The Biggest Issue in Gun Rights

Sebastian asks the question, and I’m more than happy to answer.  He thinks that the biggest issue with winning our continuing battle is general ignorance of firearms; his example is a conversation with someone he met at the Gun Blogger’s Rendezvous.  This woman had no idea that pistols were used in a sport of any kind, and Sebastian was able to gracefully educate her.

I generally agree with him that our big issue is a lack of knowledge – people have no idea what guns are used for, because most people just believe what they see in media.  And media says that “handguns are used for killin’ people”, so why should they believe anything else?

But I don’t think that’s our biggest issue, honestly.  While the general public not knowing anything is certainly bad, I would say that our biggest issue in the gun rights community is divisiveness.  There are so many factions in the pro-gun community, from hunters that just want to keep their rifles, IPSC shooters who want their raceguns protected; we have hardliners who believe that there should be no gun laws, moderates, and everything else under the sun.  And while all that diversity makes for a pretty cool picture, it also makes getting anything done pretty difficult.

That’s what frustrating to me – that we as a movement can’t put aside our prejudices and biases and just move forward in the best interests of all of us.  Right now is not the time to be fighting for unrestricted access to automatic weapons, that’s like step 34 and we’re only on step 5 right now.

I really believe that if we as gun owners, hunters, sport shooters could actually get together and fight for our rights in an orderly fashion instead of the scattershot manner we use now, we’d basically be unstoppable.