Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Losing Their Religion
Over at Chronicles, Dan Gifford has a tremendous article about the cultural disconnect between gun owners and the shapers and influencers of modern society. Here’s a sample, but read the whole thing, it’s really worth your while.
America’s almost entirely liberal chattering class has for years undermined the fundamental right to keep and bear arms by creating false metaphors based on academic frauds and emotionally charged language. Disseminated through pop culture, these pejorative factoids are now ostensibly unshakable. And unfortunately, the ability of the average Second Amendment defender to reject the chatterers’ use of the negative term “gun lobby” has been woefully insufficient because the typical Second Amendment defender tends to be a literalist who is disconnected from popular culture.
The cultural gulf between gun owners and those who favor civilian disarmament is huge, and right now, it’s not getting any smaller. The chattering classes in the Northeast are amazed when “Duck Dynasty” or The Passion of the Christ become hits, and then they attempt to capitalize on that success with tone-deaf efforts such as the Noah movie and similar attempts to speak the language of a country they’ve never been to.
By that same token, we on the right incessantly mock the excesses of left-liberal culture. The antics of today’s social justice warriors and the ongoing confusion over self-declared genders (and even races) provide plenty of grist for right-wing humor mills.
We don’t understand their culture, and they don’t understand ours. However, just as there are distinctly religious elements to “our” culture, there are religious elements to “their” culture, and those elements are becoming more noticeable all the time.
This changes the equation. Gun culture, as the Gifford article notes, tends to frame arguments in terms of a left-brained, literalist world view, while the anti-gun forces, by their own admission, use emotion. We’ve known that for years now, but we’ve not done a good job fighting back, as we lack the mental framework needed to create a strategy to counter an emotional appeal.
However, we do know how to counter a religion that’s encroaching on our territory. We need to start thinking in terms of proselytization, not rationalization. We need to talk about the how wonderful it is to respect individuals for who they are, without wondering whether the tacos we’re eating are appropriating someone else’s culture. We need to take them to gun range and go shooting with them, because, as I’ve said before, guns are the gateway drug to freedom.
In short, we need to have fun.
Andrew Breitbart opened the door to this with his “happy warrior” mentality, and in some ways, Milo (and others) are picking up the banner and continuing to lead the charge. As a Facebook friend of mine once said, in a culture war, never bet against the side that’s having more fun. We need to show the world that conservative ideals are fun, and expose liberals as the Neo-Puritans they really are.
Published in Guns
I’m not so sure. There have been successful gun confiscations in similar countries, like Australia. Correct?
Gun owners are generally willing to use their firearms on burglars and other assailants. Many would not be willing to turn them on police officers following a tyrannical but “lawful” (though unConstitutional, so not truly lawful) order. Kill the burglar and you don’t have to worry about a team of burglars invading your property the next day. But kill a government official and you live under threat of a SWAT team forever after… even discounting any reluctance of making an otherwise respectable officer pay the ultimate price for following grossly unjust orders (under threats).
If Democrats ever do try to confiscate weapons en masse, an immediate outbreak of civil war is not guaranteed. As with non-violent civil disobedience, refusal only blocks unjust orders if that refusal is echoed by thousands or millions of sympathizers. It’s not so hard to lock up a few people at a time.
All at once would dissolve into chaos. People would snip police. Heck, a lot of police would just refuse. Not going to happen.
And down under? They started with less and still did not get them all.
I hope you’re right, but if they federalize gun confiscation and use picked men to confiscate, then they only need to go to the homes of a few crazies, egg the gun owner until he acts predictably insane and then they use that as an excuse to massacre the entire family, and suddenly the vast majority will act to protect their family by surrendering their weapons. Terror works.
Ruby Ridge was just such an operation, as was Waco. It didn’t work then but it will work someday if we are not vigilant. Clinton’s take over of healthcare didn’t work back then either and now we can’t get rid of it.
Those are both single cases. To take away the guns, it will require going house to house and searching them. There is no other way. American gun owners will not just turn their guns in. Heck, many of the guns are not even known to the Feds. Door to Door searches of homes to remove guns will require either massive violations of the law, changes in the law, or massive numbers of warrents. It will all require an armed citizenry to sit back and ignore it is happening. Based on the past, I do not think it will happen.
I do not know where you live, but I can tell you, across the South, The Man is not going to be able to collect firearms without sparking Civil War II: This time it’s Personal.
