One of the truly great things about our country (the U.S.) over the years is that people with very different political opinions could actually have a civil conversation about the issues. Even if you didn’t end up agreeing with someone, you could walk away from the conversation and still be friendly with each other.

Sadly, those days may be gone in our country.

Politically-motivated violence is on the rise, and despite what the mainstream legacy media is saying, that violence is almost exclusively coming from the political left and is aimed at conservatives (like gun owners, who are overwhelmingly politically conservative).

The situation has gotten so bad (over a simple political disagreement!) that an 84 year old woman in Michigan was shot (hat tip to here for the lead). And the shooting seems almost certainly politically motivated, if the woman is right that it was intentional. Mary Margaret Olohan writes,

Eighty-four-year-old Joan Jacobson never imagined she would be shot when she knocked on the door of a Michigan couple’s home, hoping to convince them not to vote for a local pro-abortion ballot proposal.

Sharon Harvey answered the door and quickly became “hostile, belligerent, and antagonistic” when she learned Jacobson’s mission, according to David Kallman, Jacobson’s attorney with the Great Lakes Justice Center.

Olohan continues:

In a Thursday phone interview with The Daily Signal, Jacobson insisted that Harvey refused to listen to her, yelling over her, and finally ordering her off the property. The 120-pound woman, who stands at 5 feet tall, said that Harvey followed her down the porch, onto the sidewalk, continuing to yell at her, before her husband Richard Harvey appeared in the yard carrying a .22 caliber rifle.

“When that registered in my mind, I heard a shot, I felt some pain, and I thought he had hit me in the back,” she said. Jacobson learned at the hospital that the bullet allegedly went through her shoulder and out her back, very narrowly missing her spine. “I was just in shock. I said to myself, ‘Did I just get shot? Did he just shoot me?’”

“They didn’t say anything,” she said. “I didn’t say anything. I just headed back to my car and tried to ascertain if I could drive … I didn’t feel lightheaded or like I was going to pass out or anything. I thought, ‘I gotta get out of here.’ I got into the car and they were standing by the sidewalk, I looked through the car window, and I had a thought that went through my mind, I thought, ‘This guy is going to shoot me again through the window of the car!’ He didn’t, and I was able to get the car started, get into gear, get on the road.”

Again, from Olohan:

The only time during the altercation that Jacobson believes she raised her voice was when she told Sharon Harvey, “Stop following me,” as she walked away from the house.

Now, my point here is not to get into a discussion about abortion. This is a gun site, after all.

But this story does make the point that political violence against other people is on the rise, even against people as non-threatening as a 5 foot tall 84 year old lady.

Let’s be frank, if a lady of that age and height is physically threatening to you, then, you may want to evaluate whether you understand true danger signals in the world.

On the other hand, as appears may be the case with the shooter, if you aren’t able to control your temper in a verbal disagreement over politics, then, you need some anger management therapy.

And if you’re one of the rational, peaceful people in the country (which the overwhelming number of legal gun owners in America are), then, you may want to consider always having your firearm with you for self-protection in case another nutcase decides that they want you to be their next target for not agreeing with their politics.