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The Government's assault on the tobacco industry was an instance of the Government giving its blessing to squadrons of tort lawyers to feed at the commercial trough, with the government getting its share, of course.

I do not know of one dime of the enormous settlement funds which actually went to pay any smoker's medical bills. The attorneys for the plaintiffs made a percentage commission which amounted to six figures an hour or more in some cases.

Now for the scary part:

Because only one person in five smoked at the time, the real issue was a test run. If a minority element is attacked in a campaign spun to make that attack popular for any of a number of reasons, will the people form a mob and go after the minority, or will they stand up for the rights of the minority.

We got our answer. The transition from smoking being commonplace and widely accepted to universally vilified only took two decades (one generation) of slowly ramped up attacks. The whole gambit being used against gun owners now was test flown against tobacco, the seminal difference that tobacco use was not specifically protected under the Constitution, and the percentage of gun owners in the population is significantly higher.

Another generation of schools which do not allow even the mention of a firearm without punishment swift and screwed up--but sure, and the balance may tip the other way.

If mob rule instead of the assurance of our rights continues to be the paradigm, even the 2nd Amendment may become functionally moot.

We do not have to like what others do, if that is within their rights, and we may object--but we had better stand up for their right to do it, or we squander our own rights in the process.