CapArms Question of the Day: “Americans are Under an Ever-Present Threat of Violence” True or False?

Over at Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun agitprop machine, readers are invited to go Inside the Class That Teaches Missouri Lawmakers When It’s OK to Pull the Trigger. According to thetrace.org writer Blake Nelson, the “key message” of the class is that “Americans are under an ever-present threat of violence, and an armed citizenry is the first line of defense.”

Mr. Nelson’s summation is entirely in keeping with the civilian disarmament industrial complex’s view 0f American gun owners: paranoid fantasists. The People of the Gun are tooling-up against an imaginary threat and they’re incapable of meeting it should sh*t get real (paraphrasing).

The truth seems pretty obvious to me: a threat is imaginary right until it isn’t, and it’s better to have the ability to meet a threat with ballistic intervention than not. But the question remains: is the threat of violence in America “ever-present” and are armed citizens “the first line of defense”?

Oh and why isn’t anyone mentioning the threat of government tyranny? Or is that threat imaginary too?