TO BE FAIR, TOM NICHOLS HAS BECOME PRETTY MUCH THE POSTER BOY FOR CONDESCENSION FROM THOSE WITH LITTLE TO CONDESCEND ABOUT: A Condescending Anti-Gun Argument.

That Nichols’s opinions on the subject, which resemble a progressive 17-year-old’s knowledge of American gun culture, get a lot of attention from anti-gun types tells you something about the anti-gun movement: that it, too, has very limited experience with guns and the people who own them. . . .

Here is the truth: Guns are many things, and one of the things they are is tools. Like any tool, guns have a good and meaningful application when used properly and correctly, e.g. when they are carried by trained, law-abiding citizens and used for proper defensive and life-saving measures. A good example of that is the recent shooting at the church in White Settlement, Texas, in which an armed parishioner shot and killed a murderous gunman before a rampage could really begin.

Tom calls that scenario a “lucky break.” But this is precisely the point. The vast majority of gun carriers will never have the need to draw their weapons. Virtually none of them (a few blustery dimwits aside) wants to draw his weapon. Tom’s claim that the Right has undergone a “pornification of gun ownership” does not comport with the reality of those gun owners who would be happy to live out their lives without getting in a firefight.

For these gun owners, carrying guns has nothing to do with some base desire to get in a shootout. They carry because they want to be able to protect themselves and other innocent people if an insane murderer decides to start shooting. It’s not rocket science.

Statistics are not on the side of Nichols’s argument.

That Nichols has taken front-and-center as a defender of “expertise” in public debate tells you a lot about the state of public debate, and expertise, today.

Related: The Suicide of Expertise.

Also related: Trump and the Crisis of the Meritocracy.