Ideas are dangerous and can be divisive. But to be fair how would a liberal parent feel if they found their teen reading some stuff by Anne Rand or even stuff by Robert Heinlein (good sci fi but also very political)? Hell Twitter and Facebook which are austensibly "woke" and liberal friendly routinely censor and ban people for posting the wrong thing so I don't think the whole ideological culture war is one sided. Both Red and Blue ban and censor content they don't like.

Guns are dangerous and can be divisive & deadly. A liberal education would be inclusive of Ayn Rand and all sorts of notions, thoughts, & opinions that aren't necessarily palpable but are non the less important to be aware of, that's what choice and deciding ones own fate (life path)requires. The left and the Right both have their own bias but it's the Right that advocates the absence of gun control and the banning of books...

For future reference if you want to block me for not aligning with your tribe or political ideology whether that's left or right i really don't care. 😀 Honestly blocked because of a typo lol.

in response to tess. A liberal education MIGHT include both but it wasn't until I was exposed to anarchist literature that I started veering towards a more moderate position. I get accused by both the Right and the Left of being a Liberal and being a Conservative on a regular basis when in reality I'm neither.

True guns are deadly but at the end of the day they're just tools. For example you cite the Right's reluctance to support gun control. But is gun ownership really the problem? Or is using a gun as a status symbol the problem? When I was a kid my Dad had like 5 to 8 guns in the back room. Like many others he was a hunter and a member of the Rod and Gun Club. Owning a gun, even in Canada, is a thing. But even then they were just tools. Not penis substitutes or a way to pretend like you're as tough as the military. To use a comparisan with swords I'd see nothing wrong with carrying a blade either. But if Americans treated swords the way they do guns they'd be walking around carrying big old bastard swords over their shoulders and challenging each other to duels just so they could stretch and show off their glittery polished sharp steel. Probably have them jewel encrusted and named and good odds that the majority wouldn't spend any time actually practicing their sword fighting skills. Owning the weapon isn't the problem. Disrespecting it is. A gun shouldn't be treated like a fancy car or a name brand designer suit. It's a weapon, it's a tool. If you pick it up you are the moral agent to decide what harm is or is not done with it. And THAT'S the conversation people aren't having. So to me it's not a matter of gun control vs no gun control. It's people need to get their shit together and have a good long look into their souls and talk about things like not reacting to emotional provacation, pride, how to defend one's honor without ending up killing someone, and what is or is not taking a life over and why. Things like that, you know hard core philosophy and moral values. The hard conversations that people keep avoiding because they want to play political identity games instead.

But I digress, and for a reason as well. What I have just done is utilize words and ideas to demonstrate a point. You may agree with me or not. But instead of falling into the typical gun control debate I'm using ideas to provide a third path. And that's kind of the point. Guns are deadly but only if someone points and shoots someone. And humans are moral agents that respond to IDEAS and beliefs. So while humans may aim guns it's the ideas and beliefs that aim the human that quite possibly is holding the gun.

Also gun control is nothing but "gun centralization" which is i feel an even worse idea. I'll never understand this popularity with the monopolization of violence. An economic or social class monopoly would be shunned and frowned upon but when it comes to weapons or the ability to distribute violence it's all "let's trust a small minority with all the power!" Yeah no, prohibition and centralization is a failed concept.

You might find Lonnie Athens theory of violentization an interesting read...
The reality remains though that, like the meme attempts to portray, it's more than puzzling that a constituency is more comfortable trusting a teenager with a gun than it is with a book. That constituency is right leaning. Seemingly a fear of ideas outweighs the fear of a deadly weapon to that constituency...

Yes well I think that has more to do with class divisions and identity politics than anything else. The anti-intellectualism really has it's roots in economic class division because it costs so much to go into higher education. Then mix in culture divisions (rural vs urban) and it gets even stickier. So coming back to the gun vs book thing if a conservative right leaning parent hands their kid a gun it's a symbol of tribal identity and uniformity as well as something they know and understand. If that same kid picks up a book it's a risk they may beak away from their parents and the family grouping or the comunity as a whole. Of course no one talks about all this explicitly; no one discusses things like atachment oriented bonding in terms of social stability and politics but that's the short of it. I mean you could ask why Liberal parents don't take their kids out for weapons training or teach them how to grow their own food (as many urbanites don't bother learning how to cook let alone learning how food is grown).

I've always been disturbed by the term "fly over state" as if rural conservative states had nothing to offer. Where do these city folks taking these planes think their food comes from? Cities more or less import their supplies which means all the riches of cities have to be produced elsewhere. You can't live in a city and disrespect rural culture without it backfiring at some point. Again we're back to the gun vs book. Rural vs Urban. Independent vs Collective. It's not actually about stopping kids from reading anymore than Twitter or Facebook really want to infringe your free speech by banning offensive content. It's about trying to enforce values and maintain a tribe. And THAT division as I explained comes back more to an economic class divisoin but is aggrivated by political polarization. Which isn't helped by people deciding to block one another because they're of opposing political views.

So much by way of explanation is possible, anti-intellectualism, tribalism, political polarization, rural vs. Urban circumstance. All grounded, reinforced and perpetuated by ideas. Ideas, the very thing those on the Right fear most it seems...

There's a pluspora post that has some relevance I think.
Thank you @T P Q
"If something is true, it will withstand critical scrutiny. If something is false, but presented as true, it requires protection."