Last week I wrote a column about Amanda Gailey’s new button collection which, as I understand it, has sold out. And it didn’t take long for the NRA to respond with a comment on one of their websites, which referred to my ‘hateful rhetoric against law-abiding gun owners’ and my hateful this and hateful that. Which of course then spawned the usual torrent of literate and thoughtful emails from people who wanted me to know just how hateful I really am.

Here’s a couple of examples of the emails that I received: “Letting all my friends and business associates know what a lying piece of crap you are.” “Next time get your facts straight, asshole.” And from my Facebook page: “You must be a cowered [sic] and scared of guns. “What a dumbass you are.” “Stupid ass racist” This last comment was posted against the column I wrote on Colion Noir.

I receive messages like this all the time. They used to include some more threatening comments but the word has gotten around that the ATF and FBI routinely scan certain web venues looking for hints that someone is thinking of doing something stupid or dangerous with a gun. But what I find most interesting about this correspondence, in a bizarre sort of way, is that allegedly I am receiving it because these folks are so offended by the ‘hateful’ rhetoric that I always employ.

Talking about hateful rhetoric, have you ever considered the fact that the only times you can listen to Rush doing a live radio broadcast anywhere in the United States is between 9 and 3? In other words, basically his audience consists of people who don’t work. Oh yea, there are a couple of salesmen driving around in their cars and maybe an over-the-road trucker here and there, but I worked in corporate environments for years and you just didn’t sit at your desk with a radio that blared AM.

For all his talk about the virtues of hard work, free enterprise and profitable gains, the fact is that most of the people who listen to Rush are sitting on their rear ends at home. And most of them are probably good and pissed off because they really have nothing to do. My father spent the last ten years of his life sitting around getting increasingly angry about a world that he didn’t understand except the truth is that it was world that had passed him by. And if you listen to Rush, and I listen to him all the time because I like to keep my enemies closer than my friends, he’s always invoking a world that has somehow changed and no longer is a fit place for the kind of people who listen to his show.

The folks who send me those angry emails seem to be cut from the same cloth. Let’s be honest. If you actually had time to sit down and email such nonsense to someone you don’t even know, isn’t this an indication that maybe, just maybe you have nothing better to do with your time? I once showed some of these messages on my Facebook page to a high-ranking official with the ATF who told me that I needed to consider some kind of personal protection; to which I told him that the odds of some jerk getting drunk and plowing his car into mine were much greater than getting shot by some guy who was upset by what I write. First of all, in order to attack me, the guy would have to get dressed and come out of his house.

The NRA can accuse me of being an enemy of law-abiding gun owners, but what I am really opposed to is an organization that used to promote gun ownership for hunting, collecting and sport but now justifies its existence through appeals to fear. What I’m saying is true, and if you need proof just take a look at the comments about me that crop up every time I say it again.