Of Children and of Guns.

[beevul]

11. For starters, you're going to have to learn how to talk to the people you're trying to reach.

"But for those who have honed in on ownership of high powered semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines, and what they view as an affront to the Second Amendment if there is any legislative action taken to restrict ownership of those items, I just implore them to stop and take a step back."

"If one is suddenly by law prohibited from buying an AR-15 or buying a 30 round clip for their own personal use, in the end, it means nothing. Nothing You can still freely buy a less powered weapon or a smaller sized package of ammunition, and you can still achieve whatever basic sense of satisfaction that you sought from those items."

For starters, many of the people it will most effect see this as dishonest in the extreme.

Standard capacity for a handgun, is however many rounds a magazine holds without protruding from the grip of the gun. Thats the generally accepted definition, right or wrong, among gun people, and in the arena of gun discussion.

Most modern handguns hold more than 10 rounds, thats a fact. One does not actually have be in that persons shoes, to understand how this can be seen as a dishonest attempt to limit rights. "Gun people" see "half a cup". If you make any attempt to say the cup is "half empty" or "half full", you've lost them, because in their eyes, you're one of those gun grabbers, and you're dishonesty and/or spin, is proof enough. Fwiw, I own a single handgun, and a ten round limit would reduce by a single round, how many I could hold in a magazine - and I have no "assault weapons" nor any intent to own any. I own a single handgun, and a single bolt action .17 caliber rifle, and a few inoperable antiques, so i have no dog in this fight, other than the principle involved.

If you want a chance at getting those people on your side, you have to be completely honest with them, no spin, no hyperbolie, and no defining for them whats "high capacity" in terms of discussion. If you want to argue there should be capacity limits, fine, but don't try to tell them that a standard capacity magazine is a "high capacity magazine", or you'll be seen and interpreted as pissing down their backs and telling them its raining.


Where ar-15 rifles and 30 round magazines are concerned, 30 rounds is standard capacity of the magazines they hold. If you wanted to ban mags over 30 I doubt you'd get any resistance at all. But lowering it to ten? Not likely. And the same thing goes with the rifle discussion. If you start calling standard capacity magazines "high capacity magazines", you've lost them. You have to remember, the people you're talking about, far more often than not, are familiar with the rifle and familiar with the mags. If they percieve the slightest bit of dishonesty, or definition changing from whats historical fact, true, and real, you'll be seen as a gun grabber, guaranteed. That doesn't mean you can't have a discussion about limiting mag capacity. it just means that you're going to have to use common definitions, or you'll lose them, if you don't.

Same thing with "high powered semi-automatic rifles". You're going to lose them the second you say that. The .223 is many things, but its not "high powered". In the eyes of most of the people that you're trying to reach, the .223 round is anemic, and a .308 or a .270 is "high powered. Again, not using commonly accepted definitions just hinders your efforts, and causes the people you're trying to reach to view you as a gun grabber, because you're using the exact same terminology that people that have an anti-gun agenda do, and as far as the people you're trying to reach are concerned, they are the enemy. If gun control proponents had any idea...any idea at all...how much damage they're done to their own cause, by referring to commonly owned low-power cartridge rifles as "weapons of war on our streets" for example, their heads would explode.

My point in all this, is having a discussion with the people you are trying to reach is fine, laudable even, but you need to understand what it takes to have credibility with the people you are trying to reach, and how easily you can lose that credibility with them, with the utterance of very few words.