Joy Behar’s latest outburst on The View—announcing that she and “we all” should feel embarrassed to be American—lands like another tired volley in the culture war, but it carries a sharper edge for those who value the Second Amendment. Her remarks arrive at a moment when the Biden-Harris administration has pushed the most aggressive slate of gun-control measures in decades, from ATF pistol-brace rules to quiet support for assault-weapon bans and universal background checks. When a high-profile media figure frames national identity itself as shameful, she is effectively giving political cover to policies that treat the right to keep and bear arms as an embarrassing relic rather than a cornerstone of liberty. The 2A community has seen this rhetorical pattern before: equate patriotism with extremism, then argue that “responsible” citizens should gladly surrender rights to prove they are not part of the problem.
What makes the comment especially tone-deaf is its timing against the backdrop of rising urban crime rates and the very real defensive-gun-use numbers that quietly dwarf mass-shooting headlines. FBI data and CDC estimates both point to roughly 500,000 to 3 million defensive firearm uses annually, yet Behar’s audience is invited to feel collective guilt rather than gratitude for a constitutional safeguard that disproportionately protects the law-abiding poor and minorities in high-crime cities. For gun owners, the implication is clear: if loving the country and its founding principles is now suspect, then defending the tools that make those principles enforceable becomes an act of quiet resistance rather than hobbyist excess.
The larger takeaway is strategic. Every time a celebrity equates American identity with embarrassment, it energizes the very voters and activists who remember that the Bill of Rights was written precisely to prevent government from deciding which liberties are too mortifying to keep. Rather than shrinking from the label, the 2A community can treat such statements as free advertising—reminders that the cultural battle over guns is ultimately a battle over whether the United States remains exceptional or simply another managed society where rights are privileges granted by the compassionate elite.
