The Twenty-Seven Percent's Solution

"Principled" conservative Conor Friedersdorf doesn't understand why the "Obama's coming for your guns!" section of the country is openly talking about armed insurrection and a Second Civil War.

It's one thing to argue that gun control legislation is a nonstarter, despite tens of thousands of deaths by gunshot per year, because the safeguards articulated in the Bill of Rights are sacrosanct. I can respect that... but not from people who simultaneously insist that 3,000 dead in a terrorist attack justifies departing from the plain text of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth amendments, and giving the president de-facto power to declare war without Congressional approval.

The conservative movement has a broad, textualist reading of the 2nd Amendment... and nothing else.  

I don't understand a subset of the rank-and-file either.

If you're a gun owner who worries that gun control today could make tyranny easier to impose tomorrow, I get that, and if you worry about federal excesses generally, I have no argument with you.

I think law-abiding Americans should always be allowed to own guns.

But if you're a conservative gun owner who worries that gun control today could make tyranny easier to impose tomorrow, and you support warrantless spying, indefinite detention, and secret drone strikes on Americans accused of terrorism, what explains your seeming schizophrenia? 

It's called "cognitive dissonance" Conor, and it's the hallmark of the modern GOP.    Where the hell have you been for the last five plus years, man?

Thanks.