[CAUTION: SPOILER ALERTS IN VIDEO] I’ve never seen ‘The Walking Dead’ (I seem to run into enough mindless, shambling, brain-suckers as it is) but the point of this video is clear enough. One wanna-be strongman in AMC’s zombietastic series is apparently bent on post-apocalyptic world domination. Hence the lesson drawn by the bearded alley-dweller above.
As RF is wont to say, culture eats strategy for lunch. Seeing the practical effects of gun control and civilian disarmament on TV, in movies, books, comics — wherever — outperforms out of all of the beautifully produced promo spots the NRA and other pro-2A orgs will ever be able to produce.
But wait: the media are largely owned, produced, edited, and performed by people who are, for the most part, hostile to Second Amendment civil rights. Hence the problem. And the question: given the relative potential power of a well-produced movie or TV show on non-interested and fence-sitting low information viewers, what can gun rights supporters do to get their message out there?
You’re fired.
I often wonder how figures in entertainment media reconcile the cognitive dissonance created by the juxtaposition of their beliefs about guns and the stories they tell. The left calls us “gun fetishists”, but the TV shows and movies they themselves create often treat guns as symbols of power and empowerment in an almost sexual way. The content they produce consistently portrays violence as power. No doubt there are a few anti-gun ninnies among the cast and crew of The Walking Dead, yet here they are telling a story that realizes the utility of guns in the face of tyranny and an armed and hostile enemy. Maybe it’s just a natural mechanism of narrative that forces them to view the story in more pragmatic terms than they view real life. Or maybe it’s that they know the power of violence, and simply wish to claim sole proprietorship over that power for themselves. Without personally getting their manicured hands dirty, of course.
I think the media and entertainment industries play to our weaknesses without fail. If they get you to tune-in, then they can claim that you are a constituent, and that they 1) represent your thoughts and desires; and 2) can influence (hold sway) over your thoughts and desires. This garners them power with people who will pay them to influence you.
We needed it to be the case during WWII, when they sold war bonds and a stiff upper lip. They have never forgotten that. Plus, THE MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRIES ARE ALL COMMUNIST, and in communist countries those two groups hold a little higher social standing than the peons, and they will never forget that either.
That certainly seems to be the mentality that they have, whether they as individuals are conscious of it or not.
For a good description of the relationship of celebrities to those who actually wield power, I recommend reading C.Wright Mill’s “The Power Elite”.
“there are a few anti-gun ninnies among the cast and crew of The Walking Dead”
Actually, they probably all are. Gale Anne Hurd, Executive Producer, loves gun control. Andrew Lincoln is a Brit; ’nuff said.
Norman Reedus? Here’s what he said in 2013: “I don’t feel there’s a real reason to have automatic weapons at all. I can understand the right to bear arms to some extent, but no one needs an automatic AK17 hanging in their truck. No way.”
AK17? I gots to get me one of them!
I could go on, but what would be the point?
Not in any meaningful way, not currently anyway.
The people “in charge” of the mainstream media, movies, TV, News, Companies, etc, have a vested interest in keeping the progressive narrative alive. They are fighting hard to keep anything favorable to American values, Constitutional protections and personal responsibility from becoming “popular”. This latest “Fake News” bullcrap the MSM are pulling is illustrative of this. How do you get a message out when the Axis owns the airwaves? How do we liberate ourselves from the oppression of those who have the means and will to degrade and discredit what this country was founded upon? Why are those who enshrine The Constitution, personal freedoms, American values, automatically presumed to be extremist, second class neanderthals not worthy of a recognition.
. . . and biology trumps culture. Little girls play with dolls, boys with weapons. Moreover, Hollywood and the game industry are digging in the gun culture as fast as they try to fill-in the hole. The war on guns is one which they can’t – ultimately – win.
Our problem is to organize around themes that promote the gun culture as a positive one rather than a negative. And, that isn’t hard to do. There will always be: a war; criminals; a dominating government; . . . threatening us. The political scene will always be one of turn-over of faction. The only practical solution humanity has ever found is to be forearmed for whatever event will inevitably re-occur.
Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama and soon Trump. Now liberals are buying guns to protect themselves against . . . Trump! Let’s remind them; it wasn’t so long ago that they were complaining about Bush the 43’rd and Bush the 41’st. Before them, Reagan; before him, Nixon.
Who among us is most vulnerable to crime? Isn’t it our Black brethren in the inner city? They need not be looking over their shoulders for the KKK in white sheets. Now, they need to be on the look-out for black-on-black crime.
No one is safe from Islamic terrorists; or crazies of any stripe.
It’s time we have a real two-way conversation about the role of guns in our society; only now, the chair is occupied by a CCP holder.
What we have to do is gather together around those themes we can agree upon. No magazine limits. No “May-Issue” carry. No GFZs that are not secured by the proprietor (e.g., courts, jails are secured). The data on suicides, homicides and accidents are distinct phenomena that call for different solutions. We WILL vote; and we expect our legislators to protect our rights.
We need to govern our own rhetoric; we need to rise to the occasion so as to assure the public that we, the PotG, are the adults in the conversation. We need to call-out the Alinsky tactics of the Antis without damning our case by using these tactics ourselves.
If you want to effectively communicate your message, it helps if you speak the language that the other person speaks. I don’t care how eloquent your argument is, if you’re making your case in French and the other person speaks only Portuguese, you aren’t going to be effective, period.
So stop it with “gun rights” – guns don’t have rights, people do. Start calling it “defense rights.” And if you’re saying things like “my constitutional rights trump your dead kids”, you aren’t going to be heard. You may pat yourself on the back because you’re “right”, but — you aren’t going to be heard.
If you just want to shout to the echo chamber, that’s one thing. But if, as you’re asking in this question, you want to get the message out more effectively — speak to them in language they can understand. You can chant “2nd Amendment” til you’re blue in the face, they won’t hear it. But show them an episode where it’s just painfully incredibly obvious that those who are armed will more successfully defend themselves and their own than those who aren’t (like the Walking Dead is making extremely clear) and — they might hear that.
Note that The Walking Dead has never once clamored on about “2nd Amendment” or “gun rights”. They just show what’s obviously necessary, and they play out the scenario in such a way as that anyone (no matter their political leanings or indocrination) can see what would work and what wouldn’t.
A fine comment, but let me pick an important nit. On The Walking Dead they don’t talk about the Constitution or gun rights because the entire show (except the first 1/2 hour of the pilot) happens after the total dissolution of all government and social structure and the military.
What you see on the show is roughly a portrayal of what the Anarchist’s utopia would really look like.
Good point and well taken. However what those who have been watching the series from the beginning are seeing is the reconstitution of social norms post apocalypse and what happens when an individual or group of individuals has the ballistic capacity to impose their own flavor of “order”.
Seems to me to be a great argument for personal weapons ownership.
>What you see on the show is roughly a portrayal of what the Anarchist’s utopia would really look like.
Not quite. Anarchy is the absence of centralized government, nothing more. There are sizable groups of individuals who label themselves anarchists who also foment violence and chaos in it’s name, but it doesn’t define the concept of anarchy any more true than the SJW driven “progressive” movement anointing itself with the title of “liberal” as actually being truly liberal.
Also, in the Walking Dead, there’s the fantasy element of corpses reanimating and attacking the living. Not exactly a realistic situation, though it does make for an enjoyable hour of escapism each week. I read the graphic novels, but haven’t kept up with the show since zombies are way too cliche now.
Drain the swamp
Well, today’s reality is that if you are interested in winning the cultural war, you have to have media that supports your agenda. Given that reality, my advice would be to create media outlets that report on DGUs and positive gun cultural messages like the NRA does today and then distribute those stories through the owned media outlets that are controlled by pro-gun/pro-liberty enthusiasts, as well as other friendly media sources and also send the story links simultaneously to the alphabet-soup networks and other hostile media channels every time one is written.
