For the last 50 years, since '68, gun ownership has been criminalized, unless we each could prove, beyond any doubt, and were were as innocent as the new-fallen snow. That social construct has consequences. "we" have been put so on edge to be more than law-abiding that we can turn upon our own.
Which has managed to dovetail in with the social phenomenon where ignorance and histrionics are celebrated beyond reason and rational thought. There is a severe fin de cecile element where too many have accepted an argument that all things knowable are already known, you merely needs must look them up. So, fact checking, simple mathematics, and the like, are all subsumed into whatever becomes the most responded-to sound bite.
Now, it's all too easy to see malice in this, as, "our" side must needs rely upon the factual, the concrete, the letter of things to be in the right and only just barely). And, if facts no longer matter, neighter do our arguments. We're just wrong, next topic. However, the adage to never ascribe to malice that which can be better explained by incompetence still applies.
Consider this putative headline: "Sun Fails to Rise in West; GOP Gun Owners to Blame." Were that on twitter, almost no one would be arguing the fallacy of the preparatory clause, the heated arguments would all be upon the follwing one. And, all of that diatribe and vitriol would be pointless for being about a factual and logical error.
Allow me to finish with what remains a pithy quote: