TTAG reader Jim Bullock posted the following comment underneath Gun Control Advocates Playbook Leaked.
That’s a very solid set of messaging principles. We should adopt them. Not only will the principles work, using their own tactics against them will make the un-gunners crazy mad. The other thing is you gotta hone the replies, and practice delivering them. So, below is me practicing, Rev 1.0.
ALWAYS FOCUS ON EMOTIONAL AND VALUE-DRIVEN ARGUMENTS ABOUT GUN VIOLENCE, NOT THE POLITICAL FOOD FIGHT IN WASHINGTON OR WONKY STATISTICS.
So the terror of being defenseless is OK? When did we decide that anyone who wants to can take our stuff, beat us senseless or kill us? Worse, this is taking from the many for the misdeeds of a few – unbalanced, often medicated, and throwing signs of being trouble waiting to happen, often for years. These people should have been addressed long before they took up a gun . . .
TELL STORIES WITH IMAGES AND FEELINGS.
You know, my munchkin-sized mother living in her town’s cul-de-sac of widows shouldn’t be afraid when some young guy pauses at the end of her driveway, and my sister shouldn’t have only hope when a hopped-up, recently released career criminal walks up hers, past the dogs and the orders to leave. I don’t want to walk into either of their homes to find what’s left of them, vs. them.
We shouldn’t be at the mercy of predators who are willing to take what they want. Don’t my mother & sister – one old & frail, neither much of a physical threat – deserve to be able to protect themselves?
Should the awful happen, what do we want their last moments to be?
This mother in had a choice, because she had a gun. After she hid herself and her kids in a closet, after the predators weren’t satisfied with trashing her place, after they broke down the closet door, after facing a gun was no deterrent, she had a choice, other than watching her kids die.
Should the awful happen, I’d rather my indomitable mother had something other than resignation and endurance to choose from. Will isn’t enough.
CLAIM MORAL AUTHORITY AND THE MANTLE OF FREEDOM.
Who speaks for the victims? The weak? The tired? The simply sane? Are we free when we live on sufferance, subject to the whims of any predator who would own us? Women in particular are free, not to be used, then discarded or killed. How dare anyone take that away from them.
The question, really, is who’s life do we value, the predator or the would-be victim?
EMPHASIZE THAT EXTRAORDINARILY DANGEROUS, MILITARY-STYLE WEAPONS ARE NOW WITHIN EASY REACH ACROSS AMERICA.
Unfortunately, the weapons law enforcement insist they need for their safety are not available to citizens in the face of home invasions and drug cartels. As one example, the M-4 & it’s semi-automatic derivatives has been called by homeland security “an ideal personal defense weapon.” (Check that quote – ed.)
Ideal why? They are controllable & accurate. Criminals don’t use them much because they are expensive, and hard to conceal. So, banning these “military style” weapons only makes innocent citizens more vulnerable.
It’s ridiculous to deny homeowners, property owners, and working folks access to these tools based on features that make them more controllable and accurate – better stocks, better grips, recoil-management features, etc.
The only reason I can see for such legislation, since it did nothing to reduce violence or crime the last time, is wanting honest people who are assaulted to die when they don’t have to. That can’t be it, but there’s no sense in anything else they’ve said yet.
EMPHASIZE THAT AMERICA HAS WEAK GUN LAWS AND DON’T ASSUME THAT PEOPLE KNOW THAT.
There are a great many gun laws in America. While many are as silly as “You can’t eat peanuts in church” some have some use.
While most gun laws are state and local, the overriding national, federal laws are these:
– Commercial sales must be checked vs. a national database of people prohibited from owning firearms. This didn’t stop any of the recent tragedies, but it’s something.
– Gun vendors are licensed and monitored by the ATF. Vendors are on the lookout for questionable purchases, reporting them to the ATF. It seems hard to shut down a few, bad vendors, and the ATF itself sometimes requires questionable behavior. (Multiple vendors questioned the “straw purchases” that stocked the “Fast and Furious” pipeline to Mexican drug cartels. The ATF said make the sales.)
– A great many firearms and accessories are restricted, to he point of being forbidden without actually saying “forbidden” in the laws. THERE ARE NO MILITARY STYLE “ASSAULT RIFLES” AVAILABLE FOR CASUAL PURCHASE IN THE US, for example.
Of course some countries – Switzerland, for example – put actual military weapons in every home, to no great harm. Indeed, in the US, some 200 million+ firearms in over 80% of households are used to no harm every day.
CHALLENGE THE NRA ON YOUR TERMS, NOT THEIRS.
/meta Always challenge the other guy on your terms.
Also, note “the NRA.”
“Well, the 100 million or so gun owners in the US have some positions as well…”
Why does the criminal have darker skin? Is this site racist or something? /sarc_off
I couldn’t tell since I’m blinded by the light. I’m wearing sunglasses while browsing it.
Yes, yes. Working on it.
Yeah, bright red and white is great for my motorcycle jacket, not so great for a website.
He’s blonde though, so it’s probably just a surfer tan.
If one looks hard enough, “racsim” can be found in almost ANYTHING.
brown paper bags come to mind.
The criminal is also wearing a black hoodie sweater very similar to the one worn by trayvon martian. Don’t think it was intentional, but just thought it was funny that the artist picked a black hoodie when trying to depict a character that people would immediately correlate with a criminal. Sorry to bring up trayvon, as I know most are tired of talking about it.
Newsash: criminals wear dark hoodies a jeans. A lot.
