HOUSTON — Ben Cromeens has 17 guns at home, 13 that he bought and another four he inherited from his dad. He keeps two stashed in a secret compartment near his bed, just in case anyone thinks of messing with his family.
To the 32-year-old son of Central Texas cattle ranchers, Thursday's Supreme Court ruling that individuals have a constitutional right to carry firearms for self-defense seemed about as obvious as the sun. But, Cromeens said, he travels and knows that not all Americans agree.
"The way I look at it, it's the right that ensures all others," he said outside his taxidermy shop -- which was stuffed with turkeys, wart hogs and other trophies that Houston hunters paid him to preserve. "You can't have freedom of speech and freedom of the press if you're unsafe."
In California, Charlotte Austin-Jordan has some painful reasons to disagree. She lost two children to gun violence in South Los Angeles -- her 13-year-old daughter, Ja'Mee, in 1988 and her 25-year-old son, Corey, in 1996.
She now lives in Valencia. But she still worries about her 24-year-old son, Derris.
"Every time he walks out that door, I'm scared to death," said Austin-Jordan, who founded a group called Mothers on the March that counsels women who have lost loved ones.
To her, the answer to the urban bloodshed seems simple: Access to guns should be restricted. "I don't want you to walk a mile in my shoes. Just walk a block and come back and tell me if you feel guns are necessary," she said.
In New York, Dario Nunez, 45, a Brooklyn-based architect, agreed -- about everyone not agreeing about gun control in America.
He has no problem with people being allowed to have guns for hunting and protection. But he didn't see it as some inalienable right -- and after pulling up the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday on the Internet, he remained unconvinced, calling the decision shallow and simplistic.
"We look at the Constitution almost like a religious text, and I think that's a mistake," he said. "Maybe the founding fathers left certain amendments vague so that it could be decided within the context of the times. Maybe they were trying to avoid absolutes and putting things down in stone."
John Sawyer, an office manager from Herndon, Va., had something a little more tangible on his mind when he decided last year that he needed a gun in his life: He was robbed twice in two weeks. The first time, a man pointed a gun at his head outside a used bookstore. The second time, a masked assailant held up a private poker game.
