Two comments:
First is my situation. I live five miles and fifteen minutes from the county shooting facility. It costs $2.00 a carload and for this you get a porta-john which is maintained regularly, and two ranges, fifty yard pistol and 300 yard rifle. Additionally, I've been out of work for over a year and, thus, can go shooting pretty much any time I want. I have a couple of shotguns, some centerfire rifles and pistols and some .22's. My wife and I have agreed to keep a minimun of 100 rounds on hand for each centerfire and shotgun plus 1000 rounds of .22, although we usually have more. I haven't been shooting since November.
Shooting alone is just no fun. Oh, I go by myself occasionally but it's more fun with someone else along. I've made at least a dozen shooting appointments in that time, none of which has ever actually happened. Admittedly, we had a wet spring and the range was a sea of sandy mud six inches deep over hardpan, but that has been cleared up for months. Now, of course, it's too hot. People talk about going but nobody ever shows up. Guess I'll just sit here, surrounded by firearms I don't shoot, and drink.
The other situation is one I encountered some years ago. The sister of my then-girlfriend had turned forty and decided that, living in the Marina District of San Francisco, she needed something to protect herself. A professional student, she had attained a doctorate in microbiology and was currently attending law school--guess that micro-thing didn't work out so well. She had one of her hair-gelled, cheeto munchin' classmates to set her up with a gun. This specimen, obviously a frustrated crime-buster, put her onto a Browning BDA in .380, which she bought and left in the box, on her closet shelf. She had never bought ammo for it because she didn't kow what to buy, neither, apparently, did Hair-gel Boy.
Using the argument that you wouldn't want to have a car you had never driven, indeed, didn't know how to drive, or even put gas in it, would you? The next time she came over the hill to visit, she brought it along. I had bought a box of hardball and a box of silvertip hollowpoints so we went to the range. She had trouble getting the thing loaded--she kept wanting to put the rounds in the magazine backwards--and had a lot of trouble getting the slide pulled back. The concept of a safety seemed beyond her grasp. She hated the brass flying everywhere. She decided the whole damn lthing was too complicated! Remember, this woman had a DOCTORATE in a medical field, and has undoubtedly operated very complicated lab equipment.
Then, we let her fire her sister's model 19 S&W. She loved it. I eventually ended up buying the Browning from her (but that's another story) and she ended up with a Ladysmith that she keeps in the box on her closet shelf. At least I made sure she had ammo.
Point here is that some, like me, like to have company. Others, like the woman in the story, seem to think that a gun is some sort of magic wand, get it out when evil threatens, otherwise, leave it alone, lest it lose its powers.
Did that make sense?
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), so many people can afford one. 
