Check out this comment underneath this YouTube interview with TTAG Gun Hero of the Day Stacy Dash: “It must be hard when you call yourself an ‘actress’ and have only been in one thing. Perhaps people aren’t “persecuting’ you, Stacey, for your ‘conservative’ beliefs. Perhaps people just hate you. Perhaps you are a terrible ‘actress’ and people know that. Maybe, just maybe, it has nothing to do with what you say, but the fact that YOU are saying it. Now, please stop martyring yourself.”

desantis blue logo no back 4 small As someone who reads thousands of TTAG comments per week, I know that some gun rights advocates can be nasty f*cks. But I also know that the pro-gun control side is far worse, in both the anonymous comments sections of various websites and, more worryingly, in the mainstream media. Why is that? Why do so many antis resort to ad hominem attacks — frequently portraying gun owners as emotionally unstable racist bigots — and bring the bile?

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83 COMMENTS

  1. Because the anti gun movement is largely manufacturd by special interests, which do not have the truth or facts on their side, and must rely on raw emotion to sway people.

    • Conflicts over lifestyle (which is what the gun-rights/gun-control controversy actually is) are often accompanied by emotionalism borne out of an assumption of moral imperatives. The gun-control movement, having gone through a stage where it tried and failed to assimilate others to it core beliefs, has moved to a point where it now considers gun-owners to be cultural enemies who have to be coerced into obeying gun-controller’s views on proper behavior. Gun-controllers, along with militant vegans, animal rights activists, environmentalists, and other groups all see their causes as moral crusades against the unrighteous. When you see your opponents as irresponsibly immoral cultural enemies, it’s easy to become increasingly annoyed at their outrageous behavior. And when the unrighteous the are openly defiant, indignant insults will naturally follow.

      • Someone(Mike)below summed it up much better than myself, bottom line is that peoples ideas and opinions are being engineered in a way that people think they are forming their own opinions. There is much sophistication behind social conditioning/engineering, and unless it is recognized for what it is, mind control to control the masses, there is little chance overcoming it.

        • When the commies did it (and still do) it was called propaganda. And the far left, which is where the anti-gun types mainly reside, is essentially “commie”.

    • Thanks for posting this! Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) is a great website.

      I read the whole thing. Good food for thought/ammo in the “conversation” with the antis.

    • IMO this is the ‘money shot’ in that article…
      “How does my correspondent “know” that his neighbors would murder him if they had guns? He doesn’t. What he was really saying was that if he had a gun, he might murder his neighbors if he had a bad day, or if they took his parking space, or played their stereos too loud. This is an example of what mental health professionals call projection ”
      The antis project their own rage, lack of self control, and desire to murder others off unto us to avoid having to deal with their own internal nastiness. It shows up regularly, whenever they express their desires to do harm. “They should all be gunned down”, “lined up and shot”, “I hope you all die screaming”, etc.
      Its really quite sad. Pathetic actually. Playing out their death cult fantasies on others because they cannot even bare to take a tiny glance at their own selves, and their own behaviors.

  3. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but antigunners being encouraged to call in nonexistent threats because of “feelings” can kill me.

  5. Because they are wrong.
    I had a supervisor get angry at me and suspend me. He was screaming at me for no reason. Maybe because he was an asshole from New York. I had the suspension overturned by his boss and his boss told him “If you are right, you don’t have to yell”.
    Also, gun ownership is a symbol of freedom. The collectivists are afraid of those not joining the Borg. People act irrational out of irrational fear.

    • “Hostile and combative.”

      The job performance review I am most proud of.

      That review came from a company I will call “Co. A”.

      5 years after I left “Co. A”, I was hired by “Co. B”.

      “Co. B” had just bought “Co. A” about a year before I was hired. When “Co. A” was bought, my new boss at “Co. B” was sent to “Co. A”‘s facility to streamline the merger.

      While he was there, he got to personally experience my ex-boss, the one that gave me the “Hostile and combative” job review.

      When he hired me he told me that the fact I couldn’t get along with my ex-boss was a prime indicator of my suitability and qualifications for the new job. To say that my new boss was un-impressed with my ex-boss was an understatement.

      Thereafter, every time I saw my ex-boss at company functions I gave her the biggest sh!t-eating grin I could manage.

      The over 30 percent raise I got in the new job was a nice perk…

    • “If you are right, you don’t have to yell.”

      15 years of law enforcement experience would indicative otherwise.

      Although I certainly agree with you on the dangers of being right when your boss is wrong.

