Some advice for gun-control advocates: watch the atheists and the GLBTQ community. [View all]

[backscatter712]

Last edited Sat Jul 21, 2012, 09:19 PM - Edit history (1)

I'll admit I haven't paid very much attention to the gun control debates here that flared up after the Aurora shootings. I used to be more of a gun person than I am today. I sold my guns, mostly because I needed the money, but also as a personal renunciation of violence. But guns just don't interest me much anymore. Once in a while, I'll shoot clay pigeons with my brother in law, but that's about all I do.

But I did have a brain fart, so take it for what you will. The first step in a political campaign is taking an honest appraisal of the environment, and my appraisal is this, as amateur as it may be.

Gun control is very unpopular.

And that's where you (I mean gun control advocates) have something in common with atheists and the GLBTQ community. They're also unpopular, but at the same time, they've made significant progress.

I'm an atheist, and thus a member of a group so unpopular that we joke about eating babies, as that's about the only thing less popular, especially in the Bible Belt.

I saw one thread here titled "Give up on banning guns! It'll never happen in the U.S." But did the atheists, or gay people, or black people give up? They've been behind the political eight-ball, but they fought and make progress.

So recognize the challenge. How do you take a position that is deeply unpopular (OK, not everywhere, but in a lot of the country), and gain some ground?

Part of it is persistence. Keep going, recognizing that you're in for a slog. The right-wing and the NRA have planted a series of memes framing gun issues as a civil rights issue, using the Second Amendment to make the assertion that people have a basic civil right to own and possess deadly weapons. You're going to need to put forward an alternative frame. Politics always has morality lurking in its core, and for you, framing your morality is easy. Killing is wrong, these deadly weapons are being used to kill children and innocent people every day, and some common-sense rules need to be implemented to decrease the potential for shootings.

Another part is desensitization. Gun control advocates have been very effectively demonized as usurpers of liberty (complete with black- helicopter conspiracy theories) , and that sucks the oxygen out of the debate before you can even get your first word out of your mouth. You will need to desensitize the public to the idea that you have your ideas, that you will talk about them openly, and they can't shut you up.

How do you do this? Be an asshole!

I'll come clean and say that as an atheist DUer, I've deliberately been a real asshole. Madalyn Murray O'Hair and Christopher Hitchens have also been known to be very abrasive. Religious people have planted the norm in our culture that we don't criticize religion, that we don't ask questions and we dare not express doubt or contradict. I break that norm with gusto. I openly ridicule every religion from Christianity to Mormonism to Judaism to Islam. If I was in Saudi Arabia, they'd chop my head off!

I do this to challenge those norms and to weaken them. I fully expect people to get upset with me, and expect backlash. So much the better - it draws attention, gets more people thinking, and plants seeds. Sure, I get flamed, get posts hidden, get the riot act from administration and juries. I'm a big boy, and I can take it. And over a longer period of time, I see the resistance diminish.

So I say be an asshole, and desensitize your audience to the idea of repealing the Second Amendment, or interpreting it in a way that opens the door to firearms licensing & firepower restrictions. They'll scream about you taking their rights away and call you tyrants. Just smile and put on your best trollface. Before you can get them to agree, first get them used to the idea that you have the right to say it out loud.

That's my brainfart. I hope it's not too far off base.