We can then advertise our media on their media networks to get the word out even more. If money is the issue, then this pro-liberty group should link up with other pro-liberty minded existing media outlets to sponsor the new media channels.
Eventually, if this is successful even the old media will be forced to show more of the stories because their audiences will eventually demand it.
Of course the strategy is expensive, and it will only work to a point because you are never going to move hard-core statists around to your way of thinking, but this seems to me to be the best way to go about the problem if people are willing to fund it. Simultaneously, of course, we need to continue to push for political solutions, sponsor pro-Liberty bills and candidates and to fix the Supreme Court.
Don’t boycott Hollywood — instead, watch movies and TV shows and play games that feature lots and lots of guns.
Because Hollywood loves money, they’ll keep on pumping out stories that feature good guys protecting good people by using guns to kill bad guys. And because stories are more powerful than nagging, they’ll constantly be undermining their own political ideology. Shooting themselves in the foot, as it were.
USE ACTUAL U.S. HISTORY
At nearly the same time (simultaneously, but over the international date line so on 12-08-1943) that Pearl Harbor, HI, was being bombed, the Japanese attacked Wake Island in their confirmed belief that it was cut-off from support. The U.S. MARINES stationed there, supported by U.S. civilian construction contractors (and some indigenous people) had the ONLY successful repulsion of an amphibious attack of WWII (there were more than 3 major assaults), and the MARINES and contractors managed to sink several ships. Calls for help were ignored as all help went to Pearl, and 20+ days later, the island finally fell.
The civilian contractors stationed on Wake
WERE “UNARMED” BECAUSE THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE THOUGHT THAT IT WOULD PREVENT THE ENEMY FROM TREATING THEM AS ENEMY COMBATANTS.
Japan removed ALL persons on the island to internment camps in Japan except for 100 who were essentially worked to death to rebuild the island. When it appeared that the U.S. would retake Wake, 98 of the remaining 99 were killed by firing squad, one escaped to carve 98 US PW 5-10-43 (“98 U.S. Prisoners of War [killed] May 10, 1943”) on a rock near the water, before also being captured and killed.
The Department of Defense, after the aftermath on Wake, created military trained and heavily armed Naval Construction Battalions (CBs) (SEABEES), and our fight song (march) recites And we promise to remember, the 7th of December NOT because of Pearl Harbor (also a day of infamy) but because of the U.S. civilians that fought and died like dogs on U.S. soil.
HOORAH SEABEES
Never Forget
Correction – 12-08-1941
We don’t have a gun problem. We have a liberal problem. Keep taking down the liberals, as has been occurring as of late, and everything else takes care of itself.
+
Like the Sith, they never go away, and unlike the Sith, there are millions of them, and all of the POS (D) voters out there that were ready to give us more of the same or worse will all get yours in hell eventually.
I cannot overstate how important these two critical elements are for reaching the people effectively:
(1) Any message has to be short and poignant.
(2) Any message has to hit the listener hard on an emotional level.
The unfortunate reality is that many people have a 10 second attention span. And even if someone has a longer attention span, many people lack the motivation to invest any serious amount of time/energy to learn the merits of owning firearms. Thus my imperative that any message be short and poignant.
The other unfortunate reality is that many people (about half give-or-take) do not operate on reality, facts, and logic. Rather, they operate on altruism, fantasy, and emotion. We will not reach those people with facts or logic. We can only reach them with emotion. Thus my imperative that any message hit the listener hard on an emotional level.
We absolutely positively MUST create our message within that framework if we want to impact our culture.
Now that we understand our constraints, we should get down to the business of crafting effective messaging.
I will let other creative types suggest short, poignant, and emotionally hard hitting messages.
My personal favorite message to start the conversation, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
And follow that up with something like, “Why give a violent attacker free reign to terrorize and brutalize you during those minutes?”
Finally, end with something like, “Wouldn’t you much rather feel relieved to know that you immediately stopped your attacker with a firearm?”
