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Whether or not everybody should have guns is a valid discussion. In any randomly selected group of modern Americans there’s going to be a solid 1/3 that have never fired a gun, and another 1/4 to 1/3 that learned to shoot over a decade ago and haven’t touched one since. Do you REALLY want to be handing them guns in a situation where you KNOW they’ll want to shoot them? If I were in that situation nobody who hasn’t fired a gun in the last 2 years gets one, we’ll train you up when we have time, the goal will be everybody competent enough to be armed and then armed, but hell no don’t give guns to folks that don’t know how to use them, that’s just begging for friendly fire incidents.

Lori is a product of suburban living. We aren’t used to having to watch kids every single minute or sudden death could pop out. Heck Rick made the same mistake with the girl. And again he had no knowledge of guns, do you really arm a completely untrained 10 year old? Not me.

If a writer had them all armed to the teeth right at the beginning it would have been unrealistic. These are regular people, regular people aren’t armed to the teeth. Not right after the zom-poc. They’ll get there eventually. Which is exactly what’s going on in the show.

“Not right after the zom-poc. They’ll get there eventually. Which is exactly what’s going on in the show.”

Was just watching the first episode with my kids again. And how everything still looked normal. Fresh cut and green lawns, plates on the dinner table - like it was just a dream and would come back to normal.

And as the seasons go on it gets darker and darker. Just like it would in real life.

My 15 year old daughter brought up the point about Dale, and his morals, and how that ended in last season. Although there are still morals. IIRC someone said something like “Rick is all for the group. Anything that threatens the group is open season.” (Threatens is the operative word - not just being a “stranger”)

True to form I think.

You're talking about a show set in the South - there would be guns EVERYWHERE. As it was, I recall Rick having a big bag of guns that he grabbed from the police armory. So, you teach everybody in your group how to use firearms, safety principles, how to aim, how to deal with misfires, etc. etc. and then YOU ARM THEM. It would, in fact, be immoral to be in possession of a big bag of guns but refuse to give them to anybody. That would be a potential death sentence. If the reason you are reluctant to hand out the guns is because they don't know how to use them, YOU TEACH THEM. IMMEDIATELY. You don't say, "Ah well, they're unfamiliar with guns, so let's keep them defenseless." Gun training would be an immediate priority, not "when we get around to it."

And excusing Lori's behavior by saying that she is a suburban housewife who is not used to having to watch her child is an incredibly unrealistic way of looking at it. People only behave certain ways when the environment allows them to. A person may have grown up his whole life swimming in pools and lakes, but that doesn't mean that he'll jump right in to shark-infested waters just because he's used to being able to jump right in. He'd say hell no, I'm not swimming in there. Likewise, Lori being a lazy housewife when the world was safe was reasonable, but being a lazy housewife in a zombie apocalypse is beyond unrealistic. If she cared even a LITTLE for her kid, she would never let him go beyond 3 feet from her sight. It would be INSTINCTIVE. They would all be scared, for one, and people don't do cavalier stuff when they are afraid. That is why having a bunch of sheltered, spoiled, never-seen-real-danger Hollywood left-wingers writing for a show like this tends to suck: they have no idea what real people would do in a survival situation because they've NEVER SEEN IT.

For that matter, ALL of the characters would be terrified, all the time. NONE OF THEM would ever wander off alone, especially unarmed. They would cling to each other like ticks. Very few, if any of them, would even CONSIDER leaving the relative safety of the group, not even to take a tinkle in the treeline. THAT would be reality. And it wouldn't be a conscious decision - it would be purely instinctive behavior. The writers can't grasp that because, most likely, none of them have ever been in survival situations.

Back to the gun thing - if you saw the season 3 opener, you'll notice that the kid, Carl, is suddenly a full-fledged gun-wielding badass who can get clean headshots from 50 yards away, at moving targets, with a pistol (evidence that the writers know exactly jack about guns). Well, someone apparently took it upon himself to see that Carl knew how to shoot, and them armed him. Unfortunately, it took months and a lot of whining before that could happen. With less liberal writers, that would have happened by the end of week 2.