{"id":116271,"date":"2026-04-17T11:36:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=116271"},"modified":"2026-04-17T11:36:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T16:36:44","slug":"116271","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=116271","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Bearing arms: Shifting views among gun owners on a foundational right<\/a><\/p>\n

Reporter Patrik Jonsson has been writing about guns for 15 years. As the Monitor\u2019s beat reporter in the American Southeast, Patrik has covered gun violence and gun rights; coffee shops banning firearms and stand-your-ground-law advocates using them; mass shootings and the National Rifle Association, and whether the gun itself has become a \u201csacred object\u201d in America.<\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s magazine, he writes about a new twist in what has become one of this country\u2019s most emotional, and debated, issues: a growing liberal embrace not just of guns themselves, but of an approach to the Second Amendment long associated with the conservative right.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve covered so many angles on the Second Amendment,\u201d Patrik told me. \u201cI\u2019ve done stories about liberal gun owners, I did a story about women gun owners, I did a story about the complications of being a Black gun owner.\u201d But Patrik started noticing something new after the killing of Alex Pretti, an intensive care nurse fatally shot by federal agents in Minnesota earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\n

Why We Wrote This<\/h2>\n

The Monitor\u2019s longtime Georgia bureau chief, Patrik Jonsson, noticed a shift in thought among gun owners: a mistrust of government on the political left.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

During the COVID-19 pandemic and a wave of Black Lives Matter protests, Patrik explains, a growing number and diversity of Americans started turning to firearms in hopes of defending themselves from criminals. This, according to scholars, was an expansion of what is sometimes called \u201cGun Culture 2.0\u201d \u2013 a perception of guns as being primarily for self-protection rather than for hunting or military use.<\/p>\n

(Previously, those on the left were more likely to identify with gun control advocates, who point to research showing that firearms in the home increase the risk of violence there.)<\/p>\n

After Minnesota, though, Patrik found a growing, cross-partisan belief that guns are necessary not just to protect oneself from criminals, but also from the government.<\/p>\n

Mr. Pretti had been carrying a licensed handgun \u2013 a fact used by some government officials to at first justify his shooting and later raised by citizens across the political spectrum worried about federal overreach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened after Alex Pretti … was this simmering sense on the left that, \u2018Maybe the folks on the right were correct? What if the state falls into the wrong hands?\u2019\u201d Patrik told me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

“if the state falls into the wrong hands” he says<\/p>\n

Judge Alex Kozinski –
\nThe Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed \u2013 where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

He started to look for data, he says, and found early indications that thought might be shifting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is at the heart of the story \u2013 this rethinking of the Second Amendment on the left and what that means,\u201d Patrik says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bearing arms: Shifting views among gun owners on a foundational right Reporter Patrik Jonsson has been writing about guns for 15 years. As the Monitor\u2019s beat reporter in the American Southeast, Patrik has covered gun violence and gun rights; coffee shops banning firearms and stand-your-ground-law advocates using them; mass shootings and the National Rifle Association, … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116272,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116271\/revisions\/116272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}