Because America has a unique sort of toxic masculinity that the gun makers and Repub pols have combined to aggressively market guns to men, esp. young men, in a way that makes them feel more masculine, superior, and more powerful than other men, and esp. women, by owning and using guns. It's not much different than how large pickup trucks and guns are also marketed to women, who buy and use both of them in order to feel more powerful and less vulnerable, esp. to men, by having these toys..

And as long as there is so much profit for the gun makers, and so much political benefit for the Repub Party to oppose gun laws, the gun laws will never fundamentally change. Lastly, as Chris Hedges said so eloquently today, and Obama spoke about years ago, to many people on the right, owning guns and having their fundamentalist religion are, they feel, the only power or rights they have left under our corrupt system where the corporations and the government dictate everything else in their lives. They feel powerless against the corporations and the government, so they cling to their religion and guns for emotional comfort, because at least, in their minds, the government and corporations have taken everything else from them.

And they are mostly right. Hedges also talks about the toxic mythology that white Americans, esp. males, have about how they came to dominate America and how much they need to fear those of other races that their ancestors oppressed and will surely take revenge on them once whites are outnumbered here, unless the whites arm themselves enough to defeat and protect themselves from them. Hedges says the country has two paths, civil war or a modern New Deal like FDR's to finally improve the lives of the underclass and restore some balance of equality in America, but he feels the choice has already been made by the elite and everyone who is not part of the ruling elite or the reactionary white right wing of America will be collateral damage, as everyone not in the latter group, such as racial minorities, queer people, liberals, intellectuals, etc., the same people targeted by Hitler, will be hunted down or killed by the right wingers, while the ruling elite stay safe behind their gated communities, their security forces, the FBI, the police and the military. The rest of us don't matter and we are all expendable to them. They will still have their servants while they wait out the civil war.