NRA missed an opportunity today. I feel the speech skipped from point A to E to M to Z. We understand A to E, etc, because w live and breath guns and gun safety and understand how broken individuals rarely respond to pleas to put the gun or bomb down.
Those who want to ban guns will be unable to follow from A to Z in such large leaps. They will dig in.
A larger concern is what the reaction is by the person who maybe grew up around guns, has no gun in their house today but has kids. Those folks may also be unable to follow from A to Z. These are the people that outnumber us and outnumber the anti-gun folks. We need them to understand why guns are good tools. These are folks that sincerely want action taken rather than do nothing. They fear guns in school yet accept them in use by good guys inside banks, courts, airports etc. These are folks that understand outlawing something is not the same as improving society (drug war now in second decade, prohibition in 1920s).
An easy stat to find is how many people were shot and died in the United States. It is 1000s per year. Millions of guns. Millions of people. 1000s is a small percent but is still too many even when most of the dead are bad folks shot by other bad folks who would use a ballbat if needed to kill. In those 1000s though are innocents. Now we have a school shooting.
The stat that is not easy to find is how many law-abliding folks used a gun to prevent a crime upon them and others. This number is 10,000s per year. Lives are saved but no is counting when a gun was "good" in the hands of a citizen.
Guns are like cars in that most of us use them responsibly but deaths do result. Same with alcohol, especially when then the drinker drives. Outlawing cars is not the answer. Outlawing booze ha been tried. Some folks will make bad decisions by driving impaired and innocents will die. Some will be kids. Sometimes will be multiple kids killed when a van is hit, etc.
I think people could follow that if the stats about good used of guns were gathered. Perhaps NRA will launch a "Report a Gun was Good" tracking application that we can use to log these good uses: What was the situation, city, time of day, what was the fear, etc. A real time meter will show murders prevented, muggings prevented, rapes prevented, etc.
The next factor is at what point a gun is used. Was it prior to law enforcement being able to respond. If a bad guy kicks in my back door in the middle of the night then police will typically arrive at my residence in 3 to 5 minutes once alerted. If you live in a more rural area then add several more minutes.
Seconds may be all you have, though. A gun would be good in that case.
I think people can follow that A to B step.
Preaching to the choir is fine. We need to reach out to the undecideds that are open to finding a solution. Education is critical and it needs to be in small segments that are easy to understand.
My 2 cents.
