Originally Posted by Willravel

Alright, the answer is really quite simple and it's going to come off as an attack but I swear it's not meant that way.

Liberals oppose gun culture. We hate guns and generally we don't trust people that like guns. It took me years to trust you, even thought you gave me no reason not to trust you. Its not meant as personal, I never made a conscious decision not to trust you, but there's such an aversion to things like war and shootings on the left that we develop a hypersensitivity. We ourselves are so removed from that kind of violence we don't grasp the culture. Because we're so separate from that way of thinking—that "as a last resort, I can always pull my piece" option—it doesn't even occur to our radical elements to go shoot up a town hall or blow up Monsanto or whatever types of attacks a liberal might be inclined to be a part of. It never even enters our mind as an option. Speaking from personal experience, when something violates my personal code to my very core, like someone attacking people close to me, my first instinct isn't to put my hand on the holster, ready to draw. My first instinct is to put myself between them and danger and react non-lethally. It's an entirely different mindset. Thinking of the different progressive people I know IRL and here on TFP, I suspect they wouldn't have that instinct to use deadly force either. It's not that we're all pacifists, we're not, but most of us share a strong aversion to violence and war. It's why liberals have always been underrepresented in the armed forces. We're not cowards, we just have a different way of fighting that involves less violence.

I'm not at all suggesting that every 2nd Amendment loving American is a terrorist, or is even violent by nature. All I'm saying is that the most radical elements of gun culture, the rare exceptions to the mostly responsible people, are the ones that are going to be using acts of violence like shooting up a holocaust museum or blowing up a Federal building. I cannot imagine a liberal shooting up the George W. Bush library or blowing up a weapons factory. Really, the closest liberals get to that is eco-terrorism, which is generally just things like lighting an SUV on fire or spiking trees, things that are more about property damage than putting people in danger.