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Something Isn’t Working as It Should
In a few short months, gun owners have gone from counting votes in the Senate to get CCW reciprocity passed nationwide to fighting for our Second Amendment lives.
Gun owners are in a culture war and we’re losing. The forces of civilian disarmament are using the techniques of the anti-smoking movement against the private ownership of guns and they’ve had more success curbing civilian gun ownership with this tactic than they’ve had fighting a political war over the previous 10 years.
This has to change. If gun owners think that relying on the pro-2A messengers and messaging of the past is somehow suddenly going to turn things around for us and make guns cool again, we are delusional and deserve to lose. We can (and have) won political battles, but now that we’re losing a cultural battle, things have to change.
We need allies, we need them fighting for us, and no talk about “Freedom’s Clenched Fist” isn’t going to bring people running to our aide.
What will win this war for us is when people begin to understand that we’re all in this together, that the fight isn’t gun owners versus gun control, it’s really freedom versus totalitarianism. This sort of thing works, NRA. Do this more often, please.
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Published in Guns
This post was based on an email I sent to my friend Michael Bane, a gun writer and host of a bunch of TV shows on The Outdoor Channel. He adds in his take on his podcast, Downrange Radio.
#1 would be difficult for me. I’m not terribly fond of the culture at the moment.
Taking people to the range and shooting .22 rifles definitely helps, especially when it’s a nice light rifle like the S&W MP15-22.
But we do need to fix our image problem. I sit next to a young lady in one of my classes. I do not tell her my opinions on gun control. She is a student organizer for the March for our Lives in Dallas. How can I convince her that everything she knows is wrong? Obviously not by telling her “Yo, lady, everything you know is wrong.” Some more tact may be required.