Out of curiosity checked out what Kevin Drum had to say about the Heller ruling. He doesn’t really elaborate much on his own view, except to doubt that the threat of confiscation swayed anyone outside of an “extremist fringe” (whatever that means: chances are, your fringe ain’t my fringe…). As is usual with blogs of the more tolerable “progressives”, the comments got overrun by walking statist-liberal stereotypes, one of whom sneered the following in response to a comment by a proud “armed socialist”:

Dr. Morpheus: “I’m still a socialist, but I’m an armed socialist.“

That worked out real well for the Black Panther Party.

I guess on a superficial level you can say his sarcasm was correct — the Panthers dissolved, and no longer exist except as a stolen name slapped on a group that has nothing to do with them. But considering the reaction to the Black Panthers and their enthusiastic embrace of the right to bear arms, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the image of armed left-wingers — and armed BLACK left-wingers at that — struck a nerve, revealing what the real fear of the political elite was?

Call it tinfoil-hattery if you wish, but I don’t think it’s far-fetched to consider whether the mainstream “liberal” embrace of gun control rose from the tender sensibilities of the political elite being offended by the above scene. Ironic, when you find out who first agreed with them on preventing that from happening again, and realize that before then the precedent for disarmament in the U.S. was set in the Jim-Crow era south…

To put it another, simpler way: if the “latte-sipping limousine liberal” slur were not a right-wing tool for portraying themselves as populists, but a comment by the anti-state Left that amounted to shorthand for questioning their “people power” bonafides in light of crap like this, I’d actually agree with its use.