General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why we lost the gun debate in the Senate, and why we'll keep losing it. [View all]Savannahmann
(3,891 posts)You defeat them with ideals and principals and facts.
When Senator Cruz asked his question, why didn't Senator Feinstein reply with something like this? "Senator, we always place limits on Civil Rights. The right of the people to be secure in their homes under the 4th Amendment for example, doesn't mean that the police are powerless to enter the home if someone is shooting from a window until they have a Warrant. The right of the people to keep and bear arms is not infringed by banning assault weapons which are civilianized versions of military weapons." She could have continued for another minute describing the military weapons being chosen and designed to maximize casualties. That night, the news would have been that she decimated his argument. The public would have sided with us, and potentially more than 4% would have gotten interested.
Instead she watched a slow pitch float across the plate, and swung the bat to connect with nothing.
We aren't winning against the RW with slogans and single statistic arguments. They're winning the public perception argument with the image that they are dedicated defenders of the constitution. We are left looking like clueless gun grabbing liberals.
We didn't take the RW TV shows, like Sons of Guns, and show how these people revel in the destructive potential of the weapons, and work to increase that destructive potential. We paraded a bunch of gun victims out, and figured that was the final bit of the argument we needed. We beat the NRA once, with the Brady Law, but then we had arguments that we could and did use. This time, we ignored them in favor of screaming 90% of the people want it, and you better give it or else. If that didn't convince them, we then shouted. "Look at this woman who lost her daughter and tell her you don't care." It was Cindy Sheehan all over again. Sure it got some news, but it didn't convince anyone that we needed to do this now. We won the argument with the news media, but lost it with the nation.