I stand by what I said in the previous post about President Biden leading off his remarks about Uvalde with the business about "stand[ing] up to the gun lobby." It was tone deaf in the extreme and blew an opportunity to strike a unifying note.
A word must be said, however, about something that's come to my attention since I wrote it.
The photograph that accompanies an ad for Daniel Defense is nothing short of obscene. Daniel Defense is the manufacturer of the rifle with which he Uvalde shooter murdered 19 people.
The manufacturer of an AR-15-style assault rifle that Salvador Ramos used to kill 19 kids and two teachers has been slammed for posting an online ad featuring a toddler clutching a similar weapon just days before the massacre.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” Daniel Defense wrote in the ad shared on Twitter on May 16, eight days before the slaughter at Robb Elementary School.
The line refers to a proverb in the Bible.
In the attached photo, a boy wearing a T-shirt that reads #Rascal is seen sitting cross-legged looking down at the scoped firearm with a magazine lying in front of him. An adult’s finger is pointing at the child.
The ad was posted on the same day Ramos turned 18.
The New York Post article linked and excerpted above includes the photo.
This is the latest round of the cyclical digging in of heels that the two sides squared off against each other in our society's culture war engage in. Now it's the anti-gun side's turn, and they'll no doubt have a suitably inflamed response.
We saw this kind of provocative gesture at the end of 2021, when two Congresspersons, Thomas Massie and Lauren Boebert, posed for Christmas-greeting photographs with their families, with everyone holding rifles.
Look, I understand the principle behind the Second Amendment. A gun is the ultimate assertion of individual sovereignty. The framers understood that government per se, even one as carefully crafted to uphold freedom as the one they were enshrining, could amass power of a degree that would imperil that sovereignty. A while back, I wrote a post that, as part of a discussion about Ukraine, reflected on why the Alamo has such ongoing significance for Americans. William Barrett Travis and the defenders of the Alamo were aware that their deaths were pretty much a certainty. Still, they were compelled by their sense of honor to stand for that individual sovereignty.
And the other side in out present squaring-off has a view of government power that indeed doesn't sit well with most people who hold freedom among the primary values that make human life worth living.
But this copping of an attitude among a certain portion of the gun-rights-prioritizing Right is engaging in a form of self-congratulation that has a discernible parallel to the virtue signaling that's routinely on vivid display on the Left. Just as that sector preens about the extent to which it cares, so its mirror opposite puffs itself up with a self-image as the only bunch that really values freedom, by God.
One last observation: It's a damn shame that a word like "patriot" has become so fraught with ideological charge that those who are not ate up with this yeah-and-what-of-it mentality eschew its use.
It has been another aspect of Daniel Defense's advertising theme:
Daniel Defense had planned to hold an exhibitor's booth at the NRA's annual convention, being held this Friday through Sunday in Houston, and had stated it was "proud to reunite with thousands of patriots." However, those plans appear to have been scrapped as the NRA's list of vendors no longer includes the gunmaker, per the Washington Post.
And one way I know that I can hit "delete" on an email is if the header includes the word "patriot." I'll speak plainly here. It's certain to come from some drool-besotted Trumpist who wants me to kick in to a political campaign or sign up for one of those idiotic "VIP Gold Card" memberships.
What I'm delving into here is a little touchy. I understand that. The line over which one crosses into snobbery looms. Or at least the danger of flirting with insufferable condescension such as that displayed by Barack Obama in 2008 when he talked of a swath of Americans clinging to guns and religion is something one must be aware of.
But the in-your-face stuff is out there. It's a major factor in our ever-increasing polarization. Therefore, it merits our attention.
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