He certainly had the right idea simply to ask a couple of straightforward questions to begin with but it is revealing that he had to do so on a public forum rather than, say, an intelligent conservative friend with whom he had already established a trust relationship. Those tend to be somewhat rare in Seattle but hardly nonexistent - he could have had all of his firearms-related questions answered at Wade's Eastside in Bellevue, for example.
But clearly the preference was to theorize - i.e. to imagine - an answer rather than letting the specimens under study to speak for themselves, and I think I know why - such an imagined answer might fit into the fantasy world in which doctrinaire liberals confine themselves mentally and forthright answers direct from the source would not. The one on firearms is an example - it's almost right and entirely wrong. The issue of taking responsibility for one's own life and by extension its self-defense does not occur to him, what does is the ability to kill something. You have to squint pretty hard to equate the two but he manages it.
That said, I am all for promoting discourse between the two sides of the aisle. I just wish it didn't have to be semaphore.
Here's the writer's response to my question about "gay Hobbits:"
There are more longing looks between male hobbits in those movies than in the entirety of "Brokeback Mountain." Respectfully,, MR