Gun control activists, or gun grabbers, like to think of themselves as enlightened. They’re the ones who are working to keep our streets and communities safe and we gun rights supporters are really just trying to create a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad world.

I’d love to say this is hyperbole, but it actually tracks with a lot of what I’ve seen.

Recently, in a letter to the editor at the Baltimore Sun, one such gun grabber provided us a great opportunity to look at the idiocy that drives their ideology.

What’s amusing about this, and the reason I’m writing this letter, is that the rise in gun-related crime is the fault of the Republicans. They’re the ones desperately fighting in court and in the court of public opinion to preserve the rights of criminals to obtain firearms.

The Republicans say that they’re fighting to preserve the rights of law abiding citizens to obtain firearms, but in actual fact, gun control laws don’t prevent law abiding citizens from buying firearms. They just slow down the process a bit. But Republicans are against many gun control laws, and that makes it easier for criminals to get guns.

See what I mean?

First, let’s start with the idea that gun rights supporters–the term is about more than just Republicans as libertarians of almost all stripes also support that right and even a few Democrats do as well–fighting for gun rights are really preserving the rights of criminals to get guns.

Wow.

It seems this individual and the people who think like him honestly believe criminals get firearms from gun stores.

Generally, they don’t.

Most purchase firearms from black market dealers or steal them from law-abiding gun owners.

Now, about that claim that gun control doesn’t prevent people from owning guns, it just delays them.

First, I’d repeat what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said about that: “A right delayed is a right denied.” If you “slow down the process a little,” that may well be as good as denying that right entirely. Further, how much slowdown is justified in his mind? The few minutes for a NICS check is bearable, but what if you have someone threatening your life and you have to wait because the check couldn’t be completed in time?

That delay could be deadly.

And again, criminals aren’t buying guns from the gun store. If they do, they’re using a straw buyer–an act already illegal and much harder to detect than some would like to believe. Such an instance would be slowed down by such laws, sure, but no more than anyone else. Further, nothing on the books actually stops these from happening.

The idea that gun control does anything to inhibit criminals is laughable, especially in light of the second mass shooting in Sacramento–the capital of the most gun-controlled state in the nation.

So it seems that the letter writer has fully listened to the media blitz on the efficacy of gun control without engaging in anything approaching critical thought. Then again, that just means he’s like most gun control fans.