Some thoughts on anti-gunner worldview & making real progress

[divert_fuse]

Although I've been told I don't know anything about this forum, it strikes me that I may have a somewhat different perspective from most folks here in that I grew up among anti-gunner leftists, and thus may (contra Haidt) understand them better than the average poster here. There's a tendency on both sides of this issue, as with others, to regard the other side like the Terminator. The anti-gunners are out there, they can't be bargained with, they can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, remorse, or fear. And they won't stop until your rights are gone.

While the pathological hoplophobe contingent exists, it's important to keep in mind that there are shades of opinion and thus a very real moderate anti-gun cohort which can be, if not converted, at least rendered a negligible force for political purposes. They will of course tend to support any anti-gun law reflexively if not given a reason not to, but that's no excuse for losing.

So how do these people, the less-insane, more-persuadable anti-gun people think, and what do they worry about when it comes to guns? In general, the good old "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" is to them persuasive, at least in the sense that they do not challenge it. They understand notion that there are bad people who will have guns no matter what and might need to be shot, although they prefer this be done by professionals (hey, so would I; ammo's expensive). Nor are they especially worried about mass shootings, comparatively speaking, as they tend to recognize this isn't where the real danger comes from.

What worries them is what I'll call the Stupid Young Men problem. Basically, that widespread ownership of guns among young guys who are not criminals, but have the natural desire of young men to be badasses and not exactly at the top of the class in terms of judgment, foresight, and ability to control their tempers will lead to unnecessary deaths. The risk cohort includes men of all ages, and women to some extent, but obviously young men represent the biggest danger.

I know what some of you are thinking, but resist the temptation to critique this worldview's accuracy! Not even for fun on the internet because it will distract from the purpose of this thread. You will get nowhere attempting to fix people's worldviews. But you can make progress by emotionally satisfying people's actual concerns, whether they are significant or not. And the fact is that the Stupid Young Men problem is a real problem, it's just not the biggest problem or a good reason to ban guns.

My thought is that you need to spread the notion that since a real ban on guns is impossible (something all shades of anti-gunners fear), the only solution is to spread shooting sports. I've done a lot of martial arts, and one of the things that happens to you when you do that after a while is you stop thinking of martial arts in terms of practice for something you might have to do for real in a serious situation. You know that you can beat the crap out of the random drunk jerks at the bar without trouble, so there's nothing interesting about the idea. Moreover, the random drunk jerks can smell it on you, so you never end up having to use it in real life if you're not looking for trouble. In any case, you come to regard the toughest guys at your martial arts school as the "real fight," because the fact of the matter is that they're way tougher than anyone you're going to get into a scrape with in regular life. The result is that I've never even heard* of a serious and talented martial artist who got into a lot of fights except in a professional capacity (security guys, cops, soldiers, and so on).

So the idea is that you try to do this sort of thing for shooting. Young men want to be badasses? Okay, go down to your local two-gun action challenge match and show everybody how badass you really are. What's that, you lost? Better go train, kid. Pretty soon, you know that you're pretty badass, that beating the local two-gun champion is the real fight, and that shooting some random guy mouthing off proves nothing except a lack of self-control (which you're working on regularly in your two-gun martial arts training).

You could further point out that this is the true spirit of the 2nd Amendment, where the military was supposed to be like a volunteer fire department staffed by young aspiring badasses, or how the NRA was originally founded to basically do the same thing. I don't know how rhetorically effective this is though.

The result, hopefully, is to give the moderate anti-gunners an emotional reason to worry less about the Stupid Young Men problem, which will make them inclined to provide less support to the hoplophobes. Over time, the conversation can shift.

The guys from Forgotten Weapons and InRange have talked a bit about how they try to keep politics out of their content. Karl said he was explicitly trying to present guns as a hobby and source of self-improvement (like martial arts!), and Ian talks about trying to present them as fun pieces of history. The idea is that giving people a way of looking at guns besides the usual "No more dead kids!" vs "SHALL. NOT. BE. INFRINGED" actually moves the needle.

So maybe this isn't the best idea, but my point is that I'd like to see more people talking about how to actually move the needle, and here's some of my thoughts on the subject.

*This is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm aware of historical examples of champion jerks, but I assume you all get the gist.

[bigmike82]

"The idea is that giving people a way of looking at guns besides the usual "No more dead kids!" vs "SHALL. NOT. BE. INFRINGED" actually moves the needle."
This used to be the predominant usage of the words gun culture. Not the Ya'll Qaeda parody that the media is pushing.

Good points though. There's no better way to get comfortable with guns and ownership than exposure.

[divert_fuse]

Thanks. By the way, I should point out that the big concern being stupid young men is just my experience, which may not be totally representative. I'd like to hear other people's take on anti-gunner concerns. Just remember that we're trying to think how to address those concerns and win, not incestuously agree how dumb anti-gunners are in our little clubhouse while our rights disappear outside.

