Month: August 2009

I think some people are misconstruing what I’m saying in regards to changing minds and pushing people’s comort levels.  I am not suggesting that we, as gun owners, have to always be accommodating to people’s sensibilities, and I’m certainly not saying we should never push people’s comfort zones.  But I think it’s foolish not to be aware of them, or to have no regard for them, especially in a medium that’s more prone to soundbites and memes than actual discussion.  But let’s look quickly at one of the thoughtful arguments made in the comments:

Imagine the following was written in the early 1960s, and change a few terms.

“We can’t have people openly violating laws on buses or at lunch counters. We can’t get this radical over our rights, even if they are rights. The white people outnumber us by the millions. They out vote us.

We’ll never convince the white people to accept us if we keep having people on “our side” doing stupid things like sit-ins at lunch counters, violating state laws on public buses, or blocking public roadways with organized marches.

That kind of radical behavior will only cause more backlash against us, and won’t accomplish anything.

It’s sad we have such radicals messing up our public image like this.”

There’s a great difference between standing up for your civil rights, and engaging in civil disobedience, and what these armed protesters are doing.  There’s a difference in both the moral gravity of what they are doing, and in the strategic implications of each act.

Let me first concentrate on the analogy from a moral perspective.  Open carry is not unlawful.  In fact, in Arizona, as it is in most states, it’s a constitutionally protected right.  It is not an act of defiance or civil disobedience to show up at a public event and engage in a shocking, but legal activity.  There is no civil right being defended, because, as far as I am aware, there is no serious movement to make open carry illegal in Arizona.  If this guy had just been a man in the crowd open carrying a pistol, hey, it’s Arizona, and I would have agreed the press was just out looking for an issue.  But that becomes different when you sling a rifle on your back and head out looking for the press.  By contrast, Rosa Parks was committing an act of civil disobedience.  It was illegal for her to refuse to move to the back of the bus.  Same with the folks who refused to sit at the “right” lunch counter.  These were people who were prepared to suffer the consequences for violating an immoral and unjust law.  These incidents can’t be compared to that.

I also think you have to look at the strategic implications of getting people to accept your point of view.  Nearly all people can understand why someone would want to be treated as an equal member of society, and be afforded the dignity of not being treated like a second class citizen because of a condition of birth.  While there are certainly many parallels that can be drawn, and lessons that can be learned between our struggle, and the struggle to end Jim Crow, I do not think you can make direct comparisons.  Gun ownership is not a condition of birth.  You choose whether or not to be a gun owner.  Sure, you have a right to choose that, and I certainly don’t believe we should acquiesce to that right being stomped on, but it’s not the same, and I doubt most people would view it the same.

We also have issues we can use to appeal to ordinary people to accept our point of view.  Most people can understand wanting to protect themselves and their families.  Americans, quite uniquely among peoples of the world, generally don’t believe in relying exclusively or nearly exclusively on community protection.  Even very liberal Americans tend to understand this, even if guns make them uncomfortable.   Most people also understand having a pastime, hobby or interests, and generally aren’t all that interested in interfering with someone else’s enjoyment.  If this wasn’t the case, the gun control movement wouldn’t  have had to go to great lengths to convince the public that the gun controls they propose won’t affect people’s pastimes, or their ability to protect themselves.  When we push people’s comfort zones based on these kinds of common values, I think we can win people over.  But you have to appeal to a common value.  Few men were better than this than Martin Luther King, who’s strategy involved appealing to the very American “all men are created equal” and then shaming his country for not living up to the very values we pretended to care about.

If we are to win this struggle, it will have to be through common American values, and there I think we have a lot more to work with than the other side.  But I don’t think there’s any context in which most people can understand taking a loaded rifle to a political rally.  I think we’re lucky if most people are taking this for the publicity stunt that it is.  In that context, most people can probably understand it and dismiss it.  But political violence is a touchy thing for most of the public, and there’s no appeal to it that’s going to find acceptance.  Gun rights has to be a mainstream issue if it’s going to win out in the end.  If it’s seen as a fringe issue, exercised by “dangerous” people, we’re going to suffer for it over the long run.

