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calimary

(80,700 posts)
Wed Feb 21, 2018, 08:22 PM Feb 2018

"School Shooter Weapon"

I just heard Chris Matthews use that phrase, "School Shooter Weapon," to refer to the AR-15.

I think that's a BRILLIANT tactic for framing, messaging, and perception management on the whole damn miserable gun proliferation crisis. Let's start attaching the horrifying and heartbreaking real-life nightmare of school massacres to that label. "School Shooter Weapon." AR-15s should be known AS that. Call it what it IS. A gun-of-choice for mass-murderers. It's also the truth. We should encourage that, and spread-spread-spread it. Help manage the perception. We want the AR-15 contaminated by what it's DONE. What it MADE happen. No knife of any sort or length did that. No car did that. It might ignite a mood change, a cultural change, in which this damnable massacre machine starts to fall out of favor with gunners.

What if we were to render that accursed mass-murder machine so toxic that nobody wants to own or collect or otherwise possess it anymore?

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calimary

(80,700 posts)
12. That's a good one. Clear and simple.
Thu Feb 22, 2018, 01:19 PM
Feb 2018

And there's no better time to drive that home than right now. When the grass hasn't yet grown back over the new graves of those innocent young murder victims. And the memories are still vivid. And the hurt is still fresh.

calimary

(80,700 posts)
8. Yet we're still talking GUNS.
Thu Feb 22, 2018, 01:08 PM
Feb 2018

And at least in my own opinion, I've come to regard ALL guns as murder machines. Because it's proven again and again what they do. They KILL. They KILL people. They KILL students. They KILL our kids. They KILL our loved ones. But then again, I'm one of those utopians who want to see ALL guns gotten rid of. As impractical and unrealistic as that kind of goal is. It's still one of mine.

And I say the following with all respect to your point, AncientGeezer. Not trying to be flip here, but precious few people by now even remember Virginia Tech. As I've watched the discourse in the wake of this latest St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Parkland Florida, people bring up Newtown all the time. That's still fresh in the mind. Recent enough. Las Vegas. That was just last fall, very much indeed recent enough, and with a body count that is damn near beyond imagining. The Pulse nightclub massacre is also brought up. Probably because it was in Florida, and it, too, was recent enough, with staggering numbers of casualties. But Virginia Tech more often than not is left off the list.

And seldom do you hear about San Bernardino. OR Santa Monica City College. Or Umpqua Community College in Oregon. Or Fort Hood, Texas. Or, hell, even that mass shooting of those sweet peaceful church people in Charleston.

Maybe it's because there are so DAMN MANY of these by now, that all but the most anal-compulsive detail people forget about, after awhile, because there are too many to count.

 

AncientGeezer

(2,146 posts)
16. I get your point...won't help anything but...I get it.
Sun Feb 25, 2018, 03:15 PM
Feb 2018

I think you underestimate how many remember VaTech..Ft Hood is 1 of my pissed off points..they knew the guy wasn't wrapped right.
San Bernadino, Vegas, Pulse...warning signs there...and missed or ignored.
Don't get me started on the Sandy Hook shit head....kill your Mom to steal her gun....to then slaughter 1st graders...

I get your point but I don't fully think those are forgotten...

johnpowdy

(116 posts)
17. Get rid of those too. I've said it before and I'll say it again....
Sun Feb 25, 2018, 03:17 PM
Feb 2018

No one needs anything more than a shotgun. And that shotgun should be highly regulated (permit, license, locked storage with separate ammo) to satisfy the hunters.

 

AncientGeezer

(2,146 posts)
19. That's an option...the minute you get rid of the 2ndA
Sun Feb 25, 2018, 04:53 PM
Feb 2018

And change the entire Bill of Rights to the Bill of Needs.
Where I hunt a shotgun is normally worthless. Some of our deer shots are 150-200yrd out and it would be unethical to try that. We have to get a hunting license-permits in NY.
Hunting isn't a 2A standard... but you know that.

calimary

(80,700 posts)
10. Yep. Look how harmless that sounds. Oh, Sports! Yay sports! We all love sports, right?
Thu Feb 22, 2018, 01:16 PM
Feb 2018

How bad could it be?

Exactly. Makes it sound innocuous. Harmless. Nothin' to it! It's SPORTS! They cobbled together "sports" and "rifle," and suddenly, the whole idea of a rifle is sanded down, buffed and polished, and painted red-white-&-blue, or maybe a pretty pink - with sparkles! There's nothing horrifying or death-causing or blood-spilling or mothers-in-mourning or gory or heart aching. Sports! Fun-fun-fun! See how the perception management works?

And there's NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING fun or sporting or harmless about it. We can't smear it with actual blood, which it deserves. So we use our words, instead, and smear it all over the theater of the mind.

calimary

(80,700 posts)
11. That's another good one.
Thu Feb 22, 2018, 01:17 PM
Feb 2018

And it also happens to be true.

