Fight Gun Control With Our Own Emotional Stories

Opinion

United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- When we discussed the “civil society” gambit to ban modern multi-purpose semi-automatic firearms, we noted that it was being used to set up a one-two combination to get people to not look at the facts surrounding these firearms. The first part of that combination was massive amounts of emotional manipulation.

For instance, Kamala Harris used the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as pawns during her CNN town hall. Before that, there were the victims of Columbine, Las Vegas, Tucson, Virginia Tech, and just about any other mass shooting. Since then, they’ve used victims from Parkland.

Lives cut short, particularly young lives cut short, stir powerful emotions. For people in the short-term aftermath of a mass shooting, especially one involving the misuse of modern multi-purpose semi-automatic firearms, Justice Department statistics don’t matter in the immediate aftermath. The emotions are that raw.

Harris’s most egregious act of emotional manipulation was to say she would have required Senators and Congressmen to look at the autopsy photos from Sandy Hook while in a locked room before they voted on our Second Amendment rights.

She makes no bones that she will use emotion to try and trump facts. Sadly, that gambit works, especially when magnified by today’s media.

Second Amendment supporters now have to consider the fact that it may be time to consider fighting back on an emotional level to supplement the facts that are already on our side.

Now, some may think this is sinking to their level. The fact of the matter is, though, they have already been wielding it, the genie is out of the bottle. Unilateral disarmament is a bad idea, whether in the figurative sense of debate techniques or in the literal sense of gun-free zones.

Like it or not, we have to emotionally connect with people, especially those who are on the fence about our rights. Now, we have to be very careful how we do it, given the way the vast majority of media outlets are hostile to our efforts to defend the Second Amendment, but there are ways we can do so.

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The first is to point to people who are responsible users. Fox News recently had the story of David Smith, a person who took up competitive shooting after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. One of the photos on the Fox News site shows Smith, who the report described as being excited about not seeing a special “disabled” category in his first match, holding a modern multi-purpose semi-automatic rifle. Smith, a man who has found a way to make a new career after a devastating diagnosis and who seeks to help others with what he calls “gun therapy,” would be just one of the people wrongfully punished by bans favored by the likes of Chris Murphy and Harris.

Then, there are the personal defense stories. Like the one involving Zachary Phillips in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Phillips and his father had their home invaded by three intruders armed with knives and brass knuckles (as an aside, knives kill four times as many people as rifles of any type). Phillips used an AR-15, perhaps the most prominent of the modern multi-purpose semi-automatic firearms that people like Murphy and Harris want to ban, to defend himself and his dad. The intruders were killed, and their getaway driver has been charged with murder. It would be interesting to see anti-Second Amendment extremists asked why they would leave good people like Mr. Phillips helpless in the face of intruders.

Finally, there are also the victims of laws that violate the Second Amendment. For instance, the case of Carol Bowne in New Jersey. She had broken up with her abusive boyfriend, who had a criminal record that included at least once felony. After that break-up, she applied for a pistol permit. New Jersey law says it should be granted within 30 days. Bowne had been waiting for six weeks when she was stabbed to death by her abusive ex, who had a warrant out for violating a restraining order. Perhaps, Kamala Harris, she should sit in a locked room with the autopsy photos of Ms. Bowne and read the police reports before she pushes her anti-Second Amendment agenda.

We have the facts on our side, but the other side is using emotion to get people to ignore them. Perhaps it is time to start generating some emotion of our own. We didn’t ask for that kind of fight, but we may have to get used to fighting it.

About Harold Hutchison

Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.

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