Last week I wrote a long essay in The Atlantic that represented my best effort to explain "gun culture" to those who may be more hostile to gun rights than, say, the typical reader of National Review. I began by describing threats to my family and how a person's decision to carry a weapon is often directly tied to personal experience of real danger. Today, my friend Bethany Mandel published a similar essay in the New York Times, describing how her mother once chased off an intruder with a gun and how she herself decided to buy a gun when her family was threatened during the 2016 presidential campaign. ...

David French, the one-time hope of the NeverTrump faction, has summed up the reasons why the left cannot win in its anti-Second Amendment crusade. Owing to his status as an enemy of Trump, French has access to prominent organs of the left. In National Review, he explains how he is trying to persuade the left to give up its gun-grabbing dreams (and presumably become more effective in their opposition to Trump):

It simply can't persuade a rational, reasonable adult who's experienced a threat that they're safer without effective means of self-defense.

It is fascinating that these two intellectual redoubts of the progressive establishment are open to this argument. They must realize how harmful the anti-gun crusade is to their cause, as they watch the momentum garnered from the massacre in Parkland dissipate and energize the public against gun-grabs.

French demolishes the arguments against gun ownership for personal protection. No, you are not more likely to be hurt than protected if you own a gun. And no, getting a gun is not a pathetic fear-based decision any more than buckling a seat belt is. And no, we don't take away constitutional rights just because some people abuse them.

The left, in the end, comes up against human nature, as it always does, and founders:

Faced with a generation of defeat in the gun debate, the Left is increasingly turning to one of its favorite weapons in the culture war, stigma. It's mobilizing its tribe – including progressive corporations, Hollywood, and the mainstream media – to not just make policy arguments but also to shame and insult Americans who disagree. The goal is to make gun ownership culturally toxic. But shame is weaker than love. Gun owners who've experienced a threat possess or carry a weapon because they love their families. Teachers who wish to carry a weapon at school do so because they love the kids under their care. These folks know that their responsible gun ownership makes their communities and families safer.

Self-preservation, even more than love, is at the root of the desire to own a gun. That trumps shame, fear, and all the other arguments of the left.