1.

Read the whole thing.

Indeed. Hopefully it’s acceptable to excerpt the closing sentences of the last paragraph, regarding the Guns & Ammo readership:

Well, what those readers “want,” apparently, is what so many want nowadays: They want never to be challenged; they want never to hear an opinion with which they disagree — even from a friend and an ally; they want never to hear anything that offends them. And that, I’m afraid, is a problem of national proportions.

It’s a problem which goes well beyond Second Amendment controversies, and is not restricted to any particular part of the political spectrum.

2. The G&A editors’ pandering to extremism may work in the short run. However, I suspect we’re in a vicious circle which cannot go on indefinitely. Rather than informing its audience, G&A contributed to its debasement. At the end of such unchecked processes is, as Ben Franklin warned, an electorate too uninformed and too cognitively undisciplined to maintain a democratic republic.

3. As of this writing, Cooke’s piece has attracted over 400 comments. My spot check of them was not encouraging. It’s ironic that people who howl the loudest about “liberty” are so instrumental in leading us toward the calamity which Franklin feared: “…the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”