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Iowa State Student's Final Column on Gun Control Shared Thousands of Times

Barry Snell, one of the few conservative columnists at the Iowa State Daily, wrote his final column on gun control.

An Iowa State student's final column in the Iowa State Daily, a conservative view of the gun control has gone viral.

Snell: Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned” in the Iowa State Daily was shared more than 1,000 times, tweeted about 500 times and garnered just a little more than 60 comments since it was first posted May 3.

Barry Snell, called himself one of the few conservatives at the student newspaper and said that there is no opportunity for any genuine, honest debate on guns.

 “I’ve come to realize after the Sandy Hook shooting that the reason we can’t have a rational gun debate is because the anti-gun side pre-supposes that their pro-gun opponents must first accept that guns are bad in order to have a discussion about guns in the first place. Before we even start the conversation, we’re the bad guys and we have to admit it.”
 
Then Snell went on to list about 24 reasons why gun people don't trust anti-gun people before concluding:
 
Yes, there is a terrible crime problem, and yes, that problem sometimes involves guns — but it is the perpetrator that is the problem, not the instrument. Yes, there is a great divide between liberals and conservatives on the issue of guns. And while I will be the very first person to criticize the Republican Party on its many and frequent mistakes, and even stand with my democratic friends in my disfavor of those things, on the gun issue it is not the conservatives who are mostly in the wrong this time. We want the crime and killings to stop as much as you do, so to my fellow citizens who are anti-gun I say:

So long as you deny our humanity, so long as you malign our dignity, intelligence and wisdom, so long as you seek to shade us under a cloud of evil that we do not partake in or support, so long as you tell us that because we own guns we are terrible people, you will prove yourselves absolutely right in that we won’t come to the table to talk with you. And there will be no hope for resolution but through victory by force initiated by one side or the other, God help us, for we will not plow for those who didn’t beat their swords into plowshares.    



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