Now They Say Shame On You
By Charles C.W. Cooke. Jan 24, 2022
Aware, perhaps, that their long and absurd attempt to rip the Second Amendment out of the U.S. Constitution has failed, opponents of the individual right to keep and bear arms have lately been using a different tactic: good, old-fashioned social shaming.
In The Atlantic, the unfailingly anti-firearm journalist David Frum noted that the gun owners of today are "more likely to be people of color and more likely to be women” than ever before, and that, contrary to the cartoon that is often contrived in the press, "they are not buying guns to join a race war, or to overthrow the government, or to wait for Armageddon in a bunker stocked with canned beans,” but "to deter a burglar or an assailant, should one come.”
And that, Frum concluded, is why there is a problem?
Wait, what?
Evidently, Frum is disappointed by this shift, which is why, in his own words, he has resolved to abandon the "legalistic approach to restricting gun ownership” on which the gun-control movement has relied for so long, and to make "progress” instead by "persuading Americans to stop, one by one by one.” Americans, he argues, "used to smoke cigarettes on airplanes,” "once thought drunk driving was funny” and "long regarded spousal abuse as a private matter between husband and wife.” But "they changed,” and, in his view, "they can change on gun ownership too.” .....