    • A few years ago I took over a large state agency. Based on the number of complaints that I was intimidating from the employees of that agency after I took over, I HR suggested I go to what amounts to sensitivity training. At the end of the week long session, there is a puzzle exercise that is designed to show you how you get everything done if everyone works together. When it was my turn to run it, I “fired” 70% of the class, and had only a few people run the puzzle. We beat the best time by almost half. And yet, HR suggested I take the course again. Instead, I fired or forcibly retired most of the people at the agency.

      • Victory! (And I’m not kidding.) One thing I’ve always hated about “training sessions” and, especially, “sensitivity or diversity training sessions” is that they’re always conducted as one-way events. You have a person in the role of gatekeeper who passes on Great Truth to all the stakeholders. I always made it a practice (having tenure was a big help, here) of either not attending these sideshows or, if absolutely required to go, I insisted on asking the gatekeeper questions, insisting on my right to have a cogent dialogue about the information, its accuracy, and overall quality and relevance of the presentation (i.e., why the hell are we here?). This almost always completely flumoxed the high-dollar “trainer” who usually proved incapable of carrying on any kind of discussion about the Great Truth they were peddling. I made one woman so mad I thought she was going to throw the podium at me. Loved it, although it would have been a lot more satisfying to simply fire their asses and start over.

  7. Because we aren’t standing or sitting in front of them. If we are far away strangers, then they assume they will never interact with us in their day-to-day lives.

    If a sit-down took place with several People of the Gun and several Anti’s, and they knew the PotG were armed, then the conversation would be civil. There’s no threat of violence there; you just don’t go about insulting people face-to-face unless you plan to win any resulting fight.

    • Actually its the opposite. They know POTG are nearly all peaceable and ballanced people who won’t shoot someone in the face over a disagreement. It makes them feel powerwful to shout down a “more powerful/violent/hostile/angry” person with a gun….. Think of the end of the movie “V for Vendetta”…. If that government was really as oppressive and violent as the movie led you to believe the troops would have mowed all those unarmed people down……. But nooooooooo…… In their world power comes from standing up to armed people with your words and relying on their restraint for your survival. It goes hand in hand with the notion of “just give him what he wants and dont fight back, and we’ll be okay.” Your restraint reinforces their world view.

  9. “As someone who reads thousands of TTAG comments per week, I know that some gun rights advocates can be nasty f*cks.”

    Awww, flattery will get you *everywhere*, TTAG…

    *Blushing* 🙂

  10. The only way to reconcile taking away a person right to defend themselves is to make them an unperson. They don’t consider us people, so we deserve whatever hate they throw at us.

  11. It’s because they have no self control and can’t think five minutes down the road.

    I have liberal acquaintances and the women make mountains out of molehills, fly off the handle constantly, and cannot understand cause and effect. One woman breaks down and cries every month when they go over the family budget because her husband says they can’t spend $2,000 at Target AND go on a vacation. They think the money fairy will provide, no matter what.

    My point is that they have no emotional maturity, hence the over the top outbursts. They need a good smack of reality.

  12. It’s a classic tactic to keep your opponent off balance. They think if they bull rush us with personal attacks we’ll be too stunned to argue with our logical facts. That we’ll respond in kind so they can say, “See! He’s too emotional to have a gun!”

  13. Well I think they are inhabited by demons-who want good folks defenceless, terrorized/and/or murdered. As far as Ms. Dash-wtf has that pos ever done? It’s pretty hard to “make it big” in the entertainment world(especially if yer brown). I know- married to 2 extremely talented black women who should have been “big”. Ms. Dash has my support but she does go out of her way to spout(?) off on FOX.

        • “Boy” is racist. You prove my point. You ever carry illegally in California?

        • Pond,

          The “racist” accusation is the hallmark of a weak mind, a weak argument, or both.

        • Gee boy-did I guess your race? Who’s obsessed? Thanks for the backup officer accur-I got NO IDEA what carrying”illegally ” in Cali means-too much tokin’ on that bong boy…

        • I suspect he is of the weak mind category, if I had to guess. And don’t even bother Accur81. Your song and dance is bullshit. You will be the first one stacked at the door for the 2AM confiscation raids. Got’s to keep those salaries, benefits and pensions.

    • It’s pretty hard to “make it big” in the entertainment world(especially if yer brown).
      Oh heck, it is hard to make it no matter what race, creed, color, or religion you happen to be.
      You had better have the “It” factor, cause at this level the fact that you have talent is taken for granted.

  14. I think it’s because they are lying. And they know they are. And they don’t want to be angry at themselves for doing something they know is wrong. Doing something their parents instilled in them was wrong and not to do. So they turn their self anger outward.
    Or maybe they are just a-holes.

