"Gun Control" Agenda Requires
Heinous "Gun Violence"
By Kurt Hofmann, May 28th 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
Picture, Oleg Volk
Click to enlarge
The differences between gun rights advocates and those who favor forcible citizen disarmament are (thankfully) both numerous and vast. Perhaps the most fundamental of those differences is that while those of us who dedicate ourselves to defending the means to protect one's life, family, and liberty decry every high profile shooting for its senseless evil, the "gun control" advocates' agenda actively requires such atrocities. Without heinous slaughter of innocents, the gun prohibition agenda is dead in the water.
They know this, too. Last August, Seattle Gun Rights Examiner Dave Workman uncovered a "playbook" for the gun ban lobby, "Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging."
The "effective messaging" they have in mind is to make a point of steering clear of dry facts and logic. James Taranto, writing for the Wall Street Journal, explains:
The booklet explicitly urges foes of the Second Amendment to abjure rationality in favor of the argumentum ad passiones, or appeal to emotion. "When talking to broader audiences, we want to meet them where they are," the authors advise. "That means emphasizing emotion over policy prescriptions, keeping our facts and our case simple and direct, and avoiding arguments that leave people thinking they don't know enough about the topic to weigh in."
And this is what is meant by "emphasizing emotion over policy prescriptions":
"The most powerful time to communicate is when concern and emotions are running at their peak," it advises. Antigun advocates are urged to seize opportunistically on horrific crimes: "The debate over gun violence in America is periodically punctuated by high-profile gun violence incidents including Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, the Trayvon Martin killing, Aurora, and Oak Creek. When an incident such as these attracts sustained media attention, it creates a unique climate for our communications efforts."
The "playbook," of course, hardly represents a new approach on the part of the gun ban lobby, instead merely codifying the cynical, vulture-like opportunism that has long been a staple of their efforts. One of the more glaring examples is U.S. Representative Carolyn "What's a Barrel Shroud?" McCarthy's (D-NY) introduction of a standard capacity magazine ban bill within hours of the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007.
Another example (provided by another New York Democrat in Congress) is Rep. Jerrold Nadler's expressed wish that Obama "exploit" (Nadler's term) the murdered children of Sandy Hook Elementary.
And that brings us to the present, and the brutal murder of six in Isla Vista, California, by a rage-filled, socially incompetent loser. Although half the six were stabbed to death, rather than shot, good luck finding many "gun control" advocates with enough honesty to describe the atrocity as a "stabbing and shooting spree," rather than the deliberately misleading "shooting spree."
Picture, Oleg Volk
California, with some of the most oppressive gun laws in the nation, has long been held up as a model of "common sense gun control" that the rest of the country should follow, and those laws did nothing to stop the slaughter. As JPFO contributor David Codrea notes, those blaming the NRA for the slaughter perfectly illustrate that anything short of total citizen disarmament is not enough for these people. And as the spittle-flecked, shrieking outrage loudly expressed in response to that observation illustrates, homicidal rage seems far more the province of the anti-gun crowd, rather than of the people they want disarmed.
Speaking of their desire to disarm people, that of course serves their purpose in more than one way. Not only is citizen disarmament their desired end, it's also a means to that end, because the more "gun free" zones, there are, the fewer people permitted the means to effective self-defense, and the more they can be limited in whatever firepower they are permitted to have, the less likely it is that the next killer will be stopped before he racks up a big, exploitable body count.
Just the kinds of "horrific crimes" forcible citizen disarmament advocates are taught to "seize opportunistically on." Just what they're waiting for. Just what they need.
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A former paratrooper, Kurt Hofmann was paralyzed in a car accident in 2002. The helplessness inherent to confinement to a wheelchair prompted him to explore armed self-defense, only to discover that Illinois denies that right, inspiring him to become active in gun rights advocacy. He also writes the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner column.
