One Million Moms 4 Gun Control, more or less (courtesy huffpost.com)

Hoplophobes are afraid of guns as if firearms had a mind of their own. Hoplophobes are ignorant and we’d like to teach them, but they (mostly) do not want to learn. They are happy in their ignorance. They are only dangerous because they vote . . .

Anticulturalists hate gun culture and wish it to be destroyed. The guns are secondary. We are their target, and they’d hate us even if we were disarmed. The hatred of us is palpable. Listen to their language. They use phrases like “gun nuts” and far worse to deride our culture. They would exterminate us if they could get away with it, but they can’t. Most of the anti-gun crowd are anticulturalists fighting this culture war. It’s positively tribal. [ED: Anyone who doubts this should click here for proof.]

Gungrabbers are statists. Whether they are politicians or servants of politicians, they want all the power and all the control. They do not hate us per se, but they hate the fact that we — or anyone but them — have power. They’ll kill you if you don’t go along with the program, and they have the means at their disposal to do so and get away with it.

We have our own tribe, but it’s peaceful. All we want is to be left alone. If we were violent, we have the means to cause a great deal of destruction. We don’t because our aim isn’t to take anything away from anybody. We just want to hold on to our culture and our guns.

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95 COMMENTS

  1. Congratulations Ralph…
    After readin your article a couple times it bacame apparent to me that there are more types of gun owners than there are antis.

    • This needs a whole new article. I could think of:

      FUDD’s
      hunters
      plinkers
      target shooters
      Long range shooters
      Self defense advocates
      Mall ninja’s
      OFWG’s
      collectors
      Libertarians
      open carry advocates
      cops
      military
      BB/Air/softair gun enthusiasts
      Paint ball
      etc etc ad nausium

      What have I missed? There are a few I would call subsets. I didn’t try to think it through that deep. I did try to clump similar things close together. FUDD’s may not belong, as they are a subset of the grabbers.

  2. Come out, come out, wherever you are Dirk Diggler…

    We need our resident Shannon Watts (TM) specialist.

    • RF republished it as a separate post after the comment. Even though we never discussed it, I actually thought he would because it may be worthy of a separate discussion.

  4. Yes.

    This is the accuracy of perspective that comes only with age and having been around this fight for decades.

  5. I think that one of the notions common to each type of anti-gunner is the idea that being a victim is noble. Better to be noble in your suffering than disruptive in your own defense.

    • Yeah, that one has struck me as both very prevalent, and very, very odd. I mean, the concepts of things like honor and chivalry aren’t part of their plan, since they like to belittle those ideas as at best antiquated and at worst fantasy, but they sure love to worship their sacred victims and call them heroes. But they don’t believe in heroes, so….

        • Not all victims. St Skittles’ mom didn’t get to ride in AF-1. Hey, does that make Obama racist? We need to tell “Reverand” (stop laughing) Sharpton.

    • Only the first two think that way. The gun-grabbers are the furthest possible from the exaltation of victimhood.

      At their most benign, they’re enablers; they sympathize and attempt to identify with them, but they will never BE victims. They’re privileged. They can have a gun if they want one, but for the most part, they don’t need them; they can pay others to isolate them from the inconvenience of abiding by their own policies.

      At worst, they’re mass victimizers. They encourage the victim mindset because it’s a powerful tool; they don’t have to get their hands dirty. They need the first two types to continue being willing victims because that keeps them desperately believing in the illusion of safety and security they’re selling.

    • I believe that’s because so many of them exhibit malignant passive aggressive personality traits. The victim/martyr are the highest ideal for those stuck using this maladaptive strategy. In entertainment, whenever an extreme liberal is successfully portrayed; there’s practically always a strong passive aggressive element to the character because it’s true to life and a character wouldn’t be readily recognized by an audience without it.

  6. Finally wrote an article huh Ralph? It’s been a long time. it seems.

    A good read though. You should write some more often instead of draining the stores of ammunition and not sharing any with us.

  8. “We have our own tribe, but it’s peaceful….”

    So two out of the three types of gun control advocates want to kill us all, but we’re just a bunch of peaceful folks, huh? Where do you get the idea that those two sub-groups want to ‘exterminate’ gun owners? And how hard would it be for them to point out the same level of ‘evidence’ by looking at gun forums to say that gun owners want to do the same to them?

