December 2012 – Page 3 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Specific Steps You Can Take to Oppose the Coming Obama/Biden Gun Controls

I’m back with more specific ideas that you can try in your version of a “gun community” to oppose new gun control measures. My apologies for the time off from these, but it was a little tough to blog seriously with a 4-year-old niece crawling in my lap and wanting her hair brushed and styled with “big girl” hair clips. But those kinds of moments remind me why I try to protect our rights. Someday, she will be a big girl who should have the right to decide the best way to protect herself when she’s out on her own in this world.

In case you missed the previous posts, Iâ€™m writing a short series on the topic of contacting lawmakers over the next few days with specific ideas for various communities of gun owners to expand their reach. Whether youâ€™re just some guy who owns guns and finds their â€œgun communityâ€ online, own a commercial gun range or shop, or are a member of a community gun club, Iâ€™m going to collect specific actionable, easy ideas for you to think about.

Todayâ€™s list is for individuals with a focus on reaching out through the media.

Don’t write off the media as completely against us and worthless for outreach. Many individual members of the national media aren’t good targets, but the local press is much more likely to be open to different opinions. In my holiday local news viewing opportunities, the often featured viewer comments via social media and email responses which showed support for the Second Amendment and opposition to new gun control measures.
If you live in an area with local weeklies or other small papers, turn to those as an outlet. When I did my Congressional internship, the Congressman’s primary office had a subscription to every single paper in the district – no matter how rinky dink the circulation. I can’t speak for every single Congressional office, but I suspect that this is pretty common. The offices generally want to keep up with what all district media are saying about them.
If you are writing to the local paper, try to include the name(s) of your targeted elected officials. As the only intern willing to work daily in the aforementioned office, I had the joyous task of reading every single paper and finding any and all references to the Congressman. It did not matter what the topic of the article/letter to the editor was about. If it was calling him to do something or mentioned his record on something, I had to cut out the article. This is likely still done for any offices that take smaller local papers that don’t publish all sections online.
If you submit a letter to the editor or comment to the local television/radio stations that doesn’t get published or aired after several days, then post it online. If you have a blog, post what you intended to say online and include a link to what inspired you to write. The staff of any officials named will pick it up in Google Alerts and see that you are contacting media outlets in his/her district, even if your letter or comment wasn’t published that day. If you don’t have a blog and have a particularly well-written letter to the editor that you have submitted that didn’t get published, then email it to your favorite gun or political blogger to see if they will post it. Make sure to include the media outlet you targeted, and any relevant links to original stories.
Email a copy of your letter to the editor directly to your lawmakers. If you want to go the direct route, just email the office of your representatives with a note that you thought they might like to see the letter to the editor you just submitted to the relevant district news outlet that mentioned them. Don’t do this every single week, but just a friendly and professional heads up since it is relevant to potential press coverage for their boss.
In any communication with the media, you’re more likely to be featured if you are clear and concise. With letters to the editor, they shouldnâ€™t be any longer than 150 words. The shorter letters provide more flexibility as they lay the pages out for publication. Typically, a writer or commenter won’t be featured more than once every 30 days, so don’t bombard any outlet with constant letters or comments if they have recently published or shared something from you.
Use spellcheck. Ask a family member, friend, or even a fellow commenter on your favorite gun blog or forum to take a look at something before you submit it. It will help to keep you message. Don’t forget to include your name and city, as well as contact information so they can verify with you if they want to publish or feature your comments.
If you have a state or regional political news site or blog that covers your lawmakers, consider submitting a guest editorial to them on the specific policies being discussed. If you’re lacking inspiration, use gun blogs and forums as guides in writing a well-argued piece. Don’t plagiarize, but you can certainly use ideas and concepts for composing a serious post.

I do have more ideas for individual action than just the media, but I wanted to do a media-themed post since there will be so many opportunities to talk specific issues and specific lawmakers in the next month. It’s not a completely lost cause to use these outlets.

A thorough response to one of the bigger (now defunct) political blogs here in Pennsylvania got at least one journalist to stop falsely reporting that a Democrat was pro-gun. While I’m not encouraging that kind of response to every mainstream report, it shows that readers/viewers/listeners who speak out can remind the media that we’re going to keep them on their toes. More importantly, it amplifies your voice to lawmakers since they now know that you’re not only contacting them as a constituent, you’re out there talking to other voters.

Advice to Gun Control Advocates

Paul Barrett delivers a dose of reality to gun control advocates:

If they are ever to regain political momentum on the national level, gun-control proponents will have to be more honest, and less hysterical, about their opposition. In America, for better or worse, guns are mainstream, and the NRA is not going away.

The article talks about how NRA actually does represent the viewpoint of a large number of Americans, backed up with polling data. I don’t agree with many of Barrett’s observations, which I think come from the point of view of someone who is not a political activist and likely doesn’t have much experience in grassroots politics, but he is correct in assessing the overall situation.

