Tips on Engaging People on the Gun Safety Issue

Here are a few words of advice if you find yourself about to engage in a group discussion where there’s a gun activist who’s chomping at the bit to attack the gun laws. Gun activists will often try to attack your position with statements of outrage (e.g., “They’re trying to take away our right to bear arms!”) or by denigrating your position (e.g., “Why won’t you let people defend themselves?”). Don’t let them bait you into conversations led by this type of talk. Set the tone! For example, “step back” and say something like, “Let’s look at the facts and not exaggerated accusations.”

You could start off by asking the group, “Do most of you support a right to bear arms?” Assuming that many signal that they do support it, then acknowledge that and take it to the next step. “Okay, that’s very common, so do you think it’s okay to take steps to keep guns away from mentally disturbed people and criminals? Or, do you think there is an absolute right to bear arms with no restrictions?” Many people will agree to restrictions, so you can then follow up with a rational argument: “Okay, most Americans agree with you. So what we’re really talking about is how far we should go with restrictions. So do you support using background checks?...” You’ve then shown the gun activist to be more out of the mainstream.

Bring the issue down to the basics. Despite all the arguments thrown at you by the opposition, bring the audience back to the main questions: do we want to make it easy or difficult for dangerous people to gain access to a firearm? Do you want to make it easy or difficult for disturbed people to mow more people down with an assault weapon? We passed these laws to make it more difficult. Don’t you think we did the right thing?

Most important, while you should be assertive and persuasive in countering the arguments of the gun activists, there’s little hope you can win them over. Your goal is to win over the audience—those many Americans “in the middle” of this issue who support a basic right to bear arms but understand the need for common sense restrictions. If the gun activist becomes aggressive or insulting or sarcastic, don’t act in kind. Let them misbehave and isolate themselves, as they so often do.

 


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