By Rob Morse
We all know how to sell something. We also know how to discredit an idea or action. All we have to do is ignore its benefits and inflate its costs. Are those lies exactly? Here is how the mainstream media and anti-gun rights politicians teach low information voters to hate guns and despise gun owners…they lie about them.
Tell only half the truth about armed self-defense. The easiest way for the media and gun prohibition politicians to blame gun owners is to show the harm that criminals do with guns while ignoring the lives that are saved when honest citizens use firearms defensively.
The mainstream media tells us all about the horrific murderers who use gun. At the same time, those same news outlets ignore the commonly occurring events of armed defense that happen every day. It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of this lack of balance since media bias isn’t just shaded by a few percent…it’s more like a thousand-fold. That level of willful distortion is commonly called a lie.
We can test that right now. See if you can remember a time when the news told you about a murderer who used a gun. Of course you can, but do you remember when the news media showed you an example of armed defense where the good guys and good gals stopped the attacker and saved lives?
That happens almost 4,600 times a day and yet you can’t remember seeing more than one or two news stories about it. It’s easy to only associate guns and gun owners with murders and robberies when the legacy news media hides half the story.
Misrepresent gang activity as firearms accidents. If you look, you will find more and more stories of young men engaging in violent crime. We now see 12-year-olds as part of armed carjacking gangs. It’s easy to assume that when an 11-, 12-, or a 13-year-old gets shot that it was a tragic firearms accident. That might be true in a small rural town but even 12-year-olds are parts of violent gangs in failed cities.
It’s certainly true that many youngsters are shot as innocent bystanders, but that isn’t a “firearm accident” either. We have to make a clear distinction between an actual accident and homicide. The good news is that both the number and the rate of real firearms accidents have been falling for years. Firearms education and safety programs prevent accidents.
Combine suicides in with homicides. The largest fraction of gun-related deaths are from suicide. Long ago we passed laws that made suicide illegal. But someone who is willing to take their own life isn’t concerned with breaking the law. We passed “red flag” laws that take firearms away from gun owners. We take their guns, but we don’t offer them mental health counseling. We’ve also seen some states impose mandatory waiting periods of 3 to 14 days before you can pick up the gun that’s been purchased.
The claim is that mandatory waiting periods reduce suicide rates. We’re told that we might impulsively use the newly purchased gun to commit suicide, but you wouldn’t use firearms you already have in your home or other means. Waiting periods simply don’t make sense and are inherently dangerous.
Suicide is a real problem that deserves more than imaginary solutions. The number of suicides rises and falls each year, but we haven’t found clear evidence that gun-control laws reduced the rate of suicide. Other countries with strict gun controls have far higher suicide rates.
I have seen the large and sustained efforts that firearms manufacturers, ammunition manufacturers, gun shops, and individual gun owners have put into mental health counseling for gun owners in crises. They helped establish and fund programs like Walk-the-talk America and Hold My Guns.
Conflate gun owners with criminals. Despite what we’re told, we don’t see the rate of crime drop after states impose gun control laws. The reason is obvious since honest people obey gun laws while criminals continue to commit crimes. Unlike us, criminals don’t use gun shops to get their guns. Criminals get their guns the same place they get their drugs. They buy them on the street from other criminals (or steal them).
The news media tell us that making it harder for honest citizens to get guns will somehow change the way criminals behave. That’s magical thinking, not reason. The media tells us that honest, law-abiding gun owners are to blame for the crimes that criminals commit with guns.
Blame lawful gun owners for mass murderers. Honest gun owners are blamed every time a madman commits murder in a “gun-free zone” where the victims are disarmed by law. We’re told that we need to have mandatory background checks to stop mass murderers.
We’re not supposed to look at that statement too closely since mass-murder is pretty much a one-and-done career. When we look, we find that some mass murderers had a criminal record that should have disqualified them from possessing a gun. That prohibition scheme doesn’t work when prosecutors don’t prosecute criminals.
What surprises us is that many crazed mass murderers actually told us why they wanted to kill. We’ve read their journals and manifestos. They want to be famous and will kill to get what they want. The news media is all too eager help.
We were not told that 94% of mass shootings occur in gun free zones. We’re not shown that honest gun owners stopped 104 attempted mass-murders in the last seven years. Where we are allowed to go armed, we stopped more than half of the attempted mass-murders in the last few years. If that comes as a surprise to you, you know that the mainstream media has been lying to you. Armed citizens are the cure rather than the disease that caused public violence and celebrity murders.
Portray gun owners as an emotional threat. We’ve seen politicians question our right to defend ourselves. The news media and anti-gun rights activists demean not only guns and gun owners, but even the people who tolerate them.
We’ve talked about facts, but we haven’t talked about feelings very much. There is a reason for all this animosity directed at gun owners.
Gun owners are guilty of wrongthink. Questioning the effectiveness of gun-control laws undercuts the utopian fantasies that underly gun control. We think we’re discussing facts but we are actually shattering their dreams. We’re considered a threat since we ask ordinary people to question the utopian ideals that the gun control industry promises.
It’s comforting to think that getting rid of guns would eliminate violence. Some politicians and activists are strongly attached to that fairy tale. Lawful gun owners are considered a threat because we make the utopians feel insecure.
How dare you put your safety and the safety of your family ahead of my comforting fantasy!
We’ve talked about facts, but if you want to make someone uncomfortable, question their dreams. That explains the vitriol that’s regularly hurled at ordinary citizens who want the means to protect themselves.
Facts matter to those who are influenced by facts. Dreams matter to those who live in their dreams. I will not call my virtue a vice simply to make other people feel more comfortable. Life is too precious for that. I have dreams of the future too, and so do you.
This article originally appeared at Slow Facts and is reprinted here with permission.