The super-aggressive gun abolition position – not just, “we should make the laws be like Australia or most of Western Europe”, but the position where these people go full ragemonster and make appeals to might…
It just seems so empty, and revelatory. Like, have these people seriously thought so little about where power and expectations come from?
I have many doubts about a (nationwide) revolution against tyranny in this country being supported by legal gun owners, but these people are proposing the exact course of action that would provoke one (and also provoke sympathy from normally unsympathetic quarters).
They feel about this the way that you feel about abortion.
…not that I imagine that this analogy will move the needle for you in any way, substantively, or indeed that it would move the needle for them were I talking to them instead of you. But it might help to make the other side’s thinking clearer.
They see a cruel, alien culture whose representatives are saying “we support the status quo in which masses of children are killed, and indeed we are willing to fight for that status quo, so that we can continue having fun.” Their reaction to this fails to be temperate.
That intemperate reaction isn’t justified, any more than (by your own standards) it would be justified for you to start preaching holy war. But I imagine that you can grok the impulse.