Some good advise for us Civil Rights advocates here...

[virginia mountainman]

I stumbled over this blog posting by accident earlier, and it really made some good sense. We can use this, to help the anti-civil rights advocates see our side.

I really want to see us make some more great gains to our causes, this is why I post this. We are running away with this issue, but their are more "anti's" out their to peel off from their Republican Leaders..

A good quote from this blog post...This is from a marketing expert, with many successes and books to his credit. These ideas would be beneficial to us, as we continue to help these individuals in our own party.

Same goes for diehard fans of the other brand, or worse, the clueless who should be using your solution, but don't even care enough to use your competitor's product.

If they only thought like you, of course, and knew what you know, then there wouldn't be a problem.

The challenge doesn't lie in getting them to know what you know. It won't help. The challenge lies in helping them see your idea through their lens, not yours. If you study the way religions and political movements spread, you can see that this is exactly how it works. Marketers of successful ideas rarely market the facts. Instead, they market stories that match the worldview of the people being marketed to.

A bit more here..

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/think-like-me-agree-with-me.html

Remember folks, we are trying to win over people, who has placed their faith, in the poorly thought out plans of their republican gun control leaders. Faith, is a belief, it has nothing to do with any factual basis at all... So it is pointless to "debate fact" with these misguided people. To them, facts have no bearing. Much like trying to debate with religious nut cases about abortion, it is completely pointless. The facts don't matter...

It is all a matter of faith...no matter how wrong it is.

It is exactly the same kind of thought processes that go into these two stances.

As I pointed out in last weeks post about the underlying issues of people who place blind faith in Gun Control. We would do better to stick to those proven techniques, and the advice above to win new, converts to our swelling ranks.

[Arctic Dave]

1. Civil rights? You tarnish the phrase with your stupidity about the subject,

I don't see anyone being hung or beaten because they own a gun.

[virginia mountainman]

2. The right to own a gun, is recognized by the US Bill of Rights..

It IS, a civil right...

[eqfan592]

6. Ah, so a civil right isn't important....

...or isn't even a true "civil right" unless somebody is hung or beaten while attempting to exercise it? And exactly how does that make a single bit of sense? Also, I imagine you could find somebody somewhere in time who was beaten and/or hung for exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, especially if this person was a black person in the deep south in the (sadly) not too distant past.

[proteus_lives]

9. So ignorant.

[Factoid]

10. Oddly enough..

.. The first gun-control laws in the US were passed in the south to ensure that recently freed minorities WOULDN'T be able to own guns to protect themselves from those who wanted to hang or beat them.

Which is one of the reasons that the 14th amendment was passed, which was circumcised by the utterly horrible Slaughterhouse case among others.

Something we're hoping to see rectified this spring. For *ALL* Civil Rights.

I believe you have let your passion for this subject blind you to some of the documented historical facts of the matter. If at all possible, I would urge you to take a step back and read up on american history in the south circa 1860-1960, Perhaps then you may come to a better understanding why some of us are rather outspoken in defense of all civil rights.

[SteveM]

11. Well, let me edumacate you about the subject...

There were plenty of laws banning the ownership of guns by "Negroes." Many of these Jim Crow laws even allowed "militia" and other groups to invade the homes of blacks in search of guns, all without due process. The Atlanta riots in the early 20th century were a point of departure for the Atlanta Constitution to decry in its editorial the prospects of Negroes owning guns. Of course, many "Negroes" died in those riots. In fact, ye who lives far to the North, the whole suite of gun-control laws (both proposed and passed) have long been bench-tested in the South.

Now, of course, gun-owners don't have to worry so much about "punishment" for owning firearms because, Dave, they have been afforded protection of their right to keep and bear arms as a result of the Civil Rights "era" of the 1950s - 60s.

Unfortunately, some DUers still use crow feathers as book markers in their copies of the Constitution.

[Arctic Dave]

13. At yet you speak of two different things.

They were being harrassed because the were black. They were not out to hang the gun. The OP does a nice job of trying to ride the coat tails of a hard fought and nasty part of the US history. Will he start calling it a gun holocaust next?

[SteveM]

15. No, the post-Civil War Southern gun-control laws ARE part of a "hard-fought" history...

In fact, the debate over the 14th Amendment (passed 1868) was chiefly about the disarmament of Southern blacks by white gangs, the KKK, even state militia. The heavy-lifting done during the civil rights era was by that same 14th Amendment (when jurists could see past the Slaughterhouse decision). The OP was spot-on in placing the Second within the core of our civil rights and the movements it spawned. The reason there was little blood shed in the latter part of the 20th Century was because so many of the other civil rights questions were settled. But there were ample break-ins, arrests, beatings, confiscations and deaths due to the efforts of Southern governments/gangs to disarm blacks -- but well before any contemporary date for civil rights "success" we might designate now.

Please read the Heller brief, submitted by www.georgiacarry.org

I'm not sure what "hang the gun" means or has to do with this topic.

[Callisto32]

16. So something is only a civil right if people get hung or beaten over it?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that exactly what is NOT supposed to happen when civil rights are involved?

[Francis Marion]

27. Some rights are respected some of the time for some of the people.

Although we would hope that all of our rights are respected all of the time for all of us.
Suppression efforts don't create or destroy rights, they just interfere with our exercise thereof.

[armueller2001]

17. Apparently women's suffrage

isn't a civil right because nobody got hung or beaten over it.

