David Brooks, Please Don't Assume What I "Get" on Gun Control as a Progressive

In his latest column, focusing on various afflictions plaguing the American working class, David Brooks had this to say about gun control:"It’s a culture [the American working class] that celebrates people who are willing to fight to defend their honor. This is something that progressives never get about gun control. They see a debate about mass murder, but for many people guns are about a family’s ability to stand up for itself in a dangerous world."I am a progressive, depending on how one defines the term. I also grew up largely as a part of, and certainly surrounded by, the American working class.I can say with confidence there is nothing I don't "get" where the enthusiasm for owning firearms is concerned, despite Brooks' blunt and stereotypical accusation. Like many people who lean left as I do politically, I absolutely understand, and in most cases honor, the desire of individuals to protect themselves and their families. I would not seek to prevent Americans from owning firearms within common sense limitations, the details of which are beyond the scope of this piece.But please, David, don't tell me I simply "don't get" what guns are to the working class or anyone else. I do. What I also "get" is that, unfortunately, far too many of them (along with people in other demographic groups, like Donald Trump) are not plain-spoken, responsible men and women wanting to protect their families. Instead, they are gun fetishists who believe- with adolescent naivety and emotion-driven fantasy- that guns are shields and not swords. With inattention to facts and utter blindness to human experience, they nevertheless assert that that arming everyone, everywhere, is the answer to preventing the kind gun violence that, in fact, stems from the proliferation of those very same guns.