Gun control advocates are dedicated to the cause of civilian disarmament. They cling to their anti-gun jihad with frightening fervor. As their crusade flies in the face of facts, history and common sense, maintaining their righteous indignation against determined, informed and active opposition can be a real challenge. While I don’t want to help them in that effort, here are three things they must not do to avoid seeing the light on the right to keep and bear arms.
Don’t shoot a gun
Support for gun control is strongest in urban population centers. Cities where gun control has held sway for decades. Where inhabitants have no more experience with firearms than they do catching lightning bugs in a jar. Guns are extra-special bad because they have no idea how they operate.
If a gun control advocate shoots a gun, their belief system can undergo a seismic shift. For one thing, they experience the fun of shooting. But guns are bad! They should not be fun! How can they be fun? How can I be having fun?
For another, they finally grasp the fact that a responsible person can handle firearms responsibly. A gun is fired and no one is hurt! And the people they’re shooting with aren’t insane. Again, that does not compute.
Don’t get mugged/raped
It’s all well and good to be against gun ownership — right until you need one. At that point, you really want one.
Yes, some survivors of mass shootings become gun control advocates. I put that down to the fact that they’re not facing a deadly threat in a one-on-one situation. The event is so overwhelming that they can’t conceive of mounting a successful armed defense.
If, however, a violent attack is entirely personal, the survival instinct to counter-attack comes to the fore. That’s what happened to me in downtown Providence back in the day, when this former gun control advocate faced a knife-wielding attacker and realized the error of his ways.
Don’t study history . . . or current events
As the son of a Holocaust survivor, I am keenly aware that gun control precedes mass murder. Again, it took a personal attack to connect the dots, but connect them I did.
From that point on, the more I learned about what happened to a disarmed populace in Nazi Germany, Wounded Knee, Stalinist Russia, Armenia, etc. the more I realized that “never again” applies to all people — and demands armed protection against government tyranny.
Equally, the more I survey the agonies experienced by the peoples of Mexico, Venezuela, China, etc., the more I know that gun control is the weapon of genocide. After that, it’s simply a matter of logistics.
Those who support our natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms can hope that gun control advocates can be turned. We can use logic and facts and common sense to make our case.
But until and unless a person who favors civilian disarmament encounters one or more of these three experiences there’s little chance that a true believer will abandon their attack on our firearms freedom. And, indeed, our very existence.