  15. They don’t have any guns, so they have no fun, so they are angry and hate you for your G(f)un ownership.

    It’s like (some) Muslims (Smuslims?) and bacon. If you had bacon, and I didn’t/couldn’t, I would so hate you with a fire unparalleled by the Sun.

    For the anti to function in society they must live in a box where their freedoms are restricted, because they cannot control their impulses. They are not immune to the fact that you can live without a box and can control your impulses, thus, they hate you. Small people in an even smaller box, living their small lives, trying desperately to fit you in a small box.

  17. Honestly I don’t think this is just an ‘anti 2A’ problem. It’s a Regressive Left problem, which the media is in the picket of. Everything they do must service that narrative and damned ANYTHING else. Facts, figures, statistics fact, historical fact, the Constitution, and even even the very LANGUAGE we use MUST to fit what the current group think is.

    As my own use of language suggests I don’t look upon these people at ALL kindly.

  18. It’s Y’all’s fault, you know that right? If you’d just STFU and do as your betters say we wouldn’t be having all this trouble, now would we?

  19. Why Are Anti-Gunners So Nasty? Because they hate us.

    This is a culture war, not a culture debate. If they had the chance, they’d happily kill us. Unless, of course, we convert to the anti-gun religion they espouse.

    • Saw a post recently that said something like ‘we were told the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, so shouldn’t it be just a mild dislike now?’

    • This is fascinating. It’s so obvious, and yet so cloaked.

      I wonder how many parallels we can draw between ISIS and anti-gunners… perhaps that’s one reason why the anti-in-chief refuses to say “Islamic terrorism” — because he and those like him are actually practicing from the same playbook?

      You’re totally right though — “convert to my way of thinking or I will destroy you, you infidel” is totally applicable to the nasty anti-gunner as well as the jihadi.

  20. They project their own negative emotions and assumptions onto other people. In the racist Social Justice ideology there are no individuals, only homogeneous groups whose status and inherent good/evil are wholly defined by skin color and geographic origin. Ms. Dash’s very existence is an affront to their conception of reality. Individualism and disagreement are cardinal sins to the SJW hive mind.

  21. Antigunners and many broad spectrum progressives hate the status quo. The want Cuba, Venezuela, or some other utopia’s policies brought here.

    Pro gun folks usually don’t hate the status quo. They usually get along okay even when they want change. That is to say, they don’t “hate” as much as the class of progressives do.

    Don’t believe me? Watch an Elizabeth Warren speech and put the sound on mute. Watch her eyes and expressions.

  22. The simplest answer is because that’s all they got!

    Perhaps a secondary answer is because they are largely emotionally driven creatures who cannot muster the effort to actually produce logical arguments in support of their rather iffy positions.

  23. Let’s look at common traits of anti-gun advocates

    1. Emotionally compromised
    2. Immature
    3. Self important
    4. Myopic
    5. Close minded
    6. Surprising resilience to logic and facts
    7. Poor basic math skills
    8. Distorted view of reality
    9. No sense of personal responsibility for their safety
    10. Want free handouts or to be told what to do
    11. Refuse to believe evil people are the actual issue
    12. Hoplophobic
    13. Victim mentality (to the point they would rather die than fight back)

    Pretty much impossible to have a constructive outcome with sheeple like that.

    They haven’t brought any solutions to the table that don’t end badly for victims of crime… (Aka wait for the police to save you, even if it takes 3 hours).

    The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over hoping for a different result.

  24. It’s the Progressive way. The easiest way to deal with people and ideas you don’t like is to stick a nasty label on them and degrade them to subhuman level. Once you have done that, you are free to disregard everything they say. They do this in all areas of political debate, not just guns:
    -People who are against illegal immigration or affirmative action are racists.
    -People who are against abortion are misogynists.
    -People who are against the Progressive agenda are:
    a. heartless corporate robber barons
    b. uneducated rednecks who are too dumb to know what’s good for them
    c. racists who are afraid of non-white people gaining some power in this country
    d. misogynists who want to keep women naked and pregnant in the kitchen
    e. at least two of the above

    It all comes back to a lazy approach to debate and a refusal to consider any other viewpoint. They are the ultimate bigots, and so blind to their own bigotry that they go around accusing everyone who disagrees with them of bigotry.

  25. Because playing on emotion is the only angle the anti-gun media has, and they know it, and so they play that card, and play it well.

    Anti-gun rhetoric, which is carefully woven into most seemingly “unbiased news,” is engineered to yield maximum sadness, empathy, and shock value. The reactions we get from the anti-gunners is just a manifestation of these feelings.

    Most, if not all of them, have no idea how well they’ve been manipulated into believing that their views on gun control are their own, when in reality, they’ve just been tricked into adopting them by some very clever wordsmiths.