[AreWeFree]

Thanks. By the way, I should point out that the big concern being stupid young men is just my experience, which may not be totally representative. I'd like to hear other people's take on anti-gunner concerns. Just remember that we're trying to think how to address those concerns and win, not incestuously agree how dumb anti-gunners are in our little clubhouse while our rights disappear outside.

There is no "we're trying to think" and "our little clubhouse."

That's your tell.

[bababoris]

[Preston-CLB]

Bababoris nailed it!
-P

[divert_fuse]

In my experience, this kind of strategy is not widespread in the minds of moderate anti-gunners, although I imagine some hardcore activists do think this way. The reason this is important is because I'm talking about how to emotionally satisfy the concerns of moderate anti-gunners in order to make forward progress. The secret plans in the mind of the leaders pulling the strings isn't relevant except when it comes to the question of how to counter it.

That people who want a ban and can't get one fall back on death by a thousand cuts just seems like what you'd expect people to do. I'm trying to look at what kinds of concerns lead people to support bans in the first place, so we can find ways to emotionally satisfy them and win support.

To the extent that you make the middle more comfortable with the idea of people having guns, you'll make them substantially more open to arguments that particular gun laws are dumb, like not letting people have semiautomatic rifles with flash hiders. I know it wasn't presented that way, but nobody could look at that proposal and think "Finally, we'll be safe!" The reason it works is that enough people aren't actually looking, and the emotional barriers are key to this and changing it.

[theLBC]

imho, libtards have issues with guns not because of their existence, but because of the shootings and murders, which they blame on guns.
while i support grass root efforts to get more people involved in the sport, i don't honestly think this would significantly reduce the murders, the reasons why they occur, or the libtard's opinions (unless they are the ones taking up the sport).

[MosinVirus]

The problem with die hard anti-gunners is they are not willing to listen to any facts. They see one side of the coin - murder and mass shootings - not both sides of the coin - murder and mass shootings on one and crimes (murder, mugging, rape, burglary, etc) stopped on the other. Especially where the crimes stopped clearly outweigh the murder and mass murders.

The bigger problem that is the route (in my opinion) to all of this nonsense (gun control) is lack of education.

I keep saying the same thing over and over... Our country with a right to keep and bear arms has no firearm handling and responsible ownership education in high schools. (which some time ago may not have been needed, due to parents teaching their kids, but now there are fewer and fewer parents that will teach "guns" to their kids)

Without education those uninformed will believe anything media says. (e.g. 30 magazine clip, fully semi automatic, high-capacity 11 round magazine, AR = Assault Rifle, etc)
Without education those uninformed will fear the unknown.
Without education those uninformed may accidentally discharge a firearm they have a right to own.
Etc.

And it literally doesnt matter what any gun owner will say. The mass media (source of information to the left) is more credible to the leftists than any deplorable...

And by the way as a "privileged, racist, bigot, deplorable" I can call them libtards.

And I think any attempt to "emotionally satisfy their concerns" is only going to dig the hole deeper. All we have been doing is emotionally satisfying their concerns. That is why a plain old semi auto rifle is an "assault weapon" now.

[divert_fuse]

while i support grass root efforts to get more people involved in the sport, i don't honestly think this would significantly reduce the murders, the reasons why they occur, or the libtard's opinions (unless they are the ones taking up the sport).

Keep in mind that the point is not to actually reduce murders, but to emotionally satisfy people's concerns. I welcome reasons why this wouldn't accomplish that, or other thoughts on how to satisfy the concerns, but don't get to caught up in practical impacts because they aren't all that relevant to emotional persuasion.

Also, please don't call them "libtards" in this thread (feel free elsewhere).

[AreWeFree]

Keep in mind that the point is not to actually reduce murders, but to emotionally satisfy people's concerns. I welcome reasons why this wouldn't accomplish that, or other thoughts on how to satisfy the concerns, but don't get to caught up in practical impacts because they aren't all that relevant to emotional persuasion.

Also, please don't call them "libtards" in this thread (feel free elsewhere).

LMAO. I can hardly believe what I'm reading, you're so outrageous I'm blown away.

Why don't you want to prevent murders?

I would seriously like to prevent murders.

[bigmike82]

LMAO. I can hardly believe what I'm reading, you're so outrageous I'm blown away.

Why don't you want to prevent murders?

I would seriously like to prevent murders.

You need to chill a bit and reread what's been said.

This is about expanding gun culture, and getting people more used to them who aren't because, ultimately, that's a fight the brady bunch is winning. This isn't some crime-prevention discussion.

[fiddletown]

...So how do these people, the less-insane, more-persuadable anti-gun people think, and what do they worry about when it comes to guns? In general, the good old "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" is to them persuasive, at least in the sense that they do not challenge it....

