Posted on 12/26/2012 5:47:25 AM PST by Kaslin
When you argue for a living, you can tell how an argument is going for you. The evidence and my gut both tell me that the liberals have lost control of the gun control narrative.
Not for lack of trying – it was almost as if they were poised to leap into action across the political, media and cultural spectrum the second the next semi-human creep shot up another “gun free zone.” This was their big opening to shift the debate and now it’s closing. They’ve lost, and they are going nuts.
The evidence is all around that this is not going to be the moment where America begins a slide into disarmed submission through an endless series of ever-harsher “reasonable restrictions” on our fundamental rights. You just have to look past the shrieking media harpies to see what’s really happening.
Let’s start with the most obvious omen that this tsunami has peaked. President Obama thrilled his base by grandstanding at the memorial, and then promptly washed his hands of it by handing it over to a “blue ribbon commission.” Making Joe Biden its chairman was like staking a vampire through the heart, then hosing him down with holy water before burying his body beneath the Gilroy Garlic Festival.
Why does Obama want this gun thing buried? While intensely popular with metrosexual pundits, coastal liberals, and cultural bigots slobbering at the opportunity to stick it to those banjo –strummin’, God-believers out in the hinterlands, gun control remains poison to Red State Democrats.
Joe Manchin of West Virginia couldn’t resist some sanctimonious posturing, but clearly he heard enough from his constituents to sprint-back his heresy with a WaPo op-ed explaining how awesome the NRA is and how groovy gun owners are. He will never take sides against the family again.
We didn’t see the Red State Democrats up for re-election in two years out dumping on their constituents to please the media. Call it “the Fredo Effect,” and 2014 is the rowboat. We won’t hear from the likes of Senators Landrieu, Pryor and Begich until they vote “No.”
Sure, Senator Feinstein will submit her gun ban wish list to Harry Reid, who will look at it sagely, nod politely, and let it die. He’s more Tom Hagen than Fredo. He is going to retain the NRA “A” rating his website proudly showcases regardless of what Chuck Schumer thinks. What gets you hosannas in Manhattan gets you unemployed in Searchlight.
So, the politicians’ actions have spoken louder than their words, but what of the media? We lawyers always say that when your case is strong, pound on the law and the evidence, and when your case is weak, pound on the table. The furniture is splintering in Liberalland.
Their post-Newtown strategy was always to prevent an effective response from the pro-gun freedom side by both rapid action and by demonization. But the holidays and the kabuki theater that is the fiscal cliff drama meant that legislative action, their Holy Grail, would have to wait. That gave people time to think and the gun freedom side the time to react.
Demonizing those who support gun freedom was always intended as a weapon to silence them. It was also critical that we, law-abiding gun owners, become the Other. By dehumanizing us and painting us as evil, it is that much easier to strip us of our rights.
But gun freedom advocates fought back. Using the mainstream media, conservative media and especially social media – we need to understand its huge significance here – gun freedom advocates countered liberals’ bogus “facts.” Media reports about “automatic” weapons were corrected, clownish statements about “high caliber magazines” and “large capacity round” were mocked. The struggle raged over millions of Facebook posts. The average citizen saw gun banners ask “When will America control access to weapons?” and then saw several experts among his or her friends post about the significant hurdles one needs to get over to get a gun. Truth bypassed the mainstream media and became a weapon for the side of fundamental rights.
The banners overplayed their hand, losing credibility with every distortion, evasion and smear. The cries of “Blood is on your hands!” failed to resonate – reasonable Americans just did not blame the actions of a single sociopath on millions of their fellow neighbors. And it did not help when third-string celebrities and wizened literary has-beens took to hoping gun rights advocates would be shot for daring to oppose disarmament.
The gun banners also counted on a narrative that portrayed a respect for the Second Amendment. They sought only “reasonable restrictions” – why, no one wants to ban or confiscate your guns! The problem was one of memo distribution – not everybody got that memo. Mayor Bloomberg was putting out that what few guns he might graciously deign to leave in the hands of the unworthy would be starved of bullets, while Governor Cuomo acknowledged that confiscation was one of the options.
Oops. “Gun control” is a process that is designed and intended to lead to a total gun ban, and the banners are counting on people not realizing it.
