Guilt-Trip Gun Control Advocacy Won’t Work, So Knock It Off

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of calls for gun control from a lot of different sources. You’ve seen a lot, too, I suspect, and you’re not necessarily someone who has to seek them out to any degree. You can imagine how many I’ve seen.

A lot of them just sort of repeat what’s been said before. In fairness, we do the same thing, too. After all, it’s the same issue and nothing has really changed about where anyone stands.

But one thing has really gotten under my skin over the years, and that’s what I call “guilt-trip gun control advocacy.” 

That’s when someone tries to make you feel terrible for not supporting gun control. They’re focusing on emotions, either your own or the emotional struggles of others, all to make you feel like you should have to support gun control.

It looks like this:

The news ticker denotes yet another shooting and fire, this time at a Latter-day Saint church in Michigan. This tragic incident occurred only weeks after the massacre at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, a tragedy whose shock had barely begun to fade from public memory. Each headline was a fresh rupture in our collective psyche, each one a new entry in the ever-lengthening register of loss. I felt the same fatigue—the hollow, tightening ache of resignation. How many times can we say “not again” before the words’ meaning dissipates?

America has a peculiar way of justifying sin and bearing her scars. Our country’s response to violence is not just inadequate; it is complicit. We have constructed a body politic that tolerates, even sanctifies, these acts through legislative inertia and a distorted interpretation of constitutional rights. The sacred text of our republic has become a shield for the status quo, with lawmakers and justices hiding behind its language to justify inaction. Leaders at every level offer only platitudes, as if thoughts and prayers could bind wounds that legislation refuses to heal.

Our nation’s dysfunction runs deeper than any one event or single perpetrator. Behind the headlines are the haunted: families who will never again feel whole, first responders who carry silent burdens, and clergy who must find words when language feels useless. And behind them, a vast community of the traumatized—students, parents, teachers, neighbors—bound together not by choice but by the grim lottery of proximity. This is not the mark of a healthy society. It is the sign of a nation adrift, its soul eroded by violence and its conscience dulled by repetition.

Yes, we’re complicit in mass murder simply because we aren’t willing to give up our rights, even when many of these killers are people who should have been caught by some existing law and weren’t.

How dare anyone try to claim that I’m complicit, that I’m responsible, simply because I recognize the failures of gun control in the past? I’ve been one of those who will never feel whole again, because a dear friend was gunned down by a maniac who was pissed that he couldn’t sit in a coffee shop anymore after being a pain for the last time.

How dare anyone say that to our own Ryan Petty, who lost his lovely daughter Aliana in the Parkland shooting, or RedState’s Jenn Van Laar, who lost a friend in a shooting in Thousand Oaks?

We lost, and we recognized that gun control wasn’t the answer, but now we’re told everything that followed was really our fault because we didn’t bend the knee and give up our rights?

No.

This guilt-trip gun control push isn’t working. It’s never going to work. People don’t get told they’re complicit, that they’re responsible for mass murders, then just go, “Oh, well, OK. I’ll change all my views about everything.” They get angry and dig in even harder, which is fantastic for our side.

The writer of this screed, Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson, describes himself as a “spiritual entrepreneur,” which sounds more like someone who uses faith to grift, if you ask me, but I’m not sure he understands that trying to guilt-trip someone isn’t really a great strategy.

Knock it off. You’re just making us mad and making yourself look like an absolute dipstick.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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