    • You’re either blind, joking, or incompetent. Probably all three. Look at any socialist movement in history – the right wing always gets the boot.

      • Once the left wing manages, usually by subterfuge, to get power the usual first action is to destroy the opposition. If it were only “getting the boot”, as in: “Get the f out and don’t come back!” it wouldn’t be so bad, I’m pretty sure I’d try to leave, but the historical fact is that once they have the power (guns) of the government backing them they go into overdrive exterminating their political opposition.

        Stalin summed it up best. He was asked why he released so many violent criminals from prison and gave them jobs in his administration. The response was that his political enemies could not be reformed and could never be trusted not to try to overthrow him and communism. Criminals could not be rehabilitated, but if you put them in positions where they could freely enjoy their criminal natures they would be absolutely loyal to the state and absolutely ruthless in destroying the enemies of the state.

        If anyone really believes that the anti-Second Amendment groups are pacifists who would disdain the use of the police and military to consolidate their position once in power they are delusional and have NEVER studied history.

        • And lastly, Hannibal, I’m curious: are you ever going to do anything other than keep rewording “right-wingers are just as bad” over and over? There’s nothing left to gnaw off that bone.

          The fact that some people on our side go off the deep end and act foolishly doesn’t make it okay when the anti-gun left makes such behavior standard protocol. Now, either ditch your single talking point and bring some new thoughts to the discussion, or shut the hell up.

        • Lucus, you are just as bad as the left-wingers. And I’m interested why you think I care if you think I should shut up, if I don’t care when they put their fingers in their ears and do the same thing.

          Actually, I lied, I’m not interested at all.

        • There are plenty of countries that have been functionally disarmed without anyone being sent to gulags or extermination camps. They certainly lose freedoms, which is why I don’t want to live in Australia, but the idea that general civilian disarmament leads in a direct line to a violent leftist takeover followed by a purge of anyone right of center is absurd rhetoric. The article states that two of the three groups of disarmers want to “exterminate” or “end” gun-owners. This is a provocative statement with absolutely no evidence presented.

        • I kind of already explained why you should shut up, but here it goes again: You keep making the same statement ad nauseum when we’ve made it abundantly clear that it’s totally irrelevant. Even if it had anything to do with our discussion here, what’s the point? We haven’t all dropped our stones and walked away in shame, so why keep working that same angle when it’s utterly failed to be the argumentative “silver bullet” you were hoping it to be? Are you really that dumb, or are you just having trouble keeping your cat off the keyboard?

        • You may be right, up to a point. The extermination of political enemies is not necessarily a given, just a tendency of far left statists, since their supposed utopias cannot stand the scrutiny of conservative opposition. Which means that in reality only one of the three groups above is likely to be a real threat.

          In most of the other cases you allude to I think the main reason it never deteriorated to the “send them to the camps!” phase was that the political opposition was pathetically weak and disorganized such that they never presented any real credible threat to the winning party.

          The anti-culturalists do hate and fear our culture, hell any culture except their “anti-culture”, but they are so PC all-inclusive I think they could never get enough consensus to mount a threat. Besides which they are all so busy doing dope, making sex ( not love) and singing Kumbaya that they don’t have time for extermination campaigns. Not that it didn’t cross their minds, but then that killer weed kicked in and “OH MAN!” they were distracted again.

          The real problem is that any political faction, once they have consolidated power, is at risk for turning to extremes in order to keep that power, especially those utopian left wingers who are so convinced that their political position is just and altruistic and any opposition can only come from truly evil right wingers who want to starve school children, pollute the air and water, and shoot all the blacks and homosexuals.

          This is what the Federalist Papers refer to as factionalism, and is exactly the sort of internal tyranny the Second Amendment was intended to allow the people to fight against. (IMO)

        • The American left eliminated all opposition in their statist K-Grad education system. If you are a conservative in that fiefdom you quickly learn to keep your mouth shut of there will be hell to pay. The left wants it to be just like that for the entire country.

