In the gun control debate, we see a lot of underhanded things. Sometimes they’re intentional, other times they might not be. However, one of the worst is how gun control advocates try to gaslight the country.

See, what they do is take actual things that happen, rephrase it so they’re clearly the victims, and dare you to say anything else.

A prime example was at, of all places, Christianity Today. There, a gun control activist shows us exactly how they play the game.

Taylor S. Schumann is a survivor of the April 2013 shooting at a college in Christiansburg, Virginia. She is a writer and activist whose writing has appeared in Christianity Today, Sojourners, and Fathom. She is the author of the forthcoming title When Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough (IVP, July 2021).

The following is an adaptation from Chapter 13, “Beyond Thoughts and Prayers.”

When I began to publicly speak out about gun reform, I expected the backlash and the criticism. What I did not expect were the attacks on my faith and my character from people who claim to follow Jesus. Even though I had spent almost all of my life in a conservative and religious area of the country where many people own firearms, I never grasped just how enmeshed it all is.

I was somehow labeled unpatriotic and un-American for wanting to reduce gun violence. I was told that I hate my country, that I should be more grateful to be an American, that I was attacking a God-given right. I have frequently been told that what happened to me is simply a price we pay for freedom. I have been called an angry and emotional woman. I have been accused of using my victimhood to become famous.

Except, that’s literally not what happened. It’s never what happened.

See, no one takes issue with people trying to reduce gun violence. We take issue with the concept that not only is gun control an idea that works, but that it’s also the only alternative.

Schumann, such a devout Christian, is lying here. That’s sinful, to say the least. She knows damn good and well that people took issue with her pushing for gun control, thus stripping us of a constitutionally protected right. Had she simply been talking about reducing violent crime in general or advocating for various other means to reduce such violence, she wouldn’t have been met with any such resistance and she knows it.

She even shows she knows it in the very next sentence.

Yet this is a common tactic among the gun control crowd. They gaslight the entire nation into believing that they’re really just trying to reduce violent gun crimes. Their motives are so pure that we’re supposed to just ignore that they myopically focus on gun control as if it’s the only possible answer. They then frame any criticism as if you’re actively opposing reducing gun crime.

And understand, I say they’re lying because I can’t imagine anyone being so stupid as to read the many, many writings from pro-gun voices such as myself and legions of others and still think we actively support violence. I find that downright insulting.

They know we support no such thing. They know we take no issue with the idea of reducing so-called gun violence. They just purposefully manipulate society through their choice of words, knowing full well that the media won’t probe any deeper.

Our country is being gaslighted by a group of people who claim to only want to reduce violent crime, but who advocate openly for the destruction of our basic civil right to keep and bear arms. I, for one, am sick and tired of seeing it happen and so few calling them out on it.

Well, I have no problem doing just that.