How gun-controllers helped the NRA. And got paid for it...

[SteveM]

When Kates and Kleck wrote more than ten years ago on
gun-control, the landscape was quite different:

"...all that the gun lobby needs to do to marshal massive
opposition against gun control proposals is to capitalize on
the terms of the debate established by anti-gun luminaries. 
As one analyst notes, exposure to this debate

'convinces America's handgun owners that they are a hated
minority whose days are numbered by mortal enemies -- 
enemies who hate THEM more than crime.  With the die cast so,
gun owners are made to think that THEY HAVE
EVERYTHING TO LOSE if those who loath them have any success at
all.  [Knowing this, the gun lobby actually]
disseminate[s] the nastier [anti-gun] cartoons and
vituperative op-ed pieces in publications read by gun owners 
to fan the flames of incipient paranoia.'  (emphasis the
author's) 
-- Stell, "Guns, Politics and Reason," 9 J. Am.
Culture 71, 73 (1986)

"The last point is both remarkable in itself and telling
in its implications:  In reprinting anti-gun cartoons, the gun
lobby is
actually paying anti-gun cartoonists royalties for penning
those cartoons!  The money is well spent.

"Essential to mobilizing gun owner opposition is that
they be convinced that every gun control proposal is bottomed
on hatred for them -- that however moderate and reasonable a
control may seem, it is actually only a further step toward
the hatemongers' ultimate goal of banning and confiscating all
guns... Indispensable to gun lobby success is an anti-gun
discourse that convinces gun owners that 'gun control' is not
a criminological imperative but a matter of culturally or
ethically based hatred of them." 
-- Kates and Kleck, The Great American Gun Debate, Pacific
Research Institute for Public Policy, SF, 1997.

                                                
----------------

     The "luminaries" have gone into hiding and the
chief component of the gun-control lobby, MSM, is collapsing. 
The shrill gun-controllers we have on these pages now seem not
only ignorant of their own history, but don't care about that
history, nor, it seems, the issue of crime, "gun
deaths," or even gun control itself.  They are deeply
satisfied to exhibit their righteous hatred toward gun-owners
and continue a losing culture war, identified by scholars
years ago.  One must wonder:  if guns were not the issue, what
would that issue be?  

[rrneck]

1. K&R Bullseye. nt

[spin]

2. K&R (n/t)

[Old Codger]

3. You bet

any time anyone jumps in with a knee jerk anti gun reaction to any and all gun posts regardless of whether it even makes common sense they lose all relevance, we have a couple here, they do not seem to realize that they marginalize themselves with their total predictability, and so are mostly ignored.

[GreenStormCloud]

4. Now the thrust is a failing attempt to divide gunowners into hostile groups.

First they tried to pacify the hunters by telling them that their duck and deer guns would not be effected. This was not helped at all by Kennedy, in 2005, attacking the venerable .30-30 hunting cartridge as a cop-killer to be banned.

Now the tactic is to attack and demonize CCW permit holders. The effect will be to anger about five million voters, many of whom will be swing voters. People underestimate the importance of swing voters.

Fortunately, the antis don't seem to realize that people own guns for many different reasons, and that one person can cover several reasons. A person can own guns to hunt, to plink, for self-defense, for various types of competitions, all at the same time. And one single gun can cover several puposes.

Long ago, gun ownwers realized that a threat to one part of our community would eventually be a threat to all of us. Divide and conquer won't work on us. I will never own a .50 BMG semi-auto rifle, but I will defend those who do.

[east texas lib]

5. The antis won't stop until they succeed in banning everything they consider deadly...

Up to and including toothpicks. Brave new world, you know.

[gorfle]

6. I don't care for the tone of insinuation.

'convinces America's handgun owners that they are a hated
minority whose days are numbered by mortal enemies --
enemies who hate THEM more than crime. With the die cast so,
gun owners are made to think that THEY HAVE
EVERYTHING TO LOSE if those who loath them have any success
at all.
disseminate the nastier cartoons and
vituperative op-ed pieces in publications read by gun owners
to fan the flames of incipient paranoia.' (emphasis the
author's)


The terms "convinces" and "paranoia" implies that the motives of the anti-firearm crowd are not genuine, and that American handgun owners are not "a hated minority whose days are numbered by mortal enemies", and "enemies who hate them more than crime".

American firearm owners are simply taking the anti-firearm folks at their word. I fail to see how pro-firearm folks exposing pro-firearm people to the actual words of the opposition is "fan(ning) the flames of incipient paranoia".

[SteveM]

7. I agree. But the academe is a little like MSM in that "balance" is treasured...

even if the "balance" is contrived; the better to sound fair and detached. Unfortunately, there is little real balance. Kates and Kleck noted this as well:

"Author Roger Caras (who was being critiqued) commented in 1970 on the quality of the debate over guns: 'Any careful observer of the battle must be distressed at the ignorance, ill will, and dishonesty apparent on both sides.' Caras' assessment was true as far as it went, but its bland evenhandedness obscured the extremely unequal impact of 'the ignorance, ill will, and dishonesty' of each side....The biased views of gun control proponents find a sympathetic outlet in the major print and broadcast media, whereas the equally biased views of gun control opponents are largely confined to the pages of gun and hunting magazines, where they are read almost exclusively by a comparatively small audience of the already-converted faithful."

The controllers got a free-ride from MSM. But that car is in the ditch.