I noticed something interesting on Pinterest yesterday. Hobby Lobby posted a pin of this product in a new category dedicated to western-themed room decor:
Throughout the day when I checked, that product was their most re-pinned and most “liked” pin they had posted in any western decor. I checked out who re-pinned and where, 30 of those re-pins were to boards clearly labeled for home decor. About half a dozen were to boards designated as gift ideas. The vast majority of all boards were clearly run by women.
Keep in mind the context of this pin. This is from a craft store with a target audience of women, and this is a product they stock and also sell online. (Lordy, I miss Hobby Lobby. I like Michaels, and Joann is okay, but Hobby Lobby is supreme in crafting, IMHO.) Actual sales data from other sources indicate that these re-pins aren’t all just people browsing without buying and displaying since an antique-style Winchester Rifle sign is in Amazon’s top 20 of decorative signs.
When I see things like this, it really does hit home that even as our community has taken a few significant political hits on the chin in places like Colorado where its hard to imagine such losses, we are making public awareness of gun ownership a normal thing. Unless you live in Manhattan or San Francisco, saying that you own and shoot guns isn’t likely to get you looks like you have a second head anymore. (Even those places, it may only get you one because that’s how those people think they should react.)
But when you can go to a party and the hostess hands you a glass designated yours by the revolver wine charm, we’re winning. When the 7th most popular ice cube tray on Amazon is makes ice in the shape of handguns, we’re winning. When half of the one star reviews on the product come from anti-gunners who are outraged that such products are even sold, we’re winning.
The next step is to converting the “new normal” of recognizing gun ownership without ridicule to actual action on behalf of the Second Amendment, even if it is minimal action. In some ways, being part of the new normal (at least the relatively newly recognized, since gun ownership was always somewhat prevalent) makes it tougher to motivate people. It makes it easier to fall victim to notion that no commonly owned firearm is really under threat because everyone knows that the Supreme Court said we’re good on guns and so many people own them, so clearly they are safe.
Are we winning? Lordy, I hope so.
When Hickenlooper and the other Bloomberg meat puppets are out of office and Colorado is free once again, then I’ll think about winning.
We need to defend what’s ours, then take the political battle into enemy territory. I didn’t move from Canada to Two Americas, I moved to America, singular.
I’m not saying we’ve won politically. I’m highlighting that we are winning culturally. Now we’ve got to turn that cultural acceptance into winning politically.
True that, and the backlash against big government that’s been brewing up on both sides of the aisle can only help us.
And its really hard to win politically if you aren’t winning culturally.
It’s impossible to win permanently politically if you aren’t winning culturally. This has always been the anti-gunners’ problem. At best, they’ve been holding the line culturally.
Two things:
There’s a Hobby Lobby just moved into the Middlesex Mall in South Plainfield, so they’re expanding into the Northeast (not that SPlainfield is convenient to you). I call that category of stores AC Michael’s, myself :)
Second, cultural change precedes political change, and the anti-gunners are finding themselves cast on deadly ground, in the Sun tzu sense. They’re at their most dangerous, because they have no place to retreat.
FWIW, I would say from Hobby Lobby’s history and reputation, it is already biased toward the gun owner’s side, politically, and probably culturally, so as cultural indicators go, I’d regard what it does guardedly.
This post isn’t about Hobby Lobby specifically. The repins are not from Hobby Lobby. They are from ordinary Pinterest users. The sales on Amazon that rank a similar item in their top 10 of sales in those decor items aren’t exclusively to Hobby Lobby executives. All of those examples are in this post, but you’re choosing only to focus on the element that what initially spurred my thinking about the topic was something posted by Hobby Lobby. You’re kind of missing the point.
Touche’ — You are right.