    • Nazi Germany, the USSR, China, Japanese Imperialism, and so forth do not chronicle histories which were peaceful. Statists clearly have the means and the will to commit mass murder. Gun owners are indeed a peaceful lot as a whole, once the gang bangers and inner city street thugs are factored out.

    • Well, Canofbull, all I can say is, if we wanted to hurt people, there would be a mountain of bodies. We have a lot of guns. But there aren’t mountains of dead bodies, because we’re peaceful.

      As for the anticulturalists’ hatred and desire to see us dead, just read what they write and draw your own judgments. We’re not dead because they’re not armed. And the statists? They kill innocent gun owners every day of the week. I’d publish examples but the post would go on for days.

      I’ve heard it said that “Reading is Fundamental.” Try it. You may learn something. But then again, I hear tell that ignorance is bliss. How happy you must be.

      • “But there aren’t mountains of dead bodies, because we’re peaceful.”
        -Do you even hear yourself talk?

        “As for the anticulturalists’ hatred and desire to see us dead, just read what they write and draw your own judgments. We’re not dead because they’re not armed.”
        -So for us it would take a mountain of bodies to prove that we want people dead, and words don’t matter. But for the other side it just takes what they write and draw. Convenient, ain’t it?

        “And the statists? They kill innocent gun owners every day of the week. I’d publish examples but the post would go on for days.”
        – Well I hope to hell there are mountains of bodies, because I’m pretty sure they’ve got enough weapons to do it.

        “I’ve heard it said that “Reading is Fundamental.” Try it. You may learn something. But then again, I hear tell that ignorance is bliss. How happy you must be.”
        – Yes, the fact that I find your circular logic to be hypocritical means I must be ignorant.

        • You’re using logic and reason to argue with Ralph’s base emotion and faith. Might as well use logic to convince a preacher to give up his faith. Impossible, they are so firmly entrenched in their view that there is no convincing to be done. Just like me trying to convince my wife not to be scared of guns.. Won’t happen.

          • ” Just like me trying to convince my wife not to be scared of guns.. Won’t happen.”

            All fear is rooted in the fundamental fear of the unknown. We evolved this because the cavemen who wandered away from the fire and ventured out into the dark scary woods got eaten.

            But we’ve got flashlights. We can go find out where that scary noise came from, and make it not so scary. Ergo, the cure for fear of the unknown is to make the unknown known. IOW, fear is curable with knowledge.

        • //“But there aren’t mountains of dead bodies, because we’re peaceful.”
          -Do you even hear yourself talk?//

          One could point out that whenever shall issue concealed carry licensing was introduced in some State, there were predictions of the Wild West erupting as a result. Never happened.

    • Even if your assertion is correct Hasdrubal, there is a monumentally important moral difference:
      the motive for civilian disarmament proponents to kill armed citizens is hatred, whereas the motive for armed citizens to kill civilian disarmament proponents is self-defense.

      • I’m honestly not sure that there isn’t quite a bit of hatred on both sides even if I do believe in the individual right of self-defense. That said, I’m interested in getting the 50% or so of people who don’t have a firm opinion to swing more towards gun rights. The only way to do that is through narrative, and the anti-gun crowd (regardless of which type) has one: protect the children/safety/etc. I think that an affirmative push for being able to defend one’s family and self is the best way to counter that, along with pointing out that laws don’t stop bad guys in and of themselves.

        A lot of that undecided majority won’t ever be completely for unrestricted gun rights. They will still think permits and background checks are a good idea. I’d still rather swing them closer over here than giving them up for the other side. And telling them “you’re with us or against us, all or nothing” isn’t going to work. And acting like the camps are opening up and the trains are running isn’t, either. They listen to that stuff and start moving towards the ‘anti-cultural’ disarmament camp, because it just doesn’t match with the reality of what they see every day.

        • I don’t know if the anti-gun side has one single narrative, but it’s not just about children and safety. There’s definitely a culture war tinge to their views, it’s just that enough of them are polished enough not to express their disdain given their notion of what a typical gun owner is all about. Sometimes it does slip what they think, and it’s not pretty.

  9. Good list above.

    There may be another group – I guess falls into statists. They feel that people don’t need guns, the government knows best, the government is here to help and take care of us. They don’t necessary dislike guns or gun owners – just feel guns are not needed. Why have guns when there are police right? These people are ready and willing to surrender their rights for government control and typically don’t prefer a great deal of responsibility in their life. Some call them sheeple.

