More thoughts on gun culture and the aura of menace from TPM Reader JR …
Your commenter BF notes there is no equivalent to the anti-abortion protests, against guns. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I’d like to highlight one I think most people are genuinely afraid to talk about. The pro-gun forces have guns, and practice how to use them to protect “their rights” all the time. They fantasize about pointless shoot outs and martyrdom, as resistance to tyranny.
And of course, in case we might forget, every couple of months one of them enacts these fantasies, in classrooms or public buildings across the country. They are, in short, weaponized bullies with terroristic tendencies, and the public shies away from confronting them. Meanwhile, pro-life activists, though they may get shouted at, have no fear of gun wielding representatives from Planned Parenthood. They know that. And the more highly weaponized the gun crowd becomes, the stronger this repression of other people’s civil right to protest becomes, even as the right knows they may be harangued but they will not be shot. Thus a movement that is responsible for thousands of deaths and tragedies across decades gets no attention, while Fox News froths in the mouth about Bill Ayers.