This message is short and to the point and hits emotionally.
When you take a new shooter to the range and they use your guns (especially if they’re fence-sitters or anti-gun but at least open to trying it out), make sure to tell them that simply letting them use your gun is essentially prohibited in “universal background check” states. Or otherwise gently politicize the range session/lesson.
Culture eats strategy for lunch, and I would argue that the gun-grabbing leftists in the media and government are currently trying to devise a strategy to battle a culture that is changing, in our favor. I would love to be a fly on the wall at a DNC meeting, just to see the fear in their eyes.
John Lott recently estimated that there are 15 million people in the U.S. with gun carry permits. Gus sales (including scary black rifles) continue to set records, even after the recent election, when the pro-2A presidential candidate defeated the candidate who was openly hostile to 2A. Many of those unexpected Trump votes came from gun owners.
California notwithstanding, the culture momentum is definitely in our favor. It remains to be seen how long it will take for those in the left-wing echo chambers to realize that. Here’s hoping they continue to discount the influence of gun owners and cling to their belief that the country is driven by hatred of anything non-white and non-Christian.
If you haven’t seen TWD you should check it out by starting with episode 1 on Netflix. Don’t just catch a couple current episodes. Also, it is a TV series created from a previously completed long-running series of graphic comic books, though they have taken great liberties in re-writing it.
While the creators take great care to give the show spectacular zombie scenes, usually the zombies are rather wimpy compared to other shows in the genre. But the heart of the show IMHO is as an example of the total breakdown of government and social structure.
The core concept of the show came from H.G. Wells “The Shape of Things to Come,” a book that appears in Season 5, Ep. 5 in Eugene’s hands. The book published in 1933 envisions a WWII with bio warfare that results in zombies and total social breakdown. Wells himself was an active socialist and advocate of a One World government with planned economy run by a technocrat elite similar to the Woodrow Wilson notion. As toxic as that is, it IS the opposite of what we see in TWD.
New issue(#161) just came out today.
I wonder how many ultra leftists will interpret the Negan/TWD situation as “no one should have guns” rather than a cautionary note that one becomes powerless upon surrendering them.
US gun orgs, and TTAG, are good at pointing out the problems with gun control in other countries (UK, Canada, Australia, etc). The anti-gun attitudes in these nations are much stronger than in the US- including social ones. The stigma attached to being a gun owner can be very unpleasant in many places. But even so, we see an increase in gun ownership and in the number of gun owners in all these countries- even approaching record highs since the big anti-gun pushes in the mid/late 90s.
One thing that could help is for those gun orgs to spend a bit of money to do some research. What exactly is happening that despite all those restrictions, despite that strongly anti-gun attitude- why are more and more people getting licenses and buying firearms (in the UK, Australia, Canada, etc)? By doing a comparison from the research, they may be able to determine some common threads- and then use that for targeting a new strategy.
But as for culture- one of the biggest problems is gatekeepers. For one example- the publishing industry is notorious for this. There are a lot of good writers crafting pro-freedom stories (not polemics, just interesting tales that don’t scream “gunz r bad, ‘kay” over and over again). What is lacking is some way to get past editors who don’t like the content.A push for greater support of conservative media would cost about the same as the average think-tank, and produce far better results.
And thanks to the rise of easily-accessible media development, we’re seeing a lot of individuals standing up and doing their own projects. A lot of it isn’t great, but there are some real gems that have emerged- but they’re all doing it seemingly under their own power. It’s ridiculous that Ian from Forgotten Weapons, Hickok45, the team at C&Rsenal, or many others don’t have greater support from the big gun orgs. Yes, they aren’t on TV, but that underestimates their reach and accessibility (I mean, a Youtube channel about obscure firearms prototypes gets millions of views). They bring new shooters into the fold.
“RF is wont to say, culture eats strategy for lunch.”
Culture doesn’t bleed, change occurs when it does.
To Mr. Zimmerman’s point, there was a brief run of a reality TV show called Panic 911. To my surprise there were several episodes featuring defensive gun use by residents defending their homes and lives.
