#justify the tragedy even if it Eventually led to greatness because we keep doing it. honeybear also uses a lot of grand orchestration

[lilja4ever]

Chloe and the next 20th century is such a good album like I'm not joking. I think you all may be miserable haters. Unlike me who is a hater but in an intellectual way

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Not sure if ya’ll have noticed but talks about representation in superhero comics has been ever so slightly popular these days.

 Sarcasm deactivated.

 In all seriousness, yes there should be more though I have problems with certain approaches adopted by Marvel and to a lesser extent DC in recent years and the way a lot of fans have handled the situation on both sides.

 Like saying Miles Morales shouldn’t exist is not okay but nor is saying Peter Parker should be shelved for his sake. Writing Titania in Jane Foster’s book as having solidarity with Jane because she’s a woman stepping into the role of a male hero is not okay (because seriously, Titania’s main enemy is goddam She Hulk and she despises her) but nor is saying sexist shit about Jane (who lest we forget was awesome long before she became Thor, arguably moreso).

 But most of the time I personally feel disabled and mentally ill characters don’t get talked about as much whenever discussions like this pop up. Representing women, black people, gay people, etc, etc happens all the time but not so much with disabled and mentally ill characters.

 What’s even stranger though is that on the occasions where those types of characters are discussed people seem to not recognize a lot of the ones among the classic established heroes. 

 Oracle, Daredevil and Xavier get brought up a fair amount but Tony Stark had a heart condition that early in his series required him to hide a great big metal chest plate under his clothes which then compromized his former playboy lifestyle. Among the truly mainstream and major Marvel/DC heroes Tony Stark genuinely was the first physically handicapped hero (unless I’m getting my dates mixed up and X-Men preceded him, even then though Xaiver was a mentor more than the lead). 

 As for mentally ill characters, whilst people will cite Deadpool and Harley Quinn as mentally ill protagonists within the Big Two (and you could arguably put Wolverine in there too due to his legitimate anger issues, though they are contextualized as part of his bad ass appeal so...maybe not) both those characters are fun, wacky, violent former villains who even when they aren’t on the side of evil still do amoral things. They’re mental illnesses are rarely treated with too much gravitas. In fairness their core concepts is for them to be wacky and fun (at least nowdays) so it would be possible in a debate to argue there is a certain amount of justification for not going too deep with their problems and touching them lightly.

 Meanwhile you have Tony Stark and Carol Danvers who are both alcoholics. And if you know anything about that illness (and it IS an illness) you know it’s not one you really cure so much as manage. 

However multiple runs of Iron Man since the iconic Demon in a Bottle storyline have at best touched upon it rather or else avoided it altogether. From what I’ve seen of Bendis’ run it’s mentioned but off handily and wasn’t a focus before Tony died. Maybe creatively you could justify that too but technically speaking Tony is a mentally illl hero due to that illness so if you want representation viola it’s right there if writers bothered to make use of it outside of showing him relapse or something. 

 The same is true of Carol Danvers except in her case it’s worse because you could be forgiven for simply being wholesale unaware Carol was ever an alcoholic since multiple runs don’t even bring it up (I suspect because people legitimately forgot). Nevertheless the female hero Marvel is most keen to promote and who will be getting her own movie soon enough is canonically mentally ill. That should be brought up more but I can see why people who ARE aware of it might not want to count her because like I said it’s hardly touched upon.

 Which is why the next character I’m going to talk about is so important.

 He’s never been a legitimate villain.

 His mental illness(es) are integral to his character and impossible to ignore because of that fact.

 He’s got a history of physical and emotional abuse which led to his illnesses and isn’t thrown out as cheap backstory or motivations for his character.

 His illnesses have been showcased to ostracize him from wider society who often fear, hate and hound him either out of a desire to exploit him or else because they simply do not understand him. Which sadely echoes the experiences of a lot of mentally ill people.

 He’s portrayed sympathetically with the hardships and tragedy of coping with mental illnesses showcased routinely (albeit often on a metaphorical and not strictly accurate level).

 And most importantly he’s been repeatedly showcased as a truely heroic and caring figure in spite of his illnesses, even using them for the benefit of society as a whole when given the opportunity and right help.

 I am in fact referring to...the Hulk.

 Bruce Banner canonically was physically and emotionally abused by his father and developed serious anger issues and issues of self-worth because of that treatment. All of which led to him eventually developing Dissociative Identity Disorder, also known as Multiple Personality Disorder or more commonly referred to as having a ‘split personality’; and INCORRECTLY referred to as schizophrenia.

