Okay, this is where you lose those of us on the left. When you start claiming that we're mentally diseased because we don't agree with you politically. When you start saying things that essentially boil down to "Lefties are vegetarians! You know who else was a vegetarian? HITLER, THAT'S WHO!". Screaming about the authoritarianism of one side while ignoring that of your own wins you no converts. How many of you know what the Mulford Act is? How many of you know that Nazi Germany didn't ban the possession of firearms for anyone but Jews and other "enemies of the state" and in fact relaxed the draconian firearms laws imposed on them by the League of Nations? I don't blame most people for believing that one really. It's probably a lot more comforting to believe in a completely disarmed populace, helpless against the machinations of the Third Reich and forced to stand by and do nothing while millions were slaughtered than it is to contemplate an armed populace standing by and doing nothing and complicit in the slaughter of millions of their countrymen.
That's an unpleasant thought, isn't it: the idea that the people of an entire nation, able to be reasonably well-armed under the laws of their government, might sit by and do nothing while that same government engages in mass murder. They weren't helpless. They weren't inhuman monsters. They were regular people who nevertheless turned a blind eye to the abuses and atrocities perpetrated by their own government because that government figured out how to sell it to them. This is not a new phenomenon. But it works. It worked in Hitler's Germany. It worked in Stalin's Russia. It worked in Mao's China. And don't delude yourself for a moment that it couldn't work here. What did it take? A minority of the population, singled out as the enemy within, as the cause of every ill, working against the perfection of a nation because of their inherent evil. That's it. You'll be hard pressed to find a nation, having descended into totalitarianism, that didn't end up there by following that path, by chasing the enemies authority gives them.
This is why, in any society, the right to bear arms is worthless without the full compliment of freedoms we're all born deserving. Without the other rights enumerated by the founders of this nation, the right to bear arms is nothing more than a super-tacticool rifle hanging on the wall in a house that's all ready been looted and picked clean. And that's why you lose people on the Left. You focus solely on the right to bear arms as inviolable while disparaging or ignoring the other rights due all of us. We see support for warrantless wiretaps, for torture, for police brutality, for all sorts of government abuses as long as it's directed against the right people.
I offer this as a Left-wing gun owner. Want us on your side, so we too can help convince our less-rational and fear-motivated political peers that gun ownership is not solely the province of racist, sexist, homophobic and reflexively violent thugs? Don't revel in acting like you are, even if you aren't, just because of some childish impulse to upset the people on the other side of the aisle. Ask yourself if putting a thumb in their eye over affirmative action or global warming or same-sex marriage is worth sacrificing your right to defend yourself, your family and those around you. If you're going to be ambassadors for firearms culture, act like it. You'd be surprised how many people you won't alienate by simply laying out the case for responsible firearms ownership and self-defense instead of railing about how Obama is the new Hitler.
Thanks for your time folks. We're all in this together, after all.