“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it” — Upton Sinclair

“To give truth to him who loves it not is to only give him more multiplied reasons for misinterpretation.” George MacDonald”

So, that big march for gun control took place today, I’m sure you heard of it, you see that there is word of this huge wave of support for gun control. Do you not see the crowds? The signs? Do you not hear the speeches?

How could one not? They are unavoidable. One problem, they’re more exhausting and aggravating than anything else. You see, as we’ve discussed previously, it is no longer difficult to just get a massive crowd in one spot a mere two weeks from now. Social media, among other things, makes organizing extremely easy. However, as we’ve seen from the Dakota protesters (remember them?), BLM, Antifa and the MeToo movement, these big marches have their moment and disappear. Leaving nothing but a giant mess in their wake, when they didn’t attack people. MeToo, to its credit, fights a more subtle, insidious form of violence that has rendered a potentially baseless accusation as grounds for an ineradicable conviction.

So now we have the inescapable David Hogg, a 17-year-old kid who survived the Parkland shooting and leapt right in front of a camera, hasn’t left, and doesn’t intend to, having recently said this is a “lifelong marathon” for him. Meanwhile, there seems to be a blackout on other students who disagree with Hogg, some can only manage to wind up on a British morning show and the occasional FOX visit. Consider also that the story from Maryland, where an armed resource officer killed a would-be gunman has utterly disappeared from the headlines and indeed the entire discussion.

What incenses me about this is that it brings into sharp relief where the gun control argument is at this point in time, and I was recently made aware of how comfortable they are in that position. From Columbine to now, a nearly 18 year gap, never once has the gun control argument considered the vulnerability of the gun free zone (That being, the killer is the only gun in the building.), they continually bemoan the idea of armed security as just “Adding more guns to a shooting situation” (failing to realize we defend everything else we care about with armed security), metal detectors are not the answer either. The only solution, it would seem, is to ban guns, and anyone who disagrees with that notion likes dead children. Worse still, the gun control world seems content with where they are. If you have to tell them that, for example, automatic firearms haven’t been easily accessible since the Gun Control Act of 1968, you are “gunsplaining”. This term seems to apply to noticing that the people who cut the barrel off the rifle are not “making a statement by disabling their gun” (which they aren’t doing, on either count) but are instead committing a felony on camera by shortening the barrel past the legal limit. Basically, it applies to those who know what they’re talking about trying teach those who don’t but come to class with ulterior motives, and already seeing themselves as morally superior to the person they’re supposed to be learning from.

How arrogant does one have to be to walk into my wheelhouse, know nothing about anything (thinking that sawing off the barrel disables the weapon instead of committing a felony, thinking automatic weapons are easily obtainable, and ignoring the vulnerability of the gun free zone, or the concept of evil), and insist that I am morally obligated to agree with you and leave everything I “claim to know” aside?

It was at one point taboo to come after people like Hogg because “They were kids” or “They are survivors”, but that seems to be, especially considering how hot button this issue has been for years, and with the new idea of “gunsplaining”, an excuse to evade any deeper conversation on the issue. They do not seem to believe that evil can only be fought physically and that it can be legislated out of existence, in fact they find such a view to be pessimistic and damn near fatalist. When told that every major mass shooting has taken place in a gun free zone (Chardon, Columbine, V-Tech, any shooting in California, Illinois, New York or indeed Maryland), or a gun-free state (the four mentioned just now), the most common retort is “well I guess we should have no laws than” occasionally suffixed with an elongated, condescending “HMMMMM!”.

It is not, and has never been, about “having no laws”. But if we’re going to talk about what the law should be, is it really too much to ask that both sides of the argument know what they’re talking about? If the past, present and future of the gun control movement is any indication, the answer is a resounding “yes”.

For there to be the progress the gun control movement claims to want to see or for the discussion it claims to want to have, they have to first know what they are talking about. It makes no sense that those of us who do know a great deal about firearms should put our knowledge aside and discuss things based on “kids are dying, we have to do something” if only because the kids who have not been killed deserve deeper, better consideration than “let’s just do something and hope for the best”. This issue involves the question of how to protect children from an evil we will never get rid of and can only fight. That is not fatalist, that is not nihilistic, that is real. Evil has existed since Cain and Abel, we who have the iPhone are not so special that we will eradicate the problem.

The gun control movement is proud of its uneducated state and it has alienated or dismissed those who can teach them. There is little reason to suspect good intentions from a movement so proud of it’s own ignorance, so averse to being taught and so angry at the people who can teach them, that “if you disagree with us, you like dead children” has been the battle cry for nearly 20 years.