Their credibility and motives already in question, the gun banners became vulnerable to a shift in the paradigm from depriving law-abiding citizens of effective defensive weapons to the idea of protecting kids with armed personnel in schools.
Suddenly, the gun banners had to argue two ridiculous positions. The first was that allowing trained educators or police having weapons in schools is a danger. The problem is that people generally like and trust teachers and cops. The second position was even worse, that armed personnel or police are somehow utterly useless against untrained, amateur creeps who seek to confront six-year olds. All over America, millions of parents noted how none of the wealthy gun banners were disbanding their personal security teams and thought, “You know, I think I’d like having a cop around my kid too.”
Frustration at the fact that their argument had not been unquestioningly accepted morphed into faux moral outrage that their opponents had dared offer any alternative proposal at all. E.J. Dionne of the WaPo was a prime example. He had to “grope for words to describe the National Rifle Association’s proposal,” yet he managed to find some: “Absurd, unbelievable, tragic, obscene,” as well as “insane.”
Note that Dionne’s righteous fury does not apply to the armed guards at the Post’s front door, surrounding President Obama, or to anywhere else other than in the vicinity of regular people’s children.
Particularly amusing are the liberals who transform into green eyeshades misers with the public purse when it comes to cops in schools. The folks who can’t spend enough dough on fudge-smeared, patriarchy-challenging performance artists suddenly become thrifty Scotsmen when it comes to doling out a few shillings to put a cop on campus.
They have been unable to articulate any coherent argument opposing putting cops in schools because there is no coherent argument against putting cops in schools. But more than anything, the mommies at the affluent Los Angeles-area school my kids attend have convinced me that the narrative has escaped the gun grabbers.
Knowing our reputations as proud conservatives – we represent diversity for our liberal friends – a pal of my wife remarked, out of the blue, that “I think my husband and I need to buy guns.” Whoa.
And as third graders sang holiday songs at their pageant while I surveyed the packed, vulnerable room, I blurted out to another mommy that I wished I could legally carry a weapon to protect those kids. And she told me that she wished that I could too. Whoa.
Gun banners, you lost the President, the senators, the social media, and now you’ve lost liberal LA mommies. You’ve lost everything. Again.
“I don’t think they have lost the narrative at all.”
I’d have to agree with you. The original article above contains much wishful thinking and whistlin’ in the wind.
The “dialogue” on gun control is not over — it hasn’t even really yet begun. Expect this to ramp up in January, and consume much activity in D.C. through the spring and summer.
I would expect any gun control bill to be hundreds of pages long, with provisions deliberately “buried”. Another one of those laws that (as Nancy Pelosi said) has to be passed to find out what’s really in it...
“I don’t know. I chatted up a good friend of mine, who is in his early thirties, yesterday. He specifically mentioned that a lot of people around him, who were ambivalent towards guns/gun control, etc., are waking up and getting pissed off. These are folks he said rarely, if ever, even mention guns at all.”
Your post is unclear.
Exactly HOW are they getting “pissed off”?
What sentiments are they expressing?
Which side of the argument are they coming down towards?
Please clarify for the dunderheads like myself...
Bookmarking.
“while those of us who dare say otherwise are pushed off the stage as racist bigots.”
We need to keep climbing back on the stage and crashing the party. It would be a sin to do otherwise.
The author is correct.
The liberals are too afraid to touch this radioactive issue.
I wish they would persue gun control. This would change the political landscape.
Look at the massive growth of the NRA the very day the tragedy occurred, gun owners knew they would be blamed for a crime they did not commit.
Also somthing is happening that has never occured before.
Gun stores are soldout in ammo and guns.
Factories are ruuning full blast and shelves are still empty.
You are SO right. Every winnable argument, and we've had plenty, is given up by these fools so they can be liked by Katie Couric, David Gergory, Bob Schieffer, the NY Times, Wash Post, etc, etc.
I guess when they do finally tell the TRUTH, boldly and without remorse, they get the Joe Wilson* treatment, and every RINO heads for the tall grass with a wet, yellow trail behind them.
*After nearly an hour of contentious debate, the House of Representatives passed a resolution of disapproval criticizing South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson for shouting out "you lie!" in the middle of President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress last week.
The largely party-line vote was 240 in favor to 179 opposed. Twelve Democrats opposed the measure, and five others voted "present." Seven Republicans backed it.
