a handgun. Later they were going to a range to learn to shoot.  No, I thought. A gun is a weapon. A screwdriver is a tool. You can kill with it, but mostly you open paint cans.  I could tell you the guy was wrong, but I’d rather just say: I disagreed. Because to me he is not an abstraction or an adversary — he’s Bob. Robert Boilard, an N.R.A.-certified instructor at the Londonderry Fish and Game Club. He and fellow club members opened their doors to me and a colleague, and over two long days, in the clubhouse, in the classroom and on the range, we talked, shot some and got to know one another.  It started as a conversation in a Quonset hut decorated with game trophies and a poster of President Obama labeled “Firearms Salesman of All Time.” The club president, Rick Olson, Mr. Boilard, Robert Cormier and Mark Gashi had answers to most of the questions and arguments I could think of.  They believe the Constitution is clear about what guns are for, and hunting and target shooting are the least of it. Guns don’t threaten safety. Self-defense is a right, and law and order is a citizen’s duty, especially when cops and ambulances are farther away than rapists and home invaders. Yes, gun massacres happen, and suicides, and accidents, but the evil and sickness that drive people to homicide will find their outlet without guns. The solution to accidents is training.  Our back-and-forth was a game of hypotheticals. No serve went unreturned. What about the danger to children with guns in the house? Well, what about the danger from a burglar? New Hampshire is heroin country, and robberies and violence are serious threats. Yes, but crime is so low in your state! Hah, point proved: New Hampshire is safe because of guns.  The men could not have been friendlier, or more serious and sincere, or less moved by my case for gun restrictions. Laws that strike me as common sense they see as ominous. At some point in the second hour the tone shifted — in my view — from prudence toward paranoia. The unanswerable hypotheticals this time involved government tyranny. Registering gun owners, the men said, simply makes it easier to round us up. Think of Japanese-Americans in 1942.  Mr. Obama, Hillary Clinton, San Bernardino, Newtown, ISIS — to me these are abstract, empty reasons to buy a gun. To my new friends, and so many of their friends, they are concrete and immediate reasons. Gun clubs across the state are bursting with new members. Mr. Boilard’s women-only class is filled every weekend.  The class is called “Badass Divas.” The students, in quilted down vests and pink hoodies, did not strike me as particularly badass, but most seemed less intimidated by handguns than I was. Some said their fathers, husbands or partners had urged them to go. Others said they wanted to take responsibility for protecting themselves and their families.  These were the law-abiding gun owners you always hear about, those who are — or want to be — at ease with guns. That’s not the feeling I had when I first held the 9-millimeter revolver, or fired the fully automatic rifle with a drum magazine. Or when I watched Mr. Boilard explain where to shoot, using a poster showing ribs, heart, lungs and spinal column. Right there in the kill zone, he said, not lower. Otherwise “you’re just punching holes in intestines.”  The world they inhabit, where good people strive to be as lethal as the bad ones, is not one I want to live in.  Their response: You already do.  I don’t share all their fears. When I hear a noise downstairs at night, I assume it’s the cat. You could say that’s because of the lucky circumstances of my life in a quiet place.  Mr. Boilard approaches the noise-in-the-night differently.  “Dad goes downstairs, Dad’s probably going to die,” he told the class.  He went further: “What happens to the people upstairs?”  “They’re going to die, too,” the women said. The logic was pretty clear.
A game of hypotheticals with the other side of the gun debate finds logic, friendliness and a reality driven by fear.