With polls showing President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney running neck-and-neck, anti-gun activists are trying to rally the voters on whom Obama's chances of reelection largely depend: the liberal-left base he was talking to four years ago when he said "We are the ones we've been waiting for."

As we have noted, the Brady Campaign's Sarah Brady has described herself as a "Democrat," a "proud liberal," and "proud to support Obama-Biden 2012," and railed against conservatives for driving SUVs and being skeptical about "global warming."

Not to be outdone, last week, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence's Josh Horwitz warned readers of the left-wing Huffington Post website that the non-partisan NRA's efforts on behalf of the Second Amendment are "one element of a broad, right-wing agenda." Obviously combining the Obama-Biden 2012 campaign theme "Forward" with another leftist code word, "Progressive," Horwitz said the NRA opposes "any American seeking forward progress in our democracy."

Earlier this year, Horwitz tried to turn Huffington Post readers against firearm manufacturers by pushing the most sensitive of leftist buttons. After news reporters cited federal instant background check statistics as evidence that firearm sales had increased, Horwitz insisted that the statistics are "bogus." The NRA pointed out that gun sale trends are also indicated by firearm manufacturing and importation statistics, but Horwitz disparaged those statistics too. He then proposed a business theory that only Cass Sunstein, Obama's "regulatory czar," would understand. Fantasizing that firearm manufacturers make guns without intending to sell them, Horwitz asked "How do we know these products aren't simply sitting on the shelves?"

Hatred, of course, has been at the core of radical leftism since Robespierre and France's Committee of Public Safety guillotined the nobility, Carmelite nuns, and anyone else who got in the way of "forward progress" during its Reign of Terror.  In something of the same spirit, Horwitz accused the firearm industry of "purposely and continuously" manufacturing firearms for the thing that leftists have hated the most throughout history: (the other guy's) "profit."

Of course, you can't talk about leftists and anti-gunners without mentioning former National Coalition to Ban Handguns activist Josh Sugarmann.  In 1988, Sugarmann set himself up as the New Right Watch, so named to gain left-wingers' favor by pretending that he was keeping "watch" on Reagan Revolution conservatives. Sugarmann now calls his "Watch" by the apolitical name Violence Policy Center, but the group still gets most of its funding from the liberal-left Joyce Foundation.

In April, Sugarmann blogged on the Huffington Post that the Martin-Zimmermann case in Florida should be blamed on "the firearms industry," which he said supports Right-to-Carry laws to compensate for a "long-term decline" in gun ownership. "Decline" is Sugarmann's way of describing those rising instant check, manufacturing and import numbers, as well as Gallup's poll showing that gun ownership is higher than any time since 1993.

Meanwhile, another Huffington Post item, "Corporations Plus NRA Equals Gangsterism," theorized that the NRA supports laws protecting the right of self-defense "to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda."

We have to wonder whether these people are serious, or just seriously in need of help.