The resolution called the outburst "a breach of decorum [that] degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House."
"Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the House of Representatives disapproves of the behavior of the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson," it read.
This will be like pot. Some states will be anti-gun and some states will be pro-gun. And the por-gun states will be left alone by the Feds, because they can’t enforce their silliness at the local level without state cooperation.
“Obama may face the last half of his term contending with a Republican controlled Congress.”
Heh.
At the rate the Pubbies are going now, regarding the “fiscal cliff”, they are on a glide path to lose the House in 2014. This is going to be the issue that the ‘rats use to divide and conquer the Republicans in D.C.
They will make gun control an issue in 2013, but I sense that if the resistance becomes too tough, they’ll “get quiet” on things through the end of 2012 and 2013, and keep hammering on the economy.
If and when they get full control of Congress in 2014, expect the big guns to be brought out by the left to fire away on the gun control agenda. By then they’ll have the numbers to push it through, with backroom deals and payoffs if necessary — just like they did with ObamaCare. (Aside: also remember that Reid plans to revise filibuster rules in the Senate in 2013, so the filibuster may not be an option for Republicans afterwards)
I bet that ticked off the anti gun folks. I don't use FB, but would love to see some reactions.
I hate these liberals who say “Private citizens shouldn’t own the same weapons as the military.” The military is the government. And the 2nd amendment was written to keep the citizens armed AGAINST the government.
OK, putting aside the conspiracy theory aspect, what do you think they’re going to come up with if the attempted murder of a U.S. Congresswoman (with the murder of a nine year old girl thrown in) and the murder of classrooms full of sx year olds didn’t get people on the “ban guns, it’s for the children” bandwagon?
You know, it’s great they’re going to lose that gun show loophole, since Adam Lanza bought his guns at a...Hey, wait a minute!
It should worry you that you read an article saying we are winning and you think the author’s message is to stand down. Quite the opposite. Keep on it and win more converts.
Honestly, I do not know.
The Godless Left, is, in my opinion, what Churchill said about the Soviet Union:
“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”
What is the key to the Godless Left? POWER and CONTROL. The ends justify the means. Without God, what is their morality, their ethics based on?
It’s not something good, in my opinion.
There are things, as a Christian, I could not, would not do.
If you have no Superior Morality to guide you, except a man-made list of ethics, that are at best situational, and not eternal, what could you, would you not do?
As Saint Paul said:
“For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.”
But again I ask, if the near murder of a U.S. Congresswoman (Giffords would have been dead as a doornail from that wound even ten or fifteen years ago) and the murder of classrooms full of six year olds didn’t do it, what would?
They will go after bullets and magazines. Better buy plenty of both now before they go for them. The 2d Amd does not say a right to bear bullets they will say, thus outlaw all bullets. That is where they will go if they cannot get the guns. I am planning to visit my fav gun shop this week and fill his pockets with bucks for bullets.
I was not talking about their moral state or putting something beyond them. I’m asking what could convince the public suddenly that gun confiscation is a good idea that didn’t convince them before.
I think you're right. I'm not crediting any one slogan with it, but another one that comes to mind is "Gun control is the idea that a woman strangled to death with her own panty hose in an ally is morally superior to the one telling the police how she shot the rapist."
I think there's been a change in culture, too, which a lot of normally liberal-leaning people have noticed. We went from "I Fought the Law and the Law Won" to "Cop Killer" in a generation, and another generation on being a thug, which used to be one of the worst things you could call people, is celebrated. People who would have figured they could rely on cops are now seeing a pathology in the wider culture, and they want to defend themselves against it.
I just find it suspicious that a ‘we are winning’ article comes out before the enemy commission has issued its bogus reports and before the enemy has introduced their legislation. It is, in my opinion, possibly disinformation designed to cause the pro-gun forces to relax- which is at this moment precisely what we should not do.
Um, no, keeping and bearing arms necessarily implies the weapon functioning as a weapon, including the projectile. Furthermore, restriction of a fundamental right via some direct government-imposed economic restriction would be subject to a strict scrutiny standard, and that is almost always a losing argument for the gov. Legally, this is untenable for the left. They will ultimately be forced to go at this some other way. Rather than handwringing over nonissues, we should be anticipating their plan B maneuver and heading them off at the pass.
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