What makes MAIG so dangerous is that they have chosen to remain rooted in reality as the rest of us know it, rather than trying to construct their own.
Sebastian
June 4, 2012
Richard Aborn’s Desperate Plea
[Sebastian has been concerned about MAIG (Mayors Against Illegal Guns) for a long time and I haven’t been seeing it. I’m not convinced yet but this is a best reason that I have seen so far.
The Brady Campaign and others have severe cognitive distortion problems. And it’s almost as if When Prophecy Fails was written about them. When one of their predictions about “blood will run in the streets” fails they become more frantic and proselytize even more. After a time most people realize they are a few Fruit Loops short of a full bowl and don’t pay much attention to them.
MAIG does appear to be fairly well grounded and for the most part stay on their one message. That message, if implemented, is harmful to us but is not easily dismissed as pointless. People want to believe there are simple solutions that will reduce violent crime. The MAIG message when viewed from a very narrow perspective would seem to have promise in doing this without significant harm to gun rights. This isn’t true but the complete refutation of that message doesn’t lend itself well to sound bites* and that makes the risk of causing problems greater.
*I like, “The war on ‘illegal guns’ will be no more effective than the war on illegal drugs.” But too many people view the war on illegal drugs as a necessary and beneficial thing. And it would seem to concede there is such a thing as an “illegal gun” when in fact they are referring to a prohibited person in possession of any firearm. Hence we quickly get out of sound bite territory.—Joe]
There’s one important thing to remember about the debate that I haven’t seen anyone talking about recently. Yes, we are winning *now*. In fact, in most of the battles we’ve chosen to fight *now*, we’ve won. We’ve been able to do that, I think, because the Internet has enabled us to break the media monopoly position on guns. (See Glenn Reynolds on preference cascades after an artificially imposed consensus).
But.
There’s a fool born every minute. In the US, in fact, there are 8 of them, every single minute of every single day. Each of those fools is a blank slate, and we have 18 years to get to them before they start voting. Gnu help us if they are still fools by then. Those people are new to the debate, new to the issues, and those people are why the anti-gun groups are desperately clinging to life. Not in hopes of beating us now; they set their hopes on convincing the next generation, who may not have been inoculated against their version of reality.
So while we’re gloating, we should also be taking our sons, daughters, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren to the range with us, and once they get that new shooter smile broad on their face, take them home and show them how to clean the guns they shot… and tell them about the people who tried to take those guns away, not so very long ago, and what to do should those people try again.
Tell them that the price of that smile, the price of liberty itself, is eternal vigilance.
There is no stronger antidote to propaganda than personal experience of reality.
Kruschev railed against the choices of bread available in a US grocery store, on the basis that good Russian black bread was so much better tasting (when it was in stock) than Wonder Bread. The experience of a capitalist grocery store was denied to the population he controlled, for as long as possible. Detente led to the realization by many in the Soviet Union just how bad things were there, compared to elsewhere.
I knew many kids who, having been told by the nuns in my school that “Drugs are wholly evil,” found that a sinful drag on a joint did not make Satan immediately appear to drag their souls to Hell. Many of them, in fact, went quite overboard with drug abuse after this discovery. I guess learning a truth doesn’t necessarily lead to correct actions.
I have taken new shooters to the range, and the half dozen or so who experienced shooting for the first time uniformly liked it. And then wondered why it was so demonized. Perhaps that knowledge will work out OK for them to have in the long run.