I agree with you, surprisingly, about a lot of what you said. But guns are a weird subject for a lot of people. The issue that is always brought up is that guns are designed to kill. The counter is good safety foundation, training, and practice. The counter to that is, humans are stupid greedy assholes.

like wise you could argue that censorship resistant platforms, self hosting, and e2e encryption can cause acts of violence to be carried out against people. I don't see anybody complaining about that though, that's just an understood cause and effect of having freedom in regards to censorship. Shitty people exist, they will proceed to be shitty. You can censor them, but if you want to maintain truly uncensored speech, you must allow them to speak, unfortunately.

There is always a benefit, and a negative to any action taken. Guns can indeed kill people, you can argue they were made to kill, but you can also argue that the vast majority of guns in existence have never once killed a person. And therefore, statistically, are probably safer than a lot of other things. Like eating junk food.

Like you said, you treat guns with respect, because they can be dangerous, much like someone who interacts with powertools on the regular, understands the dangers of powertools, and how they can be used to hurt people, intentionally or otherwise. Just like when creating open source software, or using it, you have to respect it's licensing, and use it appropriately.

The lack of respect is certainly a problem, but it is drastically upset when republicans, who disproportionately, understand gun safety, and utilize it to their benefit (as they should) don't want to educate people they don't find very appealing on how to be safe with them. Which not only leads to potential self inflicted dangers and injuries, but also potentially to others as well. If we want everyone to be safe and respectful of guns, we can't simply ignore an entire segment of the population, it just doesn't matter. You can't justify that.

putting them on different fields is certainly understandable, they are different things after all, but i think it's important to consider the underlying structures and mechanisms behind something, and seeing how those can be effectively applied elsewhere, if for no other reason than to prevent bias and hypocrisy. As well as ensuring consistent beliefs. Seeing as a non-insignificant portion of gun owning republicans seem to be experiencing this issue right now. I would say that's fair.