We know that the gun control crowd isn’t a fan of the Second Amendment. Just what form their issue with it takes varies from person to person, but they universally take issue with it. For some, it’s a mistaken belief that it only applies to the arms of the day, as if our Founding Fathers lacked sufficient vision to understand that guns would advance over time. For others, it’s something even dumber.

Take, for example, an op-ed run at CNN this past weekend where we get to hear more emotional prattle from an anti-gun zealot:

I am tired of living in a cycle where we choose our own trauma and violence over solutions. I am furious at politicians who accept money and then cower before the gun lobby. I am furious that a few loudmouthed interest groups force the rest of us to raise generations of children in fear. I am furious that we do not have adequate mental health services for people in need. I am furious that we are not demanding more of our politicians and more of ourselves. I am tired of treating white male domestic-abusers who massacre people as some kind of unsolvable problem. I can only believe that for now at least, we are a country who keeps loving our guns more than we love our children. Personally, I’ve begun to feel that my Second Amendment rights are being violated. I was promised the right to a well-regulated militia, and instead I see a nation that falls victim, week after week, body after body, to a series of unstable people with elaborately hoarded arsenals. I am absolutely sure our founders would be appalled. I am absolutely sure that our founders would not wish that we run out and buy even more guns because of it.

No. Just…no.

Your Second Amendment rights involve you right to keep and bear arms. The “well-regulated militia” is not what you are entitled to under the Constitution and it never was. Read the whole text.

A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the people’s right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

There’s no promise that the government would provide a well-regulated militia. It was a guarantee that the government has no right to keep people from being armed, and that this is essential to the keeping our nation safe and free.

There’s no mistake. I believe this “misreading” is intentional. It’s an attempt to try and set up gun rights advocates as being a counter to the Second Amendment, rather than advocates for it. The idea here is that by trying to grab hold of the introductory clause of the Second Amendment and make it the pivotal point of discussion, they can justify regulations under the idiotic idea that the Second Amendment only applies to governments.

This is a tactic they’ve tried before but were slapped down by the Heller decision which established that the Second Amendment was an individual right.

However, that doesn’t mean it’ll always be that way. The Court has reversed itself before, after all, and it could again.

What this interpretation attempts to do is lay the groundwork for future generations. It’s the hope of the anti-gun zealots that this argument will worm its way through academia, spread like a cancer among all who study at American colleges and infect the very legal professor from which future justices will be selected from.

It’s a hope that we cannot allow to persist. It means we must confront it with cool logic and facts, including the entire text of the Second Amendment, which this particular writer seems to have never comprehended.

Oh, she claims she doesn’t envision an America without guns, but that just means she lacks the foresight of some of her fellow travelers who are openly advocating for strict regulations on muzzleloaders, of all things. Make no mistake, today people like her will claim they don’t want all the guns, and maybe she doesn’t. But the gun control crowd will continue to demand more and more until there’s simply nothing left.

There’s a reason most of us refuse to give one more inch, and it’s not because we don’t value the lives of children.

The reality is that the argument of “if it saves one child’s life” is very long on emotion, but very low on fact.

In the past, I’ve seen low estimates for the defensive use of a firearm go as low as 108,000 per year. The numbers go as high as 3 million defensive uses per year, but for the sake of argument, let’s take this low estimate.

Now, let’s compare that to the number of “gun deaths” presented by Everytown For Gun Safety. I use these numbers because they’re supposedly from CDC numbers, but they’re presented by a group that is decidedly anti-gun. There’s a reason for this, so bear with me.

Everytown For Gun Safety says there were 33,880 gun deaths in 2016. This includes 11,564 homicides, the rest being suicides. While I don’t believe including suicides is justifiable, since many who are inclined to kill themselves will simply select other means to do so if they didn’t have a firearm, let’s leave those number alone for just a minute.

So we’re faced with a low estimate of 108,000 defensive uses of a firearm versus 33,880 “gun deaths.”

That means there are three times as many people who use a gun in self-defense than to take a human life, including their own. If you eliminate suicides from the statistics, you get more than nine times as many people using a gun for personal defense.

Now, looking at these numbers, maybe you can see why so many of us reject the “if it saves on child” argument. It may save one life, but cost as many as three others.

Yes, if it’s your child’s life that’s saved by heavy gun restrictions, it may well be. But what if your child is killed because a law-abiding citizen couldn’t defend him or her? What then? Are those precious gun control laws wonderful then?

No, they’re not.