California Gun Laws: Spinning Your Rights Away: Part I

10/01/13

Marketing experts preach that redefining a market is the best way to win it over.

This is why gun control politicos are now making an effort to change their messages, targets and tactics.

Over the last twenty years or so, gun control has lost. They lost the constitutional argument. They lost the criminological debate. They lost the support of the general public. My hope was that they would continue doing exactly what they have been doing, because they would continue their losing streak and might eventually become a historical footnote.

But they are getting shrewder, as evidenced by a new publication Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging, (herein “the book”).  It’s a 70+ page book that a marketing pal of mine reviewed and called “a classic market redefinition and repositioning strategy.”

The book is a field guide for gun control activists, and is intended to coach them on how to change the political tide by redefining the terms of the debate. I assume some gun control money – namely from the Joyce Foundation, Barack Obama’s old haunt and a frequent advocate in the gun-control debate – was scrapped together and invested in having Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research work on the book. 

Indeed the name “Joyce Foundation” litters the GQRR web site and Joyce reciprocates. Some of the suspect cash was also likely tossed to KNP Communications, a K Street communications company that divines how best to pitch political concepts. They were also involved in the book.

In other words, the book is propaganda by professional spin masters designed to charge their public message, manipulate public opinion, and reverse the gun control movement’s failures.

Though the scope of its initial distribution is unknown, the words, phrases and concepts in this 2012 publication are already dripping off the lips of anti-gun politicians. No doubt circulated through the left side of Capital Hill, the same points of persuasion are now in the skulls of every staffer and copywriter, statist politicians and “progressive” think tanks.

For this article, I’m going to focus on what are the goals of this book. Subsequent articles will dive deeper into the muck being raked and how you, an advocate for freedom, can defeat gun control politicians and their well-financed spin campaign yet again.

NEXT: THE GOALS OF THE NON-GUN-CONTROL PUBLICATION