Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File

As a pro-gun voice, I’ve been called a great many things by anti-gunners. Few of them complimentary, and none intentionally complimentary. That’s par for the course, though, and most gun rights supporters have similar stories.

One thing I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of is being anti-American.

However, leave it to Dan Rather to argue that those who oppose gun control are being somehow unpatriotic.

Following the shootings Friday, Rather on “CNN Tonight” called the inaction “despicable” and charged “it speaks to our lack of honor and patriotism.”

Rather said on Friday’s “CNN Tonight” show with Don Lemon: “This story is not new. This story happens all too often, and the fact that we haven’t done anything really to come to grips with it is — despicable is the only word that comes to mind. And it speaks to our lack of honor and patriotism, in this sense: This is a national health epidemic. And can you imagine, Don, what it would be, of instead of guns, we had an outbreak of an Ebola epidemic? We the public, we the people, and our political representatives would be behaving in a completely different manner.”

Finding someone like Rather trying to lecture the country on patriotism is as laughable as Hillary Clinton giving a keynote speech on cybersecurity. Then again, this is the world we’re living in, isn’t it?

In Rather’s little world, an appreciation for the United States Constitution is somehow unpatriotic, but running a false story about a president’s military service somehow isn’t. Funny.

Contrary to Rather’s assertion, opposing gun control isn’t unpatriotic. Quite the opposite. After all, patriotism calls for upholding our great nation and the values upon which it was founded. That includes the right to keep and bear arms. A right that “shall not be infringed,” according to the Second Amendment.

But Rather calls ignoring that as somehow patriotic. I don’t think that word means what he thinks it means.

Then again, what would Rather know about patriotism?

Instead of saying that we need to solve the issue of gun violence, he ventures down the path that so many of his fellow travelers go down. He tries to argue that the only potential solution has to be gun control. There’s nothing else that can possibly be done. No answer is possible besides infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens who have done nothing wrong.

That’s not even remotely true.

The problem is that the anti-gun voices in the media refuse to consider any potential answers besides gun control. For them, it’s everything, and any suggestion that mass shootings could be stopped by other means is the gravest of insults.

What people like this fail to recognize is that gun control is a non-starter for a large segment of the American population, not because we don’t care about saving lives but because we don’t believe the net effect would be beneficial for anyone. It wouldn’t save lives. It would cost them.

Folks like Rather don’t care about that.