Crafting The Narrative
By Nicki Kenyon, June 9th 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
Have you ever been called a "gun nut," an "extremist" or, as Bill Maher vomited recently in an attempt to denigrate law-abiding gun owners, an "ammosexual"?
Have you been accused of compensating for the ostensibly small size of your genitalia because of your ownership of "assault" weapons?
Have you ever shaken your head in disbelief when the mediots and pundits scream about "assault weapons," no matter what kind of weapon was involved in a particular crime?
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And have you ever seen politicians hold up big, black, scary guns as a symbol of everything that is evil in this country, blaming them for every bout of violence committed by unspeakable monsters?
The uninformed and intellectually lazy buy the anti-gun message hook, line and sinker. They decry "assault weapons" as the scourge of our century. They cry about semi-automatic weapons being responsible for "gun violence." They complain about America's "gun culture." And no matter what other weapon is involved in an atrocity, it's always the gun and the gunman who get the blame.
He's not a murderer. He's a gunman.
It doesn't matter that he was a violent, mentally unstable, entitled, spoiled killer. It's the gun that matters. His was a "gun rampage." Ban it, and things will be fine.
The "gun nuts" are responsible for the supposed lack of gun control that is allowing "daily gun massacres" to happen in this country.
And then there are those evil "high capacity clips." (Stop laughing – gun grabbers really have called them that!) We can't have those available to normal citizens. They're dangerous killing... thingies.
Why?
Why do we allow the gun grabbers to vilify us and spread misinformation and DISinformation?
Why do we allow cunning politicians to frame the narrative to their liking and put us on the defensive?
It's as much our fault as it is theirs.
They do it because they can.
We allow them to put us on the defensive. We allow them to shape the debate with hysteria and lies. We play by their rules and debate on their terms, thereby allowing the deceit and deception to become part of public discourse.
No more.
I've been guilty of this myself. Instead of drawing attention to the "high capacity clip" fallacy and informing the gun grabber that such things simply don't exist, and that what they call "high capacity clips" are merely standard sized magazines for a particular rifle, I've countered their rubbish by pointing out that banning them will not reduce casualty counts without addressing the baseline falsehood.
Instead of calling attention to the hysterical claims that "assault weapons" are causing "daily massacres" in this nation, I have tried to argue that they do no such thing, instead of pointing out that my interlocutor couldn't define an "assault rifle" if it jumped up and bit him in the privates.
It's time to stop allowing them to define the terms and put us on the defensive, because as soon as we do that, we admit that the mythical "assault rifle" is a problem in our society. As soon as we allow them to frame the narrative, we concede that "gun violence" not only exists, but is worse than other types of violence. As soon as we allow the gun grabbers to call slime like Elliot Rodger a "gunman" even though, he killed as many people with a knife as he did with a gun, we concede that the gun is the problem and not the murderous monster using it.
Recently Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action, in her zeal to pressure Target into banning law-abiding citizens from its premises if they were carrying their tools of self-defense, spewed an outright lie about a gun that was found in a Myrtle Beach, SC Target store, claiming it was an "assault weapon." The pistol was actually a 9mm handgun, but it seems very few focused on Watts' lie. They allowed the "assault weapon found at Target" hysteria to stand, while trying to defend their right to carry their guns into the store. Watts may have been eventually exposed as a liar, as she always is, but the "assault weapon at Target" myth is out there, and only a few pro-Second Amendment blogs took the time to expose Watts' fabrications.
It's time to call them out. It's time to bring the facts to the foreground, instead of defending ourselves against continued, steady attacks.
Assault weapons... high-capacity "clips"... gun violence... gun culture... extremists... gunmen... scary, semi-automatic rifles...
Enough is enough!
We don't have a gun culture in America. We have freedom. We have the ability to stand up to tyrants, as the Founders intended. We have the ability to fight back should we be attacked. We have respect for our rights and freedoms. But we have allowed the hoplophobes among us to redefine our freedoms as something shameful.
These people don't understand what a semi-automatic firearm is, but they want to perpetuate its image as a weapon of war, instead of a common tool.
They advance the impression that "gun violence" is worse than stabbing, automobile or poisoning deaths, and present it as an "epidemic" and a matter of public health. We should refuse to debate them on those terms, because the moment we do, we lend credence to this lunacy and we allow the debate to progress on erroneous terms.
No, scary, black rifles are not any more lethal than ones that do not possess random features such as bayonet lugs, pistol grips or barrel shrouds, which Carolyn McCarthy – the author of the original "assault weapons" ban – couldn't even define. But if we allow gun grabbers to define everyday, ordinary firearms as something insidious, we are allowing them to define the terms of the debate, putting us on the defensive.
If we allow the gun-grabberian drivel to be presented as baseline fact, we have already lost the debate.
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Nicki Kenyon has been an avid gun rights advocate since she returned to the United States from an overseas Army tour in Germany. She began writing about Second Amendment issues in 2001 when KeepAndBearArms.com published her first essay, "The Moment.". She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Arts degree in National Security Studies from American Military University. Her area of expertise in those fields is European and Eurasian affairs. When not writing about gun rights or hanging out with her husband and son, she practices dry-firing her M1911 at the zombies of "The Walking Dead."