The last episode I remember was a single mom with a 10 – 12 year old daughter who came home from school 2 or 3 hours before mom got home. The home was outside city limits by 20 minutes and a swarthy character had been seen lurking in the area. Mom had a revolver in a drawer and showed her daughter where it was and how to use it, only if someone tried to break in. In the 911 call the girl ends up shooting the meth crazed joker in the shoulder after he broke into the house and bedroom. He was later caught by police in stable condition.
This case was edgy because of the of the armed young child. Can such content survive on TV? It doesn’t seem likely.
That show “911” on A & E was cancelled quickly. The last episode I saw was the case of a single mother living in an apartment complex in San Diego. It was TWENTY SIX (26) minutes of sheer terror for her and her toddler son as she stayed on the phone with the 911 operator the whole time while a home invader attempted to, then gained access to her apartment and began raping her. She DID own a firearm, retreated to her bedroom where the handgun was located but the key to the locked case was in her pocketbook in the living room. Her complex, a massive one, resulted in police responding to a building 1/4 mile away on the complete other side of the development. The 911 operator, a female, was a moron who cautioned the victim AGAINST using her firearm in self-defense, police did eventually arrive and catch the perp, a career criminal, as he was atop the woman raping her in front of her son. That victim was left bloodied not only from fighting off her attacker but her hands were sliced open and mangled from trying to pry the plastic case containing her handgun open. If anything that singular episode was a commercial for the 2nd Amendment and self-defense with a firearm with the bonus of the “do’s and don’t’s” of gun ownership..,
Personally thought the NRA running CIVIL RIGHTS ads was great…don’t give a rat’sazz about a fictional TV show.
Study the Shannon Watts playbook. Think about it: She really doesn’t actually have a dog in the fight but yet she never goes away and always has some clever (but aggravating) talking point. Maybe the POTG could rent her for a year or two and get smart on the PR.
You summarized Ms. Watts perfectly. She has no skin in the game, and she is for rent. But you give her too much credit. Bloomy benefactor is the only reason anyone has heard of her.
In point of fact, I think gun culture’s narrative is—and has been for a long time—doing just fine. It’s the anti-gun narrative that is in deep trouble. I first got a idea of the reach of the gun-culture’s narrative about a decade ago when the gun-controllers were making one of their pushes for more gun-control. In response, I had called the NRA to join (my first time) and was surprised to find that the number of people calling to join was so huge that they were overwhelming the NRA’s order taking capacity. I simply couldn’t get through to purchase a membership.
Fast forward to Sandy Hook. Immediately after the tragedy, before the blood of the innocent children had even dried, gun-controllers were absolutely salivating at their prospects of finally, FINALLY, being handed an issue on which to establish more gun-control laws. It was at that critical point that Wayne La Pierre stepped onto the national state and made his famous “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” statement. That single iconic statement of gun-rights versus gun-control by itself shifted the polar-axis of the gun control debate by instantaneously removing the gun-control movement’s the-fewer-guns-we-have-the-better moral argument. Deprived of it’s principal moral imperative, the gun-control movement has never been the same.
Simply put, La Pierre’s and the NRA’s comment resonated with the American public in ways that the cosmopolite gun-control argument could not. After Sandy-Hook gun-sales and ammo sales reached historic heights as Americans, instead of abandoning gun ownership as gun-controllers anticipated, began arming themselves. When in crisis Americans arm themselves and prepare to fight back. This is a part of our cultural ethos, something that is reflected in our history and is deeply rooted in our popular culture.
One of the ironies of the gun-control issue is that Hollwood produces gun-centric movies which prove to be enormously successful even while their producers and actors decry “gun-violence” and call for ever more restrictive laws. They make those movies because their desire to be successful and to make money is stronger their moral and political views about gun-ownership. Those movies sell because they reflect our historical and cultural relationship to guns. When you put all this together, I think it gives us a pretty good indication that our gun-rights narrative carries a lot more weight with average Americans than the gun-control narrative.
