The Gun-Control Movement Is Borrowing the Marriage-Equality Playbook — and Hoping for Similar Results

(NY Mag) – If the marriage movement were a novel, then the current moment would be its denouement. The players — activists, politicians, supporters, loved ones — have taken their victory lap and drunk their Champagne. The country has celebrated (cried!) at photos, on Facebook and Instagram and everywhere, of gay and lesbian friends and relatives saying their vows, holding hands, kissing, hugging, showing off children in a patriotic display of officially recognized out-ness unimaginable just five years ago. The country may be in the shitter, the feeling goes, but the Supreme Court in its wisdom also Gave. Us. This.

…For in these past weeks, as they sweep up the confetti, many have begun to wonder, What do we do now? 

For some, the obvious answer is guns. Like paid soldiers looking ahead to the next war, many of marriage’s decorated officers are privately entertaining offers from the leaders of any number of leftist causes: the environment, inequality, immigration. If you can achieve that, the thinking goes, why not try this?

…“We have more momentum than this issue has had in decades,” agrees Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “I do think you can make the strong case that this is the next big issue.”

Dan Gross, Mr. El Presidente of the Brady Campaign, who gets paid $370k (at least a couple of years ago) plus benefits, makes a pretty bold claim.  The gun control movement has more momentum than it has had in decades?   Maybe that’s why in the last two decades the entire nation has adopted right to carry, the Supreme Court has recognized an individual’s right to keep and bear arms and two-thirds of Americans now recognize that a firearm in the home is a net positive to home safety and security?

Maybe that momentum line is what he tells mega-millionaire potential donors that he’s trying to swindle out of some trust fund money for his Brady Campaign.

It is the last paragraph that sums it all up though.  By redefining our language, they hope to dupe people into supporting their flawed scheme to steal our freedom and liberty, in the name of temporary security.

Of course, the security never comes, because the bad guys don’t play by society’s rules and norms.  Gun control only emboldens bad guys.  They ignore the (new) laws while plying their trade without a second thought.

When Zach Silk thinks about how to articulate the values of the renovated gun movement, he uses the same words that the gun advocates use: “Community. Safety. Responsibility. Protecting my family.” In this redefining, he hopes to make a point. “Protection” isn’t an individual matter (a canard in any case, because having a gun in the house makes you exponentially less safe) in which individual patriarchs safeguard individual offspring. “Protection” is a communitarian thing, in which the safety of one’s own children depends on the safe habits of one’s neighbors. Like love, everyone deserves a chance at that.