Owning and using guns doesn't cause cognitive decline in the same way I've observed steep cognitive changes in people I know who are taken in by LLMs.

I recently had a friend ask an LLM what fun things there are to do in a town we were visiting. It gave the most generic answer like "try local restaurants" and "there are bars" and stuff. There's not a lot of tourist information for this area so it was nonspecific.

This is someone with an advanced degree in a medical field and she thought this was amazing insight. I asked, how is this different from what you already knew and she stood there thinking for a bit and you could tell there was a cognitive dissonance uncovered. She was very concerned when thinking it over and realizing it wasn't something she was able to intuit.

A relative of mine a long time ago had a stroke and recovered. I hadn't seen that facial expression since trying to help my relative figure out how to sit in a chair again.

Basic cognitive functions lost easily, difficult to rebuild.