Andrew Sullivan quotes readers of his Dish to produce a somewhat disingenuous on-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand summary of the gun control debate.

Reader 2 (the token pro-gun guy) is “a responsible gun owner [who] want[s] to reduce the number of gun deaths, and [who accepts the liberal perspective that] there are many ways of doing this, from requiring guns to be locked up when not in use so that minors cannot accidentally shoot somebody, to universal background checks to at least make it difficult for criminals to get their hands on guns.” But, even he recognizes that most of the left is simply playing a salami game, one slice today, another slice tomorrow, aiming at complete elimination of civilian firearms ownership.

Quote Reader 2:

On one hand, there are over 300 million of us, so only one in 500,000 Americans is killed every year because his knumbskull cousin said “Hey Bert, is this thing loaded?” before pulling the trigger. You can see that as a small number. The other way to look at is that each and every day, an American or two loses his or her life this way. In countries with sane gun laws, that 606 number is somewhere closer to zero.

That sentence encapsulates what I hate about the anti-gun crowd.

While Waldman is ahead of the game in that he at least admits that at .5% of all accidental deaths make accidental gun deaths a pretty low priority, he goes on to say that we should eliminate all personal gun ownership to take care of it anyway. Why does this bother me? Well, because it says that he doesn’t value my desire to own a gun to the point where he would take my gun to solve a problem he just admitted was insignificant. So by extension, what I want is even less significant than this insignificant issue. …

[I]t is difficult to work with somebody who puts such a low value on something that you value that they see no reason why anybody would even want what you want.

If you want to know why it is so easy for the NRA to sell the idea that some people want to take your guns away look no farther than Paul Waldman (and Obama, Bloomberg, Feinstein and others) who on one hand say they don’t want to take your guns while making statements that make it clear they don’t value you having one.

It’s easy for the NRA to find people who agree with the idea that some people want to take your guns away (no “selling” required), because it’s true.