I think you read too much into that. I didn't find any innuendo in reader5000's post.

Is there any other reason for wanting to own a gun (in a non combat situation) rather than weird insecurity?

Hobby? Many people collect guns, just as others collect baseball cards, model trains, or sports cars.

I suppose you dismiss those people as obviously insecure though...

Sport or recreation I suppose. I don't own any firearms but I have gone out 'shooting' with friends that do and it's quite fun.

I never brought up penises at any point. Are you aware that you yourself said "I'm in the UK and I find the US obsession with owning guns weird"? How is my comment different from yours? HN swings fairly hyper-individualist / libertarian / conspiracy theorist so data-backed, rational gun regulation comments are going to get downvoted. But I don't think the comment was wildly out of line as you seem to think.

You think your comments are making rational data-backed points and are only being down voted by libertarians?

I am anti gun, pro gun control. I down voted your comment because it added no value to the discussion, it was purely inflammatory, and certainly had no data to support it.

You may wish to re-read your posts in this thread.

Let's just be clear: when I call gun ownership "weird", it's "purely inflammatory", but when you do, it totally adds value to the discussion.

I invite you to reread this thread and determine who derailed an enlightening discussion regarding the psychology of US gun ownership and police militarization with ad hominmen and completely off-topic attacks on another's commenting style.

>I invite you to reread this thread and determine who derailed an enlightening discussion

I just did and it appears to be you. You are making 2 kinds of comments in this thread: 1) inflammatory comments that appear to be deliberately written to cause a derailing flamewar, and 2) comments accusing everyone else of making inflammatory comments written to cause a derailing flamewar.