Democrats are going to make gun control a significant issue between now and November. We also know that their allies in the media will assist them in this, so Republicans had better get ready, and part of that is knowing how to counter it.
But to do that, you have to have an idea of where they're going to come at you from. To some degree, we know because they're not that original.
It also helps that they spent much of Thursday night, the last night of the Democratic National Convention, going on about gun control.
In particular, they let "survivors" speak.
On the final night of the Democratic convention, gun control advocates delivered a somber plea for change. Rep. Lucy McBath (D-Ga.), who lost her son to gun violence, joined Sandy Hook survivor Abbey Clements, Uvalde mother Kim Rubio, and other survivors on stage to share their stories of loss and grief.
Clements, holding back tears, remembered the Sandy Hook shooting, saying her colleagues and first graders “should still be here.” Rubio recounted how her daughter Lexi received a Good Citizen award just before the Uvalde shooting claimed her life. “Parents reach out for their children. I reach out for the child I will never hold again,” Rubio said.
Following a DNC video slamming former President Donald Trump’s record on gun control and praising Vice President Kamala Harris, McBath urged voters to take action. “We will join with Americans from small towns and big cities to keep our communities safe. And we will elect leaders like Kamala Harris, who won’t just emphasize but will act.”
Now, let's remember that Lucy McBath lost her son to a homicide committed with a firearm, but her anti-gun efforts aren't restricted to just making sure something like that never happens again. She's basically declared jihad against all guns. I say that since she hasn't seemed to meet an anti-gun measure she didn't like, but her son was killed because some jackwagon got upset over his stereo. He didn't use an AR-15, but she wants to ban those. The guy didn't have a gun he picked up without a background check so far as I can tell, but she wants universal background checks.
See how this is shaking out?
That applies to all of these individuals. They dealt with something horrible, but now they blame guns as a whole and want to make it illegal for us to have them. They aren't starting from that point, of course, but that's the endgame.
But that wasn't where it ended.
Vice President Kamala Harris brought it up during her acceptance speech.
On Thursday, the Democratic National Convention closed out festivities with a block dedicated to the party’s gun priorities. A series of gun-control advocates spoke on the main stage in the lead-up to Harris’s acceptance speech. Then, Harris promised action on guns in her remarks.
“In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake,” Harris said during her acceptance speech. “The freedom to live safe from gun violence in our schools, communities, and places of worship.”
The plan for how to ensure people are safe from gun violence was laid out earlier in the evening during a video introducing the DNC’s “freedom from gun violence” segment.
“We’ll finally pass Red Flag laws, universal background checks, and an assault weapons ban,” Harris said in the video. “The power is with the people.”
No, the irony of talking about how "fundamental freedoms are at stake" being said in the same speech she called for attacking fundamental freedoms isn't lost on me.
We know where they intend to start. We also know, based on using survivors, that they don't plan on trying to stick to any kind of a logical, rational discussion. They want emotion. They want people to feel angry and upset because angry and upset people don't care about how there are no well-constructed studies showing any of these measures have the effect Democrats claim.
The trick, at least in my estimation, is to bring out our own survivors.
Far too many people have used a gun, even an AR-15, in self-defense to allow these survivors to go unanswered. People need to see that the narrative that guns only take lives is absolute nonsense. We need to attack not the messengers, but the message they seek to convey by undermining the idea that they carry some particular sainthood because they survived or they lost something. You do that by letting people who share that same condition do the legwork. "How dare you attack a survivor?"
"Dude, he/she is a survivor, too."
"Uh..."
I've seen that defense pop up and I suspect you have too.
So, we know what we're in for and we know how it'll shape up. Get ready because between now and November, it's going to be insane.