And again, Down Under, they did not get them all. There are as many guns in private hands as there are people. There is no way, no way, for the Feds to take over 300 million guns out of circulation. We are more likely to be able to deport 11 million people than confiscate 300 million guns.
The issue is not the next Ruby Ridge. The issue is Ruby Ridge after Ruby Ridge. And ask yourself this: If people are willing to protest with masks over imagined attacks on their freedom, what is to stop masked snipers from shooting the Feds in the back while they try to assault yet another home? It is one thing to besiege people in the middle of nowhere. It is another to start storming home after home in suburbia, while it is livestreamed to the Internet. Or do you propose the American people will tolerate government raids on guns being banned from the internet? Do you think the government can actually keep any information from the people in 2017?
The hold of the Federal Government on the rest of the nation is actually quite weak. All it takes is a spark to cause enough people to say “I will not comply”. At some point, the liberal program will cross that line. If they try it with guns, as they might based on the OP, then the nation will turn to killing each other.
I’m sure there would be resistance, but it can be done. If you threaten a man, he will fight you. If you tell him to give up his guns or someone will come and kill his wife and children while neighbors look on helplessly, he’s a lot more likely to give up his guns, even if he finds a way to hide one or two. Terror works if we aren’t vigilant.
Look at our own country and how close our society came to losing its guns through the years of Clinton when push back occurred. Until then, discussions of gun rights rarely admitted to more than hunting needs.
They won’t start with that. They’ll start with known crazies in isolated areas or places they can isolate, and kill everyone inside after provoking justification.
And then make it clear they have every intent to do it to you too. There will be hold outs, but most people will cave, and the hold outs will be ostracized and live on the fringes of society.
That’s the worst case anyway. I’m cynical enough to think the democrats would try it.
Nah, it’s not cynicism. It’s experience from watching Waco, Ruby Ridge, Elian Gonzalez, etc.
Clearly, you think the gun owners of the nation are bigger cowards than I do. The proof you offer are a handful of one-off incidents. None of these were a prelude to mass confiscation. The government cannot say “Hey, turn them in, or Ruby Ridge is coming”. Further, my family is not going to be killed. How does that work? The police come to my home demanding my guns, and I hold my family hostage as I hold the police at bay? I refuse to give my guns up, and the police tell me “We will kill your wife and children if you don’t turn the guns over to us”?. My family cannot exit the home without being shot? Do you really think images after images of families being killed by the police will just make everyone roll over?
You do not have a realistic sense of what people will put up with. There are protests and riots now, over made up stories. Are you honestly saying that the left is the only group that can riot? Are gun owners somehow less able to rise up than Black Lives Matter?
Not everyone. But most. I saw it in Iraq. The people there are every bit as brave as we are.
As for your boast to not give in– that’s why they probably won’t target you in the beginning. They will target people that can be portrayed as loathsome, outside of societal norms and kill them. Just because it didn’t work to generate support at Waco doesn’t mean it won’t work in the future. After enough of that and then almost everyone will cave. I have no doubt it can happen here.
We have to be vigilant and persist in protecting our culture and freedoms.
I do not disagree with your last line. However, I know enough people who have served in Iraq who will not roll over, nor will they help the government disarm the population.
Removing 300 million firearms has never been done in the history of the world. For me to think it is likely, you are going to have to map out for me getting from “here to there”.
They can’t do it today, but with enough agitprop they will be able in the future. We have finally turned around much of the negative sentiment that brought about the NFA and the GCA, but that sentiment can come back if we don’t oppose it.
Then our whole “argument” is your warning me not to be complacent. I assure you I am not. I am more worried about other freedoms, at the moment, such as freedom of speech, which is under a higher level of attack. It appears to be a difference of focus.
Where is the support for such a confiscation going to come from? Moreover, where is the support for strong-arm robbery and mass killings? We are not a dictatorship. I will disagree with you on Waco – it was incredibly screwed up and I think the agents were hotdogging (seriously, their execution code was “Showtime”) but I do not believe the goal was a massacre. It was criminally negligent and incompetent, certainly, but there is not evidence that the place burning down was the goal.
I don’t really disagree with any of this, but I think what fuels a lot of the suspicion about the way it went was the fact that Koresh supposedly went out for a jog every morning. If the goal was to simply arrest him, why not nab him in his jogging shorts while he was alone trotting down the side of the road?
Headlines and looking like serious business action movie bad@$$es when the budget cycle comes around?
I base my argument on this website: http://hardylaw.net/waco.html