If you ever want to witness some of the most ignorant and plain cluelessness expressed on the internet, just take a peek at what gun control advocates spout on a daily basis. It’s not bad enough they want more gun control. What’s worse is they don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, and the motivations they assign to those who favor gun rights are borne out of the worst possible stereotypes.

The NRA’s Political Victory Fund took in close to $800,000 in donations in February. It came about as a result of the NRA coming under criticism following the Parkland, Florida shooting and the attacks the organization faced from some of the surviving students at Parkland as well as members of the media and, of course, gun-grabbing politicians. The shock from the same people over the increased donations extends from their ignorance of how gun owners think and the assignment of sinister motives as to why gun owners feel so strongly about the issue.

People like Shannon Watts of Everytown For Gun Safety and others of her ilk, don’t understand gun owners, nor do they want to try. Their lackeys in the media do the same as do the politicians screaming for more gun regulations on a daily basis. The stereotype of gun owners run the gamut from gun owners being “black helicopter” types who are afraid the of the government to insecure males who use guns to compensate for small penis size. Or it is cultish behavior aligned with the “gun culture” (whatever the hell that is), people who don’t care about children, and whatever other smears they can think of when it suits their agenda.

The truth, of course, is more straightforward.

Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and one of the most astute political reporters in the business wrote a piece that supplies data on how gun owners actually think, not the cartoonish garbage offered up by control advocates:

However, pointing the finger at the gun lobby misses the underlying values that define the owning of a gun in the first place — the values of safety and freedom. In the American version of the ‘hierarchy of needs,’ these two values are at the top. According to Pew Research polling, 67 percent of gun owners own a weapon for “protection.” Guns = safety and security. Those who want more gun restrictions argue that guns are often used to harm not protect. That even the most conscientious gun owners can cause accidents. But, gun owners don’t see things that way. That may not make sense to many of us who don’t own one, but it does to them.

Gun owners also see the ownership of a firearm just as valuable as the right to vote, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. For example, when asked if freedom of speech is “essential to their own sense of freedom,” 94 percent of gun owners and 92 percent of non-gun owners agreed. But, when asked if the right to own guns was also an “essential freedom,” the divide between gun owners and non-gun owners was dramatic. Fully three-quarters of gun owners believe this is an “essential freedom” to just 35 percent of non-gun owners.

Freedom. 

That’s how gun owners see the issue. The overwhelming majority of gun owners see it as an “essential freedom,” the same way they view religion and speech. That is where the disconnect comes from and why gun control advocates cannot fathom why their supposed “common sense” gun control policies don’t get implemented at the drop of a hat.

Until the gun-grabbers want to have a real conversation, instead of just yelling the same drivel over and over again, the flabbergasted looks they have when the latest gun control measure doesn’t get passed by Congress, will continue.

And they’ll only have themselves to blame.