“I would never expect anyone to have that hostility towards somebody just expressing their opinion,” Aguilar said.

Aguilar is a big supporter of the second amendment and isn’t afraid to show it. One of his bumper stickers says “Control your kids, not our guns.”

“[I’m] just kind of perplexed that people would think that you’re a killer just because you are for guns; that’s not really what guns is about,” Aguilar said.

It’s worth noting that Aguilar couldn’t park on campus, so he ended up in a neighborhood not far away. It’s entirely possible that the vandal, whoever it was, wasn’t a college student at all. It’s also entirely possible it was a college student. CBS Sacramento had no problem finding one student who took offense to Aguilar’s bumper stickers.

Chris Lau said the stickers are easily offensive, specifically referring to one that read “If you don’t believe in the right to keep and bear arms, shut up and be a good victim.”

“That’s basically a threat..you’re telling them hey you better watch out. I see that as a threat,” Lau said.

Oh come on now. The message of the sticker is clearly “if you don’t support the right to keep and bear arms, good luck fighting back if you’re ever attacked”, not “I will victimize you for not supporting the 2nd Amendment.” But if one student is offended, I guarantee there are others.

Meanwhile, Aguilar says the car’s being repainted and will soon look as good as new, though he is making one change.

Aguilar is working on getting his car repaired. He said he also gets positive feedback for his stickers, but after all this, he’s planning on standing down.

“I plan on taking them off because I don’t want any more problems; I don’t want any more negative views,” Aguilar said.

I think it’s sad that he’s taking the stickers off his car, but I can’t necessarily blame him. A few years ago, after my wife and purchased our small farm in central Virginia, I spent about 18-months working in the DC-area and commuting home on the weekend. I rented a small bedroom in a townhouse in Alexandria to sleep in during the week, and I too worried about my pro-2A stickers, wondering if I would be the target of a break-in or vandalism in the deep-blue suburb of Washington, D.C. Ultimately it was a non-issue; the stickers stayed and my car was untouched, but not without some internal debate on my part.

I decided that if someone was going to deface my vehicle just because they didn’t like the thoughts expressed on a bumper sticker, I’d rather deal with that when the time came rather than silence myself because I was concerned about the tolerance (or lack thereof) in the neighborhood. It worked out all right for me, but not so much for Jose Aguilar.