Pretendicipation

Today Sebastian at pagunblog posted a list of factors working against gun rights. One of his listed reasons calls out millennials, something he has done twice today:

Our activists are getting old and tired. They are not being replaced by people with youthful energy. If you look at analysis of the March for your Guns (sic), the other side actually has the same problem. The general trend, if you ask me, is that millennials are far more removed from traditional civic life than past generations. I actually think millennials are more civic minded than my generation, but their views on civic life are very different. They are far less cynical than my generation, but they are also far more naive.

I agree with his statement of the problem. I am not sure I agree with his analysis in the last two sentences, but he also didn't write enough for me to feel like I understand him well enough to agree or disagree. However, as an older millennial I've noticed "pretendicipation" most places in my life.

We were trained to "pretendicipate" from childhood. Gotta get those bullet points for a college application! Mom and dad can't leave you behind while all the other kids are playing three different sports!

"Pretendicipation" is doing enough to claim you participated without feeling like you're lying but doing nothing more. Some examples from my life:

• Throughout high school I participated in a trivia competitions where regional schools would form teams and travel to a single location monthly to compete. I eventually captained my school's team. Most years it was difficult to get anyone to show up for practices. Even when it was easy, most people made no effort to answer questions. Their version of a competition: Get on bus, eat free food, sit around chatting with your friends, get back on bus, and go home. I've since heard this team had to disband due to lack of participation.
• Similarly, in high school I was a member of an honors club for the "bright" kids. This club needed elected club officers. If you were willing to do the work, you were guaranteed a position because no one would run against you. Sure, they'd show up to the minimum required meetings and pseudo-required events, but mostly to hangout with their friends -- not to get anything done.
• In college I was a member of a club that put on various outdoor activities. People would complain if there weren't enough events, but they'd do nothing to help organize them. In fact, many people would show up at activities and then not even bother to help clean up. Why help when you can stand around chatting with friends while other people do the work?
• In graduate school I ran a social organization that put on on-campus happy hours. We could easily get 300+ people to attend. If we asked for volunteers to help organize, 20+ people would email to offer their support. Most of them would show up when it was time to set up. How many would actually do something besides drink free beer and chat with their friends? Maybe two or three. By clean-up time sometimes it was down to me and one other person cleaning up after 300 people. I've since seen some of the pretendicipants put the organization on their LinkedIn as an extracurricular. Years later, this organization has also effectively disbanded.
• I don't have any examples from the workplace that I can find a way to make non-identifying, but it's been no different. Outside of their job role, people will not do extra work. They'll show up to say they participated, but they won't actually do anything.

I don't think there is any easy fix for this. I've often taken leadership roles in groups I've participated in because I wanted to be there and wanted to contribute. (It perhaps helps that my parents didn't force me to do too many activities as a child.) It feels like most people just want to check a box.

Gun Rights Supporters Are Losing The War on Guns . . . Here’s Why

Folks, the era of simply donating money to pro-Second Amendment organizations to preserve our Constitutional rights is over. If you’ve been living under a rock, let me be the first to inform you that a Southern, pro-gun state with a Republican majority just passed gun control laws that even Kalifornistan hasn’t implemented yet. The reason? The anti-rights crowd has finally found a winning strategy, while we’ve been enjoying the status-quo and becoming fat, lazy and entirely too complacent . . .

We’re hardly the only ones with money anymore. The likes of Michael Bloomberg and his cronies now have substantial financial backing to lobby and organize angry mobs in front of our legislatures. More than anything, their formula for this winning strategy has proven to be successful. Here’s what they’ve figured out:
Timing: They understand the American psyche and the short window of opportunity they have to work with. After a major shooting they know they have to act fast – and that they did. Within less than a month, bills were written and laws were passed while the public was still riding an emotional wave. They know time will only allow logic and reason to win the conversation, and prevent their agenda from being accomplished. They don’t let a crisis go to waste.

