So a 7-year-old dies when a celebratory Independence Day bullet falls from the sky and through his skull. Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, a couple is watching a TV news report about a similar incident that killed an 11-year-old girl two years ago, when another stray celebratory bullet whizzes through their home, narrowly missing the man. But the real horror here, apparently, is that I sometimes write about such things:

As a Jew, you'd think Goldy understood a disarmed populace is not healthy.

Yeah, because speaking out against America's dangerous gun culture is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust. Or something.*

I understand that there are people who love their guns with the same passion with which they mistrust their government. But here's what I don't get: That gun rights advocates—presumably people who own guns, and should thus have the least to fear from unarmed Jews like me—should get their panties in such a knot at the mere suggestion that I'd rather not live in a society where stray bullets fall from the sky, and that shrugs off as an "accident" when one of these bullets scrambles a child's brain.

I didn't call for taking away everybody's guns. I've never called for taking away everybody's guns. And of course, if I did call for taking away everybody's guns, I'd be powerless to achieve it. All I've ever done is point to current events to illustrate the fact that collectively, guns don't make us safer. They just don't. They especially don't make the people who keep guns in their homes safer, though I guess that's their choice. But they also endanger everybody else, armed or not. Kinda like secondhand smoke. Only much, much deadlier.

My hope is that if more people understood the inherent risks of owning guns, fewer people would.

I don't see what's so offensive or threatening about expressing such sentiment. But judging from the hate spewed my way in the comment threads, you'd think it was I who had instantly gone all Godwin, rather than the other way around.

* Actually, what this comment really is, is an antisemitic threat, shorthand for: "Shut up, Jew, or you'll get yours someday!"