“Let’s stop lying about this,” he said. “The calls we are hearing today for gun control have nothing to do with protecting Americans from violence. What you’re witnessing is a kind of class war. The left hates rural America, red America, gun-owning America, the America that elected Donald Trump. They hate them.

Progressives are still in charge of most of the major institutions in this country, and they despise the autonomy of an armed population. They want collective punishment for the sins of a few. They seek to obliterate a core constitutional right rather than trying to mitigate its downsides. They call it gun control, but it’s not. It’s people control. For the left, voters who can’t be controlled, can’t be trusted.”