  That’s not me interpreting anything or extrapolating either. That is an objective in-universe canonical FACT about the character. In fact he first ‘hulked out’ when he got mad and attacked his father...BEFORE he encountered any gamma bombs. In one iconic issue he even tried to resolve his problems via therapy where the different sides to his personality were integrated together.

 Whilst it involved superheroics and super powers and happened after ONE session that is the real life goal when it comes to helping most people who have DID/MPD.

 Whilst there is so much to talk about with canon Hulk let’s just use the MCU as a microcosm of the Hulk’s character.

 Bruce Banner in the MCU is so depressed over his condition (which involved being incapable of physical intimacy and constantly monitoring his stress levels) that he tried to commit suicide...only to discover he was physically incapable of doing so due to the Hulk’s healing factor.

 As Banner he wants to find a cure for himself and as Hulk he wants nothing but peace and solitude. But he gets neither because representatives of the government seek to exploit him and neutralize him as a threat as opposed to trying to HELP him. And the guy spearheading things is straight up an old guy who doesn’t want Banner ‘consorting with his daughter’.

 At any given time for reasons beyond his control Banner can become dangerous to those around him despite not wanting to truly hurt anybody, and yet he has been shown to be capable of managing his illness for altruistic ends, such as defeating the Abomination.

 When given help and support from the Avengers (who with his CONSENT employ mental exercises and when NECESARRY use non-lethal equipment to keep him under control) he’s been shown to be an invaluable force for good. His brains help resolve dilemmas and provide vital intelligence and as Hulk he is the Avengers’ biggest gun against physical threats.

 Which is why Age of Ultron was so heartbreaking. Once more he got exploited and hurt people without meaning to, looked upon in fear and scorn as a monster by those who just don’t understand him. So distraught was he that he opted to just go back into isolation.

 Of course Banner’s condition doesn’t realistically line up with real people who have MPD but when understood the character exists for drama and also deals with anger issues the character is actually an incredibly (heh) well constructed character and the legitimate (though relative) representation he provides should be celebrated.

 In fact I would argue it’s actually MORE important than the Asian representation Amadeus Cho provides because there are definitely more Asian protagonist characters than mentally ill ones. And also, though this sounds harsh...being Asian isn’t as compromising to your day-to-day quality of life as the kinds of illnesses that Banner/Hulk are analogous too.

 Of course that isn’t saying we shouldn’t have more of both but...taking away one character who represents an even more marginalized group who frankly suffers in worse ways (even if wider pop culture fails to appropriately recognize him as representing those people) for the sake of a group that comparatively speaking has it better is not a good thing. It’s made worse when you consider the shitty way Hulk was treated just before and during Civil War II.

 Bottom line: Let’s celebrate the old characters who represent mentally ill and disabled people more than we do and not throw them under the bus for other characters...especially the Hulk.

[southboundhqarchive]

MEET MATEO,

FULL NAME › Mateo Álvarez / Matthew Beckett AGE › twenty GENDER › Cis male (He/Him/His) FROM › Sierra Vista, Arizona LODGING › Copper Cactus Motel PRIOR EMPLOYMENT › College Student NOW PLAYING › Way Down We Go by Kaleo

BIOGRAPHY,

trigger warnings: abuse, violence, murder, suicide, death, childhood trauma, self-loathing

The first lesson that Mateo ever learned was that even the prettiest exteriors can hide rotten cores. Dante and Marlene Álvarez fell in love in high school, and they were barely out of college when they got married and had Mateo. It was a fairytale romance, and the inclusion of little Mateo turned them into a picture-perfect family–– but only to those didn’t look closely enough, and no one ever did, too distracted by the shiny veneer that Dante and Marlene presented to the world.

It had started with wine at dinner with friends, then beer in the afternoon with the guys, until eventually it became habit for Dante to reach for any bottle closest to hand at any time of the day. Distantly, Mateo thinks that there must have been a time when his father had been gentle, loving, kind – anything to justify why his mother had stayed with him – but Mateo had only ever known a stern man who was not only cruel, but quick to anger as well. Dante hit his wife often, sometimes over the smallest of disagreements, and whenever Mateo tried to stand up for her, the belt had been turned on him instead.

It’s okay, Marlene would soothe as she tucked Mateo into bed, your father is only doing what’s best for me. His mother’s words had done nothing to ease the growing sense of wrongness that he’d felt, and even at a tender six years of age, Mateo was more worried than reassured.

