1. If belief A and B are the same, then it isn’t a stretch. To believe in gun control is to explicitly believe in the state monopoly on gun violence and to support their direct violent use against its citizens. It’s even in their actual words most of the time, they project whatever hate and anger they have against some murderer onto every innocent person who owns a gun, and some of the shit they openly say “should be done to gun owners” is horrifying. When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

2. If you think guns don’t play a part in the state vs citizen power dynamic then I believe you’ve made a massive miscalculation. People are the same as they’ve always been. The *difference* in power is exactly what causes arrogant tyrants to become more bold and reinforces their worldview that the weak citizens are subjects of the state, not sovereign individuals. The overwhelming violence that follows gun control is something that builds very slowly for a long time, and then explodes all at once. If you are looking at the “very slowly” era and saying things are different, you are just like millions before you in history who made the same mistake. This would not even slightly be the first time people said “it’s different now, we don’t need guns because the state is on our side.” To the contrary this is said EVERY time with the same predictable results. If they didn’t think that, then it wouldn’t have happened.

To the contrary, regardless of how much conflict happens over information and perception, its entire purpose is to control what people allow for direct violence. It doesn’t obsolete guns, it decides who gets to use them with the benefit of appearing like they are “the good guys.”

An armed population remains an irreplaceable deterrent of aggressive, direct state violence against the people. And no, this time is not different.