  26. It is a political tactic that has been used by every oppressive ideology for nearly a century. They are trying to silence the message by attacking the messenger. Most people avoid violence, and they know that aggressiveness will cause most people to retreat.

  27. Both sides resort to insult hurling.
    Its a real shame that people just refuse to be kind.
    Not everyone but quite a few go on an endless attack that includes vile insults and bigotry.
    Probably coffee drinkers, try tea instead……mellow out.
    Next big war on US soil will shake people up….point out whats truly important in life.

  29. It is divide and conquer. You put some people in demographic a and others into another one. After that you point group a at group b and ally with them. It is a lot like Jerry Springer where he turns people on each other over some perceived issue and let’s em loose

  30. I theorize it’s because they literally don’t know what they’re talking about. So instead of substantive facts, they are easily caught up in emotional debates.

    A coworker tried to tell me that the no-fly list ban had to be passed and ‘they’ were idiots for not doing so. I countered that the system is obviously and horribly flawed and not subjected to due process via secret courts. His argument degenerated into “something needs to be done and fix it later”. I pointed out the opposite– How about fix it now since everybody knows how flawed it is before depriving somebody of their constitutional rights? Nope. Something needs to be done now, now, now. From there he trotted out the ‘ye ol drivers license’ argument– If you need a license to drive a car, why not operate a firearm? Well, last I checked a car wasn’t a constitutional right. He didn’t like that, nor did he like it when I pointed out that he was essentially looking to punish the millions of good drivers for the isolated incidents of the bad drunk driver.

    They get nasty because logic doesn’t fit their world view. Emotions are the only thing left.

    • I’ll point out to your “friend” that there is an ENORMOUS difference between guns and cars, which is: NOBODY wants to ban cars. Too much business and day-to-day affairs are completely dependent upon cars, and if they were to suddenly vanish, our economy, along with the economies of several other nations, would instantly implode. So, no matter what licensure or registration schemes are in place, cars aren’t going anywhere.

      Guns on the other hand, are not so universally loved, and universal registration/licensure of them would inevitably require a centralized database that would inevitably be used for their confiscation, so, sorry folks, not gonna happen. I fucking hate the driver’s license argument. It’s so obviously flawed.

  31. Could it be as simple as…

    we can kill them, and they can’t kill us?

    They see us as a threat, simply because we have the potential to use an inanimate object to kill them. That potential is so overpowering a concern that they cannot react rationally. They perceive us as an existential threat. So they lash out in hatred at their powerlessness, and cower behind the big bullies (MDA/Everytown, Feinstein, etc) who will “protect” them from us.

  32. They’re progressives. Those I’ve had the misfortune of speaking to clearly hadn’t matured much past high school.

    They also thrive off getting a rise out of people they debate with and using juvenile “Mean Girls” tactics. As others have echoed, when you simply refuse to be vulnerable to their labels, buzzwords, and attacks, you’ve won. Walk towards the fire, then walk through it without a care in the world.

  34. I think this one has several factors. You have some anti’s who actually think they are correct, and truly believe that humanity has to grow up and put down the guns, and give them to the state once confiscation becomes a reality (Hillary as president). Then there are those who know they are wrong but want to be comforted by the message of the DNC, to join the narrative that mass shootings happen mostly because of guns, after all all those people wouldn’t be shot if they have guns.

    I do not agree with the sentences above, I know in my heart that being pro 2A is a fundamental part of being an American citizen, it states, “shall not be infringed” and I see infringements daily in every state of the union, and I prepare for where this story ends, but I hope for the best. I got in an argument with my FUDD dad, a Vietnam vet, a marine radio operator, who stated that the video of that little girl shooting in the 3 gun competition was, in his words, “she is training to kill people”. I exploded at this absolute stupidity, and argued the point that she was training to be faster and more accurate in her sport, and that the nightly gun shots he hears from our local gang members are the real sounds of people training to kill others.

    Anti gun democrats argue based on the emotional talking points propagandized by the media, the buzzwords they spew perpetually when lambasting guns, they close their ears to Republicans on general principle and refuse to acknowledge that perhaps there is common ground between American citizens REGARDLESS of political allegiance. The closing of the mind is one of the biggest problems facing gun rights.

  35. The “othering” is strong with the Left. Whether you are a gun owner, Christian, heterosexual, white male, or any combination thereof, it’s easy to bash someone when you regard them as “someone not like you”.

    The Left protests racism, etc partially because of “othering” – but they have no problem using the practice when it suits their needs.

    I don’t know, but if I’m trying to encourage someone to believe in my cause, the last thing I want to do is insult them.

