With a growing climate of violence directed at Trump administration members and supporters, Republicans can take solace in the fact that they held on to their guns.

A gauntlet has clearly been dropped by Democrats like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who used a weekend speech to encourage her followers to drive Trump Cabinet members from the public square. NBC News quoted Waters saying, “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Her words come after DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was shouted out of a Mexican restaurant, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was driven from the Tampa Theatre, and WH Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was refused service at The Red Hen.

The protests are increasingly loud and personal, and many worry that Rep. Waters’ encouragement to harass will result in leftist violence against others.

Consider actor James Woods’ observation:

Buy guns. Vote. Violence is the next stop on the #MadMaxine slippery slope. We WILL fight back. https://t.co/BRBXAgXi5u — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) June 25, 2018

In a second tweet, he reacted to the insanity of leftists at this point in time, writing, “The one thing these insane scum have made clear is this: buy more guns. Vote. Vote. Vote.”

The left’s assault on Republicans and decency, in general, is not new, it is simply more pronounced, more vitriolic. While heading toward the presidential candidacy in 2008 Barack Obama mocked the common man for clinging to things considered traditionally American. On April 11, 2008, Politico quoted Obama saying: “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The transition from Obama’s mockery of the common man to today’s leftist-driven protests, shout-downs, and harassment of Trump supporters only marks a difference in degree, rather than kind.

Yet for all the insults, shame campaigns, and incessant assaults by the establishment media, Republicans continued clinging to their guns. And in the face of today’s harassment campaign, it is certain Republicans did a good thing by refusing to give them up.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.