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Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition
Andrew Sullivan has a terrific piece in the New York Times on the new religions of the right and left.
And so we’re mistaken if we believe that the collapse of Christianity in America has led to a decline in religion. It has merely led to religious impulses being expressed by political cults. Like almost all new cultish impulses, they see no boundary between politics and their religion. And both cults really do minimize the importance of the individual in favor of either the oppressed group or the leader.
Politics has always been about persuading people based on what they believe. Trump (like Reagan before him) won because he created narratives that were easy to repeat: Morning in America, Make America Great Again, Drain the Swamp, Government Is the Problem. Those are appealing and resonate in a world where the Blue State Model of government is slowly falling apart. However, we have yet to create those narratives when it comes to guns. We can (and do) talk about “My Second Amendment rights,” but that’s just the flip side of the self-absorption and narcissism which is at the core of modern progressivism.
Gun owners are playing by the rules of the left, and we are losing. We try to persuade people with facts and figures about how law-abiding citizens tend to be just that (law-abiding) and our right to keep and bear arms, but we lose when progressives make appeals to the emotion centered around scary guns and the scary people who own them.
We are losing because fundamentally, nobody cares about your rights. Instead, people care about their own rights and well-being, and that’s where gun owners are failing, and failing spectacularly. Religions come and religions go. Anyone see any Zoroastrians around recently? Me neither. The question is, what can we gun owners do to ensure that the Neo-Puritanism of the modern progressive movement is abandoned in favor of more liberty-oriented faiths?
People can (and do) change their belief systems, but only when they see the value of doing so (hence the phrase “there are no atheists in foxholes”). Gun owners are doing a lousy job of explaining the benefits of an armed and polite society, but there are exceptions. The NRA was soundly ridiculed when Wayne Lapierre suggested that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun was a good guy with a gun. But in the end, he’s been proven right. We need to make self-defense appealing to the masses before they find out that they really, really need a good guy with a gun at their side. It’s no coincidence that NRA experienced explosive growth when they ran ads that showed everyday people of all races, creeds, and colors stating for the record that they’re the NRA.
The idea is simple: Stay true to your beliefs, and make your faith appealing to the masses, and the masses will join it. Keep talking exclusively about just your right to keep and bear arms, though, and nobody will care if your faith gets tossed on the dustbin of history.
Published in General
Bingo. We are also up against a huge pre-K through grad school and mass media indoctrination effort.
The recent “Stay in your lane” thing with the NRA and the doctors came about because if science actually is a doctor’s land, the surgeons in question weren’t in it. They talk about an “epidemic of gun violence” when the fact is that the epidemic is not evenly distributed. Trauma surgeons see a lot of gunshots because they are in cities ruled by Democrats where some parts of town are very dangerous and others hardly at all.
But the “epidemic,” if such it actually is, is socially transmitted… and the doctors are ignoring that; they are also fine with disarming law abiding people who don’t work in places with tight security and armed guard.
I have. The Tata family (steel, automobiles). They control a large part of the Indian economy.
I think my disarticulated skull is Zoroastrian. I hope. They practice “air burial” of their dead. This used to be the source for a lot of skeletons used in education but the Indian government clamped down on exports when they began to suspect that there were people augmenting the supply by Burking the poor for their bones.
I think that the Zoroastrians in India have had to close or relocate the tower compounds in which air burial was done as new nearby luxury apartment dwellers didn’t like the view.
Air India is Zoroastorian Airlines.
Not that kind of air burial :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence
I don’t see this. Yes, we are losing when it comes to the left’s scary rhetoric, but those are short-term losses, and they are becoming more and more isolated (except when there’s a mass shooting, then it goes nationwide for a while)
We are winning when it comes to long term support for 2nd Amendment rights – concealed carry, open carry, Constitutional carry are just a few things either discussed or secured over the last several years.
I believe what will make the big difference is a public revelation (not by the MSM) of how ordinary citizens use firearms to prevent crime, or mitigate the impacts thereof. The NRA and their “Armed Citizen” column is something which should be adopted by local newspapers and TV stations across the country.
Yes, I know it’s an uphill battle, but readers and viewers have leverage, and it’s time we use it . . .
