This thread seems to have come to a standstill, I’ll try to remedy that.
I’m playing armchair political strategist here; those of you who have real experience in these areas, please smack me down if I’m out of line:
1. We absolutely must take advantage of pre-existing organizations. Why build new infrastructure, networks, mailing lists, etc. when you can take advantage of pre-existing ones? To this end, the lads were spot on in ep. 136 when they were of a consensus that we need to max out involvement in NRA, SAF, state and local gun groups, etc. among the gun owning, 2A minded public. Now, NRA has never been perfect, sometimes quite far from it in fact. I think we all acknowledge that here. If you are familiar with some NRA history (which I highly suggest you read about
here and
here) you’ll know that the main thing that has kept the NRA in line and on task as far as gun rights is concerned is member participation. About every twenty years, starting in the 70s, it seems there’s been some sort of showdown between the entrenched “establishment” leadership and a group of determined members attempting to disrupt the entrenched power structure in order to right the ship. In the 70s, the membership was successful. In the 90s, the leadership won this fight. We’re currently in the third of these showdowns, with people like Adam Kraut trying to get on the board. Member involvement right now is pretty dang critical for this reason, and I’m glad I’ve seen so many folks get involved in the board elections to get candidates they support in there and “drain the swamp”. I myself upgraded to a life membership just so I could vote this year (and I’m kind of pissed that I did this weeks ago and still haven’t gotten my ballot when they’re due in about a week). This is ultimately what proves the abandon-the-NRA “not another inch” types (I very much enjoyed the lads shitting on them in ep. 136) wrong, NRA is at core a member driven organization. The leadership only gets away with their unpopular shenanigans for lack of member involvement. If these purists, especially the ones with sizable media audiences *cough*MAC*cough*, dedicated half as much time, effort, and resources towards fixing the NRA through membership and involvement as they do to bitching about how awful the NRA is and their own little special snowflake groups with nowhere near as much power or influence as NRA, we would probably be in a much better place today. There’s no use in getting up on the high horse if you can’t ride it anywhere. This brings us to finding some means to achieve these desired ends, I think there are two things we should be doing right now. First, bugging NRA members you know who are eligible to vote for the board to actually vote. Let them know who the good candidates are; even if they don’t want to get involved beyond voting it would have a huge cumulative impact if we got enough people to do it. Second, making new members and getting current members to up their membership status to make them eligible to vote for the board. I’ve found
the member signup/renewal page from ARFCOM useful for this, for both its straightforward simplicity and because the rates are “discounted”.
2. The lads were absolutely right in ep. 136 about our need to get organized. NRA is great for putting the pressure on politicians (as another poster in this thread pointed out, fear drives politics) but the cultural fight and actually getting people to places to do things at certain times will depend largely on us common folk organizing and working amongst ourselves. This isn’t easy and is something largely alien to us here on “our side”. I think it was Chuck who got in to the history of organizing and just how much of what we may have thought was “spontaneous” in the Civil Rights movement was really the result of the dedication of professional and semi-pro activists and organizers. Google the Highlander Folk School. The “other side” has had institutions like this since the first half of the last century. We have a lot of catching up to do. For a crash course in how it got this way, why “our side” has largely been unsuccessful in its activism endeavors, and what we need to do to be able to mobilize before it’s too late, you need to read (and I mean need, not ask me for a TLDR or whine at me about being asked to read something) this series of articles. They’re incredibly illuminating:
Days of Rage
Radical Book Club: The Decentralized Left
Radical Book Club: The Centralized Left
Radical Book Club: What Righties Can Do
3.
This first map here may be the most important map in American politics. Part of me hopes it is, part of me hopes it isn’t. It speaks to the comparison of our country to a political “tinderbox” that was made in ep. 136. What it tells us is that the divide with regards to gun rights is pretty well set with along the partisan divide in this country. If you took a look at some of the other maps in that article, you’ll see it lines up pretty well with some other demographic and political factors as well. What does this all mean? We’ve reached the point where we’ll really get the most mileage out of dedicating the majority of our efforts to mobilizing “our side”. Yes, we need to “convert” people on the other side. That can help us in the long run, but like I said we’ve reached the point where it would probably be a waste to dedicate a lot of resources to it. “Conversions” are a distant second priority to motivating the currently existing “faithful”.
4. What can we do now, short term, following this tragedy in Florida and the ensuing political shit show?
This here and
this are pretty good write-ups on what we’re facing right now. Yes, they are by that same gentleman who wrote those articles on organizing above. You know how after all of these shootings, people on “our side” say how the “other side” likes to rev up the gun control machine before the blood is dry, before bodies are buried, etc. and how it’s almost become a sort of trope? Well, that’s basically exactly what happens. The day after this shooting in Florida they already had the machine in motion, arranging pre-assembled pieces to meet their goals. You have people and networks in place, ready and waiting, so you can go in to action immediately when a new opportunity arises. This tactic is incredibly successful, for those of you familiar with history it should remind you of the way the Bolsheviks rose to power during the Russian Revolution. We don’t have our own machine in place yet, so what can we do to face this? Basically, what many of you have probably been doing already: fight the meme war. Be engaged on social media. Respond to people calling for gun control, discuss the issue with family members, post studies that support our position, spread/share/retweet clips and articles, and post those dank memes of course. Now, the usual tactic advised on “our side” for this is to engage the enemy in a reasoned, civil discourse backing up your assertions with fact and never stooping to their level no matter how low they go, all in the hopes of swaying fence-sitting observers. This works but only so well, and as stated above there may not be many fence sitters left these days. Do not forget there are more tools in your debate and discussion toolbox than logos: ethos and pathos have their place as well. Some people won’t be receptive to empirical argument at all, and you may have to go at them from an emotional angle. Some people are very receptive to pathos, in our case tradition or history, and you could sway them by showing them some great historical figure endorsing our position and they will be sold. Now, if you encounter someone on the other side who is an egregious sh*tliberal who can only and will only hurl insults and rabid frothing nonsense at you, don’t be afraid to riposte in kind. Ridicule can be a very powerful rhetorical tool, “shows of dominance” in a debate can often be just as or more effective at swaying fence sitters than putting the reasoned empirical argument on display for them. Something I’ve found really works well when dealing with that type that will openly flaunt their ignorance (and even fear) of firearms as if it were a good thing is to accuse them of being proud of their ignorance, it can really short circuit their mental process and makes them look bad to observers.
I wrote most of this with things talked about in ep. 136 in mind, so I hope it follows some sort of semi-coherent progression. I am sorry if a lot of this is preaching to the choir. I have been bouncing a lot of this around in my head and wanted to get it in writing, wanted to keep this thread alive, and IIRC next week’s episode will be about how to fight for our rights so I wanted to get it out before then. I hope at least some of you find this stuff useful. As stated earlier please give comments and criticism, especially if you’re someone who is experienced with this type stuff.