Winning the Culture

Clutching Pearls

Apparently the pearl clutchers in Chicago are having a fit about fashion designers acknowledging the new zeitgeist in Chicago:

Bartuch spoke with Yahoo Shine about her involvement in the recent Firearms & Fashion Show in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood. “Myself and my business partner [Marilyn Smolenski, who owns Chicago-based online retailer Nickel and Lace] joined forces to educate and empower women about self protection in general — not just guns, although we prefer those,” she tells Yahoo Shine.

This is why it is very important to free these cities. I want the anti-gun people in Chicago to have to deal with this. I want them to be confronted with the reality of a diverse and free culture every time they read the paper or open their eyes. This is not something they’ve ever had to deal with. They’ve been able to maintain confidence that Chicago is more enlightened, and doesn’t cater to those kinds of people. That’s now over. They have to deal with us.

It’s also not just Chicago. Check out this video from Western Michigan

A survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation found 1 in 4 American women now own a gun–up 77 percent in the last seven years. “At Silver Bullet Firearms in Wyoming, more than half the students signing up for pistol orientation classes are female.

While at the same time, our opponents tell us gun ownership is in decline, and gun culture on the wane. Let them keep denying reality. Let them continue to live in worlds of their own making. What’s slowly happening is probably the worst thing the gun control folks could fear. They’ve been wrong for a long time, but what’s happening to them now is arguably worse. They are becoming fundamentally uncool. They can keep making their mistakes and clutching their pearls, and we’ll keep on winning the culture.

13 thoughts on “Winning the Culture”

  1. Ignorance is their major power. Otherization becomes much easier if you don’t know anyone who owns guns. “Feel good” laws are easier to support if you don’t know what they acutally say and the effect if they’ve been tried before.

    As for the increase in women shooters and the supposed “decline” in gun ownership.

    For both to be true male gun owners would have to be replaced by female gun owners. IE the gender split of gun owners would be reducing even faster. Is rhat really the argument that the antis want to make?

    1. Otherization becomes easier if you THINK you don’t know anyone who owns guns. I don’t think there’s anyone in the country who really doesn’t. There are simply too many gun owners for that.

      1. Ah, that’s a stronger point.

        Indeed, one of the things the antis seem to really hate is the actual “culture”. Which is why they try to keep people from talking about guns, or socializing or having fun with them.

      2. It’s amazing how many people who “don’t own guns” forget about their Dad’s old .38 in the closet. They mean they don’t own any icky guns or that they bought themselves.

  2. 1 in 4 American women now own a gun–up 77 percent in the last seven years.

    God damn. That’s pretty massive growth. The NSSF isn’t exactly impartial, but that’s in line with my own experiences and observations. Best of all, surely they’re mostly 2.0 types who support scary looking rifles and CCW. I’d like to see further demographic breakdown, as I’m interested to see how 18-30 year olds feel about gun control. I suspect gun control will be in serious trouble once the baby boomers die off.

    1. This is in fact the case. The highest support for gun control comes from the oldest age group. This is not a slam against them, just an observation of fact. Younger demographics are much more pro-gun.

  3. “Our opponents tell us gun ownership is in decline, and gun culture on the wane.” – And in the same breath (or breathless pearl-clutching) they claim a host of other blatant falsehoods and fictions, from NRA racism to machine-gun usage, to how easy it is to buy a gun… All lies.

    1. I wonder if they’re doing more harm than good to their own cause by constantly pushing those falsehoods. For example, I think that most of them, even much of the leadership, truly believe the NRA is nothing but a front for gun companies. How can you devise effective strategies to fight the NRA when you don’t understand how they work or where their influence comes from?

      1. With the advent of the New Media (a.k.a. the Internet), their “misinterpretations” (lies) absolutely are harming their cause more than helping it. In the 80s and 90s, they controlled The Narrative; they said something false, the mainstream media repeated it, and anyone challenging it was by definition on “the fringe.”

        Now, though, anyone can fact-check, and the mainstream media has less control over the “facts” than ever. Thus, the “gun control” groups can keep pushing The Narrative and the mainstream media will keep repeating it, but they both lose credibility when the facts are easily found with a simple web search.

        That said, they’ll never shut up about it, because that would be conceding their irrelevance.

  4. Let them keep denying the facts. Really. This is not sarcastic.

    The wife and I teach new shooters along with seasoned LEOs (we don’t get much in between). For fun we pair them up. It really helps both (won’t bother with the theory why it helps both sides, but we got one or two).

    Long story short, the claim that we re not growing the gun demographic is absolute bullshit. Pure and simple. The only logical reason they would make such a claim to convince the wealthy anti-gun benefactors (aka: too removed from the real politic) to give more money (wow, they claim “success!”). Either that or they are sipping too much Kool-Aide and frankly I give them more credit than that.

    Anyone with their feet on the ground knows better, including the anti-gun ground troops. Seriously, they know they are on the losing side but tell happy lies all the same. All the demonization of guns does is make new owners more willing to vote our way – so that our way of life is more acceptable in time and they are therefore less stigmatized. It does not matter what the new demographic say in public – in private they donate cash and send new recruits our way every single week.

    They may not be vocal (yet), but Gun Culture 3.0 wants to defend themselves and they are willing to put money where it counts. And most of my recent trainees are self-proclaimed liberal Dems.

    FWIW, we don’t charge shit for our work. We even pay for ammo.

    Gun Culture 3.0: self-proclaimed liberals who have figured out that classic liberalism means they have the power over “the man”; and when it comes to self-defense they believe they are a higher power than the local constabulary.

    That is terrifying for those who are who beholden to big-government and nanny interests.

    1. Gun Culture 3.0: self-proclaimed liberals who have figured out that classic liberalism means they have the power over “the man”; and when it comes to self-defense they believe they are a higher power than the local constabulary.
      That is terrifying for those who are who beholden to big-government and nanny interests.

      Only if your “pro gun liberals” vote the issue.

      How many antigun progressives are being primaried by well-supported Blue Dog campaigns?

      I’m glad they’re learning to shoot, and the social effects are important in the long run, but it doesn’t mean jack shit to a politician until it translates to votes. If the progun liberals continue to pull the lever for people that want them in a prison or a ditch then there will be no political change. Cuomo was elected with strong support from the much vaunted pro-gun upstate in NY, for example.

      1. The interest in guns does have to come before the political action to preserve guns.

        (Culture preceding politics afterall)

        But yes eventually these pro-gun liberals have to start voting on the issue. And getting them that way is the big thing.

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