In spite of the violence that resided in the house like an unwanted fourth member of the family, it seemed that Dante and Marlene Álvarez could do no wrong in the eyes of their small community in Sierra Vista. Everyone in their neighbourhood had been deeply religious, and the Álvarez family would show up to church every week in their Sunday best, Marlene’s bruises hidden underneath layers of make up and Dante’s anger lurking just beneath the surface of his easy smile, unseen to all except those who knew to look for it.

Mateo couldn’t understand why he was the only person who saw his father for the monster he really was, but he was a good boy, and when his mother pressed her lips to the edge of his ear, hiding her whispered smile, baby, don’t look so angry at your father behind the cover of a simple kiss from mother to son, he’d listened.

His life was irrevocably changed when he was nine years old and he’d come home to complete and utter chaos. His parents were fighting in the kitchen, and for the longest time, Mateo could only watch, frozen in fear, the drawing that he’d been so excited to show them still clutched tightly in one hand. Oh my god, he had thought, as Dante reached for one of the drawers and pulled out a kitchen knife, he’s going to kill her.

It hadn’t been a conscious decision, his movements fuelled by equal parts panic and instinct as he grabbed the nearest object at hand, which turned out to be his baseball bat, having been left leaning next to the backdoor of the kitchen after batting practice in the backyard with his father the day before. It all happened so quickly –– one moment Dante had been towering over Marlene, brandishing the knife threateningly, and the next moment he was in a crumpled heap on their kitchen floor with Mateo standing over him, baseball bat clutched in both hands like a lifeline of sorts.

Blood was quickly pooling at his feet and seeping into the cracks between the kitchen tiles; there was no need for Mateo to check his father’s pulse to know that he was dead –– the grotesque, unnatural way that Dante’s skull had caved in made it almost impossible for the man to have survived. When Mateo finally managed to tear his gaze from his father’s dead body, he turned to his mother, giving into the urge to seek some comfort, some sort of reassurance that everything would be okay. But Marlene only stared at him in horror, eyes wide as she took in the bloody tableau of father and son.

Mamá, he’d called, dropping the bat and ignoring the way the blood splashed onto his bare feet and over the discarded drawing. The sound of his voice was enough to pull Marlene from her shock, and as he tried to close the distance between them, she quickly scrambled away from him. The devil, she screamed, you are the devil.

It was like a nightmare come to life, every part of Mateo screaming at him to movemovemove as Marlene picked up the knife from where it had fallen from Dante’s grasp as he fell, but he could only watch on helplessly, the scream seizing in his throat as she stabbed herself–– over, and over, and over again, until only the youngest Álvarez remained, the last one standing. He stared at the floor as his mother’s blood trickled closer, eventually mixing with his dad’s at Mateo’s feet. It might have been morbid, but it was better than seeing his the anguish on his mother’s face immortalised in death.

He couldn’t say for sure how long he’d stood there in the middle of the kitchen, between the lifeless bodies of his parents, but someone must have called the police because the next thing he was aware of, Mateo felt himself being scooped up into a pair of strong arms and led away. It’s okay, the man whispered to him repeatedly as he wiped the blood off of Mateo, it’s going to be okay. Maybe he had hoped that if he’d said it enough then it would actually sink in, but Mateo could hardly hear him at all over the lingering echoes of his mother’s last words and the absolute terror in her eyes as she’d looked at him. She had a husband who routinely beat her, but she had never been afraid of him. No, Marlene Álvarez had died in fear of her own son.

The police determined it was a case of murder-suicide –– tragic, certainly, but not unheard of. Their small community was shaken; Dante and Marlene had been loved by all, and for all intents and purposes, had seemed happy. No one wanted to admit that they had been wrong about the young couple, or that they might have missed the signs of trouble brewing, and so they sought other explanations, looked for anything, anyone, else to blame. In the end, it was Mateo they decided was the problem. The child is cursed, they whispered, touched by the devil.

If Mateo had thought that his father’s death meant the end of his nightmare, then he had been sorely mistaken. He hadn’t thought it was possible, but things only got worse; the entire town seemed to be afraid of him, whispers dogging him everywhere he went. Even the nuns at the orphanage he was brought to seemed to cower in his presence, unable to meet his gaze in fear of catching a glimpse of the devil within. When the night terrors had him jolting out of bed at night, throat raw from all the screaming, no one came running. In his darkest moments, he had turned to prayer, his mother’s rosary clutched to his chest, but it seemed that even God himself had turned his back on Mateo.