Exploit the victims: It’s an evolutionary response for anyone to be protective of children. So they plastered them all over 24-hour news networks. Make them talk. Show the same images of them crying over and over again. While the heart strings are being tugged, that’s the time to push the message – this is all because of guns.

Demonize the opposition: They know who their enemy is, and the know how to destroy their credibility. Calling the NRA terrorists, shifting blame for the shooting, claiming blood is on their hands, etc., makes one of our beloved organizations sound pretty ominous to the naive and ignorant. This renders all the money you’re donating mostly ineffective. Nobody running for an election wants to be associated with that, and nobody is going to listen to any valid points it has to make if they think it’s evil.

Organize at the local level: We all saw the bused-in crowds of angry moms and teenagers who drank the Kool-Aid that CNN has been forcing down their throats. They were out in force in Tallahassee, wearing their Bloomberg-purchased orange t-shirts. That’s a powerful image for the easily persuaded, and intimidating to unprincipled politicians that only care about keeping their power and paychecks.

We’ve made our own mistakes. We need to . . .
Think differently: After past victories, we’ve overestimated the influence of stale organizations like the NRA, GOA, NAGR, etc. Their strategies haven’t evolved, and as a result we’ve lost some serious ground to our opposition. Funding campaigns, waiting until a law passes to push a lawsuit, feeding the pro-gun crowd the same old red meat, and encouraging constituents to send the same pre-formatted letters to our congressmen obviously doesn’t work anymore. Don’t get me wrong, they still have value, but it’s simply not enough any more.

See the big picture: I don’t think any of us like the new age restrictions in Florida…but “not liking” and being “motivated” are two clearly different sentiments. We can’t wait until they finally go after something that feels like being touched in the “no-no spot” to get off the couch and make our voices heard. The fact that laws like these were passed in Florida should be an eye-opener for everyone. It’s huge. If we don’t act more responsibly, then we’ll start feeling these deteriorating effects nationwide. This leads me to the next point…

Organize at the local level: This is one area where we’re getting our asses handed to us. Our freedom-loving, individualistic nature hurts our cause when facing down an organized threat. Our Florida brothers and sisters knew what was about to happen, yet they only managed to muster about 200 Second Amendment supporters at their only rally.
We have to understand that it’ll take us working together to match the passion being displayed in our opponents. If we protest, we need local interest in ensuring our numbers accurately represent our population of freedom loving Americans.
One of the biggest things we can accomplish by working in large numbers is to DELAY, DELAY, DELAY! As already mentioned, their formula requires rapid reaction when the moment is right. If we give enough time for logic and reason to prevail, then we can stop unconstitutional laws before they’re even passed and won’t have to fight them in court.

Be good ambassadors: We don’t do our cause any favors the way we go about defending our beliefs in public. Nobody cares about your “ACKCHYUALLY!” comments on the internet. You’re not going to convince anyone to change their minds by belittling them and telling them how much they don’t know about guns.
Things like “open carry protests” only hurt us, especially among those in the public that may be on the fence with this issue. The battle is for “hearts and minds”, so showing how knowledgeable you are only falls on deaf ears. It’s perfectly okay to educate and share an opinion, but please for the love of God don’t fan the flames or troll, because all it does is harm our cause.

Offer effective alternatives: Before the next shooting even happens, these organizations we’ve been funding should already have a package of new legislation that they’re ready to push. If “something” has to be done, let it be on our terms instead of reacting to the oppositions agenda. There’s a laundry list of underlying causes for these shootings, so pick “something” and push it as a solution to drown out the noise of anti-rights protests. As long as we offer “something”, then we can’t be blamed for doing “nothing”.

The civilian disarmament industrial complex is doing a lot better than we are right now. They have a winning strategy, but it’s one that’s not impossible to counter.

Let’s adapt and collectively overcome their efforts to ensure the preservation of our constitutional rights. Start getting involved in local politics, and take the time to collaborate with like-minded people to win over the hearts and minds of the public.

