Toni Morrison was trying to imagine her way into the mind of a racist. “Suppose … horses began to speak,” she said. “And began to demand their rights. Now, I’ve ridden horses. They’re very good workers. Suppose they just … want more. Suppose they want to go to school! Suppose they want to sit next to me in the theatre. Suppose they want to sleep with my children?” She laughed heartily. “I had to go outside the species! But it worked, I could feel it. You know; don’t sit next to me.”

Morrison made these remarks to me in 2012, but I have been thinking about them this week in relation to gun control. In this age of twisted logic, attempting to get into the minds of those who oppose the banning of assault weapons shouldn’t be that hard. Analysts labour to explain why people voted for Donald Trump and Brexit; we understand that causation is not exculpation. And yet the gap between the cost of opposing gun reform in the US – dead children – and the benefit of what opponents say they’re defending seems so out of whack. Still, it is worth having a go: trying to check the hatred I feel whenever I see a photo of Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, who looks as if he should be handing out snakes at a revivalist church, and to figure out what those who follow him tell themselves they are doing.

The words they use are “individual freedom” and this connects to an idea the US has of itself that is as fiercely defended as free speech and the separation of church and state. It is a mythic idea, but also one grounded in geography. In his speech last week, LaPierre folded gun control into the general culture war about elites in a way that was vaguely reminiscent of the fox hunting debate in the UK: a case of city people casting country people as savages who get their jollies from inflicting harm. In the US, otherwise sane people who dig their heels in over gun control do so in part, one assumes, because they loathe the people on the other side telling them what to do.

There is the thin-end-of-the-wedge argument, which might be desperately unconvincing but I guess has traction if you have a deep-seated suspicion of government: first, they came for my assault weapons and I did not speak out because I didn’t own an assault weapon.

I suppose what really baffles me is that I can’t think of a single reason why a civilian needs to own a military-grade weapon, apart from being a monstrous arsehole. Target practice and hunting is what they all say – a legitimate sport and way of life respectively – but we know it is more than that from listening to enthusiasts talking at gun shows.

I once met a guy who said he had invented a force field that would protect people in their homes and thus obviate the need for personal firearms. I told him I thought he’d overlooked one thing: that people love their guns. Perhaps it is no more complicated than that.