Shall Not Be Questioned

Again, I think they are misunderstanding what I’m saying. First, one must understand what a bigot is:

a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially :one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance

This might typically have racial connotations, but it doesn’t have to. Bigot successfully describes anyone who is intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, toward any group, not just toward racial minorities or ethnic groups. But let’s go back to the Brady folks:

In fact, the notion of “bigotry” is perhaps the pillar upon which the National Rifle Association itself has built its whole bogus empire.  That is: “Aren’t you mad at those coastal elites who look down their noses at you and your ‘way of life’?  You should be mad as hell.  GET MAD AS HELL AT THOSE ELITES!  Donate to us today.”

I think the funny thing is, by most people’s definition I’m one of those “coastal elites” that NRA warned you about, but even I can understand why this this rallying cry works. Because it resonates with people. It’s something that most gun owners can relate to. Why? Because we’ve all experienced that attitude at one time or another. How many times have you told people you enjoy hunting or shooting and had someone look at you as if you just told them you enjoy molesting children? How many of you have had people express shock that you were a gun owner, because you don’t seem like “that kind of person?” NRA uses that rallying cry because it works, and shouldn’t that tend to lend some credence that maybe a lot of “costal elites” carry around with them a lot of, dare I say, bigotry and prejudices about what kind of people gun owners, hunters, and shooters are?

Some adherents of this mantra have taken it to bizarre extremes, in fact, likening their position to African-Americans in the Civil Rights movement.  No, not kidding.  Look at this latest stemwinder by Joe from Idaho.

Well, both dealt with restoring or guaranteeing fundamental constitutional rights to Americans. Both are inherently part of the continuing argument over the Fourteenth Amendment, and how we apply fundamental rights in our society. They might not be struggling against evils of equal magnitude, but it’s still a civil rights struggle. It’s worth noting that even the Chicago Tribune, in it’s excellent article about Otis McDonald reports on parallels between the two:

The strategy was partly inspired by the civil rights-era work of the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall, who challenged racial segregation in the 1940s and 1950s by searching for compelling plaintiffs and using the press to build public sympathy and support.

The NAACP’s approach became the template for other reform movements, such as women’s rights in the 1970s, and was taken up by a spectrum of activists, including conservative groups that have used it to challenge affirmative action, with moderate success.

In the Chicago case, constitutional law experts say McDonald likely was chosen for another important reason. Arguments in the case center on the 14th Amendment, which says that a state may not “abridge the privileges or immunities” of citizens.

The amendment was adopted after the Civil War to protect former slaves in states that were passing laws restricting their rights and prohibiting them from owning guns. In the Heller decision, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, referred to that chapter in history, arguing that those who had opposed the disarmament of freedmen did so with the understanding that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.

That interpretation is central to the plaintiffs’ arguments in the Chicago case.

The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s wrote the book on how to do this, and we’re just following in their footsteps using the lessons they learned. Every gun owner should read “The NAACP’s Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 1925-1950” as it contains quite a lot of valuable lessons in the challenges of building a successful litigation strategy for civil rights. One can’t help but to realize how those lessons can be applied to our struggle. Is it fair to compare the magnitude of this country’s past racial sins with the fight on the part of some to eradicate the Second Amendment? I don’t think so. Racism has been far more damaging to this country and its institutions than gun control has ever been, and one could even argue that gun control has been a subset of that sin. Back to the Bradys:

Yet regardless of what NRA propaganda might have us believe, Americans are not born with guns in our hands, and the regulation of where guns can be carried; what kinds of guns should be out of civilian hands; how guns should be stored; and whether suspected terrorists, felons, fugitives, wife-beaters or the dangerously mentally ill should be screened out of the gun-buying process by the strongest possible background check, have absolutely nothing to do with “culture” or “bigotry.”

It doesn’t have to be “culture” or “bigotry,” but it often can be, and often is, and I think it would be wise for the Bradys to distance themselves from the folks, like Morford, who fit the definition to a T, just as I have, at great expense to some of my relationships in this community, spoken out against extreme and provocative positions of many of the stone throwers in the pro-gun movement. It’s one thing to argue in favor of your position. It’s quite another to strongly imply that you’re better and more enlightened than those who oppose your position. Maybe it doesn’t rise to the level of refusing to serve blacks at a coffee counter, but that doesn’t make it any more right, and it doesn’t make it any less bigoted, by the precise definition of the word.