GUNS are the top weapons of choice for domestic terrorists.

calimary

(80,700 posts)
6. It's DEFINITELY a WMD - a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Thu Feb 22, 2018, 12:51 PM
Feb 2018

And words can be weapons. The bad guys know this and know it well. And with the Frank Luntzes of the world, they've been thoroughly and relentlessly schooled in it. They're unfortunately quite the experts at it. They use words as Weapons of Mass Distraction.

I believe that WE can play that game, too.

Lately I've started referring to AR-15s as NRAR-15s. WE TOO can use and manipulate words to shit on their favorite concepts and turn them toxic. Make them sound bad. Make them sound distasteful. Make them sound off-putting, like that's something you wouldn't want to be involved with, or associated with. Alienate them. Help them start associating their beloved machine guns and assault rifles with bad things, undesirable things, unpopular things, unappealing things. They embrace those massacre machines? Then we need to add a cost to doing that.

I'm always reminded of the phrase "tax relief." Putting those two words together implies that "tax" is a negative word or concept - something from which "relief" is needed. See how it works? You then have the very clear implication that "tax" is bad, alienating, negative, something to be avoided or prevented or opposed or nullified. Poison the well.

These aren't "guns" or "rifles." That makes them sound beneficial, benign, okay, harmless, even desirable. That's why we should call them by what they really are: massacre machines. Murder machines. Murder weapons. Terror weapons. Domestic terror weapons. Kid-killers. Student-killers. Child-killers. And yes, even baby-killers. (Also adds insult to injury to all those gun nuts who ALSO call themselves "pro-life." And ANYTHING that plasters hypocrisy on THAT part of the picture is a VERY good thing. Wouldn't it be cool to hijack their favorite anti-choice memes, "baby-killers", and put that term to work as weapon on OUR side? Now THERE'S "asset forfeiture" for ya!)

calimary

(80,700 posts)
9. Thank you. And YOU are thinking about this stuff. And coming up with your own ways with words.
Thu Feb 22, 2018, 01:10 PM
Feb 2018

And that's THE MOST IMPORTANT THING here.

The most important thing of all.

I think that's what we all need to be doing, a lot more. And a lot more aggressively.

Wounded Bear

(58,440 posts)
13. It's a Kidwhacker...
Thu Feb 22, 2018, 01:24 PM
Feb 2018

Play on one of their faves "Bushwhacker."

Problem is, they'll (gun nuts) will glom on the term and own it like a badge of courage. Much like Deplorable.

calimary

(80,700 posts)
14. That's a good one, too.
Thu Feb 22, 2018, 01:51 PM
Feb 2018

Your point is a good one, though, Wounded Bear. The gun nuts probably will react that way.

Which brings me to my next ploy. They LIKE being called "Deplorables", 'eh? Okaaaaaaaayyyyyy...then what does that say about THEM?

They're proud of their massacre machines? Regard them as badges of courage? Well, then, what does that say about THEM?

That takes me to the Rude Pundit's latest piece:

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2018/02/lets-call-extremist-gun-owners-what.html

I think His Rudeness has a SPECTACULAR point. I think he's spot-on correct. I think it's getting into sickness territory when one's such a freakin' paranoiac that he (or she, but it's mostly male, as I've observed) simply MUST collect and stockpile massacre machines. There's something deeply wrong, twisted, maladjusted, anti-social, warped, deranged, and rather psychopathic about that.

Seems to me the only jerks who want mass-murder weapons somehow have come to believe that they want 'em handy - because they expect to USE them. Against the black helicopters or whatever-the-fuck else it is that Alex Jones's verbal diarrhea is spouting at the moment. Alex Jones is a freakin' menace to society. And all he's doing is creating more menaces to society.

calimary

(80,700 posts)
15. One of the grieving dads from Parkland Florida this morning, Fred Guttenberg, had another GREAT one.
Thu Feb 22, 2018, 05:54 PM
Feb 2018

Heartbreaking. But great.

His 14-year-old daughter can now be found underneath her own gravestone, as a direct result of last Wednesday's hideous school shooting. Her dad called it being "hunted." "Those kids were hunted. In their school." He said that on "Morning Joe" this morning, on MSNBC. I wrote it down to make sure I got it accurately.

Referring to this mass murder as a hunt. MOST intriguing, strategically. Starting to depict the whole idea of preventable and premeditated mass murder like a school shooting as a hunt - can start crapping all over the talking point about how some gunners who describe themselves as hunting enthusiasts simply must use an AR-15 to hunt.

It sure was. And in this case, the hunter wasn't interested in hunting for food. He wanted to hunt to kill.

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