REAL Americans have, for a very long time, had a history of taking derogatory terms and turning them around. Yankee was supposed to be an insult. Jeff Foxworthy has almost single handedly turned around the term Redneck. It's in our nature every time (until recently) to take the term, and make it our own.
I'm a proud gun nut. If every firearms enthusiast would take the term proudly, and make it impossible for the leftist media to turn it around, it defuses them. They have to come up with another derogatory term, and another, and another. They won't like it, and that's the point. They want to make you mad. They want to offend you. If you can not be offended, if you push back in a good humored way, they are disarmed, and destroyed. You take away all means they have of attacking you.
All too often on these boards, I see the mistake of trying to win them over. You won't. If you show you are better than them, you win over the undecided, and also have the delicious joy of completely destroying the gun grabbers.
Of course, subtly reminding them that WE'RE the ones with the guns also helps from time to time.