a second amendment firestorm

there has been a firestorm on the blogosphere about a gun writer that very very foolishly displayed a snobbery of unimagined proportions. as a "hunter", he thinks the only guns that should be out there are wood stocked hunting guns. period. boy did he step into it. read the whole post at the martialist for a roundup of what has been going on.
one of the paragraphs in that post really struck a chord in me. it has to do with what many of us see as an erosion of rights. the rosie o'donnells of the world can screech all they want about the Constitution being a living document that should be changed to reflect the times. but the cosmic joker help you if you try to change THEIR perceived rights. anyway, here's the paragraph. the only thing i hate about it is that the writer is trotting out the whole "we're victims" saw. yeah, things suck, but i don't see us as a persecuted minority of victims. i see us as a targeted group for annihilation by those elements of our society that simply can't understand. what they can't understand is our determination to keep our firearms. i won't go into the whole "to protect society" spiel that has been used by others. i will say that if the worst occurs and someone tries to harm me or my family, i WILL NOT wait hoping the cops get here in time. as has been shown time and time again, just the presence of a firearm often forces the "bad guy" to haul ass. many many "gun fights" have been resolved without a single shot. that option disappears when there are no firearms to brandish in defense of kith and kin.
too many think they are safe if they have a telephone. they/you are not. ok. i'll get off my soapbox.

The problem is, you see, that gun owners are a persecuted minority. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which protects the inalienable and natural right of American citizens to keep and bear arms, has been under attack for years, incrementally chipped away, suppressed, infringed, and circumvented by activist judges and left-wing pressure groups almost since its inception. Some of the earliest infringements on the RKBA had to do with restrictions on bowie knives, Arkansas toothpicks, and other tools of dueling, a tradition seen as barbaric by more "civilized" governing Americans. Some time later, "Jim Crow" laws included restrictions on firearms ownership, such as requiring permits issued by local law enforcement, in an attempt to disarm black Americans. The 1930s and the 1960s saw restrictions on firearms that were politically motivated by attempts (ill-conceived and ineffective attempts, I might add) to prevent gun violence, born of national horror at crime and political assassinations.