In the wake of the attempt on Trump's life, a lot of people have a lot of thoughts on what should happen going forward. Unsurprisingly, many in the media are pushing for gun control.

But this one particular piece irked me. It irked me because it tried to suggest that gun control wasn't just a good idea because of the assassination attempt, but to show "unity."

Scott Robert Shaw, the program director for WIZM News, wrote, "Both political parties are calling for unity in the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. That doesn’t mean Democrats and Republicans will gather for a group hug anytime soon, but it should mean both sides do a better job listening to one another, and the American people." 

Now, on that, there's not a lot of disagreement. We probably should do a better job of listening to one another--or, perhaps more accurately, Democrats should do a better job of listening to Republicans. It seems the right has a history of understanding the left pretty well, while the left has no idea what the right actually thinks. This is likely due to the fact that the media pushes a leftist narrative, so we can't escape it, while the left can also completely ignore any right-leaning media.

But Shaw's right. We probably should try to listen to one another to some degree or another. It's from there that he goes off the rails.

"One place to start would be on the issue of gun control," Shaw continues.

Oh boy.

It's funny how often "unity" means "doing precisely what I want as we completely ignore all your positions entirely."

That's what this is. That's what it always is with those who favor gun control.

Note the similarities between this and their ideas of "compromise," which universally means simply taking a little less than they originally wanted. We know that they'll always come back for the rest, of course, so the compromise is really just a holding action at best, which is why there are so many no-compromise voices in the Second Amendment community here and now.

Shaw, like a lot of people out there on the anti-gun side of things, thinks that unity is a good thing, but that it means our capitulation with their agenda. "We'd love to see unity," they might say. "All that needs to happen is that you give up everything you stand for and do what we wanted all along."

Why would we do that?

Did Shaw forget that this isn't the first assassination attempt Republicans have seen in recent years? I'm not even talking about those that have been thwarted without a shot fired. I'm referring instead to Alexandria, where a Bernie bro with an SKS tried to take out the Republican members of Congress attending a baseball practice.

We didn't bend the knee on gun control then, so why would we do that now? 

Yes, Trump is a former president and a presidential candidate, but the underlying beliefs that existed then are still there now. Those include the fact that gun rights make us safer overall than gun control ever could.

But we see how this is going to go moving forward. We're going to be expected to continue to give up the things that matter to us in the name of "unity" while they give up absolutely nothing toward that cause.

That's why I hate calls for bipartisanship so much. It's not that I think bipartisanship is a bad thing, necessarily. It's that it universally means "shut up and do what you're told," just like Shaw's "suggestion" for unity.

Frankly, people like this can go pound sand.