“We’re heading into nut country today,” President John F. Kennedy said nearly half a century ago, when he set out for Dallas on the day he was killed.

Back then, Dallas was home to such characters as Gen. Edwin Walker, who was charged with insurrection and seditious conspiracy following a riot over the integration of the University of Mississippi. Dallas was also the place where a right-wing mob once attacked Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of then-presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson, spitting in her face and hitting her over the head with a sign that read, “Let’s ground Lady Bird.” And Dallas was the place where a major daily newspaper printed a full-page advertisement accusing Kennedy of largely ignoring the Constitution and bowing to the Communist cause. It was this advertisement in The Dallas Morning News that prompted Kennedy’s “nut country” comment on the day of his assassination.

Today, “nut country” isn’t so much a place as it is a state of mind, and its population has been steadily on the rise amid the intensifying debate over gun control.