Memo to NRA and GOP on Messaging About Guns

Via Peter

 

Middle America News

Since the leadership of neither the Republican Party nor the National Rifle Association know how to defend their position on guns, we here at Middle American News will show them how. The Republicans especially need this lesson because it will fall on the shoulders of conservative GOP members of Congress to fight the coming legislative assault on the 2nd Amendment right to own firearms. They are the ones who will face denunciations for their positions from the news media.

Sen Diane Feinstein, D-CA, will likely lead the effort with the bill she is introducing to outlaw the sale of semi-automatic rifles that look like military assault rifles. She claims the guns must be banned because they enable killers to murder too many people at once.

Here's how to answer whatever argument she and her media supporters will advance:

In 2010, according to official FBI crime statistics, there were 358 murders committed with rifles of any sort. In that same year, there were 1,704 murders committed with knives, more than four times as many victims. So why are we trying to ban a kind of rifle when knives kill far more people? It is true that a killer with a military-looking weapon can kill far more people than a killer with only a knife. But in the real world, knives kill more people -- more than four times as many! All lives have equal value, whether destroyed by a knife or by a rifle. Since knives are used to kill more people, obviously they are a far more serious threat to life than a military-looking rifle. In fact, it is plainly irrational to target rifles when other weapons are far more dangerous. When making policy, we must be rational, not emotional.

Of course, the news media on its own won't report arguments that embarrass the gun ban advocates. So the statistic about knives and rifles must be voiced consistently, by every gun rights supporter, over and over and over again. No matter what question a journalist asks, the gun rights politician must answer with the statistic about rifles vs. knives. When the reporter asks a different question, the politician must repeat the statistic again. And again. No matter what he is asked, he must work in the statistic until it becomes second nature. It will eventually filter into the public consciousness as long as GOP gun rights supporters (and NRA spokesmen) repeat the same statistic ad infinitum.

The purpose of repeating this statistic is not to "win" the argument. In politics, no one "wins" arguments. Arguments are used to gain influence or reduce others' influence with the public. The purpose of repeating the statistic is to diminish the demonization of semi-automatic rifles in the mind of the public, to provide a factual perspective that robs gun ban advocates of the irrational emotional impact they achieve when denouncing rifles that look like military weapons.