    Or maybe… all three groups fall into this category.

    • I would like to place those people into a category of “Optimistic Cultural-Evolutionary Dreamers” or something longwinded and likely to sound awesome in German.

      “Humans have developed into a new breed of man that is much more intelligent and cultured than our forefathers. We are much more civilized than before. We are not expanding west or claiming territories; why do we still need guns? We don’t! If there is trouble, the police can take care of it! <3"

      • The cops aren’t always there and they have no obligation to protect you. Those two reasons are good enough reasons why you should have the RKBA.

  10. I think that’s a pretty good breakdown. There’s some overlap between the groups, but that’s a good way to view the problem.

    Funny how the anticulturalists will still line up and pay money to see Matt Damon or Tom Cruise shoot people with a wide variety of handguns and rifles for 140 minutes. I guess they don’t mind, as long as the movie is disparaging military professionals – like “Green Zone”. Or suggesting the US intelligence community is plain evil and corrupt – like every Tom Cruise thriller ever and the Bourne movies.

    • Do you really mean to say that they’re hypocrites? Wherever did you get that idea? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!

      • Sorry Bill, I just got up off my fainting couch.

        Actually, I don’t remember where/why I saw it (I didn’t pay for it, and it wasn’t voluntary) but I did see most of “Green Zone”. Truly disgusting movie – Hollywood is in a unique position to create a culture that helps soldiers/veterans. Instead, everyone in the military (or former military) is evil, stupid, or now, an unstable time-bomb, riddled with PTSD. And that destructive, false idea is one that they seem intent on ramming into everyone’s mind.

        I’d rather hear leftists come out and say “Look, I don’t/didn’t support the war, so I can’t morally support soldiers or former soldiers” than the “I don’t support the war, but I support the soldiers” bullshit. So, you support people prosecuting an action that you firmly believe to be immoral? How does that work, exactly? The former is honest, at least. The latter is disingenuous and inane.

        • The left is only interested in the idea of “I support the soldiers” because in their minds each and every one of those poor, disadvantaged, ignorant soldiers is a victim of the U.S. military industrial complex and the Republican’s blood for oil campaign. It is only their victim status that gives them any credibility with the left. If enough soldiers came home with stories of how happy they were in the military and being able to fight the Taliban and kill bad guys, and they weren’t victims at all, but whole-hearted volunteers, and if the Brown Stream media wasn’t so heavily dominated by the left that the message could actually get out, I think you would see the left turn on them like they did the soldiers returning from Viet Nam.

          Victims make a tingle run up the lefties’ leg, heroic citizen soldiers proud of their service scare them to death.

    • LOVE that picture of Miss Universe and Trump where the so-called journalist writing the caption felt it was necessary to point out that the person on the left was Miss Universe and the person on the right was Donald Trump! Hilarious.

  14. Well said, Ralph.
    I would add one more very important category — the frightened and deceived members of the Public who are the victims of the lies of those you identify and categorize.
    That is probably the largest and most important faction we face. They have been deceived into thinking the way the people you describe want them to think. We must re-claim them.
    The ignorance about guns in the American Public is deplorable, and exploited to the maximum by the categories of gun-right haters you have identified.
    The cure for the lies of the anti-gun propagandists is truth. The cure for the victims of those lies requires more than merely logical refutation. There is an emotional response to the fear-mongering they have been subjected to that must also be addressed.

    • LongPurple,. this lines up almost exactly with my comment below, the “not yet educated”, those who are believing what’s told and haven’t discovered what’s really going on.

      Sorry for repeating your point. But I concur with this, I was one.

      • Welcome to the land of truth and reason. Do whatever “missionary work” you can among the victims of deceit.

  15. I actually have a “Fight Club” theory that goes along with this. Underpinning a lot of the psychological drive to restrict and control guns is massive personal insecurity.

