Back in the day, TTAG contributor Dan Baum chided me for using the term “gun grabber.” The Gun Guys author considered it downmarket and incendiary. Since then I’ve referred to gun grabbers as gun control advocates, civilian disarmament proponents or simply “antis.”
Meanwhile, gun grabbers have been swimming in a sea of euphemisms, lest the word “control” diminish the appeal of their anti-ballistic brand. (The truth hurts.)
The left-leaning mainstream media’s swallowed the spin doctoring hook, line, and sinker, filing report after report on gun safety, common sense gun safety, gun reform and gun violence prevention.
Equally, the antis have assiduously avoided the word “control” in their names. There’s Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Americans for Responsible Solutions, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, States United, The Violence Policy Center, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, etc. Not to mention Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Michael Bloomberg’s abandoned anti-gun agitprop arm.
But the Maryland gun grabbers’ re-branding — revealed by the lop-sided video above — is something different.
“Vocal Majority” is a clear riff on the term “silent majority.” President Nixon popularized the term in a speech referring to Americans who supported the Vietnam War without making a ruckus (unlike the long-haired hippies smoking dope, fornicating and rallying against the war).
Whether or not Free State gun grabbers paid image consultants to choose the Vocal Majority moniker/hashtag, we know why: to suggest that their push for “universal background checks” has overwhelming public support.
Which it kinda does and kinda doesn’t.
While the majority of the public are willing to put their hands up for UBC’s, this is low-information America. They don’t appreciate/understand that there’s a slippery slope from universal background checks to universal registration to universal confiscation. Nor do they understand that UBC’s mean they can’t lend a gun to a pal — even on the range — without a background check.
Noting that the polls show that instituting “strict gun control” has only slightly more support than not doing so. Without any idea of what “strict gun control” actually means.
Anyway, the name Vocal Majority says mob rule to me. The term has a distinct bully boy feel to it. Considering the fact that gun grabbers constantly refer to gun rights advocates — especially open carriers — as bullies, there’s not a little to irony here.