Eventually, he stopped trying. His family, his community, his faith –– they had all abandoned him, and Mateo learned the hard way that the only person he could truly count on was himself. It came as a surprise to learn one day that he had a visitor, and then he was confused when he didn’t immediately recognise the man who waited for him in the small chapel, sitting quietly in the first pew. Mateo was cautious as he approached, but then the man spoke, and against his better judgement, his guard slipped ever so slightly as he found himself staring into the eyes of the only person who had held him ever since that night.

Anthony Beckett had been the first responder on the scene, and when faced with two dead bodies, his first instinct had been to reach for the little boy standing amidst the carnage with blood on his hands. He was the only person who had offered Mateo any sort of comfort in the wake of the tragedy – even if only until the paramedics had taken him away – but Mateo was angry still. It’s okay, Anthony had said as he whisked Mateo away from his parents’ bodies, but there was absolutely nothing about his life that was okay.

Mateo was mad that Anthony thought he could waltz back into his life after an entire year of radio silence like nothing was wrong, like he wasn’t as bad as the rest of them who had all but abandoned Mateo. But then he learned that Anthony had disappeared to get a fostering licence, and even though the anger still simmered – a constant itch under his skin that would remain even more than a decade later – Anthony had offered him a way out of this hell and Mateo was eager to take it.

They moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where Mateo got a fresh start as Matthew Beckett. The first few years were hard, and Mateo remained distant and closed off despite Anthony’s best efforts. But eventually Anthony’s patience paid off, and over time he slowly managed to gain Mateo’s trust, becoming the father that Mateo never had. When he noticed that Sundays seemed to be the hardest for Mateo, he started arranging his shifts at the police station so that he could have Sunday mornings off, and the pair would then spend their time at the park, playing a variety of sports. Mateo never picked up a baseball bat ever again though, and Anthony never made him.

Things were looking up, but they weren’t always great. Mateo still woke up screaming in the middle of the night sometimes, and on other nights the trauma would keep him from even falling asleep in the first place. But just like he had been taught when young, his problems at home were carefully hidden away from the outside world. Mateo Matthew was a popular kid at school, he consistently achieved good grades and was captain of the lacrosse team. Charming and easy-going, he seemed like an open book, and no one – none of his peers, the teachers, or the parents of his classmates – ever suspected that he might have anything to hide; his dark past remained a closely guarded secret.

During his last lacrosse game of his high school career, Mateo caught the attention of a scout from the University of Maryland, College Park, and earned a full-ride athletic scholarship. He accepted the scholarship, and while his classmates were busy sending out college applications, Mateo was trying to decide what he wanted to study. It wasn’t until Mateo had dropped by the police station to bring Anthony his lunch that he knew what he needed to do. Mateo had been gifted with a gilded tongue, but he felt that simple words alone were not enough to express the extent of his gratitude towards Anthony.

When Anthony asked what he was planning to study, Mateo had felt almost self-conscious as he’d admitted that we wanted to study criminology, hoping to join the police force after he graduated. The perpetually self-loathing part of him worried that Anthony might find his choice of major disingenuous, would accuse him of aiming for a job on the force just to make himself look better and not because he actually wanted to help people. But Anthony had looked at him with nothing but pride in his gaze, and Mateo knew that the man he had come to see as his father understood what he was trying to tell him: you make me want to do good.

Anthony wanted to make an occasion out of Mateo leaving for college, and so they embarked on a road trip, the pair of them driving from Arizona to Maryland. It was a bittersweet moment when they finally arrived at College Park –– Anthony was so proud of his son, and for the first time ever, Mateo truly believed that he could rise above the tragedy of his childhood, but at the same time, both of them were apprehensive about being apart. Still, neither were willing to let that dampen the mood, and after helping Mateo settle into his dorm room, Anthony left with the promise to call every week.

College was good for Mateo; even back in Phoenix, he could never shake off the feeling that somehow his past would catch up to him. Now, he was in an entirely different state, and if his fellow students whispered about him, it was only good things that passed their lips. Back in high school, he’d felt as if he had been playing a part, convinced that he was incapable of any sort of genuine human connection. Some habits were hard to break, and Mateo’s tendency to play things close to his chest remained, but slowly he began to stop thinking of himself as broken.

And then he got the call.

