Monday, July 19, 2010

Persuasion

Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell was all over this story about the anti-gun Joyce foundation being forced to try to actually persuade people to stay away from guns rather than their old pursuit of legislating firearms out of existence. Sebastian points out this is a huge victory and consequence of our side prevailing in McDonald at the SCOTUS level. And he’s right, it is a victory.

The Joyce Foundation is retrenching. I think they are in it for the long haul. These times are a setback for them, yes. But look to see them push de-normalization of firearms media campaigns rather than court cases or legislation. Public attitude has swung against the banners. It’s a lot of work to climb out of the public perception hole they are in, but look for them to start ramping it up.

I’d expect only 3 things from them. Look to see various ‘guns are icky’ campaigns, from blatant and in your face to quite subtle. They will dance in the blood of mass shooting tragedies, but they might also try to get less guns in movies and TV and whatnot through back channels, and continuing of pressuring the AMA to consider a gun in the home a ‘health problem,’ as well as still trying to weasel into the law journals like they have in the past. That’s one. Number 2 is they have to get more funding. It will have to be from additional rich guys like Soros and Bloomberg because grassroots isn’t a good source of funding for them, obviously. But they ARE a foundation. That’s what foundations are. Big ol' bequeathalizations. They just need another billionaire or two. And, 3, look for court cases and legislation but only at the margins and only as a delaying tactic. We’ll win these, probably, but those victories will give us a false confidence, and also slowly wear away at our side’s resources.

Anyway. That’s what I would do if I was a bad guy or on their team.

How do we respond? Make gun ownership and carry seem normal. Advance that normality steadily and incrementally. DON’T look wacko while doing it. One foaming at the mouth gun enthusiast understandably concerned about tyranny and TOTALLY in the right can still cost us votes and support from a dozen neutrals. Ideally we convert a few neutrals to our side but more importantly we need the neutrals to think, “Gun restrictions? Why are you goin on about THAT?! What use are those ineffective laws? Working on that is a waste of time and apparently unConstitutional. We need to get back to more pressing political matters like declaring May 9th National Ruminants Day! And such.”

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