Gun People Don’t Trust Anti-gun People Because...

Found at Instapundit, this editorial in the Iowa State Daily hits all the high notes, and the deep ones too.  A senior at Iowa State, this boy looks to be doomed to the life of a writer, if after supporting gun ownership he'll be able to find a job in the American media. Warning, long article, and a long post.

Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned 

...I’ve come to realize after the Sandy Hook shooting that the reason we can’t have a rational gun debate is because the anti-gun side pre-supposes that their pro-gun opponents must first accept that guns are bad in order to have a discussion about guns in the first place. Before we even start the conversation, we’re the bad guys and we have to admit it. Without accepting that guns are bad and supplicating themselves to the anti-gunner, the pro-gunner can’t get a word in edgewise, and is quickly reduced to being called a murderer, or a low, immoral and horrible human being...

Now who hasn't been there?

But this is the section that got my attention.  It's long, but I've only excerpted one or two sentences from each paragraph for the effect.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because anti-gunners always talk about 90 percent of Americans supporting this gun control measure, or 65 percent supporting that one, as if a majority opinion is what truly matters in America.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they keep saying they “respect the Second Amendment” and go on about how they respect the hunting traditions of America. We don’t trust you because you have to be a complete idiot to think the Second Amendment is about hunting.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they lie to us. President Obama directly says he won’t tamper with guns or the Second Amendment, then turns around and pushes Congress to do just that.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they tell us they don’t want to ban guns, only enact what they call “common sense gun laws.” But like a magician using misdirection, they tell everyone else they want to ban every gun everywhere.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they make horrifying predictions about how there will be blood in the streets, gunfights on every street corner and America will become the Wild West again if citizens are allowed to carry concealed firearms.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they say gun control is about crime control. Anti-gunners claim that ending crime and “saving children” is why they want to ban so-called “assault weapons.” Yet our very own government says that assault weapons are used in less than two percent of all gun crimes...

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because when it comes to their “We need gun control to save the children” argument, many of us can’t understand how an anti-gun liberal can simultaneously be in favor of abortion.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they are purposely misleading to rile the emotions of the ignorant. We don’t trust anti-gunners because they say more than 30,000 people are killed each year by guns — a fact that is technically true, but the key piece of information withheld is that only a minor fraction of that number is murder; the majority is suicides and accidents.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because suicide is the only human-inflicted leading cause of death in America, and that violent crime has been on the decline for decades.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because not only is the violent crime rate approaching historic lows, but mass shootings are on the decline too. We don’t trust anti-gun people because they fail to recognize that mass shootings happen where guns are already banned — ridiculous “gun-free zones” which attract homicidal maniacs to perpetrate their mass shootings.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because school shootings have been happening forever, but despite them being on the decline, the media inflates the issue until the perception is that they’re a bigger problem than they really are.


Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they look down on us for defending the Second Amendment as vigorously as they defend the First Amendment — a fight we too would stand side-by-side with them on otherwise.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because anti-gun people put us down with dismissals like “just another dumb redneck with a gun.” We are told all over the Internet that we deserve to be in prison for being awful, heartless people; baby-killers and supporters of domestic terrorism, even.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they seek to punish us for crimes we didn’t commit. We don’t trust anti-gunners because we know that the 100 million of us are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who love this country and our society as much as the next liberal.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because when things like the Boston Marathon bombing happen, everyone correctly blames the bomber, not the bomb.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they’re fine with guns protecting the money in our banks, our politicians and our celebrities, but they’re against us using guns to protect ourselves, our families, or even our children in schools.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they completely ignore the fact that true conservatism is about, in part, the preservation of traditions and long-standing principles.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because in a single breath they tell us that the Second Amendment is irrelevant today and should be repealed because semi-automatic weapons didn’t exist when the Bill of Rights was written, then turn around and say the First Amendment protects radio, television, movies, video games, the Internet, domain names, Facebook and Twitter.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because, while liberals seek to expand government regulation and services — things that may not be bad or ill-intended on their own — they simultaneously try to curtail the Second Amendment. We don’t trust anti-gun people for this reason because history shows us that every genocide and democide is preceded by expansion of government power and gun control.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because anti-gunners tell us that the police and military are the only people who should have guns (which is a joke in itself), and that we need to give up our own guns and trust the government. We don’t trust anti-gunners because we know that hundreds of millions of people have been killed by their own governments in the last century, and not a single law seeking to ban the government from possessing guns has ever been submitted.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because anti-gunners insult us for our opposition to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (aka the “ATF”). We don’t trust anti-gunners because we know the ATF is hardly a law enforcement agency but is really a glorified tax collection agency that has abused, ruined the lives of, or murdered dozens of innocent gun owners through overzealous enforcement of gun-related tax and paperwork regulations.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because they always bemoan the NRA, claiming the NRA is the source of all their anti-gun legislation problems. We don’t trust anti-gunners because it never occurs to them that perhaps it’s not the NRA per se that has the power, but the millions of members that belong to it, and the millions more Americans who otherwise support it and its mission.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because while they were crying about the victims of 9/11 or Aurora or Sandy Hook, and thanking God they weren’t there, I and many other gun people like me were crying because we weren’t there, and asked God why we couldn’t have been.

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because I and many of us are what they call “sheepdogs” and we’re proud of that. Yet anti-gunners make fun of us, calling us “cowboys” and “wannabes” for it. Wanting to save lives and being willing to sacrifice one’s own to do it used to be considered a virtue in this country.

As they say, read and savor the whole thing