This debate is over. It’s been over for a very long time. Gun laws have been getting less strict, not more, as people wise up to the reality that bad guys will always have guns. Even Chicago, the home of the famous handgun ban, had to give up that stupid fantasy and allow conceal carry laws after an outcry from terrorized residents tired of being shot at while they’re unarmed.

Most people disobeyed the laws anyway, carrying illegally for self-defense. (It should be noted that Chicago aldermen always got special licenses to carry when no one else could.)

No mass shooting attack is going to cause the pro-Second Amendment side to waver. A famous saying among us is, “You don’t get to shoot us and then take away our guns.” We aren’t giving up our self-defense rights. No amount of screeching, finger pointing, slander, defamation, or tantrums is going to make us budge.

As a nation, we are at an impasse. This debate is over. You want to take away our guns and we won’t let you. Considering that there are an estimated 300 million guns in America, we have the stronger position, which is exactly the point of the Second Amendment. You can cry about muskets (a favorite argument being that we should only be allowed to have the same weapons as the Founders carried) or about “assault rifles” (which don’t exist) or about “Uzis” (which are already illegal), and it won’t make one iota of difference in our position. All you’re going to hear from us is a resounding “No.”

No candlelight vigil or parade of weeping children or victims will persuade us to disarm, because we are not the problem — and we know it. The problem resides in the hearts of evil men and women. There is no law that will address the core issue. Blaming good people who have never broken laws for the actions of the lawless and mentally ill makes no logical sense. We have heard all your poorly constructed arguments. The answer is still “No.”

You can march out the late-night comedians (who will forget they were hired to entertain people) and have them try to shame us into compliance all you want. You can get your Hollywood actors to make a PSA with sad music and stinging insults and it will make no headway. You can even trot out someone in a wheelchair, the way the Left is fond of doing, to use him or her for political gain — and it will go nowhere.

There is a line across which you do not step. We’re there and we’ve been there for a long time, guarding that line. Go ahead and try to step over it at your peril. Gun-owning Americans made a decision a long time ago to die for the right to bear arms, punctuated by Charlton Heston’s famous battle cry, “From my cold dead hands!”

The gun-control lobby needs to ask themselves a very important question: Are they willing to die for their cause?

That’s not a “threat.” It is a fact. I have known gun owners my whole life. Every one of them is in agreement on this one issue more than any other.

Conservatives will put up with many abuses of their rights. They will pay ridiculous amounts of money in taxes and healthcare boondoggles. They will grit their teeth and support deadbeats. They will pay for endless food stamps, pork projects, bridges to nowhere, and countless other abuses of their property and product. They are patient and long-suffering people. But every single one of them I know has drawn this line.

You will not take our guns without one hell of a firefight. We will kill and be killed for it because we know that the moment we are disarmed is the moment we will have lost America for our children and all of our progeny. This will not happen without major conflict. So arguing the merits of the Second Amendment is a pointless exercise. All you need to know is we will not allow you to take it away.

It is time once again to offer an alternative to a hot war. Let us part ways amicably before this gets ugly. We’ll go our way and you go yours. You can ban guns in your territory and we will continue to honor the Constitution. I beg you people: Before we get to the point of no return, let’s be adults about this.

It’s time to stop screeching at us and start separating yourselves from us because across this line you will not step.