I know vilification when I see it.

Ah, vilification – if you want to justify denying or violating the rights of other human beings – even those who are your countrymen (should that be country-people?) - then you have to be good at vilification.  It worked for Bush after 9/11 in the midst of paranoia and now we have drones, indefinite detentions, rampant surveillance, and targeting of American citizens standing as the law of the land. 

Although all of that was much bemoaned by the liberal voices among us, it is now working for them in their quest to limit access to firearms by law-abiding citizens.  Playing the conservative game quite well, they can’t get enough of selling the image that law-abiding firearms owners are really radical crazies.  I have to wonder how the media would take it if this video was vilifying same-sex crazies; or perhaps they could make a comedy video about abortion factories?

Even in a land where lip-service is given to the idea that individual rights are supreme (e.g., the right to abortion on demand and to marry someone the person of your choice, regardless of race or sexual preference), one can ultimately violate the rights of any subgroup if they can make them an “other”, to make them so different, so threatening, as to no longer qualify for the rights that the majority wants for itself.

Enter this fine example of such an approach applied to gun control.  Is it really so hard to understand why some see current events as an assault on their freedoms - as a personal assault on their culture - and see the "reasonable gun control" rhetoric as step one in confiscation.  Indeed, if Obama, Feinstein, Schumer, and Bloomberg (and Jim Carrey and others) were honest, they would admit that their goal is to confiscate all firearms and that they are now, for all intents and purposes, slowly and methodically "boiling the toad".  They are using the rhetoric of vilification to create an atmosphere in which firearms owners become "others" to be marginalized and disarmed.  Next step - when those "others" resist being disarmed, they will be a "threat to the good order" and will deserve any measure of retribution or imprisonment the government throws at them.  So, to protect “us” they will have to be detained.

People like Jim Carrey could not give a shit about personal freedoms they do not enjoy.  Of course, I would love to see how much money he, his manager, or studio pay for his personal security.  Sadly, no one pays for mine.

As an advocate of rights for years – all rights – I found myself seemingly in alliance with people whose interests I did not share as a heterosexual, white male, but whose rights I thought were important to defend.  I will never need an abortion, I have no interest in marrying a man, I am Caucasian.  Still, I have always been on the side of rights.  Now those people whose rights I defended although I do not share their preferences, seem not care about rights at all, just their own desires.  So bizarre that a group that fights for the rights of women to abort fetuses wants to disarm people, that those who have said polls about gay marriage meant nothing and that we should not vote on rights now cling to polls regarding firearms and suggest not succumbing to such polls is violating the will of the people. For years I told others that if you insist on your rights, then you must allow others theirs.  Sad it does not go both ways.

Laugh it up, Jim.  Those are your fellow citizens your mocking, you know.