While I fully believe the United States is the greatest country on the face of the planet, I’m also not blind to its faults. In particular that “peculiar institution” we once had in this nation called slavery. Ridding our nation of that particular stain–an ironic one for a nation founded on liberty–was a good thing. The truth is, while there may be debate on just how bad slavery was, I’ve never met anyone who thinks we should go back to that point, which is a good thing.

That particular stain still resides in our history and we’ll never make it go away, but that’s fine. We learn from our mistakes, after all.

However, there also comes a point when that particular stain is being used not as a lesson but as a bludgeon to hammer away at anyone who dares to disagree with you. In these days, slavery is used in just such a way, and that includes using it against the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement.

A new line of attack on Virginia’s fast-growing gun sanctuary movement, which is propelling similar pro-gun efforts in other states, compares it to slavery, drawing criticism from movement leaders who have won support in 91% of the state’s counties.

In the latest Washington Post slam on the movement, dubbed “vigilantism” in a recent editorial, the paper gave space Sunday to a critic who said the “thinking” behind the organic movement is what propelled slavery and opposed the civil rights movement.

Peter Galuszka called the movement “disturbing,” “reactionary,” “hysteria,” “ugly,” and “dangerous.”

In linking it to slavery, he wrote, “A sad irony is that the ‘sanctuary’ movement conjures the disturbing nullification movements of the past three centuries in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison argued that the states have the right to ignore federal laws they consider unconstitutional. That thinking was applied to proslavery movements, leading to the Civil War and the fight over integration in the 1950s and 1960s.”

Wow. Someone trying to paint us as racists. We never see that one, now do we?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad slavery and segregation are long over. Were those institutions still here, I’d have been deprived of many dear friends in my life. Plus, under the “one-drop rule” and the DNA test my father recently took, we’d be on the wrong side of those institutions as well, which is yet another reason to be glad they in the dustbin of history.

But Jefferson and Madison argued states have those rights across the board. The fact that they were used for two particularly heinous institutions doesn’t mean they were wrong. All across the nation, we have states legalizing marijuana, thus ignoring federal laws against it. How is that any different?

It’s not. It’s the same principle.

Yet Galuszka doesn’t really care about that. He’s too busy trying to continue vilifying pro-gun voices by comparing them to slavery apologists and similarly vile people during segregation. He knows precisely what he’s doing, too.

Where he runs into a problem is that so many of us have been called racists for so damn long at this point that this latest effort isn’t likely to change anyone’s mind. Not that running around and screaming about racists everywhere has a really good track record of changing hearts and minds anyway.