Well yeah, agreed. Just thought is was interesting considering the controversy and hoopla that was the Halloween hoodie campaign, and the million hoodies for Trayvon trying to convince people not to stereotype people who wear hoodies like this artist chose to do. Personally, I still think a dude walking down the street at night wearing a dark hoodie with the hood up looks like a person up to no good, regardless of their skin color. But of course I wouldn’t go following them either.
If they swapped hats, the one on the right would look like Merle Haggard.
I support anything that will set the controllers back on their heels. Asses is better. And the best way is mirroring – using their own tactics against them, which is a martial arts concept. Let’s DO it!
And feel free to use videos like this one for our side’s emotional appeal:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=6df_1375329655
Seriously, what kind of animal opens the door for an elderly handicapped woman, only to turn around and rear-naked choke her and steal her possessions? Really? Any woman from Moms Demand Action is just one mugging away from switching her entire worldview. Unicorns do not exists. The male homosapien is the most dangerous wild animal on this planet. Prepare accordingly.
Or the video of that home invader savagely beating a woman in front of her child from a few weeks ago.
I’ve had four coworkers ask me about buying a gun and gun training, because their wives saw that video and want guns now.
Don’t forget Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Namely, ridicule kills.
And, unlike much of what Alinsky preaches, we can use ridicule and remain moral. That, and so many of the grabbers positions are so ridiculous that it’s easy, too.
We really do need to understand Old Saul’s prescriptions, to shut them down even if we won’t use them.
“Rules for Radicals” is a cheap paperback, and I think online here and there as well. FAIR WARNING – what has been seen cannot be unseen. Read these and you’ll see the manipulations all around you.
As much as we want to take the high road in matter of political discourse I can not beleive it to be a winning strategy for the peolpe of the gun.
Like anything political we simply can not afford to loose this fight. As such, it is readily aparent to us all that we must in fact stoop to there level. We need not drop all sense of civility. The facts are plainly on our side, however to ignore the oponents game plan, and tactics, leaves us at a tremendous disadvantage.
You have to win playing the same game or you didn’t win at all. We can win the fact-finding game all day long but they keep playing the emotional appeal game and for some it works. We need to win not only by proving our side is right but also their side is wrong.
I’ve heard of 911 call recordings of victims being attacked while they are waiting for the police. I can’t find any at the moment. Anyone have a lead on something like that?
I think this is one of the worst ones. The woman calls 911 and ends up getting raped on the phone while the 5-0 are on their way to assist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwut6UFJfoQ
One thing that sickens me is the use of the words ‘what are the chances’. I’ve been struck twice by people hyped up on drugs/trying to escape from a crime scene. Both times were unwarranted as I was not involved or trying to remove myself from an area. They were both in non-threatening areas (one a shaved ice place — where an off duty police officer helped the assailants by disarming a friend protecting me while on the ground detaining the assailant before having my face punted like a football by one of his cronies — and the other a guarded, by local police, function). Don’t forget, the only one you can trust to protect yourself properly is you.
Oops, this is the correct video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnkDtgpFP44
These Wall Street-funded anti-gun groups would happily strip away a woman’s right to choose how she defends herself. By the time police get to the crime scene, the woman is usually already raped or dead. Nice work, Bloomberg.
Play up the class warfare theme as well.
I think there is huge potential in this^! Point out how ALL the grabbers have armed security details but then want us ‘poor’ people to be defenseless. That whole 1% thing was working for a while for the lefties, lets take that meme back. The real 1% is the one that has armed guards while arguing that we shouldn’t be armed for our own defense.
Well, I didn’t expect *that.* Flattered and honored, I am, none the less.
I might have edited a tad better & ideally each point would have phrase, sentence and story forms with the references ready at hand.
The hardest part for me about using their tactics is, frankly, going there.
It’s funny that it’s some sort of scandal that anti-gun groups are using the same sort of messaging tactics that every political advocacy group and candidate uses. Of course you appeal to emotions. Facts and numbers are boring, and nobody believes them anyway. Picture every TV debate show ever – both sides quote a bunch of facts and stats and then call each other liars.
I’d like to see the pro-gun side put out more effective messaging – not just about fear, but about empowerment. I think the voices of people, especially women, who have been victims and subsequently chosen to arm themselves would be incredibly effective. I was struck by all the cogent arguments in response http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/08/daniel-zimmerman/question-of-the-day-why-an-ar-over-a-pistol-or-shotgun/#more-246633 .
I’d like to see more of this, less of Chief Kessler surrounded by bearded thugs.
I’m thinking of a series of women fading from one to the next saying “I wasn’t raped”.
Then indicating in each case how the woman used her firearm to ward off, wound or kill her attacker, thus preventing the rape. Follow with statistics on recidivism among rapists (horrifically high) and the appropriate stats on the average number of rapes a predatory (stranger) rapists commit.
At the end I’d like to see the stat on the % of successful rapes against those with CCW’s who were actually carrying Vs those with no weapon and or no permit up on the screen.
And how many rapes were prevented by police…
Roll it up and hit them over the nose with it. Don’t forget to rub their noses in any offending mess they made.
Uh, yeah, but try not to be a dick about it. Know what I mean?
Didnt you guys know that minorities have used the SYG law in Florida near 70% of the time, so by repealing this, you, a leader in the black community are saying that you want more coloured victims not to be able to defend themselves, uh what gives, we thought you were for minority rights?
While I found the guide interesting, my first thought after completing it was: is this for real? Would the antis really put these lame tactics into an accessible format. I have to say that I was reminded of “The Protocols of Zion”, a “Jews control the world” diatribe that was later proven (to the non-Arab world anyway) to be a complete fabrication.
Still, if this is the best the anti-rights people have got, it seems that we pro-rights folks can beat them.
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