Let's look at 9/11 and Iraq with the goal of understanding and integrating the legitimate views of the NRA and 2d Amendment advocates.
We sometimes accept the liberal line about guns cause gun deaths a little to quickly, without the tough examination that other issues, like John Edwards' hair, or Al Gore's weight, or Obama's skin color and genography attract.
Is it because we are being trained to fill our attention space (six ideas maximum) with the trivial instead of the significant?
Freedom is significant, is it not? Suppose that Bushco, the corporate consumerist imperial oligarchs, had succeeded in removing access to guns from Iraqis after invading and occupying Iraq? No IED's, no mortars, no snipers. Easy occupation.
Now, under the fold, imagine the USA under that same occupation, WITH access to rifles, handguns, ammunition, smokeless powder, and so on.
The gun nuts (I use this non-pejoratively) are concerned about their liberty, in the very real and extreme but possible case of an overthrow of our constitutional form of government by the military, or by a cabal of conspirators, and that the cabal would have use of the military to enforce that overthrow.
IN THIS WE ARE IN AGREEMENT WITH THEM.
Their preparation for such a possible overthrow is to cache weapons. I know these people. I like guns, as machinery, and I find it very easy to talk to gun shop owners about accuracy, and fps, burn rates, and windage.
In addition, my son is what you might call an expert in the field of weapons, being a former instructor in sniping, communications, hand to hand combat and Ranger operations in general. He's no long in the Marines, but he served in Iraq I, behind Iraqi lines as forward reconnaissance.
Conversations with him are enlightening. I would not like to be in charge of occupying and pacifying central Utah with him in it.
That's the metaphor: protection of home, family and freedom. Why would you be against it, in the real sense of taking away guns?
Pretty much any argument you make against citizen retention of firearms, especially military grade weapons useful in guerrilla warfare, as in Iraq, is easily countered by arguments much more in tune with human instincts.
People won't lay down their arms in such a dangerous world, so I'd recommend dropping the whole issue of gun control, even if the MSM is currently echoing the VT event, and try to get what the NRA and gun nuts are saying: we want guns for protection against the government. Do you agree, or do you want, on weak arguments, to take them away.
If this doesn't turn into a flamefest, I am going to counter the liberal arguments with what I have heard from my many gun nut acquaintances. Not friends, because I'm not a gun nut. But I've spent a lot of time drinking beer and talking about the gummint.
DailyKos is not the only place that the evils of government are discussed, and it is not sound thinking to dismiss their arguments on general terms. They might be right, after all. Evidence, not faith.