How the Gun-Control Movement Got Smart

[flamin lib]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/how-the-gun-control-movement-got-smart/272934/

Why are advocates so optimistic now when reform has failed so many times before? Because they have a totally new strategy.

The story of the way the gun debate changed is largely the story of AGS (Americans for Gun Safety, now defunct). Formed in 2000 by Andrew McKelvey, the CEO of Monster.com, the group sought to reset the terms of the debate and steer the gun-control movement away from its inward-looking, perpetually squabbling, far-left orientation. The various advocacy groups were often more concerned with fighting with each other than with taking the fight to their opponents, and a vocal contingent valued ideological purity over pragmatism.

AGS ceased to exist in 2005 . . . But its success endures. These days, proponents of gun-control don't quite march in lockstep, but the movement -- long one of the most quixotic and beleaguered factions of the progressive coalition, on a par with environmentalists and campaign-finance advocates -- is fairly disciplined around the new message. "In the past, there were a lot of pitfalls that those seeking change on this issue had fallen into," the Brady Campaign's president, Dan Gross, told me. (Handgun Control Inc. changed its name a year after McKelvey quit the board over the issue.) "The message is now turned outward instead of inward, focused on engaging and mobilizing the latent majority of the American public that supports common-sense measures like universal background checks." Now, a representative email from a Colorado progressive group to its supporters is headlined, "No one is coming to take your gun."

The NRA has had free run of the debate since the '70s. That's a big head start and it will take some time to catch up. The fact that EveryTown is serving as a central hub for so many other groups is why there is so much attention being paid to gun violence in so many states.

Support a gun violence prevention group of your choice. America loses 30,000 people a year to guns. That's like having a fully loaded 747 Jumbo Jet collide with with a fully loaded corporate jet killing everybody on both planes every week and if we controlled pilots like we control who has guns that would be happening.