David Yamane’s new book, Gun Curious: A Liberal Professor’s Surprising Journey Inside America’s Gun Culture, hit shelves on June 1, and Robert VerBruggen writing a review for The Washington Free Beacon had a great lede:

David Yamane is, by his own description, a ‘‘card-carrying liberal’ Asian American sociology professor from the San Francisco Bay Area who, for the first forty-two years of my life, never saw, touched, or fired a real gun.’ The first time he saw a deer stand, he remarked to his companion that it seemed like a ‘weird spot for kids to build a fort.’

Now, I’d like to quickly point out that Yamane was seemingly voting (Democrat) this whole time—talk about an offense to the rest of us—despite not being able to distinguish a deer stand from a tree fort and having never even seen a firearm in person. Supreme ignorance, baseless confidence, and a zeal for using government to force agenda capitulation upon  others into their agenda? A hubris known only by a modern leftist!

But, Yamane has been on a 12-year journey, and in this time has undergone a radical transformation; while he’s presumably still a “liberal,” he’s now a gun enthusiast, with a small arsenal.

Wondering what the catalyst was for this evolution? Well according to VerBruggen, there were several factors, but it all started when… Yamane had a frightening experience with a violent man. From VerBruggen:

Things started to shift for Yamane when he separated from his first wife and moved into an apartment complex. While his children were visiting, he saw a neighbor pleading with her boyfriend not to take her car but was powerless to do anything beyond ask if everything was okay. The next morning, she knocked frantically at his front door, he hid his children before letting her in, and she said the man had ‘threatened her with a knife and taken her cell phone and car.’

Like you don’t bring a knife to a gun-fight, you also don’t bring a phone with a 911 operator on the other end to a knife-fight—the realization that without a tool of self-defense he’s really at a disadvantage (consider him dead in the water) if someone wanted to hurt him and those he loved, compelled Yamane to view gun ownership differently than he did before. Imagine that!

There’s a chasm of difference between how anti-gun “liberals” and leftists view firearms, and how those who exercise their right to keep and bear arms as a means of self-defense and security do—and I just partly gave it away. Historically, given their actions, the left views firearms as offensive tools of aggression and mayhem, or, to oppress and force compliance with a political agenda; conservatives on the other hand view firearms as defensive tools of protection. One group consistently misuses guns, while the other group consistently uses them appropriately.

Guns are the great equalizer, giving a smaller, weaker individual a level-playing field against someone bigger and stronger who wants to infringe on the former’s unalienable rights. Here’s another consideration, as a friend keenly noted today:

First they claimed my firearms posed a threat.

Now they claim my speech is a threat.

Next, my existence shall be deemed a threat.

This is exactly why we keep our guns, to avoid that third development.

As a gun enthusiast myself, the whole point is to avoid the violence in the first place. As Robert Heinlein’s famous quote goes, “An armed society is a polite society.” I’d like to add that an armed Judeo-Christian society is a polite society.

Image: Public domain.