As sad as it is to say, we need to re-educate the public to the values of the Bill of Rights…and we can’t rely solely on the NRA to do it for us.

Diversity and Inclusion Through Focus

Mixing gun rights with every right wing cause is toxic.

Immigration is not killing gun rights. Educate immigrants on those rights and win them to our side.

Healthcare laws are not killing gun rights. If your doctor injects themselves into the gun debate during working hours, get a new doctor because that one isn't a professional.

Net neutrality is not killing gun rights. How did anyone even get to this?

You know what will kill gun rights? Dissuading potential allies by championing unrelated causes they don't agree with.

NRA and GOA should be single issue advocacy groups. When you're advocating for guns, be a single issue advocate. By all means, advocate for other issues you care about too, just don't mix them. When it comes to guns everyone should be welcome. Strike "libtard" from your vocabulary. Treat others with respect.

We need all the friends we can get. Are you winning friends and influencing people?

You don't have a pro-gun rally to attend because YOU haven't organized it

You won't get celebrities donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to bus you to a pro-gun rally. You won't get sports teams lending their planes to fly in your friends. You aren't going to be handed a free, billionaire-purchased shirt when you show up.

Welcome to the grassroots side. If you want to rally, put your shoes on, make your sign, and march outside. Call some friends while you're at it. You might be alone at first, but that's no excuse if you really believe in your message.

Lead by doing.

Do Something(TM) That Won't Hurt Constitutional Rights

After every major shooting loud swaths of the country rise up and shout that politicians must do something. The gun rights community hates this. We shout back: Logic! Reason! Avoid emotional actions! Not one more inch! This response is no longer effective. Florida shows us anti-civil rights advocates are now effectively organized, prepared, and capable of achieving gun-owner control - even in ostensibly pro-gun states. Democrats have gone full gun grab and Republicans are picking up the divide and conquer flag.

What can we do? One idea: Copy effective tactics. More specifically:

• Organize gun owners. NRA has an extensive network full of both knowledgeable advocates and gun clubs. Hand pick 10-15 effective gun rights advocates and fly them from gun club to gun club to train local advocacy groups in techniques that work.
• Propose solutions to violence that do not hurt the gun rights cause. Package these proposals in an anti-violence omnibus bill and give it a snazzy name about stopping mass shootings, violence, whatever. Next time our rights are under threat, push this bill as hard as bills will be pushed to further erode our constitutional rights. 

I want to elaborate on the second point. As a community, we are prone to taking any proposal and responding with walls of text that read like they were written by this guy:

This is missing the forest for the trees. We need to buy time to organize gun owners. In the mean time, we need a way to deflect calls to do something that too often result in gun control. What better way than to propose alternative legislation that doesn't hurt our constitutional rights? This gives politicians an alternative, it counters arguments that gun rights groups refuse to act on violence, and it just might win some hearts and minds from the centrist crowd.

What to propose? Good news! We can copy effective tactics again. We do not actually have to be completely convinced our proposals will work, but they must: 1. be something, 2. not hurt our constitional rights, and 3. be serious.

Before you read my ideas, holster your ackchyuallys and re-read the sentence above. Some ideas:

1. Push to decriminalize drugs and improve existing state run rehab facilities.
   
2. Create incentives to enforce laws that are already on the books. Sanction officials that fail to act. Defund agencies that continually fail to act. Spend that money on existing agencies that will.
   
3. Take some of our extremely large military budget and spend it employing veterans as security, civilian firearms trainers, and firearm safety program leaders at the local level.
   
4. Create federal tax credits for gun safes and firearm safety courses.
   
5. Create grants and subsidies for those pursuing education in mental health that agree to spend a designated subset of their time working in underserved communities.

Will these proposals work? Maybe, maybe not. Worst case, they are something(TM). Best case, they actually make the world a better place.

What do you propose?