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mctowalot wrote:Remember that old "School House Rock" American Revolution clip? Are they still teaching the kids about that incident or just the OKC bombing?

I'd be willing to bet that only a small fraction of college freshmen could pass a test over the material covered by School House Rock. A couple of years ago, I had to post the "I'm Just a Bill" video to the Students for Concealed Carry on Campus Facebook page.

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Part of the problem is that RKBA groups are, traditionally, not very good at public relations. Rather than constantly playing the victim card and whining about the liberal media, we need to learn to make winning hands from the cards we've been dealt.

For example, rather than making a smart PR move like scheduling the Second Amendment March to fall on a day that isn't the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, gun rights advocates chose to schedule the march on that anniversary because it also happens to be the anniversary of the firing of the first shots at Concord. Those same gun rights advocates then acted shocked and appalled when the media, which has always had a love/hate relationship with gun owners, focused on the date being the anniversary of America's deadliest act of domestic terrorism, rather than on the date corresponding to a little-celebrated milestone from the American Revolution.

If we're going to act like we're above playing the public relations game, we have no right to act offended when our opponents, who have no problem playing the game, manage to portray us as a bunch of dangerous, ignorant nuts.

Another example of gun rights advocates not understanding and/or refusing to play the public relations game is open carry rallies, such as the one occurring today on the Virginia side of the Potomac. Gun owners trying to win gun rights by publicly carrying guns en masse is comparable to gay men trying to win gay rights by dressing up in leather thongs and making out en masse. It accomplishes nothing beyond irritating opponents and alienating fence sitters who otherwise might choose to side with us. I'm not saying we don't have or shouldn't have the right to carry guns en masse; I'm saying that we do harm to the cause when we choose to.

A third example of the way gun rights advocates play into the hands of opponents is by arguing their case either entirely on the basis of the Second Amendment--thereby reinforcing the stereotype that proponents of gun rights have no practical defense for their positions, beyond a 200-year-old document--or on the basis of flawed, inaccurate, or incomplete information--thereby reinforcing the stereotype that proponents of gun rights are ignorant and uneducated.

The U.S. Constitution is a wonderful document, without which we might have lost our gun rights years ago, but citing it neither wins supporters nor discredits opponents. Doing so simply perpetuates the notion that we have nothing more to contribute to the debate.

Many gun rights advocates get in the habit of citing rumors and half-truths as factual evidence, as a way of besting friends and acquaintances in casual debates. This tends to backfire when you do it on national TV (or any form of published media). For example, I once heard someone on Fox News say that Charles Whitman, the perpetrator of the 1966 University of Texas sniper attack, was shot by an armed professor. Whitman was actually shot by a police officer. That kind of nonsense makes us look like we have to make up "facts" to support our positions.