> In the end, the political polarization is such that those who own lots of guns tend to be the same demographics who revere police/military/order and are currently in the camp that overlooks / detests the protesters, saying their complaints are overblown.

I'm steeped deep in gun culture in Texas, most of my friends online are in gun culture. We are all universally outraged by what happened to George Floyd and to others. The majority of us do not support looting and pillaging, but we do support the message of the protests. In fact, the gun community has been advocating for something to be done about police militarization and the negative side effects of the War on Drugs for decades.

It is this weird thing how political divisions work, because so many people on the Left in this country assume "gun owner" == "racist white man, thin blue line, thank you for your service".

The reality is a sizable proportion of gun owners in America are lumped into a generic "conservative" bucket because of some specific issue viewpoints, which have nothing to do with actual worldview. By and large, gun owners tend to be more Libertarian than conservative, and as such view the government and the police with distrust. They view people breaking the law with even more distrust, which is why they may often support the police, but they do not support police brutality and they have deep concerns about policing in America.

It was the Libertarian think-tank The Cato Institute that spent years collating every single failed no-knock raid in America and mapping them. It's Libertarian writers like Radley Balko who've published multiple books on police misconduct. These groups and people who are opposed to police misconduct on the grounds of preserving liberty are part of gun culture.

It's really weird to me being in the tech industry as I see it's shift Leftward politically and being inundated with utterly ridiculous caricatures of people who hold similar viewpoints to me. Gun owners aren't a homogenous group, and by and large your caricature of a racist Elmer Fudd is grossly inaccurate. I have most of my teeth, am educated, work in a knowledge field, am politically active in causes which matter to me, most of which align with the positions of the Left somewhat ironically, and yes I own guns.

The real reason gun owners aren't starting an insurrection is because we have too much to lose and very little to gain. The reason CHL holders are the demographic with the lowest crime rate in the US, and why most gun owners own many guns (which are expensive, by the way) is because as a cohort we are people who uphold order, make prudent financial and life decisions, and take our responsibilities seriously (because of course, we regularly handle deadly weapons). Insurrection has a nearly incalculable cost in human lives, has no guarantee of the end result being a better system, and essentially ends every positive thing that currently exists in your life in the blink of an eye. As you said, the 2A isn't an affirmative defense in court if you go around shooting government employees, so only people who are so thoroughly radicalized that they've effectively already distanced themselves out of society and thrown their lives away are willing to be the one to fire the first shot.

It has basically nothing to do with political affiliations and everything to do with common sense and basic prudence.