Twenty years ago, I could be counted on to be fairly reliably anti-gun. I believe I finally figured out why not too long ago. When I was ten years old I was assaulted by a bully on my way home from school. The bully started his attack on my by brandishing a toy pistol at me. When I mocked him for threatening me with a fake gun the altercation got nastier. I ended up smashing him across the face with my lunchbox because he was following me to my house, which I did not want him knowing the location of. And I felt very threatened.
At any rate, I have always viewed those who brandish pistols quite dimly. The bully who assaulted me was a sniveling coward. He only had the advantage over me because I was very small at that age and he was bigger than me.
Later on, I matured and realized that politically gun control advocates such as myself weren't helping the Democratic Party. No one had put a pistol in my face for years, and I became quite apathetic towards the subject.
That changed last week.
I started reading tale after tale of gun-brandishing individuals turning up at Congressional townhalls, and finally at Presidential events.
I want to be very clear how I feel about this, because I think it's important for gun-owners in particular, who think that it's all about the Second Amendment, to realize what it looks like to me.
And I've mentioned this in comments but I wanted to flesh it out in a diary:
Gun-toting thugs at townhalls are doing one thing ONLY: they are pointing a loaded weapon in everyone's face at these supposedly civic discussions and implying that a failure of the conversation to please them will result in violence. They are THREATENING.
That is the end of my statement on that. I will not debate it or give one inch of ground on it. I will not be THREATENED by political thugs. I refuse to be INTIMIDATED by goons with pistols and assault rifles.
I was apathetic about the issue for a long time. Willing to concede, to live and let live. But I would like the gun-toting masses to understand that the conversation is now about how the Second Amendment is being contorted into an argument that, "hey, it's their right to take a gun to a public place and they're breaking no law so back off, mmmmkay?"
This is the cheerfully glib ignorance of the intimidation factor. And it pisses me off quite ferociously. And the next time gun rights are brought up, I'm going to mention this quite LOUDLY. Because as far as I can tell, this is now the only thing the Second Amendment means:
The right to bear arms, in order to intimidate and threaten your political opponents, shall not be infringed.
I am not seeing a more noble use of the right to bear arms. The NRA has become so strident in recent years that all they've got left is "you'll take my guns from my cold, dead hands."
And my response is, "Ok. Let's do this, bitches."
Because I'm tired of having a gun pointed in my face by some asshole screaming that it's his right to have a gun. To point in my face. So he can scream at me and WIN the argument because actually winning on its merits is apparently not sufficient.