Viking6
I can't speak for everyone on the board, but I define an "elitist" as someone who believes themselves to be enlightened, and one of the "chosen few" who are not part of the "great unwashed" - that is, they believe they know something, and that about 99% of the rest of the population doesn't. They believe that the vast majority of the population needs to have their hands held throughout life, and needs to be taken care of, given helpful advice from those who are "in the know", and while they can't empathize with the common man, they can certainly sympathize.
Since these people believe that most people are generally going through life aimlessly and ignorant, guns are, of course, out of the question as far as being acceptable in society. They believe that freedom is a threat to the general order of things.
The epitome of such a person, in my opinion, is Peter Jennings.
When someone on this board refers to someone as "sheeple", they are noting that a good number of the population actually believes this themselves (about themselves), to their own detriment. But the big difference is, that an person who is not an elitist believes that they can overcome their blindness if they want to, but usually this only happens if the person in question has a close call of some sort - such as the police not getting to their house in time to take care of them. Only someone that isn't an elitist would believe that this sort of personal responsibility could and should be exercised.
TD