I studied Sociology in school. One of the most powerful things we learned about were sub- and counter-cultures- examples: hippies, Trekkies, military/veterans, ‘gun nuts’, etc- everyone is weird in their own way and we all want to be accepted by a group or family. That’s where these groups come in. These movements take root and speak to the beliefs of those who feel left out in whole or part by the culture at large. Whether real or imagined, Conservatives feel ignored, left out, and marginalized daily. I know I do. So what now? Step 1- keep doing what we do. Write about guns, gun culture, shooting, protection, training, self-defense, etc. to ensure we stay abreast.
Step 2- spread the word. Talk about it. Invite un-initiated and initiated folks alike. Teach and educate those who are ignorant or afraid. Knowledge is power.
Step 3- stay vigilant and proactive. Unless we’re in a position to set up our own communications network, which with the current state of technology and its availability we very much can be, this will largely remain a home-grown grassroots-style movement. Albeit one with enormous membership and power if we’re able to organize it and bring it together.
Step 4- organize. We either fall in on an existing group or create a new one to encompass the existing groups, or both. We like to say that it’s nigh impossible for our government to strip us of our weapons due to sheer numbers. Imagine if those numbers were arrayed as a single unit with a common purpose. Assuming there are only 100million firearms in the US and those are owned by one person each, that’s 100million firearms owners. That is a massive group. It’s 20 times the number of personnel in our entire military. Imagine what could be accomplished if 1/3 of this nation-almost the total number of voters in the 2016 election- stood up simultaneously and made declaration with one voice. It would be deafening, metaphorically speaking.
The Walking Dead?
Those damn Hollyweirds killed off the only non-cuck and Alpha-male in the cast, Abraham, in the season opener.
Maybe we need to remake the Death Wish movie series.
Let’s have Bronson’s replacement clean up Chicago…
The answer is something you’re overlooking:
The answer isn’t in the media. It’s at you local gun range. If the media was as powerful as some people give them credit for the 2A would have been completely repealed decades ago.
I went to college with a ton of rich kids. They mostly came from the Western suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. 95% never owned a BB gun. Their parents were anti-gun. Their grand-parents were anti-gun. Their aunts and uncles were anti-gun. Their church was anti-gun. Hell, even their dogs and cats were anti-gun. The kids themselves were anti-gun.
Due to the fact that I didn’t hide my gun ownership/love over the course of my time in college dozens of these kids, who had met me and discovered that I wasn’t a raving psycho (debatable) who killed children and regularly feasted on kittens, approached me sheepishly and asked “Is it true you own a gun?”. My response was always the same “Yes, multiple guns. Why, do you want to go shooting?” (unless I was shitfaced, in which case I might have slurred/rambled a bit) to which the response was a giant smile and an enthusiastic “Yes!!!!!!” every single time. So I took them shooting.
After their first range trip, the first question when stepping off the range was always some variation of “So, how do I buy a gun for myself? Like, what licenses do I need?”. These days 85% of those people now have what the media would call an “arsenal” of their own and, with one exception (one of my crazy ex’s), they all own at least one gun.
Start them with a .22 pistol and in an hour you’ll have someone blasting away with your AR (unless you’re one of those questionable and possibly undercover commie AK weirdos, then they’ll be merrily blasting away with an AK) and laughing like a maniac. They’ll be talking to other people on the range and they’ll walk away realizing that gun owners aren’t lunatics but rather that gun owners are normal people with fucking awesome toys.
As a communications consultant who has taught the subject at the undergrad and grad level, here’s, my take: Communications is about three things: Media, message and audience. You get all those sync’ed up and deliver effectively and you get your message across.
Media is becoming less and less of a problem. We have to stop whining about “the liberal media.” With the internet, they can’t keep us from getting any message we want to any audience we want or calling them on their BS. Dick Cheney was asked by the press the other day about Trump’s use of Twitter and YouTube. Cheney’s response? “It shows we don’t need you guys anymore.”
