Want To Teach About Gun Violence? Try Doing What Gun Nuts Do.
If you haven’t yet taken a look at the online course on
gun violence being
offered by our friends at the Hopkins-Bloomberg School, you haven’t been
reading my columns. I have posted several
columns about the importance and value of this online educational effort, and I
am pleased to find that more than 2,100 folks have registered to watch the
well-done video lectures which are offered along with a quiz on each section of
the curriculum, a very comprehensive reading list and, of course, a feedback
form.
Those of us who form what I refer to as Gun-control
Nation like to believe that one of the major differences between what we say
about gun violence and what Gun-nut Nation says is the degree to which our
beliefs and narratives about this problem are grounded in evidence-based
research, whereas the other side, the gun-nut side, doesn’t believe in evidence
or scientific research at all. Want an example of how 2nd-Amendment
advocates get the information they use to support their ideas? Try any of the
loony and stupid videos by Grant Stinchfield, Dana Loesch or Colion Noir that
are posted on NRA-TV. These efforts aren’t educational
at all – they are nothing more than plain hucksterism disguised as some kind of
rational opinion about the positive reasons for owning guns.
But if you believe that Gun-control Nation has a
copyright on internet video messaging which has a rational, educational focus
while Gun-nut Nation’s messaging is nothing more than hot air, think again. In
fact, if anything, when it comes to imparting real, hard-core information about
guns, the folks who produce and distribute educational videos which promote gun
ownership and the gun-owning lifestyle are way out ahead.
Want an example?
Try this YouTube video, which
has been viewed more than one million
times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNKKC4ew1Xk. The company which produced this video has more than 100,000 subscribers
to its website and the average video posted on the site has been viewed at
least 50,000 times. Now you may not want to believe that a ten-minute video
which shows a guy blasting away for 30 seconds with a variety of 9mm pistols should
qualify as an ‘educational’ tool. But the reason this video has been viewed so
many times is that lots of folks out there are considering buying, owning and carrying a pistol for self-defense, and
this video is a very effective and professional effort to provide potential
armed citizens with exactly the kind of information they need.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Gun-nut
Nation’s online educational effort are aimed (pardon the pun) only at providing
information which can be used to promote the sale of self-defense guns. Take a look at this video which has registered
almost 250,000 views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODhQmE2OqY&feature=youtu.be.
Frankly,
if the Department of History at an Ivy League school wants to expand its
curriculum to include a course on the history of technology as exemplified by
early gun design, they should hire the guy who did this video and runs a website,
https://www.forgottenweapons.com/,
which contains a remarkable
collection of evidence-based articles, book reviews and technical videos that
puts many so-called educational websites to shame.
You would think that with the kind of financial support
that gun-control advocates can tap from the likes of Mike Bloomberg, Bill Gates
and Warren Buffet, that creating some kind of video effort to promote
discussions about the risk of guns is something that should have happened years
ago. The really silly videos posted on NRA-TV get more than 300,000 views every
month. You mean that a solid and informed video presence produced by a
gun-control production company couldn’t do just as well?
Here’s the bottom line. No advocacy effort can afford
to cut itself off from actual or potential supporters when the opponents of
that effort communicate to their supporters on a regular and ongoing basis
every day. Believe me, the pro-gun video
machine is a much more effective way to generate support for gun ‘rights’ than
some loony speech coming from Wayne-o at the NRA.
THANK YOU BRENT
GURTEK!
