Hillary Clinton and her allies have convinced one another that attacking the natural right to bear arms for self-defense is a winning strategy in November’s Presidential elections, even as they recognize that they have to lie about what they’re proposing to make gun control palatable even among each other.

Common sense is one of the terms that gun-control lobbyists advise their clients and allies to use when framing their arguments about the fraught subject of guns, lest opponents weaponize their words.

Pollster Anna Greenberg, who works with the gun-control group Americans for Responsible Solutions, tells supporters to talk about “the gun lobby,” but not the National Rifle Association, which in many voters’ minds is about hunting and sport. Talk about closing loopholes, not about stricter gun laws. Talk about background checks, not a national gun registry. And never promise that anything is a fix-all or use the loaded phrase “gun control.”

“By using the right arguments and language to bring more Americans into our movement, galvanize our allies and fight back against the gun lobby, we can win this fight,” according to a strategy memo circulated to allies in Philadelphia this week.

This style of messaging played out in events around Philadelphia this week as Hillary Clinton prepared to accept her party’s nomination. Unlike other recent Democratic presidential campaigns, Clinton has made combating gun violence a signature issue. And in Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, she picked a running made who is a longtime foe of the National Rifle Association, which called itself a civil rights group when the Republicans met in Cleveland for their convention.

Gun control is general and gun confiscation in specific are the “holy grails” of the radical left wing that has seized control of the Democrat Party. Hillary Clinton’s pollsters have told her that it’s a winning issue for her, as long as she disguises what she’s actually attempting by changing the language used in her argument.

The surefire loser of  “gun control” becomes “gun violence prevention.”

“National gun registry” becomes “universal background checks.”

Common semi-automatic firearms that have been around for over a century are now “weapons of war.”

The nation’s oldest and largest civil rights group, the National Rifle Association (NRA), are not to be mentioned, nor is the unfailingly polite and wonky industry trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).

Instead, the Democrats have crafted an imaginary and foreboding “gun lobby” strawman to flagellate.

The efforts to reframe the debate by changing the language is a thinly-veiled attempt at sleight of hand that plays well in urban areas where gun ownership is relatively low and liberal Democrats are already in power, but this left wing strategy of redefining reality embraced by Democrats and the media (as if there is any separation between the two) is running headlong into the unassailable fact that firearms are more popular now than at any point in American history.

FBI NICS background checks show a new monthly sales record almost every month. The number of concealed carry permit holders in the United States continues to grow, and constitutional carry—recognizing the right to carry a firearm openly or concealed without a permit—is rapidly growing on the state level, even as states pass laws expanding the kind of places that citizens may carry firearms.

Youth shooting sports are the fastest growing school sports. Youth firearms education and participation in shooting sports are exploding in popularity.

Female interest in armed self-defense has grown rapidly. Female hunting is on the rise despite attacks from rabid animal rights activist on popular female hunters. Firearms and accessory manufacturers are seeing so much interest in female gun ownership, hunting, and shooting sports that many manufacturers are going beyond “pink guns” to truly design firearms and equipment designed for smaller shooters and the female form in particular. It’s worth noting that female gun ownership is often initially focused on handguns for self-defense, but for those who find enjoyment in shooting, their defensive handguns are often quickly augmented by AR-15s because these common rifles are lightweight, low-recoiling, inexpensive to feed, and easily adaptable to the needs of the individual shooter. It’s important to point out that as more women become gun owners, they end up having children brought up to respect firearms as well, suggesting that arguments for gun control will either succeed now with Clinton’s desperate rebranding attempts, or continue to lose ground at an accelerating rate.

Urban gun ownership is also on the rise, driven by concerns of violent crime in cities failed by decades of Democrat rule. This urban adoption of firearms cuts across color lines. Based upon the many defensive gun use stories we’ve covered at Bearing Arms, it appears that armed minority women and their families are the beneficiaries of this sea change in thought towards defensive gun use among law-abiding citizens “in the city.”

Simply put, almost every possible physically tangible market indicator shows that interest in gun ownership is up across the board in the United States, and the best-selling and most popular firearms on the market across demographic groups are the very firearms that Hillary Clinton and her allies in the mainstream media are trying their hardest to demonize.

Democrats are repeating the phrase “weapons of war” time and time again to describe common utility firearms like AR-15s, and according to their allied pollsters and the media, it’s a winning strategy.  Record firearms sales and gun ownership across the nation, however, suggests that the Democrats may be experiencing more than a little Pauline Kaelism, so sure of their ideas among their insular and self-affirming group that they simply cannot fathom the probability that they’re picking a losing fight with America itself.