Watching the Left discover guns is like watching a toddler discover matches in a dry barn. They don’t respect fire and they don’t grasp the responsibility it demands. They only know it delivers a quick jolt of power in a world where their own belief system has stripped them of grounding and restraint. They approach firearms the same way they approach identity—something to tinker with, reinvent, and parade without ever accepting the moral weight that should come with it.
Meanwhile, conservatives are painted as the threat even as they hold their firearms for the same reason they always have: to safeguard what matters. They love their country, even when their country seems unsure if it loves them back. And despite endless warnings about “right-wing violence,” the loudest cries for confrontation now come from corners of the internet where people fantasize about being soldiers in a cultural war they barely understand. Left-wing terrorism is now at its highest point in decades, a wave the media pretends not to see.
— John Mac Ghlionn in The Left Gave Up God—Now They’ve Picked Up Guns