Gun control – waking the dragon

This has been linked and referenced on many blogs, but for those who haven’t yet heard about it, make sure to click over to the Iowa State Daily and read Barry Snell’s superb essay on gun control, ‘Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned‘.  Here’s a brief excerpt to whet your appetite.

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.

. . .

Liberals always make the common plea, “We need to get some experts to solve this problem!” for any public policy issue that comes along, which is a good thing. But when it comes to the gun issue, gun expertise is completely irrelevant to the anti-gunner — people who probably have never fired a gun or even touched one in real life, and whose only experience with guns is what they’ve seen in movies or read about in bastions of (un)balanced, hyper-liberal journalism, like Mother Jones. That a pro-gun person might actually know a lot about their hobby or profession doesn’t stand up against the histrionic cries of the anti-gunner.

How can we “gun people” honestly be expected to come to the table with anti-gunners when anti-gunners are willfully stupid about guns, and openly hate, despise and ridicule those of us who own them? There must first be respect and trust — even just a little — before there can be even the beginnings of legitimate discussion of the issue.

There’s much more at the link.  Essential reading, and highly recommended.

Next time an anti-gunner attacks you for owning guns, or assails the Second Amendment, or anything like that, give them the link to this article.  End of debate, right there.

Peter