In the previous post, I mostly concentrated on the hearts and minds consequences of this latest guns at rallies controversy.  Namely that a lot of folks who have little or no familiarity with the issue, but aren’t generally hostile to gun rights, are going to be turned off by seeing people use firearms in this matter.   There’s another side to this coin though too, and that’s motivating the opposition.

The gun rights movement has benefited greatly from the fact that no one on the left really has much passion for gun control these days.  We have a lot to credit in that regard, but it’s mostly driven by the fact the there’s a perception among many on the left that they’ve lost on a lot of important issues because of their past pro-gun control positions.  Credibility was lent to this perception by none other than Bill Clinton himself.

That could change greatly if left-progressives think gun rights means armed people showing up to, in their minds, intimidate the public out of agreeing or acquiescing to their position on issues that are important to them.  There’s some anecdotal evidence to support this already.  See the comments at Josh Horowitz HuffPo blog, or Paul Helmke’s.  Early on in the commenting, before pro-gun people arrived in force, I was noticing a lot more than the usual yawn most of Josh or Paul’s posts illicit form the left there.  That tells me this issue resonates.   That’s bad news for us if these incidents keep happening, and considering the people responsible for them are getting the attention they seek, I think that’s a guarantee.  If appearances of armed people at rallies turn guns back into a left/right issue, with the left motivated to stick it to us, it’s going to make our jobs of advancing gun rights a lot harder, and the anti-gun groups may even find a constituency to help push some of their agenda.

… who do not own guns.  What are the implications of that?  The implications are that you have to care what non-gun owners think about you, and think about gun owners and gun rights, because if you lose the support of the 240 million Americans who do not own firearms, the Second Amendment will be no more than a 200+ year old ink blot on a piece of old parchment.  I can’t think of any better way to lose the support of the majority of Americans that do not own guns than to make those people think the people that own them are not above using them as a means to gain political influence.  This has third world banana republic connotations to a lot of people.

Now, I suspect the gentleman involved in this last incident did not have making an implied political threat on his mind when he went to the protest with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder.  If I had to wager, I’d wager he was looking for media attention.  But it will be spun in the media to the 240 million Americans who do not own gun as a political gesture, and many will take it as a threat.  If Americans think that expanded gun rights means turning this country into a banana Republic, they will stop favoring expanding them.

Understand this, because it’s important: we are outvoted.  We only succeed when the vast majority of American believe in the right to bear arms.  We only beat back gun control because the vast majority of Americans aren’t passionate about gun control, and don’t vote on the issue.  We do vote on the issue, but we’re a minority of voters.  Compared to the electorate as a whole, we’re a small minority of voters.  There is no escaping that we have to convince others to support, or at least not oppose our position.  So you have to care about how gun owners, as a group, fare in the Court of Public Opinion.

Some might suggest I believe we ought to get back into the closet.  That’s not really accurate.  I don’t sugggest that.  But part of breaking down stereotypes and misconceptions about gun owners being deviant or abnormal is to act normal.  Normal people do not walk around with AR-15s slung over their shoulders.  You might have the right, and I don’t think it should be illegal, but you won’t get people to see gun owners as normal by engaging in that activity.  It would be roughly akin to trying to get the public to accept public nudity by running around in public nude.  It’s not liable to change anyone’s mind.

UPDATE: It’s been suggested that 240 million is a bit much because I’m includind every American and not just registered voters.  I think this is a valid point.  Number of registered voters is 170 million.  Others point out that the numbers are likely understated,  I also agree with that.  Even arguing the numbers are more like 70 million gun owners rather than 57, you’re still not at a majority until you’re over 85 million.  That’s also assuming all gun owners are registered to vote, which they aren’t.  That’s also assuming that gun owners all vote like gun owners, which they don’t.  NRA has run studies on this issue, and figures it has influence with about 33 million Americans.  That’s nothing to sneeze at, certainly, and it’s why we even had a vote on National Concealed Carry at all, but it’s not enough to guarantee our political fortunes.

AARP has 35 million members, and backs nationalized health care.  If AARP can’t ram through ObamaCare with 35 million members, why is that?  Why do we think we can get away with doing whatever the hell we want, and damn what the public thinks with 4 million?