livingston
20×102mm Vulcan
In just the last month, there have been three school shootings. More if we extend the timeline back to February to include the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. No one can point to any real regulation short of confiscation that might have stopped the killings, and, besides, we already have comprehensive gun regulations.
And yet, the “gun control” drumbeat is growing louder. We continue to be inundated with news reports featuring sobbing, scared children; stone-faced politicians who intone, “Enough is enough”; social media blitzes designed to capitalize on the still-fresh trauma; and on and on.
All this leads to a very simple, obvious conclusion—one that no doubt will shock and make very uncomfortable most people on the Right: We are going to lose the gun debate, just like we’ve lost so many others.
Why? Because the Left knows precisely how to win these contests.
School Shooting Sea Change?
It begins by focusing on edge cases. School shootings, while they appear to be more ubiquitous than ever, are actually down since the 1990s. But you’d never know that scrolling through social media or listening to the news. Then, it amplifies the voices of sympathetic victims—and what’s more sympathetic than a girl who just wants to be safe at school and doesn’t want to have to feel like she might be shot while in class?
Finally, and only after it has laid the rhetorical and emotional groundwork for its preferred change (“progress”), it pushes for formal changes in the laws, for favorable court rulings, and for various agency actions to achieve the desired policy outcome.
All of this takes place in a climate in which the Left is motivated to effect change, while the Right is caught unawares, flat-footed.
The Left wins the issue before it ever has to, or does, enact a single real policy—because it wins over the people first, emotionally and dispositionally.
Not surprisingly, we’ve seen this happen before with another well-known culture war issue: abortion. Then, as now, the Left executed the strategy I’ve just described. It began by focusing on edge cases: women who had been raped or been the victims of incest, or those who had complicated pregnancies. It also highlighted those women who had died because of their inability to access legal abortion. Then, it amplified those women’s voices, particularly the voice of the late Norma McCorvey, of “Jane Roe” fame. Then, our enlightened, robed judicial guardians on the Supreme Court discovered (created, rather) a “right” to abortion hiding within the text of the 14th Amendment.
Relentless Push for Gun Control
And now, the Right is about to be caught flat-footed on guns, just as it was with abortion. The Right fails to understand that the Left’s tactics and strategy are really just social engineering. And because this is the case, and if things remain static, the Second Amendment will be gone in our lifetimes. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If the Right is savvy, it can fend off the Left’s anti-gun onslaught and preserve not only the text of the Second Amendment but its spirit: a culture both of liberty and responsibility for one’s own safety.
More at ...
We Are Going to Lose the Second Amendment - American Greatness
And yet, the “gun control” drumbeat is growing louder. We continue to be inundated with news reports featuring sobbing, scared children; stone-faced politicians who intone, “Enough is enough”; social media blitzes designed to capitalize on the still-fresh trauma; and on and on.
All this leads to a very simple, obvious conclusion—one that no doubt will shock and make very uncomfortable most people on the Right: We are going to lose the gun debate, just like we’ve lost so many others.
Why? Because the Left knows precisely how to win these contests.
School Shooting Sea Change?
It begins by focusing on edge cases. School shootings, while they appear to be more ubiquitous than ever, are actually down since the 1990s. But you’d never know that scrolling through social media or listening to the news. Then, it amplifies the voices of sympathetic victims—and what’s more sympathetic than a girl who just wants to be safe at school and doesn’t want to have to feel like she might be shot while in class?
Finally, and only after it has laid the rhetorical and emotional groundwork for its preferred change (“progress”), it pushes for formal changes in the laws, for favorable court rulings, and for various agency actions to achieve the desired policy outcome.
All of this takes place in a climate in which the Left is motivated to effect change, while the Right is caught unawares, flat-footed.
The Left wins the issue before it ever has to, or does, enact a single real policy—because it wins over the people first, emotionally and dispositionally.
Not surprisingly, we’ve seen this happen before with another well-known culture war issue: abortion. Then, as now, the Left executed the strategy I’ve just described. It began by focusing on edge cases: women who had been raped or been the victims of incest, or those who had complicated pregnancies. It also highlighted those women who had died because of their inability to access legal abortion. Then, it amplified those women’s voices, particularly the voice of the late Norma McCorvey, of “Jane Roe” fame. Then, our enlightened, robed judicial guardians on the Supreme Court discovered (created, rather) a “right” to abortion hiding within the text of the 14th Amendment.
Relentless Push for Gun Control
And now, the Right is about to be caught flat-footed on guns, just as it was with abortion. The Right fails to understand that the Left’s tactics and strategy are really just social engineering. And because this is the case, and if things remain static, the Second Amendment will be gone in our lifetimes. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If the Right is savvy, it can fend off the Left’s anti-gun onslaught and preserve not only the text of the Second Amendment but its spirit: a culture both of liberty and responsibility for one’s own safety.
More at ...
We Are Going to Lose the Second Amendment - American Greatness