Sure, and we have nationwide reciprocity to show just how far we’ve come.
Wait, we don’t have that.
Okay, the Hearing Protection Act, we have that, right? Oh wait, no we don’t. What DO have, though, is a ban on bump stocks. That’s not my idea of winning…
SHOULD, but isn’t. In the meantime, we have to deal with inane phrases like “gun violence” and “common sense gun laws” in the media, and that’s on a GOOD day. On a bad day, we have to deal with things like “assault revolvers” when the MSM reports on guns.
The majority of Americans think that Americans should keep and bear arms, yet all across the nation, we are fighting for our Second Amendment lives. Something ain’t right with our side.
Kevin, you might not like some of the way I’d approach this, but we’d need a bit of an emotional appeal. Something not appropriate for a CCL class, but more about not being afraid and helpless, being able to defend yourself and your family.
Have a police officer and his wife talk about how she carries a gun. When seconds counts, police are minutes away. I remember hearing a police officer talk about buying his wife a shotgun, and it made an impact on me.
Have a urban black family talk about how their city allows them to carry and defend themselves. Have grandma talk with the kids about how the NRA helped them organize and defend themselves against the KKK.
Do a video with a survivor of a mass shooting. She talks about how she wishes she had a weapon to defend herself and her friends.
The narrative to counter the anti-gun propaganda is “If you have a gun, you will not be helpless.”
There are quite a few in Iran, too. I’ve met some.
We ABSOLUTELY need to do emotional appeals. We’re horrible at it. We on the right have a tendency to use Excel spreadsheets and position papers as a counter-argument to an emotional appeal. Those work, and they work well, but only to bolster a decision that’s first been made with the emotions. This is marketing 101, and we failing that class.
I would suggest that there is more going on when one looks at the wider cultural front. Gun rights are merely one front in a more alarming battle, and it’s important to understand that the cultural fights are taking on a faith dimension as well:
http://ricochet.com/578860/woke-activism-is-a-dangerous-religion/
I just finished reading that article, and it’s very good.
The question now before us is, how do we rid ourselves of the Neo-Puritans all around us? What worked in the 1600’s to quell their influence, and how can we adapt those tactics to today?
Different times and different places. And what worked in the 1600s was:
In short, a lot of cultural change over a number of generations, with a lot of other intervening events and ideas.
What about here on these shores? What brought Cotton Mather to a screeching halt?
Were the rest of the colonies afflicted with Puritan excesses? They were limited in their geographic influence.
What we are dealing with today is a national phenomenon, not limited to a few geographic areas. Today’s Neo-Puritans are all over.
I know what you mean. There are a lot of initiatives on the table that haven’t been acted on yet. However, I think we’ve made tremendous progress over the last 20-30 years.
I don’t care much about a bump stock ban, but CWP reciprocity is tops on my list because I travel even more now that I’m retired.
Hey, there was a good Second Amendment panel on the NR cruise. Too bad most of the panels aren’t taped . . .
I’ve been wondering why the NRA doesn’t emphasize its collective nature. It’s not some huge (evil) corporation like Google (heh). It’s just a bunch of individuals of every color, ethnicity, and creed who pay dues. If you’re scared of guns, don’t join. Simple.
We go to war with the Wayne LaPierre we wish we could get rid of, not the Wayne LaPierre we wish we had.
Funny thing, Hollywood filmmakers have been celebrating armed self-defense for decades, but you wouldn’t know it from the way Hollywood leftists talk.
Indeed, the line, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good a guy with a gun” could be the tag line of every Hollywood action film ever made. If Hollywood leftists can be counted on to make anything, it is films that depict the good guy confronting the bad guy with a gun (or blaster, or light saber, or wand ) to stop him.
It’s example #576,895 of leftist cogitative dissonance. When that tag line is spoken out loud by Wayne LaPierre, the Hollywood leftists mock it as corrupt NRA propaganda; yet when Hollywood leftists bring that tag line to cinematic life in film after film, it’s art.
Some other angles to try:
Women’s empowerment – worried about rapists? Carry a weapon. Do not be afraid, be prepared.
Play against type – Show women and minority gun owners. Show a gay couple talking about the Orlando night club.