Message is our biggest issue. I don’t see that we have one. Or even three. Or five. We have almost as many messages as we have gun owners. . You can’t get that many messages across. And the carriers of the messages we do have seem to have burned their credibility with the public.
We have the crowd that just wants to chant, “…shall not be infringed.” While I agree with that message, I also have to say it is completely ineffective in this day and age. Most people don’t know or care what the Constitution says and at least two candidates in this last election, one from each party, mentioned the fantasy of having new Constitutional Convention. You have the prepping message, which is a great idea, but the proponents ruin their credibility coming across as tinfoil hats. You have the “self defense, great equalizer” message, which is great, but the people who spout it sound and act like wannabe urban gunfighters just hoping for a showdown in the streets, stirring up people’s worst fears. Then there is the NRA, whose messages should all be the voice of reason, but sound more like they just want to keep the argument going to keep dues coming in.
So the first step is getting one clear message we can all get behind. I has to be something as clear as “Make America Great Again.” It can have supporting messages, everyone can get in on the act, but they have to all talk and act the part. We can be audacious and even a little offensive if we need to, but we have to be united in going for the hearts and minds. We need to turn perceptions around. We are for law and order, public safety and protection of the weak. We are for freedom of all kinds, for all law abiding people, as provided by the Constitution. We are for a strong nation, with everyone ready to pitch in to help. Being armed is being prepared and that is everyone’s civic duty. You get the drift. Maybe “Make America Strong Again” would work if we sell it well enough.
Finally, audience. Whether you like Trump or not, he figured that one out. There is a huge untapped audience out there that will rise to the occasion with the right leadership. We spend too much time talking to each other and arguing against the opposition, both completely ineffective. It’s the huge majority in the middle, who are not yet sure where they stand on gun rights that we need to go after.
Fear.
Fear of being left out. (FOBLO)
They use emotion, we need to start using emotion. Factual arguments with facts don’t work. We’ve been fighting “emotion” with “facts” for too long. It’s time to take the gloves off and appeal to people’s fears and emotions, just as the disarmers do.
No emotion you convey through text, video or photo ads will convey the emotion of holding a gun you just fired.
As I said above: the answer isn’t in the media, it’s at your local range.
I agree we have to use emotions more than facts. I have to opine, though that the “fear of being left out” is probably not the most effective emotion to tap in to. I think the fear of not being able to defend yourself is more in the right direction.
I think the range idea is a great one. Spot on. But we need some marketing push to get people to the range and to get people to invite people to the range. Perhaps some nationwide range promotions, like a free quickie first time pistol course, complete with a rental gun and ammo. My daughter got something like that for almost nothing on Groupon. It would be good for the ranges too. A lot of those people will come back.
Two words:
Open Carry
One thing that gun owners/gun rights folks can due is be more civil. When I read many posts here and then switch to the anti gunner blogs, I can hardly tell the difference in the TONE of the comments.
Both sides call the other side ugly names and make fun of them. That only inflames the other side and they dig in their heals. And the middle ground, the undecided or no skin in the game folks tune out because of the childish playground tantrums of both sides.
So, you asked what could be done. This would be a place to start that would actually do some good with the undecided.
I predict a storm of negative response to this post. Prove me wrong.
Grumpy
I have a storming, negative response to your post. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Seriously, you are spot on. I think we need to be aggressive in our rhetoric, even accusatory where it’s warranted, but we need to take the high road with tone. We need to get away from the snarky comments. I think a great example is the head of the VCDL, Phil Van Cleave. He stumbled a few times in the media when he first got in the public eye, but I have seen him in action recently, up close and personal with anti-gunners and he strikes this great balance between holding a hard line on the topic, but being smooth as silk with the person. He may not convert every anti-gunner, but none of them walk away disliking him as a person.
The left’s strategy has been to create a culture of feeling guilty about exercising your natural rights. Maybe the message should be one of making people feel guilty about NOT exercising your natural rights.
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