Can We Holster the Guns?
By Laurie Sherman
As my kids start school today, I think of the twenty children (just 6 and 7 years old) murdered with a gun at Sandy Hook Elementary four years ago. And I know: We are making a mistake when we continue to use the term "gun control."
How do we make progress in the tragically stuck arena of gun violence? We must choose -- and use -- our words, which will help us preach beyond the choir.
Although known more for his satire, after the Sandy Hook massacre John Oliver nailed a somber reality: “One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in the regulation of guns.”
In this decade we have achieved unexpected progress on some social and public health issues – think marriage equality and smoking cessation – and yet suffer shocking paralysis on gun control. With names like “Shooting Star,” “Dillinger” and even “Peacemaker,” these handheld weapons of mass destruction somehow reside inside a powerful force field, deflecting our arrows.
To crack the shield, what can we learn from other change movements, those that accomplished smoking bans and AIDS prevention, environmental regulations and bike lanes, domestic violence laws and (now at-risk) clinic buffer zones?
1. Choose -- and Use -- Our Words. In a country that embraces the lore of rugged individualism, many of all stripes will reject “control.” So let's start by shifting from the term "gun control" to "gun safety" legislation or "gun responsibility" legislation. The latter tenet resounds with the politics of both conservatives and liberals: with freedom comes responsibility.
If you think words don’t matter, remember that in the 1980s, the Republican Party – whose leadership voted against equal pay and affordable childcare, against birth control and sex education – became known for their “Family Values,” putting the Democrats on the defensive for decades. The shift from "global warming" to "climate change" has allowed for progress in public acceptance of environmental devastation.
We must market-test language. It may even make sense to reframe our gun violence proposals as “child safety legislation.” An estimated 16,000 U.S. citizens under age 25 are injured or killed annually by guns, including children who find a loaded weapon at home, teens shot as a result of mistaken identity, and college students gunned down by a troubled classmate.
The NRA understands that marketing matters, so they reach out regularly to their members with fierce – and incredibly well-crafted – messages, and they make sure to engage rising generations. We progressives tend to operate from the belief that all marketing is “spin” (i.e. suspect), or that marketing and messaging is unnecessary (good, after all, will automatically trump evil). This is naïve of us. Let’s develop better messages and invest in spreading them.
2. Preach Beyond the Choir. We who support gun responsibility legislation incorrectly assumed that after the massacre of young schoolchildren at Sandy Hook, it would be easy to enact restrictions. We failed to understand that outside the circles we turn to for support, many people see the world differently. We must try harder to understand them.
In commentaries following the spates of shootings throughout 2014, and again during the renewed violence in the past year, I sensed a real fear among gun supporters, something I still struggle to understand. Fear that if they don’t own guns, harm will personally befall them? Fear that if the 2nd amendment is read as anything other than their individual right to own guns, other rights will disappear? I don’t fully understand their arguments, but I need to. We can only hope to develop dissenters into allies if we truly listen to those we might otherwise dismiss.
The question is: What would a comprehensive gun responsibility and child safety platform look like? A new task force could craft this, but it would likely need to be comprised of thoughtful advocates on multiple sides of the issue, plus ordinary citizens who lawfully own guns and yearn for less gun violence, and other citizens who have survived criminal and accidental shootings. Perhaps in thinking outside the box together, they could compromise on new regulations that would have a sunset provision if not proven effective within ten years.
Tragically, just since John Oliver’s commentary (based on stats from an ABC news report in 2012), dozens more school shootings have been documented. If we hope to disable the handgun force field, we must start with effective language, part of a better approach to expanding our pool of allies.
