Posted without comment from today's LA Times:

[petronius]

15. The point is not that one's opinions of mass murders should change, the point is that

when someone advocates policies and restrictions relating to certain features of firearms, it's reasonable to expect them to know what those features are, and what effects the policies will actually have.

Do you really think that's so strange? Is there any other arena where you'd respect the opinion of an ill-informed advocate? Say for example someone who had strongly-held opinions on allowable structural components for commercial aircraft, yet didn't really know anything about what those components did, or how they varied, or what was possible?