[aikoaiko]

20. Your view of civil rights is bizarrely narrow.

Civil rights is about protecting individuals' rights to personal liberty which includes the 2nd Amendment.

It is you who "tarnishes" the phrase by deny all our civil rights.

[rd_kent]

21. Wow, arctic dave, YOU really show YOUR stupidity about civil rights.

[Francis Marion]

26. OP never made that claim, so how did you get there?

Consider the history of systematized disarmament by law of blacks in the US, a dishonor which has endured for half of our history.

Read the amicus briefs by the Congress of Racial Equality on this subject, particularly the one they wrote for the Emerson case. Decide for yourself afterwards whether gun ownership is a civil right or not; whether gun rights have any bearing upon second class citizen or slave status within a disarmed group. The fact is that people were disarmed by Jim Crow law, beaten and hanged by the thousands, generation after generation. This is well documented in written accounts and in photographs.

It's far easier to beat and hang disarmed people, as the history of lynching makes clear.

http://www.potowmack.org/emercore.html

Deacons for Defense and Justice exercised their gun rights to discourage affronts to life and dignity. Gun rights are, to borrow a phrase, "deeply rooted" in the Bill of Rights, and thus have their part in Civil Rights movement past and present.

[msongs]

3. fear of a black president is swelling your ranks for the most part imo nt

[virginia mountainman]

4. What would make you say that??

Can you name examples?? Why do you fear things that you don't understand, or "invent" reasons for things that might make you, someone who does not fully comprehend the problem, to say such things?

Help me to understand YOUR position on this issue.

[eqfan592]

5. Are you saying that a black president...

..has caused people who were previously on the fence of the issues of certain extreme forms of gun control to come down against it? Based off of what logic? Yes, firearms sales spiked, but I don't think that's by itself an indicator of what you are claiming to be true.

[rd_kent]

7. If anyone responds to you, will you reply or is this ANOTHER hit and run by you?

[proteus_lives]

8. "Your" ranks?

I count myself among Democrats who support ALL rights for ALL people.

We're not selective and authoritarian like some other groups you're familiar with.

[SteveM]

12. "Jump, Jim Crow, jump, jump! Now jump Jim Crow...!"

[Katya Mullethov]

23. Not black ---> RED

After the very first mention of wealth redistribution , it was go time .

[rrneck]

14. Any marketing strategy

is based on, at best, an emotional appeal or at worst, fallacious logic. It is unwise to use such unscrupulous methods to put forward an idea if you plan for it to have any legs at all. Most anti firearms arguments are emotional appeals based on fearmongering and demonizing an object without due consideration for how or why it's used.

If pro firearms groups try to use marketing techniques to push their agenda they will fail just as much as those on the other side of the debate. The bad logic and emotional appeals will be picked apart and revealed as the gimmicks that they are. They will make gun owners sound like heartless, bloodthirsty, fearmongering, arrogant technojerks out looking for somebody to shoot. Sound familiar?

Each and every person on this planet, and I mean all of them, takes a look around and makes a risk assessment. They are less tolerant of risk the closer to them it gets. We may be able to live with vague overarching treaties about nuclear disarmament and even ignore economic collapse and environmental catastrophe (until it is on top of us) even though there is abundant statistical and physical evidence that those calamities are in the pipe. That's because they aren't perceived as an imminent threat yet.

For all our cleverness and sophistication we are still the half apes that made their way onto the savannas a million years ago stretching our bent backs to peer just above the grass for predators. We didn't survive just because of our tool using ability. We have survived as a species because of our ability to communicate, remember and plan. The misuse of those tools (through marketing) has proven to work against our collective best interest.

The important question to ask doesn't start with statistics or constitutional law but with what makes us human in the first place. If I can't look you in the eye and tell you that I can protect you from an immanent threat either personally or through the devices provided by my society then I have no business telling you how to do it yourself. Those devices; laws, customs, technology and precedent are the tools we use to support the same human mandate that has insured our survival as a species: Protect every life - mourn every death.

[PavePusher]

18. Why can't a marketing campaign be based on facts? n/t

[rrneck]

19. I think you can, but if you do it right it's not marketing.

The practice of marketing is the presentation of an product for profit. To my mind, if we present information with the stated purpose of education in the spirit of social responsibility but with the unstated but universally understood second agenda of personal profit, the message is irreperably damaged because of a conflict of interest. If somebody is trying to market something to you they are looking to get more than they give. If it's a ChiaPet or a Ford, fine. But to my mind the last thing we need is profit driven social policy.

I ran across this in Wiki:The term marketing concept holds that achieving organisational goals depends on knowing the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions. (The entire entry reads like corporate doublespeak). Doesn't that sound like both the VPC and to a lesser extent the NRA? They're not trying to produce effective public policy, they're trying to make money off emotional appeals which require almost no capital investment. They're preaching to the choir for profit.

If you come at people with a pitch in the form of public policy, the other side will rip it to shreds for the self aggrandizing bullshit that it is and slather their own self aggrandizing bullshit on top of it for good measure. To my mind, that is part of the problem in American politics today - tearing up other people's bullshit and replacing it with our own.

[PavePusher]

24. After some thought, you may be on to something...

"I think you can, but if you do it right it's not marketing."

You are right. If it's based on fact, it's 'education'.

[rrneck]

25. One word restated my entire post. Well said and thanks. nt

[AtheistCrusader]

22. Advice