(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

It’s easy to be anti-gun when you can’t imagine why anyone would want or need a gun. Sure, the Second Amendment says you have a right to own guns, but that’s so old it shouldn’t count anymore, right? (Nevermind that it was written the same time as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against illegal search and seizures, and so on).

But what about when reality comes and smacks you upside the head?

Over at The Daily Signal, former anti-gunner Ryan Moore talks about what happened after two armed me mugged him.

One guy held a gun in my face, and the other held a gun to the back of my head. They took my MacBook Air, two iPads, an iPhone, an iPod Touch, and my wallet.

After that horrific experience, I slowly came to see things from a different perspective. Literally, I would become the personification of the old adage that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.

Later, I became a homeowner and realized the best way to defend against a home invasion is with a firearm. So I became a gun owner.

Not long after, I discovered I really enjoyed target shooting at the range, so I joined the NRA, and eventually became a conservative and an outspoken Second Amendment advocate.

But no, that’s not the reason I donate to the NRA. Teen activist David Hogg and actress Alyssa Milano’s anti-gun screeds are what inspire me to donate to the NRA—so that everyone at the NRA can keep working to protect our constitutional rights.

I donate to the NRA after mass shootings because of the anti-gun left. In fact, progressives calling for boycotts of the NRA and for gun bans are why thousands of new people join, and why current members donate more.

I couldn’t agree more.

There are two directions Moore could have gone. One, of course, is the way he went, where he recognized that gun laws don’t stop bad people, only good people with guns can generally do that. The other would have been to blame lax gun laws that aren’t that lax and were most likely broken by both of those muggers and to demand more of the same.

Moore wisely recognized the shortcomings of gun laws.

I also applaud him for donating to the NRA in response to David Hogg and Alyssa Milano going off half-cocked on guns (pun fully intended).

Moore took a horrible situation and learned from it. He could have demanded more of what had already failed him, but instead, he recognized that the failings weren’t with the law being too lax, but from those laws only applying to the law-abiding citizens out there.

Unfortunately, too many people can’t seem to grasp that. They seem to pretend that more laws will eventually reach a point where guns will magically disappear from criminal hands, this despite the fact it hasn’t happened anywhere in the world.