If you believe this is necessary, you’ve been conned.
A while back I wrote a post called “Get Scared, Buy Stuff” which was about the way marketers scare you into thinking you’re ugly to buy make-up, and into thinking a nuclear holocaust is coming so you’ll become a doomsday prepper and put a bunker filled with MREs and grenades in your backyard. I started thinking about this again, thanks to the National Rife Association.
I often wonder what world people live in that they think they need semi-automatic weapons to protect their families. The truth is, they live in the same world I do… they’ve just bought into the BS marketing tactics of the NRA (and the weapons manufacturers that are their bread and butter).
I am a single woman who has lived in just about every kind of neighborhood you can imagine. From Williamsburg, Brooklyn to Mayberry Village — the kind of place where you know most of your neighbors probably have guns and that none of them are legal. I have lived in luxury apartments in New Jersey, and quiet country towns — including the town just south of Newtown, CT. I have never once needed a gun to defend myself, and I am hoping (and betting) that will continue to be the case. If I need to protect my house, I’ll get a German Shepherd.
The NRA and its gun manufacturer buddies don’t care about me though. They know they won’t be getting me to pay any membership dues or buy any pearl-handled pistols. And that’s why they need to scare the crap out of those of you who do own guns. They need you to be afraid that your right to bear arms will be taken away so that you rush out and stock up on weapons, and continue giving your hard-earned dollars to the NRA. They want you to believe you need bigger, scarier, more powerful weapons so that you look at your gun rack filled with weapons and say, “Yeah, I need one more.”
So the next time you get a piece of mail from the NRA, or someone tries to convince you that criminals are lurking around every corner waiting to take your TV or your daughter, stop and ask yourself who profits from your fear.
Writer. Editor. Storyteller. 
I think this con goes far beyond the NRA. For example, think about how many Hollywood films and TV shows involve bad guys shooting anybody and good guys shooting bad guys. In these shows people fall into three groups: good guys with guns, bad guys with guns and helpless victims (who might get shot by a gun or protected by a gun). This Hollywood con suggests you either need a gun or a good guy with one to protect you.
Die Hard comes to mind as one example but this list of movies is miles disturbingly long.
In the past few days there have been some news stories about gun nuts dying from gunshots. For instance, a woman who became (in)famous as the gun carrying soccer mom (yes, she was open-carrying on the sidelines) was the victim of a murder-suicide at the hands of her husband (also a gun nut). When will people learn that having a gun in your home actually makes you and your loved ones more likely to die from gun violence?
I don’t disagree with either of the points above, that you don’t necessarily need a gun to protect yourself or that movies appear to promote guns. What I do disagree with is the legislation to limit the right to bear arms. What seems to get lost in the argument is the reason for the amendment in the first place. Back in the day, when the right to bear arms was added to the constitution, it was to guarantee the power of the people. The government should not infringe of the rights of individuals nor their individual power. If the government did something unfair – like taxation without representation, the people had the right to say “no this is not fair” and if push comes to shove they had the power (and firepower) to back it up. In very broad terms that is how the United States came into existence. I think the government and the people need to carefully consider the balance of power and the role that guns now play in that. I don’t know if guns have the same role that they did in revolutionary times, in fact I doubt it, but I do know that in every incidence of corrupt government it is the unarmed masses who suffer. Do we want to give governments all powers and all faith? The answer may not be a “no” to gun control, but I wish folks would at least discuss the real reason behind the right to bear arms rather than overly simplistic arguments on their direct impact on an individuals life.
Kelly, some of us are tired of seeing deranged lunatics killing unarmed people with assault weapons. It has nothing to do with the right to bear arms and everything to do with more sane ways of defining who can bear what kind of arms. When our fore-fathers wrote the constitution, the arms they were discussing had little resemblance to the arms of these days.
I agree with Jason. Telling people that the gov’t is trying to take away their right to bear arms is just another way to get them to run out to stores and BUY BUY BUY! And it’s working…http://www.wbko.com/news/headlines/Gun-Sales-Increase-as-Possible-Ban-Nears-186802061.html
Again…ask yourself who profits when you fear your rights will be taken away. Probably the same person working so hard to get you to believe it in the first place.
Also, I’m starting to find the argument that we need guns to keep the gov’t in check absurd!! First of all, every person who has managed to really make a difference in our gov’t and others has done it with non-violence. More importantly, in what world do we actually think even the scariest weapons available to civilians will ever compare to the weapons our gov’t has. Unless we all now have the right to have stealth bombers, nuclear bombs, and tanks… Is that what the NRA will be advocating for next?