I've been giving anti-gunners rhetorical swirlies since the late '80s, first in FidoNet, then in usenet.
Anti-gunners, especially those in computer networks, fall into two basic categories:
The Simple - They know nothing about firearms that they didn't see in an episode of "Highway Patrol", "Hawaii Five-O" or "Law & Order". They are afraid of to varying degrees, guns, themselves in possession of a gun, and people of different racial, ethnic or religious groups with guns. They have an almost animistic awe of firearms, and see them as having independent agency. They often have issues with rage which they impute to everyone else. They think that if they had a gun, they'd murder people for slight provocation. They feel the same applies to everyone who has a gun... except the police, who apparently have some magic talisman which prevents THEM ALONE from shooting everyone around them. Being intellectually lazy, they will not question any pronouncement by a vocal anti-gunner. It is not unknown for them to not only be ignorant about firearms, but to condemn actual knowledge of firearms. British internet anti-gunners refer to the possession of verifiable factual knowledge about firearms as "trainspotting". It is their belief that actual knowledge of a subject makes one's opinions about it LESS valid. They have virtually no knowledge of current firearms law. They will frequently proclaim that guns are easier to get NOW, than they were when anyone could buy anything but a machinegun or destructive device through the mail. They engage in clumsy reductio ad absurdam argument, seeking to trivialize that which they do not understand. See anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott for examples of this behavior.
The Dishonest - Like the 1% of charlatans at the top of the neo-Nazi movement who exploit the 99% at the bottom, they lead The Simple around by the nose. They know the actual truth of gun control and instead lie. Like Josh Sugermann, they attempt to deceive and confuse, deliberately blurring the distinction between automatic and semi-automatic firearms. They intentionally lie about current laws, be it prohibitions on interstate mailorder sales of firearms, to the legality of handgun hunting ("Nobody hunts with a handgun!") They frequently coopt the media in their disinformation campaigns as in the case of CNN, which showed an "assault" weapon destroying cinderblocks which were untouched by a non-assault weapon... which it turns out was not even aimed at those cinderblocks. They claim that more people are killed with their own guns than kill criminals... as if one has not defended oneself with a firearm unless someone dies. Strangely, they advocate the use of the martial arts instead, but do not demand that every use of the martial arts end in someone being beaten or choked to death.
I've pretty much seen it all. Without fail, anti-gunners are handed their heads in every such debate. Unfortunately, like neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers, they just keep coming back for their regular beating...