    Here’s what I mean (and not to put too fine a point on it): I’ve completed military training. I’ve used a firearm defensively. I’ve been in plenty of real fights. I’ve had my ass kicked a few times. I’ve administered a beatdown or two (when necessary, never gratuitously). I don’t worry about being able to protect myself, or those I care about – I’ve already completed my trial by fire. I’ve already dealt with plenty of threats, conflicts, and confrontations. I’m secure in my ability to deal with whatever comes my way. And if I can’t deal with it, and it kills me, well hey, I guess my number had to get punched eventually.

    Liberals, in general, don’t operate with that mindset. It’s always about what the world “should be”. Not “is”. That leaves them unprepared to deal with the world – “mugged by reality” as it were. The anxiety and uncertainty regarding their physical safety drives them to wish away all physical threats – specifically including guns. And the only viable option for them to reduce their perceived danger is through the coercive power of the State. This is pretty basic psychology – the bottom of “Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs”, actually.

    The rise of the beta-male (who seemingly delights in weakness and effeminate behavior) almost guarantees this mindset. How many skinny hipsters do you imagine CC? If they do, it’s something ironic or pointless – an obscure, likely unsafe .25 manufactured God-knows-where, specifically because no one has ever heard of it. Like the music they claim to enjoy.

  16. That’s as good of a way to explain it as any I’ve heard or read. There is one component though, that all of these groups share; the one thing that ties them together in their common cause. FEAR. Fear of the independent individual.

    As most will no doubt attest, fear can take on make forms, and many faces, both rational and irrational, but their unrelenting fear is their one uniting force. For the hoplophobes, their irrational fear on inanimate objects is so great that even a picture(or Pop-tart) is enough to send them into a panicked state. The irrational anti-culturists, are, in their own fearful minds, the pro-culuralists. They have assumed that a gun-free society is the natural societal progression to a 1st tier civilization, even though we’re still teetering on the cusp of a 3rd tier civilization. I call these people the Star Trek crowd. They hate the fact that they won’t live to see a 24th century, 1st tier civilization like they see in the Star Trek series/movies. In their minds, we are the ones who are preventing the 24th century from arriving before its time, and before they die. We knuckle-dragging 2nd amendment types are stuck in the hopeless antiquity of an irrelevant, passe document like the US Constitution. The statists are just plain afraid they will lose control of the power they hold over the population. As Mel Brooks said in his movie, “It’s good to be the King.” And the only thing a king fears is a peasant uprising and a date with a Guillotine. Of the three, this is the only one that is actually driven by a rational fear of death, death at the hands of those they have oppressed to remain in power.

    • I think our sequential posts dovetail nicely. We’re both trying to hack a path through the jungle of the leftist mind (jungle’s not the right analogy – jungles are teeming with life and activity; how about “drilling through the solid granite of the leftist mind”?).

      Anyway, I think you make a very good point. The liberal point of view is centered on the Utopia that Earth *could* be. They don’t like when pesky things like say, human nature, or the laws of macroeconomics get in their way.

      As as side note, the Utopian vision of Earth (as noted by people far smarter than me) goes a long way in explaining the seemingly counter-intuitive nexus between leftists and Islamists. They’re both looking for a perfected Man, but the Islamists are willing to get their hands dirty in ways that the broader coalition of leftists aren’t. They both hate the freedoms we enjoy – to the Islamists, they’re a rejection of God and divine law. To leftists, they’re a rebuke to Leviathan’s power – the government, in their secular religion.

      • The pseudochristians are just as bad – they still believe in the divine right of kings, even though the very reason for America was to escape from church rule.

        Pseudochristians are those who spend an hour a week paying lip service to the Prince of Peace, then go forth and practice the opposite of what he was trying to teach. Personally, I like what he said in John 8:32: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

    • “Sire, Sire! the peasants are revolting!”

      “You can say that again, they stink on ice!”

      M. Brooks

  17. Hoplophobes + Anticulturalists + Gungrabbers = HAGs for short drawing upon the first initial of the three types of gun control advocates.

  18. You nailed it Ralph. I would call the Statist by there real name: fascist. Face it Liberal Democrats want a government like Fascist Italy and in some ways Germany.

    • Unfortunately, ‘fascist’ has been misused so much that the current meaning is effectively ‘what leftists dislike’. Which might be more-or-less historically accurate (the Fascists and Communists hated each other), but it’s not useful in the contemporary political discussion.

      • They hated each other because they competed for the same resource: free people. They wanted the same control over men and the root of their believes is common. Heck, Mussolini was a socialist before being a fascist.

        • I was under the impression that Mussolini was an Anarchist before he rose to power. The Nazis kept calling themselves socialists through the whole war.

          The term fascism is derived from the fasces of ancient Rome, which is a bundle of wooden rods with an axe head or arrow head on top, symbolizing men-at-arms united for a common purpose.

          The Lincoln memorial has fasces, I think it is what most Roman columns are based on. It is actually used extensively here in America. Look it up on wiki.

      • Same with the Republicans and Democrats. They both want absolute power, and they’re basically fighting over who gets to be alpha dog.

  21. I -really do think- there is one type that is the “Not yet educated”. I was one. I’ve known some. I didn’t even know what the AWB was about until I was educated. And now I know, and I can’t really ever go back.

    It made me question most of my political views, honestly, and I think becoming a gun owner did a lot for me in terms of ‘growth’ beyond just gun ownership.

    Primarily: That it’s not how political parties and the media tell me it is. And that there’s an agenda out there and it isn’t in my interest. And that I have to think and uncover stuff for myself.

    I do think those people are out there. Are they marching in demonstrations? Probably not. But they may (currently) get off-put at the talk of guns. But I and others I know are living proof that people can change with the right information.

    • What made me question my political views has all happened in the past five years.

      I was a dumb young kid when I voted for Obama the first time. I hated Bush and the neocons, and thought nothing could be worse.

      I believed Obama and the democrats as a whole were about personal freedom and liberty.

      Oops? That belief lasted for about less than a year into Obama’s election.

      There are a lot of former democrats left in the wake of the Obama era that will have been pushed squarely towards the libertarian camp, and may even be GOP sympathizers as well now.

  22. I think that troglodyte with the “follow the empire state” sign is a fine example of the anticulturalist archetype put forward here.

    I’ve met so many New Yorkers that think everywhere else should be just like New York. They can even be nice people, until you start talking to them about how things should be. New Yorkers can go well beyond rude without even realizing it, because they have lived in that ridiculous madhouse their whole lives.

    I like pastrami on rye as much as the next guy, but NYC isn’t that great and all that good food comes from Jersey anyway.

  24. Most of the antis seem to fit into all three of those categories.

    Regarding the hoplophobes, not only are they scared of guns in the hands of other people, but they are also scared of what they might do if they had a gun. They themselves are acting irrationally out of emotion and projecting that on others.

  26. “If we were violent, we have the means to cause a great deal of destruction. We don’t because our aim isn’t to take anything away from anybody.”

    Thanks for putting this in writing Ralph, I think it is a point that is not mentioned enough and is downplayed when it is.

    I always said to myself how absurd this really is, if these anti-gun people were truly afraid of us, truly scared out of their wits that we were violent and would kill them indiscriminately, then they have to be the stupidest bunch of people on the planet to continually poke the bear the way they do. But the facts just don’t match their narrative.

    • At a MAIG demonstration in Columbus Ohio, we had an uber-liberal guy come up and, after not being able to handle factual responses to his ramblings (aka the truth), go on about how he was going to get in his car and run us all down when the event was over. The police didn’t arrest him but let him continue on into the MAIG assembly area. Officers were standing by when he left, though. At these gatherings, the only violent behavior and threats of violence I’ve ever witnessed was by the antis. A few anti-gunners have come up to OCers and expressed how carrying any firearm shouldn’t be legal because of how much fear it “makes them feel”. Yet, they seem to overcome that “fear” to, in some cases, screech in the face of an armed man. Their actions rarely match the lies coming out of their pie holes.

      • My point exactly, the logic is disconnected from the action. But I guess there needs to be login in the first place…

  27. I pose another category…

    Feminizers.

    Those who want to smooth out the edges, feminize our hobbies, take “violence” and “risk” out of hobbies.

    These are the types who hate hunting, blood, contact sports, and anything scary.

    “Don’t take Jimmy shooting because he might get hurt”. “Ew, do you really eat that?” “I heard the neighbor of my roommate’s brother’s college roommate’s sister’s uncle died doing that.”

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