The whole 'law-abiding gun owner' line is in the same class as 'jumbo shrimp': the demands of their fantasy lives as heroic slayers of 'thugs' and resistors to 'tyranny' require them to adopt an attitude of 'bending the rules' and 'defying authorities' in the pinch when the gun is in hand. So their actual attitude to the law is not 'I will obey the law' but rather 'I will decide which laws I will obey', and yet still their own conviction they are righteous and law-abiding people allows them to feel they are not criminally inclined when they harbor the intent to break laws at will, and even to believe that they are not criminals when they actually break laws.