“We targeted an audience sophisticated enough to understand the message, but not sophisticated enough to know how, or why, to refute it.” This is a quote I use often that comes from an article entitled Guns, Culture or Mental Health? Framing Mass Shootings as a Public Health Crisis. What does it mean? The authors are essentially admitting their intended audience lacks the cognitive capacity to break away from the framing of their argument. Which, of course, is to see the prevalence of guns in American society as a public health crisis. This is a known aspect of human behavior. People, according to Cass Sunstein, would rather accept and go along with information the way it is framed to them, as opposed to trying to figure out if their opinions would change if the information was presented differently. We see this happening in real-world events. The Oregon school shooting was stopped cold by a citizen in possession of a legally owned weapon. The school’s no-gun policy, as is the case with all gun laws, did nothing to stop the shooter from entering the building and committing cold-blooded murder. The victims sat helpless until another gun arrived on the scene. The anti-gun left has been so inundated with gun control messaging that they cannot see any other solution than gun bans and the elimination of the Second Amendment. They don’t know how to refute the gun control message because the problem of gun violence in America has been grossly exaggerated. The news media fails to report the number of times guns have been used not only to stop mass shootings, but in individual self-defense situations. “It’s the guns, it’s the guns, it’s the guns,” is a message that has been continually drilled into their heads, and any attempt to have a logical discussion over this issue goes nowhere. This tactic isn’t just used on the anti-gun liberals. Social media is flooded with persuasive messages aimed at people who are susceptible because they do not have a rooted, ideological position. They may support the Second Amendment in words, but they are very responsive to the gun control message due to the constant exposure to so-called gun violence in the media. Unfortunately, the people who may be the most susceptible to the propaganda are the ones who consider themselves to be smart enough to see through it.
Most gun control propaganda is aimed at people who don’t know how to defend a pro-gun position. Many Republican gun owners, for example, do not view the Second Amendment from the perspective that it exists to defend liberty. They have a safe full of bolt-action and lever-action hunting rifles and shotguns but scoff at the idea of AR-15’s. They are highly susceptible to well-framed arguments that support the Second Amendment with a “but” attached at the end. They see unnecessary violence, and because it isn’t being committed with bolt-action rifles or lever guns, they can be easily persuaded to support a ban on AR-15’s. Persuasive pieces like Daniel Hayes’ I am an AR-15 Owner and Have Had Enough target these types of gun owners with arguments against high-capacity magazines, while questioning the need for such rifles for deer hunting. He also brings into sharp contrast the argument for freedom, compared to the carnage being unleashed through lax gun laws and military-style weapons. A little extra safety is worth the cost of freedom if it saves children’s lives.
Read Full Article: https://thewashingtonstandard.com/we-are-all-susceptible-to-propaganda-even-if-we-think-we-are-not/