How to Talk to the Non Initiated

There is indeed some excellent conservation happening in Tam’s comments, in regards to an MSNBC roundtable. I’d like to highlight a few things, because I think, overall, we’re pretty bad at talking to people outside the gun culture. I am guilty of this too. I’ve been surprised by analogies and arguments, which I thought were spot on and effective, fall completely flat when presented to a non-initiated person to the gun culture. Over at Tam’s, commenter staghounds makes this point:

For example, gun practice being â€œcreepyâ€ and â€œparanoid.â€ Think for a minute, and listen. Ask, not defiantly but to learn, what makes it creepy and paranoid? Is it different from practicing with other tools of daily life?

Yes, it is. What other tool do people do special practice and self training with? Musical instruments are the only ones that come quickly to mind. The other tools of life- cars, pens, hammers- we train with by constant doing.

It would be pretty unusual to meet someone who practiced jump starting his car for two hours every other week end.

Or who had four sets of jumper cables.

Maybe even creepy and paranoid.

That’s the real issue, but I think the answer is simple, and is provided by Yrro, the next commenter:

I think that’s where gun owners often *sound* insincere to anti-gun people. Because as much as I think effective self defense is a right… I go to USPSA because its fun. As much as I think that we need military weapons for the philosophical purpose of protecting ourselves from government… that’s *not* what I’m thinking about when I’m shooting 3-gun. Even general preparedness like carrying a knife or a flashlight is as much because I like being the guy who is prepared as I expect to get into a situation where I couldn’t deal without them.

Yrro is completely correct here, and the reason I believe we tend to avoid the “fun” line of argument is because it’s difficult to argue that our recreation ought to be preserved at a social cost. We stress the self-defense aspect because it makes for (we think) a stronger argument, and I generally agree that it does. But the fact is we do what we do because it’s an enjoyable form of recreation, and I don’t think we should be afraid to say that.

I got into shooting because it was fun. It’s fun in the same way video games are fun, and you get more exercise shooting. While I believe the fundamental reason our right exists (self-defense either from street criminals or state criminals), is hugely important, I also don’t think we should be afraid to admit it’s also an entertaining pastime. Most Americans who don’t have anything to lose won’t hesitate to offer up solutions that won’t affect them, and that they don’t imagine will affect anyone else. But few Americans really want to deprive other people of things important to them. If you can get most people to say “I can see both sides of the issue,” then the victory goes to the side with the largest number of energized people. That will typically be us in a struggle with the forces the favor gun control.

On Reasoned Discourse

Tam notes: “I manage to discuss politics with the Democrat Next Door just fine. I think she’s wronger than a monkey riding a poodle, but I’ll grant that she’s smart and well-meaning and came by her wrongness honestly, and I’m not going to change her mind on a single issue by shouting or belittling her.”

Most people’s views on politics are pretty amorphous and not generally all that philosophically consistent. That doesn’t make them evil. Politics is 10% inspiration and 90% bullshit. Whichever side has the best smelling specimen wins. Because of our meme-driven society, people are consuming mostly that 90% part, and therefore our most masterful philosophical constructs will always come face to face with that simple equation at the end of the day. That’s not to say philosophy isn’t important (the 10% part), but ends are not achieved by it.

Keep an Eye on State Senator Greenleaf

Stu Greenleaf is calling for a task force to study the gun issue. Greenleaf has been a thorn in our sides for a while now, but he sometimes votes the right way on our issue. It’s hard to say what the intention is here. On one hand, we shouldn’t trust Greenleaf at all, but on the other hand, task forces are a common way for politicians to be seen as “doing something,” without actually doing anything. Along with blue ribbon panels, they are generally kabuki theater; elaborate rituals often structured to come to pre-determined conclusions. But which conclusions?

The thought has occurred to me that one way to deal with Greenleaf, if he continues down the anti-gun path, is to go volunteer for his next Democratic challenger, just to get him out of a leadership position in the GOP-controlled Senate. The worse he gets on our issue, the more attractive this thought becomes.

We must act now …

… to rid society of the scourge of assault sandwiches.

David Gregory and the Magazine

Hogewash notes that the media, at some level, probably understands how stupid the idea of banning a box with springs in it really is.Â I’m not sure that’s the case. I think that they believe laws like magazine bans should only apply to the little people, like us, and not to those fit to dwell in ivory towers.

NRA Popularity

Higher than both the media and Congress. There was a concerted effort from NRA during the 90s to enter the mainstream, and by virtue of that, bring the issue with it. Clinton, and George H.W. Bush before him, Â were very successful in the late 1980s and early 1990s at painting NRA as a whack job of an organization. From “jackbooted thugs”, to laying the blame for Oklahoma City square at the feet of extremist gun rights supporters, it was one blow after another. A lot of the gains we’ve made since have been the result of gun rights becoming credible a mainstream issue, and taking action to attempt to blunt the media assertions. That’s one reason NRA promoted a popular idea of putting armed police or security in schools; it’s a mainstream alternative to gun control, and it’s mainstream in a way that “arming teachers” is not yet.

