Thom Hartman: The 2nd Amendment was ratified to help preserve slavery.

[DanTex]

69. Inevitable is a pretty strong word.

I'm well aware that politics in the US have drifted to the right, not just on guns, but across the board. And I'm also aware that conservatives like yourself are celebrating this drift and predicting the "inevitable" demise of the welfare state, the EPA, gun control, abortion, progressive taxation, and so on. We'll see what happens. I hope, for the sake of the country, that things don't continue to move in the same direction, and there is some hope in the fact that conservatives (and gun rights advocates, which demographically are pretty much identical) tend to be old white males from southern rural areas.

Of course, the fact that politics have drifted to the right doesn't mean it's a good thing. I guess you are well aware that the statistical evidence on gun control is not on your side, which is why you preemptively attack the epidemiological evidence as "questionable". Funny that the gun-rights advocates take for granted that a gun is an a useful self-defense tool despite the fact that studies consistently find that the opposite is true. Seems like this is just another instance of "questionable" meaning "non in line with right-wing political ideology" (global warming, evolution, etc.).