There’s One Lesson We’d Do Well to Learn from Gun Grabbers

The gun control crowd isn’t exactly filled with my favorite people.

And on so many things, they’re completely and totally wrong.

But there’s a saying about blind squirrels and nuts. It’s not that different from the one about the accuracy of dysfunctioning wall-mounted timepieces, really. The gist is that even the most unlikely people do something right. At least, for values of “right.”

So to have the gun control crowd done something we’d do well to emulate.

Propelled by and fed up with what they see as a lack of progress when it comes to addressing America’s epidemic of gun violence, many activists like Brooks, who have felt the effects of gun violence first hand, are embracing a new tactic: running for elected office. For political organizers, this group represents a promising new cohort, whose members, if elected, may finally move the needle on gun reform.

“There is a new wave of activists-turned-candidates, particularly among women and mothers, who are no longer willing to stand by,” Brooks said. “How can we not think about our kids?”

Pinpointing the moments that led them to run for office comes easily to these candidates.

For Emily Busch, who is running for a US congressional seat in Michigan, it was the November 2021 mass shooting at Oxford high school, where her son was a freshman, that propelled her to action. The event left four dead and seven injured. “My son ran for his life with 1,700 other kids,” Busch said. “It’s something that you never ever want to experience, which is why I’m running.” …

“I think we’re going to be more passionate because we’ve experienced it,” she said, emphasizing the growing need for “leaders who understand this issue on a personal level and who can bring authentic, passionate advocacy to the legislative process”.

That same vision is driving progressive groups to find more candidates who are willing to run for office on gun violence platforms. Last February, nearly 50 new candidates gathered in Las Vegas with Demand a Seat, an initiative to train gun safety advocates to run for office and work on campaigns offered by advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety.

At the four-day boot camp, participants received mentorship from veteran politicians, training in the fundamentals of campaign building and guidance in how to effectively elevate a gun safety platform.

The program capitalizes on a trend that gun safety advocates have been witnessing for several years. “Gun safety is actually good politics now, it’s not just good policy,” said Moms Demand Action’s executive director, Angela Ferrell-Zabala. “Folks [are] choosing to run and win on gun safety.”

Here’s the thing. These aren’t just people who favor gun control. We can beat those folks easily.

What’s working for them is that these are people who have personal stories about violence committed with a firearm. It’s about how they or their families have been touched by this violence. That’s a lot harder to counter. People love stories and they respond to them. They respond to emotion, too, and these people’s stories are disturbing to think about happening to your family.

Yet there’s a counter to this and it’s not that difficult to understand.

We need people who have used guns to defend themselves to run as gun rights supporters. We need those who have been touched by violence and who remain supportive of gun rights because of how things went with their experiences. In short, we need to be able to counter with stories and emotions of our own.

Yes, the mothers of kids who were present at mass shootings is powerful, but so is the mother who defended her kids with a loaded Glock 19.

It’s easy to say we shouldn’t be basing this sort of thing on emotion. It’s not even wrong to say it. It’s just irrelevant because most people aren’t really interested in listening. They’ve been taught that their feelings are what matters, so that’s what they “think” with.

We can and should try to change that, but in the meantime, why not recruit those who have their own pro-gun stories to tell to run for office so we can put this whole thing in check?

We can learn something from the gun grabbers. We can learn how to beat them.