My colleague Kim Ross has a good article on the gun debate. I encourage you to read it and reflect on it.

While I understand and respect that position, I fundamentally disagree with it. Let me explain.

This past week has seen the most concentrated assault on the Second Amendment in my lifetime. And not only on the Second Amendment but on gun owners in general and the NRA in particular. The tactics used by the gun grabbers have been dishonest. The CNN town hall should have been scripted and directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Guns and the NRA have been subject to demonization while the failure of authorities, given tons of warning, to do anything at all has been glossed over. In short, we are not dealing with an opposition that gives a rat’s patootie about dead kids or public safety. Their agenda is very clear. They want firearms banned and they are using whatever tools they have at their disposal.

The NRA fights the way it does because it knows its enemy. They know that once they start negotiating with the right to keep and bear arms, there is no logical fallback position that will survive assault. The feeding frenzy directed at the AR-15 is actually a proxy for all rifles with a semi-automatic action. If you think bolt-action or break-action or pump-action rifles are going to survive, you are sadly mistaken. Handguns aren’t going to survive. I doubt my single-shot .410 shotgun will escape the dragnet once it gets started. So what is going on here is not a “debate.” It is a propaganda campaign by political extremists to try to ban firearms.

Back during the 1964 presidential campaign, GOP candidate Barry Goldwater said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”

That’s where I am. Yesterday I joined the NRA for the first time in my life because I want an organization that doesn’t take prisoners on my side.

And here I part ways with Kim much as I did with some of my colleagues during the Iraq War. I don’t consider the people pushing gun control to be fellow Americans because they are rejecting the Bill of Rights. I’m not interested in negotiating or finding a middle ground because any negotiation involves me giving up the ability to enjoy a right for no benefit to society. I don’t respect them. I want to break the people and organizations who are trying to ban guns and I want to see their skulls used as bedpans.