    Which basically leads me to believe that the Left is willing (ironically enough) to order civilian disarmament by force. And also that you are forced to subscribe to their beliefs.

    I’d rather have a coalition of the willing, than people working for me at gunpoint, personally.

  36. There is a reason for this, it is very useful to know and it contains several components.

    1 People are always right, in their minds and in most cases cannot accept the concept that they could be wrong. It takes a mighty big person to do so and if they can they are generally a lot saner than the average.
    2 When one has made a mistake, and cannot confront the fact that they did make a mistake, they justify the mistake to make it “right”. Example: someone forgets to pay the electric bill and the power is cut off. Instead of looking in the mirror and blaming themselves, they rail about the blankety blank power company and and what rip offs they are.
    3 The data is out there and people really do know what is right and what is wrong about gun control and it is a wrong decision/mistake. Even the way we have it today is WAY over the line of “shall not be infringed”, and they know it.
    4 The ad hominem attack is the justification for their faulty thinking, an attempt to make themselves right by making others wrong.

    It is a painful fact that if you are justifying anything, YOU are wrong! Ouch! Knowing this makes a lot of things more clear in life. Observe it in others and yourself.

  37. They are nasty because they are frustrated and they are frustrated because they are losing a lot of battles, which is good. But we can’t get complacent. Them losing is not enough. We need to be on offense and regaining ground we’ve lost since NFA and GCA.

    We need to stop focusing on anti-gunners. They are not an audience we can ever convince, or ever even have a rational conversation with. We need to concentrate on the huge group that is the hump in the center of the bell curve, the people who could be swayed either way. We forget that a lot.

    • Very good point. But how do we convince the “don’t know/don’t care” crowd that the news they watch every day is actually trying to brainwash them?

  38. Most anti-gunners are liberals. Liberals are absolutely the most vicious, nasty, intolerant segment of our society. Which is strange as the profess just the opposite. As long as the person to be “tolerated” is one of their favored victim classes, fine. Tolerance. As soon as the person to be “tolerated” is someone who does not share their views, then it’s “nuke them from orbit” time.

  39. A lot of good explanations have been put forth here, which makes sense because there probably isn’t one single answer, anyway.

    I was coming at the question from the opposite direction, though. Why are so many nasty people anti-gunners? Along the lines of haters gotta hate and Vandals gotta vandalize, nasty people just have to screw stuff up and make people miserable, fearful and resentful.

    The anti-gunner camp is a perfect home for them. They can scare the crap out of some people, while antagonizing the hell out of others. Gun grabbing gives them the perfect cover for indulging their sadistic tendencies in a socially acceptable, albeit truly cynical, manner.

    These monsters get to hide in plain sight, hurling invective and unsettling the gullible, all for their own amusement and all the while screaming “It’s for the children!”

    • I think a lot of them get so upset because they are both lazy and cowards, and they KNOW they are cowards and the only way they think they can feel better is if everyone around them is a coward too (a lot like alcoholics get so upset if the people around them aren’t drinking too)

      The minute someone seems willing to stand up and take care of themselves they go into a tizzy because then the though occurs “what if I have to stop being lazy and take on the responsibility and have the courage to take care of myself… that’s too much work.”

  40. Because they’re Liberals, and Liberals are the rudest, nastiest most adolescent people in the would. They have no factual arguments, so they resort to foul name calling and personal attacks of anyone.

  42. The answer is actually really simple. The antis are terrified of guns, and it is a VERY small step to go from fear to hatred. THAT is why they are so horrible, and why pages like that of the CSGV are so full of folks advocating for our deaths. They hate us, personally and individually. This is also why “compromise” is largely impossible with these people.

  44. They’re mentally diseased, pure and simple. I called out an entertainer on Facebook for selling “Fuck guns” buttons at a gig when they should be upset about criminals and terrorists instead of inanimate objects. Some green-haired SJW monstrosity came out and said those inanimate objects are used by people said I’d became the same murdering monster I feared if I have one.

    I told her self-defense is not murder, that she’s projecting her fear of losing control and hurting people, and to go back to her safe space. More than a week later, no further response.

  45. A Progressive is someone who isn’t happy unless you are as unhappy and miserable as they are…

  46. I have a beauty of a collection of “bile and threats” that I keep on my phone. When a pro/anti gun conversation comes up and someone says “why are you so worried” I pull up that file and start scrolling. After the 25’th death threat the anti often says some variation on “well they don’t mean it, it’s just ‘internet talk’ you are so paranoid”.

    At which point I usually just laugh and say “well, I hope they don’t mean it… for their sake”.

    That usually stops the conversation.

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