When you’re vocally pro-gun, you get some interesting correspondences from time to time. It seems that if you’re in favor of the Second Amendment as it stands, you’re a horrible human being who doesn’t deserve to live, much less live in peace. I routinely get called all sorts of names via social media. That’s fine, though. It goes with the territory.

What doesn’t come with the territory is long, rambling, harassing emails from people who are supposed to be professionals.

A professor of criminal justice at Elmhurst College is harassing conservative scholar Mike Adams for his pro-gun views, linking the academic to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

In an email obtained by Campus Reform, Dr. Richard Greenleaf urged Adams, a professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (UNCW), to place photos of shooting victims in his office and on his refrigerator as a reminder to “be proud” of his support for the Second Amendment.

“Just thinking of you and wondering if you have placed the photos if [sic] the 17 dead teenagers from Parkland High School in your office or in your door?” Greenleaf began. “Be proud my friend as the 2nd amendment was created to protect AR 15 semi automatic assault rifles and armor piercing bullets. While you are at it place 5 and 6 year olds from Sandy Hook on your refrigerator door so your children can see what kind of hero their dad is.”

…

“Carry on and get more guns in the hands of citizens,” Greenleaf wrote sarcastically. “The heck with placing limits on the type or lethality of these firearms. To heck with those school children in Sandy Hook, concert goers in Las Vegas, gays in Orlando and HS adolescents in Broward County. They are just collateral damage Mike. The most important thing is that ‘we the people are ready for the Feds coming for our pistols.’”

This wasn’t the first email Greenleaf sent Adams either. This is a repeat kind of thing.

Adams, however, notes that Greenleaf is only solidifying his decision to carry a firearm.

“Richard Greenleaf provides a good example of why I am armed,” Adams said. “This man has been sending me unsolicited emails for years. He also provides a good example of why I support mental health background checks for people who want to buy guns. Greenleaf imagines I have children. I do not. He imagines I have an AR15. I do not. He imagines I have armor piercing bullets. I do not. He imagines I voted for Trump. I did not. He is quite literally delusional in his thinking. He must be kept unarmed so he does not open fire on his imaginary enemies.”

In other words, Adams takes a position counter to much of the pro-Second Amendment community. When it comes to mental health background checks, many of us oppose them because we can see them being twisted so no one can purchase a gun, not because we favor mentally unbalanced people being armed. And he’s somehow a Second Amendment absolutist?

I won’t say that Greenleaf is unbalanced and delusional, but he’s doesn’t sound like someone who can handle the least bit of disagreement.

This is what many of the more vocal members of the Second Amendment community get. We’re all tarred and feathered with the blood of the innocent in their minds, though people like Adams get special ire from supposed colleagues. NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch gets a special kind of hatred on a daily basis as well.

Seriously, I wonder how Dana does it; it’s that nasty.

But we’re not people to them. We’re the “other,” the less than humans they have to get out of the way so they can have their Utopia. They can do this kind of thing because we don’t matter. Not to them, anyway.

Make no mistake, this kind of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in any other context, but it is here, and that’s a damn shame.