Converting the Heathen

Publicola’s out spreading the good word to the heathens over at the Conspiracy. I applaud his efforts at explaining 2A to the deluded statists in the comments and admire his commitment. Me, I have a limited amount of patience for dealing with asshats. There’s an icon popular over at ar15.com that shows a red-faced smiley banging his head against the wall. I can’t help but think of it when I read these discussions. Publicola, to his credit, is immensely patient and keeps trying. If he can convince a few people who were wishy-washy on the subject, it’s all to the good. He will never convince the likes of Freder Frederson and jgshapiro, but I’ll give him big props for trying.

In many respects, a failure of the gun community has been the lack of outreach. The hardcore RKBA types, of which Publicola is a shining example, are the worst at it. To many of us, the right is self-evident and needs no explanation. We also come across as a bit scary and dogmatic. Well, at least I do when cranked up about it. Of course, I’m one of those fringe types who thinks I should be able to have anything the gummint does, provided I can store it in such a fashion that a malfunction doesn’t clear out a ‘burb. This attitude scares some people. Publicola is putting forth the effort and doing it politely and without rancor. SayUncle is in the debate, too, but he’s more like me and prone to snark at the idjits. While fun, it’s not going to change many minds.