The media and the anti-gun groups spend so much time demonizing NRA because they know they need to force it out of the mainstream and to the fringe. This has gotten to be much more difficult for them because there are plenty of new outlets people can turn to in order to not feel alone. Alienation and shame are the primary weapons our opponents have to affect a successful divide and conquer strategy. The media campaigns to smear NRA are largely intendedÂ to shame marginal gun owners into not associating it, or its opinions. The media and anti-gun groups openly tout other gun owners with pro-gun control attitudes, because they want to offer marginal gun owners an identity outside of gun rights movement, and offer those people acceptance from polite society (for the time being).

I think blogs, forums, social media, etc in our community offer those marginal gun owners a place to find other similarly minded people. I’m personally quite comfortable being on a fringe, but most people are not; they want to belong, and shame can be a powerful weapon in convincing people they are alienated, and not accepted by mainstream society. If it did not work, our opponents would not employ this tactic in such a heavy handed manner. NRA has always had the burden of having to defend gun rights, but having to do so while not fighting and arguing too far ahead of where the culture currently is. Â In any political battle, you need to be able to form a large enough coalition to get the attention of policy makers, and not every member of that coalition is going to be someone engaged in this issue on an constant and ongoing basis.

The Business of the Blog

Much to Bitter’s dread, I’ve been thinking about updating the look and feel of the blog to a more minimalist theme, with a white background instead of the parchment look I was going for when we first made the name change last year.Â Bitter does all my graphics work and is the one who finds the right theme, and I’m very picky. I narrowly avoided being strangled when we went from “Snowflakes in Hell” to “Shall not Be Questioned” last year, so I have to balance my desire for a look and feel overhaul with the desire not to have things thrown at me, or have to sleep with one eye opened. I would not be changing the name of the blog, just changing the look and feel.

I had a few goals when we switched names last year.Â One goal was to stop having to explain the name of the blog to the uninitiated. The other was to help with bounce rate, figuring the name did not immediately lead to an understanding about the topic of the blog, and made people more likely to leave. A third goal was to take ads and make some money.

One can see from my bounce rate monthly average over the past two years, the goal of improving bounce rate has pretty much gone unmet. It was about 68-70%, and so it remains. Bounce rate is basically the percentage of people who come in, hit one page, and then leave (bounce). My understanding is that my current rate is about par for the course for blogs. There is trickery one can use to improve bounce rate, but I’d like to improve it through visitors legitimately sticking around, rather than through sleight of hand.

For the goal of having a more understandable name, that relates to the topic of the blog, I think that has largely worked. I don’t get blank stares as much when I hand out the blog’s business card, and I don’t have to spend time in the “elevator pitch” explaining the name of the blog. I don’t market directly to advertisers, but when I’m attending NRA, or other gun-related events as a blogger, I do like people to understand what it is I do. This year haven’t spent as much time meeting people in gun related settings as in previous years, so there hasn’t been a very large sample pool. But my experience so far is that it’s easier to convey “Shall not Be Questioned” than “Snowflakes in Hell,” at least to people who are familiar with the Pennsylvania Constitution’s right to bear arms guarantee.

The revenue goals I had for the change have largely panned out. We’re self-sufficient, in that the blog pays for itself. Given that I self-host, my costs are higher than most. Through agreement, Bitter actually gets the revenue from the blog, in exchange for helping me run it.

Overall the name change didn’t do everything I wanted, but I don’t think it was a huge mistake. Search traffic took a hit initially, because of the loss of Google love, but that has since recovered. My traffic otherwise has remained constant, and I’m pretty sure my pool of regular readers has remained about the same. Much like the gun business, I get my biggest traffic spikes when Barry opens his mouth about guns, or when the media start treating us like second class citizens. People, I think, flee to where they feel more welcome when the world turns against them. I think that’s a good thing. But I’m tired of the parchment look, and I’m wanting something fresher looking. I may not even get around to it this year, with all that is going on, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about, now that I have more time to think, over the slower pace of the holidays.

CNN Parodies Itself

When I first started reading this article at CNN, I thought it was a joke; a sort of a tongue in cheek call to Bloomberg to put his money and reputation where his mouth is. But no, this is a serious article suggesting that Bloomberg and all the other billionaires (who have their own armed security) for gun control buy up The Freedom Group and essentially neuter their product line and make it politically correct.

This is honestly how naive these people are. Seriously, I really wish more journalists would at least make a half hearted effort to truly understand the gun culture before pontificating about it. This would result in the utter destruction of the Freedom Group, because, as one of my fellow bloggers mentioned last week during the Cheaper than Dirt blow-up, gun nerds love to knife a traitor more than most other pastimes. This is truth. Any journalist who doubts that can ask Smith & Wesson’s former owners, or even Cooper Arms, whoseÂ CEO I attacked back in 2008 when he decided no one had anything to worry about when it came to Obama and guns, and offered his endorsement (How’s that working out now, Dan?). As the link to TFB mentions, they were bought by Wilson back in 2009.