Even the NRA is joining in the “Make fun of the Brady Campaign” fun.

The Brady Campaign’s resorting to this kind of silliness is understandable.  It was once the most influential anti-gun group in town, able to claim some of the “credit” for the temporary imposition of the federal handgun waiting period between 1994 and 1998 and the federal “assault weapon” ban between 1994 and 2004.

But in recent years it has experienced the longest losing streak in gun control history.  The waiting period has expired in favor of the instant check system.  The 1994 gun ban has expired.  The number of Right-to-Carry states has continued to rise.  The list goes on, at the federal, state and local level.  And the group’s core arguments about the Second Amendment were rejected entirely by the Supreme Court in the Heller case. President Obama even signed bills into law which included provisions allowing the carrying of firearms in national parks according to state law, and protecting the sale of surplus military ammunition components to the private sector.

I actually feel bad for them. Not so much because I’m sorry they are on their way toward political irrelevance — that’s been what this struggle has been about. It was going to be one side or the other, and obviously I’d rather it be them. But I can’t help but feel at least some empathy based on how I would feel if the roles were reversed, and it was us in their place.

I think the Brady Campaign are in a real pickle. It’s pretty obvious that the MAIG model, pushing gun control bills under the guise of anti-trafficking, and using novel methods to build political legitimacy and capital, is the likely future of gun control. The problem for the Bradys is they could never fundraise with the MAIG model, and if you can’t fundraise on it, you either need a wealthy patron (which Bloomberg and the City of New York are for MAIG), or a lot of foundation money, and foundation money for gun control is drying up.

I suspect what Dave Hardy said right after we won Heller is true; that it essentially removed from the table the primary reason Brady’s patrons supported gun control in the first place — the elimination of guns from society. Now that’s off the table. It was one thing to support an incrementalist approach when prohibition was still a possibility, it’s another thing when that’s no longer on the table.

That’s not to say gun control is going to go away as an issue, but the Brady model is fast receding into the sunset unless they come up with something new an innovative, and that allows them to raise money. What will that be? I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to find out either.

Joe Huffman notices the virtual snowball fight that I engaged with in the Bradys and brought up the issue of bigotry again. I think it’s pretty undeniable, and thinking about it, bigotry was exactly what angered me about Morford’s editorial. A commenter over at Joe’s seems surprised, and asks, “So are you saying that there is a prejudice against gun owners in the same way there was against Jews and Blacks?”

There is, and not really that specifically gun ownership, but in the culture that surrounds, or perhaps in the culture the bigot perceives surrounds it. It’s a form of cultural condescension — a belief that “we’re” better than “those people.” So in that sense it’s not all that different than prejudices against Jews of Blacks, at least in terms of the factors in human nature that drive the attitude. This is probably why I’m interested in this issue to such a degree, because I find that type of attitude revolting. In a free society, we’re all entitled to an opinion, but no one is entitled to look down on someone else because they think, look, or act differently. That’s the very definition of bigot.

I buy into Joe’s notion to a degree, because you can’t deny someone like Morford is a bigot — he is. The reluctance Joe might sense is real though. I don’t buy the comparisons to the KKK, because the KKK was about a lot more than looking down on black people, and using the political system to deny them their rights. When the anti-gun movement becomes a domestic terrorist operation — when I have anti-gun folks meddling in my personal life, trying to ostracize me from society, or trying to intimidate me into silence, I might change my mind on that. I can deal with the gun control folks looking down on me. Burning a cross on my lawn would be a considerably more serious matter, and they don’t advocate or promote anything of that evil a nature.

The other reluctance I have is that I’m not sure people can really wrap their head around around the concept, both from outside and inside the issue. Morford is an obvious bigot, but not everyone who opposes gun ownership, or favors more gun control, rises to that level or hold deep cultural prejudices. I’ve noticed more than a few times folks on our side labeling as bigots people who simply disagreed with them. I don’t think that adds to the discourse.

But fundamentally, I think Joe is right that many people, like Morford, who hold anti-gun views deeply hate gun owners and the culture that surrounds it. They are bigots by the proper definition of the word. They are better than you, you see. You will be reeducated and brought into their enlightenment. I might not agree that rises to the level of the KKK, but that’s not to say it’s not a dangerous way of thinking. Taken to an extreme, it can end up looking like this. It’s not an attitude I think should exist among reasonable people, which is why I was disappointed to see the Brady Campaign endorsing it, even if I wasn’t all that surprised.