Good things don’t happen to boys who kill their fathers and break their mothers’ hearts –– that was the conclusion Mateo came to as he booked the first flight back to Phoenix. In hindsight, it was a small miracle that Mateo had been allowed to keep Anthony for so long, although he supposed it could be precisely because it would hurt more to have him be taken away. It had been a robbery gone wrong, they’d told him. Mateo had never given much thought to Anthony dying, but the both of them had always sort of assumed that if it wasn’t old age that did him in, it would be the job. How pathetic, then, that at the end of the day he ended being just another victim of a petty crime.

Mateo had not cried when Dante and Marlene had been buried, and he still did not cry as he watched Anthony’s casket being lowered into the ground. He might not have been the one who pulled the trigger, but Mateo couldn’t shake off the feeling that somehow he had killed Anthony anyway. He remembered the whispers from his childhood. Cursed child, they’d called him. Back then, he’d wondered how the very people who used to pinch his cheeks and call him adorable could be so cruel, but maybe they hadn’t been cruel at all –– only honest.

It took all his willpower and then some not to take off the moment the funeral service ended, forcing himself to stay as people came up to him to offer their condolences, as if he hadn’t been the one to seal Anthony’s fate by coming into his life. Eventually, when it all became too much, when he felt the ever-familiar anger start to rise to the surface again, he finally excused himself. Mateo got into his rented car and drove home, but remained parked in the driveway, unable to bring himself to actually go into the house.

Grief made people irrational, and Mateo found himself fighting the urge to douse the entire house in gasoline and watch it go up in flames. He couldn’t bear the thought of walking in and seeing the place still looking lived in, as if Anthony had merely gone on a milk run and wasn’t six feet underground. In the end, Mateo chose not to go in, giving the house – and the life he thought he could have had – one last look before starting the car once more. He drove with no real destination in mind, only wanting to put as much distance as possible between him and everything he’d lost.

As night fell, Mateo took the first exit he saw, only vaguely noticing the Welcome to Boot Hill sign that greeted him. He pulled into the first motel he found, telling himself that he’d be out of there first thing in the morning, before falling onto the sheets still dressed in his rumpled funeral suit. But then when daylight broke and Mateo got ready to leave, the car refused to start. He’d called a mechanic and had been told that it would take at least a week to fix, forcing him to book more nights at the motel. The woman at the front desk had looked rather pleased when he’d extended his stay, and Mateo chalked it up to the fact that they probably didn’t get much business usually, since he hadn’t seen any other guests around.

In the end, Mateo was alone again.

❝ Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured? ❞

CENSUS,

FACECLAIM › Froy Gutierrez AUTHOR › Honey

[oldguardaudio]

  NRA -> Gun Banners Unmasked: The Vengeful Face of the Anti-gun Agenda Emerges Once Again

Wayne Lapierre NRA at HoaxAndChange.com

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Donald Trump NRA @ Hoax and Change

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2017

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In the aftermath of tragedy, when emotions are running high, some people reveal perhaps more than they intend about themselves and their true intentions. Gun control advocates are feeling especially emboldened in the wake of the terrible murders in Las Vegas, and their predilections and prejudices are again on full display. To no great surprise, they are openly speaking of repealing the Second Amendment, retroactively turning gun owners into criminals, and confiscating firearms en masse. And while their publicly-expressed furor will eventually subside when reason again dominates the national discussion of gun policy, it’s important to keep in mind that what they say now is what they really want. It’s not “reasonable regulation.” It’s give up your gun or the government takes it and you go to jail. It’s always that, in the end.

New York Times commentator Bret Stephens led the way with his call to “repeal the Second Amendment.”Dismissing the fundamental right to keep and bear arms as a “fetish,” Stephens cites a litany of tired and debunked “science” and rhetoric that may do much to ingratiate himself to his new readers at the Times but does absolutely nothing to advance the debate on controlling violent crime. 

He then asks, without apparent irony, why liberals nevertheless continue to lose the gun control debate. On this point, at least, Stephens is largely correct (if completely un-self-aware): Because gun control advocates don’t know what they’re talking about and because their proffered “common sense” solutions won’t make any appreciable difference.

Stephens, therefore, advocates for America to “fundamentally and permanently” change a “legal regime that most of the developed world considers nuts” by getting rid of the Second Amendment altogether. James Madison himself, Stephens insists, would look at modern America and say, “Take the guns – or at least the presumptive right to them – away.” 

