you're a sucker for the 'holdover from cold-war anticommunism' tact
I will add here though I'm especially interested in the guns issues as such, I'm not after all American and I don't think I have actually seen a gun (except those held by armed police on the continent) in my life.
What I am interested in though is the US right and its weird transformation into 'movement conservatism' (which o/c comprises many variant strands - not all of which were on the 'right' before Nixon and LBJ or Carter in certain instances) which is by far the most important ideological mass-body in the US right now. On that note, there are several articles (ever read Jill Lepore?) related to this topic that I probably post here.
Also I think adding history into the debate is pretty important and we get none of that when talking about social 'issues' (except the old liberal zombie narrative of 'progress').