A second answer is one I reserve for the more obnoxious liberals - what do I *need* a gun for? I don't need a gun. I have a gun. The guy who needs a gun is the one who doesn't.
“In answer to the title question, it’s much more satisfying to shoot a gun at people who are trying to harm you ...”
With thanks to Billthedrill for reminding the forum of the original point of this thread -
After more than a dozen years in the gun sales & repair business, I will venture to guess that there are more reasons to own a gun than there are people wanting to own guns. Which adds up to hundreds of millions of reasons, in the US alone.
As many noted, a good primary reason is defense of self, family, and community. After that comes food procurement, training (much more broad than simply learning how to handle an arm and shoot properly), sport, recreation, study & research, investment ...
Aside from the top two or three, every new gun buyer brings their own reasons. As a sales staffer, I never ask for a reason - unless the customer is unsure what they want or why, and do not know what might be available, or suitable. Then (and only then) it becomes my professional responsibility to sound them out - to a degree - on their goals and reasons, and give such advice as they might need.
Billthedrill is absolutely right in correcting obnoxious lberals. We must stop them in their tracks, as they pursue their arrogant quest to tell the rest of us how to live. Perhaps we should give thought to how we might alter the culture, to place the query “What do you need it FOR??!” outside the bounds of polite conversation.
If odawg and other posters find my responses pedantic or picky, I can ask but one question in response: which gun-ignorant citizen will forgive us, if we (who already know some details about firearms & related stuff) give them sloppy, ill-considered (or just plain erroneous) advice, and on the strength of such they injure themselves or loved ones, because we told them to get the wrong gun, or the wrong ammunition to use in it?