MILESFORTIS

I always have.

In the wake of a tragic shooting like the one in Uvalde, Texas, one thing is certain to come” The hateful rhetoric from anti-Second Amendment extremists. It’s been the same old, predictably vicious lie that has come since Columbine (or sooner): Because Second Amendment supporters exercise our First Amendment rights to protect the right to keep and bear arms, we are now child-killing domestic terrorists (or worse).

The owner of the company who made the firearm the shooter used to commit the horrific deeds at Robb Elementary School had been labeled an enabler of the murder of children on social media over ads the company ran. That’s a lie, too.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, of course. It could take a thousand columns to outline all those lies. But Second Amendment supporters need to take the level of rhetoric seriously.

Part of it is simply holding anti-Second Amendment extremists to their own standard. After all, some claimed that Sarah Palin incited Tucson with no more evidence than a symbol laid out on a congressional district in the 2010 midterm elections. That particular blood libel still persists in some quarters.

Crickets made more noise than those same people when someone who intended to carry out a mass shooting at a socially conservative think tank admitted in court that he used the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map” to select his target. But the SPLC never faced any heat for that, certainly nothing near what Palin endured.

And don’t let yourself be gaslit by the likes of Nicolle Wallace, either. The idea that anti-second amendment extremists want to take away guns is not a “frothy delusion” when we actually have people extolling the injustices that England, Australia, and New Zealand inflicted on gun owners for crimes and acts of madness they did not commit.

But at the same time, this rhetoric needs to be taken seriously. These days, we have no idea what sort of permission slip is being signed in someone’s mind because of the words coming from a talking head, a Hollywood celebrity, or even from the White House itself.

Will it be a bank or credit card company CEO deciding to financially deplatform gun-rights groups, gun manufacturers, or FFLs? Will it be an employer who decides to fire someone because they are a member of the NRA? Or could it be something worse? This is a question that is out there these days.

Second Amendment supporters have a very tough row to hoe in beating back attacks on our freedoms. But we should also remember those who smeared us – and protect ourselves by defeating anti-Second Amendment extremists at the federal, state, and local level via the ballot box.