I don’t like the emotional appeals that are supposed to make us fully embrace gun control. I don’t like them because they’re really just emotional blackmail. “If you cared, you’d support X.”

I hate that crap.

So imagine how I felt when I came across this “Editorial: America needs to love its children more than its guns.”

Mass shootings now average nearly two a week. They continue to happen faster than most people can keep track of how many times an anguished public cried out “Never again!” only to have it happen again and again and again.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the slaughter of 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Next Feb. 14 marks five years since the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 14 students and three educators dead and 17 students wounded.

Next April is the 24th anniversary of the 13 murders at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, the first of the “never again” school shootings.

Next May marks the first anniversary of the slaughter of 19 children and two adults at Uvalde, Texas, as they looked forward to summer vacation.

Almost unnoticed, the U.S. passed a hideous milestone last year. For the first time, more children died from gunfire than from car accidents, with 3,597 lives lost. Black children were eight times more likely to be victims as whites.

…

Children in America won’t be safe until we, as a nation, decide that we love them more than we love our guns

Again, this infuriates me.

Especially since my love for my children and the kids of our nation is why I have guns.

In so many of the cases where a young person lost their life, it’s because of a criminal that couldn’t lawfully obtain a gun in the first place. While anti-gunners love to trot out Uvalde and incidents like that, those are actually rare from a statistical standpoint, which means the vast majority of children are killed despite the gun control laws that should supposedly keep them safe.

Meanwhile, if we continue to whittle away at the right to keep and bear arms, as this editorial board would have us do, what happens if someone decides they want what I have and are more than happy to carry it out of my home over the dead bodies of my family?

I’m sorry, but my little girl isn’t going to be a victim if I have any say in the matter.

For all this attempt at guilt-tripping and shaming, these people have never bothered to talk to any of us. They don’t get why we stand where we do on the issue. They can’t comprehend that we recognize that gun control doesn’t work and that it means we must be able to protect ourselves and our families.

The thing is, they don’t care. The editorial boards of numerous papers will tell us all about what we think and why we’re wrong, all while illustrating their own ignorance on, well, everything.

We have guns not because we don’t care about the lives of kids, but because we so very much do.