What happens to the 400 million or so firearms already in private hands? How does society actually benefit from his plan? Stephens doesn’t say. He apparently just trusts that things would eventually work themselves out if the government had carte blanche over yet another aspect of Americans’ lives.

Paul Waldman also wrote a piece for The Week with an even blunter prescription: “Ban guns.” Waldman at least acknowledges some of the practical problems inherent in his proposal. Yet he still muses that “it’s worthwhile to step back from the concrete debates we’re having, as important as those are, and spend a moment contemplating what kind of society we’d prefer if there were no practical impediments to radical change.” 

Echoing Stephens, Waldman calls Americans’ dedication to their Second Amendment rights “absurd fetishism.” He insists, however, that “I get it.” But it’s not enough, he says, to justify “[o]ver 30,000 Americans dead every year, and tens of thousands more maimed and paralyzed.”

Self-defense would be less of an issue in his proposed Utopia, Waldman argues, because assailants “probably” wouldn’t have a gun, either. “[P]robably.” And besides, he writes, it’s a “ludicrous argument” that “even if you took away everyone’s guns, people would still have evil in their hearts, and if they really wanted to kill they’d find a way.”

We can only assume that Mr. Waldman doesn’t have much experience with the criminal element. Or much familiarity with history. Or even an awareness of the sorts of mass-casualty crimes committed in the relatively gun-free countries he obviously so admires.

Speaking of fetishes, no week’s worth of gun-prohibition rhetoric would be complete without gushing references to Australia, something of a Western democracy that actually managed to take a large number of guns away from peaceable individuals who already legally had them. Well, sort of, anyway.

And who better for this job than Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama, who along with his protégé and frenemy Hillary Clinton is America’s foremost proponent of importing Australia’s gun confiscation scheme to American shores?

Writing (appropriately) for the website Crooked.com, Pfeiffer laments that he and his fellow radical Democrats are “now in the midst of another gun debate that we will almost certainly lose.” He blames this on Democrats accepting what he calls an interpretation of the Second Amendment that was “reversed-engineered to pander to fantasies.” He then basically argues that just because the U.S. Supreme Court has authoritatively construed the Second Amendment to protect an individual right, Democrats don’t have to accept that as true. 

Pfeiffer insists the “Democratic gun control strategy fails because it is defined by this poverty of ambition … .” 

He then lists his own policy prescriptions, which are nothing if not ambitious, although not particularly original. These include national registration; “[t]racking and limiting purchases of ammunition;” mandatory “smart-gun” technology; and, of course, an Australian style “national gun buyback program.”

As savvy gun owners know, what happened in Australia was not a “buyback.” Gun owners didn’t return guns to the shops where they bought them. Rather, the government retroactively banned firearms that most people had acquired lawfully and in good faith. It then sternly threatened to imprison anyone who didn’t surrender their gun to the authorities for whatever compensation was offered, assuming the individual even survived the government’s attempt to seize the gun by force.

Many Australians buckled to the threat, and the government confiscated many hundreds of thousands of guns. But many didn’t. In the unlikely event that a the government of the United States somehow amassed the same proportion of its citizens’ firearms, hundreds of millions would still be left in private hands, but with a disproportionate share hoarded by criminals who need firearms for their livelihood.

Ironically, even as he and like-minded gun prohibitionists call for confiscation of America’s guns, Pfeiffer remains incredulous that “the NRA is still producing” what he calls “agitprop aimed at convincing gun owners that liberal Democrats and radical leftists are going to come after their guns.”

How dare we state the obvious: Your guns are not safe, as long as people like Stephens, Waldman, and Pfeiffer continue to have a role in national debate and in politics. 

Which is to say, they’ll never be safe. Pfeiffer essentially admits this and counsels his fellow radical Democrats to stop trying to “fake moderation” and win over gun voters with “insincere pandering on the gun issue.”

It would be nice to think that with a pro-gun president and pro-gun majorities in Congress, statehouses, and governor’s mansions across the country, the battle to secure the Second Amendment is won. But as long as decent, law-abiding gun owners are blamed for the acts of deranged murderers, the battle can never end. 

We don’t have to guess what people who press for gun control really want. People like Stephens, Waldman, and Pfeiffer are telling us themselves.

For us to think otherwise is to sow the seeds of our own undoing.

NRA -> Gun Banners Unmasked: The Vengeful Face of the Anti-gun Agenda Emerges Once Again NRA -> Gun Banners Unmasked: The Vengeful Face of the Anti-gun Agenda Emerges Once Again FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2017…