Category: Guns

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 “creepy” and “paranoid.” 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.

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,  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 intended 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.  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.

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, whose 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.