How do you know this? Where is your evidence that this is true? Do you have access to published, peer reviewed studies leading to these conclusions?

The reality is that we probably have a very poor grasp of the spectrum of emotional tensions at the core of anti-gun sentiment. I'm not aware of any significant sociological or psychological studies of anti-gun sentiment. If someone is, I think we'd very much appreciate the information.

And without some good studies, these imaginings of what makes an anti-gunner tick are nothing more than guesses. And guesses aren't a good foundation upon which to build an effective counter strategy.

And I hardly think that we can assume that the anti-gun world is monolithic. I'd be more inclined to hypothesize that the challenge to the effective promotion of the RKBA is the broad spectrum of emotions, beliefs, hopes, fears, values, wants and needs of too many of our neighbors, co-workers, people in our communities, folks we see at the mall, etc. In general, and for diverse reasons, and based on assortments of different values and life priorities, and fueled by varying beliefs, they don't like guns; they don't understand or accept the proposition that owning guns can be reasonable and relevant for honest, normal people in a 21st Century urban society; they don't understand why normal, honest folks in a 21st Century urban society want guns; they are afraid of people with guns or who would want to have a gun; and they don't accept the various premises upon which we have concluded that having guns is a good and useful thing.

It's about a conflict of cultures. Gun owners are increasingly being marginalized and stereotyped as misfits, outsiders, malcontents, paranoids, and loners. We're not seen as a part of and participant in the broader community. What can each of us do to try to turn that around? What is each of us doing to help turn that around?

[divert_fuse]

The problem with die hard anti-gunners is they are not willing to listen to any facts.

As I pointed out above, there's another target audience here: moderate anti-gunners, who support the diehards because of our failure to message effectively. Actually converting them is difficult, but getting them to the point where they provide less support to the diehards is, in my view, totally feasible.

Especially where the crimes stopped clearly outweigh the murder and mass murders.

I've always thought this was a loser from a persuasion perspective (even if it is an effective debating point) because the lion's share of the crime prevention is deterrence, not good guys actually shooting bad guys.

In my experience, anti-gunners often consider the idea of good guys coming to the rescue slightly fantastical. In some cases, they have some notion of the challenge of using a gun and will talk about how unlikely lots of self-defense scenarios sound. They also tend to worry about the idea of a whole platoon's worth of CCW-wielding do-gooders coming to the rescue and making it far worse (I heard this a lot around the time of the Batman theatre shooting).

I've pointed out that I think widespread CCW would be very effective against mass shooters even if the CCW holders never engage the shooter, or if the CCW holder isn't actually good enough to win the fight. Mass shooters tend to be, not to put too fine a point on it, losers. They want to go around killing defenseless people, and as soon as they encounter some kind of effective resistance (such as from police), they tend to eat their guns. The kind of person with the mental fortitude to actually shoot it out against an opponent tends not to become a mass shooter in the first place (obviously exceptions exist). To the extent that you expect to run into a CCW holder at some point, doing a mass shooting will seem like a poor way of achieving your psychological goals.

This isn't the most persuasive line of reasoning overall, in the sense of convincing anti-gunners that widespread CCW is a good idea, but on the point that anti-gunners sometimes reason "Shooting is hard, so CCW holders won't be good enough to do more harm than good" it actually is genuinely persuasive in my experience.

I keep saying the same thing over and over... Our country with a right to keep and bear arms has no firearm handling and responsible ownership education in high schools. (which some time ago may not have been needed, due to parents teaching their kids, but now there are fewer and fewer parents that will teach "guns" to their kids)

I don't mean to be rude, but the idea that you're going to solve the problem with high school shooter's ed is insane. You'd need the permission of the educational bureaucracy, and they won't find the idea as attractive as you do.

You should not, in general, be looking at ways to win which depend on the cooperation of people who are, on average, extremely hostile towards you. What are you going to do, fool them? High school teachers and educations bureaucrats aren't as dumb as you think.

If your solution is education, you have to deliver the education via channels other than the educational system. A good example of this in my opinion is Ian McCollum (sp?) packaging a set of WW1 weapons videos specifically for Battlefield 1 players. If you liked this video game, you can learn more about the real weapons you saw in this game, and all of a sudden you're using the word "clip" correctly and noticing how ignorant media coverage of gun stuff is.

[divert_fuse]

How do you know this? Where is your evidence that this is true? Do you have access to published, peer reviewed studies leading to these conclusions?

it strikes me that I may have a somewhat different perspective from most folks here in that I grew up among anti-gunner leftists

So, no, I didn't read any peer-reviewed studies about what they're like. Should I have?

I don't want to sound too snarky here, so I should point out that I agree with your thought process in the rest of your post.