It’s been a while since I’ve trolled the comments underneath the antis’ Facebook posts — to expose the strange and not wonderful ideas espoused by the civilian disarmament industrial complex. Here’s a fresh example under a post by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America:
I certainly agree with the first part of Ms. Payne’s opening salvo; the NRA is working to normalize guns. Not to go all Yoda, grateful I am. But Ms. Payne is wrong to suggest “our legislatures” are normalizing guns. I don’t know where the cat-loving commentator lives, but the politicians in California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington are doing no such thing. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Ms. Payne further reveals her rather limited not-to-say paranoid perspective by writing that there’s “nothing normal about carrying guns to school.” The statement assumes that the law-abiding Americans who do carry guns to school aren’t normal. It’s this dehumanization of gun owners that drives the hatred that drives the disarmament movement.
If Ms. Payne wants an example of abnormality, her next line is it. By asserting “guns are bullies” she’s ascribing mystical indeed evil powers to an inanimate object. The technical term is anthropomorphism. While it’s an ancient practice, it’s not a normal belief system amongst rational people.
Which is not a description that applies to anti-gun zealots, given the preponderance of evidence proving that firearms freedom protects both individuals and a free society.
Because Ms. Payne can’t face the reality of guns on campus — “gun free zones” are both unconstitutional and ineffective — she bases her antipathy on her emotional reaction to it. She “feels” that “the value of an education will deteriorate.”
There is no evidence that education institutions in states that allow legally held firearms on campus (e.g., Utah) have experienced any deterioration in the value of their education. Which is, let’s face it, an entirely nebulous concept once you step outside of a graduate’s earning potential.
“Americans should boycott guns on campus,” Ms. Payne opines. At the risk of picking nits, it’s a recommendation that once again highlights Ms. Payne’s fixation on guns, rather than people with guns or schools that “allow” legally held firearms on campus.
“What other country behaves like this?” Ms. Payne asks, in conclusion.
The question reflects the antis’ rejection of American exceptionalism. A concept that owes its existence to our Constitution. A document that contains a mandate prohibiting government infringement on Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.
My question: do all those who oppose the individual right to keep and bear arms think this way? More or less, yes. This and worse.