The Gun-Rights Movement Fed America’s Insurrectionist Fever Dreams
The NRA and its allies have argued for years that citizens need to arm themselves for a fight against tyranny.
Much of the blame for last week’s horrific assault on the Capitol lies with the president and his allies; that much is clear. But another force in society has done more than its part, inculcating insurrectionist fantasies in the American mind for decades: the gun-rights movement.
Since the 1990s, the idea that Americans would need to band together and violently overthrow the government has been the key to establishing and expanding the market for guns. It has also been used to justify citizens’ right to march around in public with assault rifles slung casually over a shoulder or hoisted high at
