Gun owners are second-class citizens in America viewed with severe derision and contempt by the elites in both the halls of political and media power in the US.  Much like rednecks and pit-bull members, they are rhetorical punching bag that gets knowing sneers from the freedom-phobic salons at the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Department of Fatherland Security alike.  They have been tucked into a rhetorical cubbyhole with preppers, private food gardeners and other such miscreants for whom self-reliance is a watchword if not a lifestyle.

The modern American gun owner is in the same position as the Irish and blacks of yore who not only suffered official sanction as less than equal but were subject to penalties up to death in both government and private hands.

ALL governments despise private gun ownership because it is not only a primary threat to their ability to control and harness subject populations but existentially all collectivist are perversely uncomfortable with the atomistic ability to not only a threat but to make that neutralization lethal.  The battle at Lexington and Concord that inaugurated the divorce from Great Britain was over weapons and munitions ownership – nothing less and nothing more.  Not only was the fight about guns, it was about that ultimate divorce proposition marrying guns and secession.  One can suppose that the rulers in America have an abstract fear of the individuated ability to defend and also project power but the true fear on their part is the self-reliant aspect.  If the singular American can defend himself then the most important cog in any political machine, the cop, becomes irrelevant if not an anachronism and without cops, no nation can sustain tyranny and enforce bad laws.

James Yeager, an outspoken gun trainer in TN, recently had his CCW suspended because he dared to exercise his free speech rights.  The police spoke-mouth was priceless: