I don't know if seventeen is actually that big a number for an enthusiast of the subject/farmer/sports shooter - I have sixteen gaming machines for instance and a non-gamer would quite possibly baulk at that!
Categories
Certainly the last two would fall into "slightly batshit crazy" for me, but the others wouldn't to be perfectly honest, even if an individual held more than one in each category. I also live in a city where I reported a person trying to TWOC my neighbour's car who had moved off when challenged and there was a blue light on the scene providing a presence within five minutes. That's a good response for Liverpool - it'll be unheard of if you live on a ranch an hour away from the nearest paving slab, so I can see an argument for self defence in rural communities. It also doesn't include wanting a gun because it looked cool in your favourite movie/game or wanting a decorative/historical gun which is not unreasonable even if it's not your cup of tea - firing big movie guns is a popular stag do activity so it's clearly fun on some primitive level!
I'm not trying to defend the madness of the current situation. None of those categories or legitimate uses would fall foul of having some basic background checks/registration or banning private sales, which is at the very least what America needs. It also doesn't legitimise your local priest having ten miniguns and all the other crazy views and practices because "in AMERICA we have this THING called the CONSTITUTION" (I always find gun rights activists explain the US Constitution/Second Amendment like nobody's ever heard of it before, which is as annoyingly condescending as Tories starting every sentence with "I think it's
right that...")
