That’s the behavior postulated by John Robb of Global Guerrillas in his latest column, which examines how social pressure groups might seek to deal with law-abiding gun owners. Here’s an excerpt.
… how will the moral network personalize attacks against people who own guns legally?
- They won’t do it by discussing it on the TV talk show circuit or pushing new legislation. The members of this network have already lost faith in that process.
- They will do it by establishing strict moral limits on the capacity of an individual to commit acts of violence. You can already see this new ‘consensus’ emerging. A growing sense that anyone who owns a gun is immoral, unsafe, and a threat to society.
- With that goal mind, the network can get working on the next step: shunning gun owners en masse and disconnecting them from society until they recant.
At this point, this doesn’t seem possible, without legislation to back it up. However, that can change quickly. This effort gets teeth, and the capacity to impact millions of people simultaneously, through a list. A list of gun owners. A list built in part using leaked/stolen government data and through the reporting of friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, and more. A list that is potentially stored in a blockchain for durability and enhanced with rumors (statements or pictures of people on the list that makes them look dangerous). With this list in hand, network members would then turn up the pressure on individuals:
- Employers would refuse employment or fire individuals who own guns, in the name of workplace safety, at the urging of other employees.
- Parents would put pressure on schools to ban the parents who own guns from attending school functions or put in place extra security at schools targeting children living in gun owning households.
- With pictures and and a little open source facial recognition software, anyone on the list could be IDed by anyone with a smart phone.
Get the picture? In short, everything from getting access to a building to renting an apartment to getting a date could get very hard for reputed gun owners to do nearly overnight.
All without legislation or government regulations.
Scare you a bit? It should.
There’s more at the link.
That’s a worrying scenario, but it’s entirely plausible within the context of a left-wing, progressive city where social interactions are facilitated and dominated by social media. Marshall McLuhan postulated several decades ago that “the medium is the message“.
McLuhan understood “medium” in a broad sense. He identified the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of “the medium is the message”. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that “a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.”
Likewise, the message of a newscast about a heinous crime may be less about the individual news story itself — the content — and more about the change in public attitude towards crime that the newscast engenders by the fact that such crimes are in effect being brought into the home to watch over dinner.
Again, more at the link.
If one examines social policy-making as the exertion of pressure in and by the medium (social media networks) on the society that uses it/them, this makes Mr. Robb’s position entirely plausible. Of course, outside societies dominated by such media (e.g. in “flyover country” rather than big cities), such pressure is much less likely to be successful; but there are fewer people in such areas than there are in major metroplexes. Social policies in the latter might end up becoming de facto law, and in due course de jure in such settings, simply because those with different views are out-shouted, outcast and outvoted. In effect, the Second Amendment – perhaps even the constitution as a whole – would be overridden simply by shunning it, and refusing to give it any recognition or importance in the formation of laws and policies.
That’s a very scary thought, particularly because those of us who take the rule of law seriously appear to be growing fewer, as we get older, and replaced in society by those who’ve been “educated” without reference to fact and an emphasis on feeling. Lenin had a name for them, of course. This meme from Gab sums it up nicely, I think.
Word.
Peter
Example of what you wrote:
Going to the Gun Range With Family Got These Students Suspended From School
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2018/03/16/a-high-school-student-in-new-jersey-was-suspended-from-school-after-going-to-the-gun-range-with-his-family-n2461760
It is this trend that has had me worried for some time. As a conservative and gun owner living in a very, very blue state; I've watched the NRA and the rest of the 2nd amendment supporters go on and on about how one should simply up stakes and move to a friendlier state. Including, I am afraid, you Peter. That is a route doomed to failure not in this generation but certainly in the next.
We have, as gun owners, abandoned the biggest playing fields both in demographic and cultural terms. It is something I can understand on the basis of each individual's personal decision, but I wish the organizations would go out from their places of safety. If we really want to preserve our rights, the various organizations ought to be aggressively pursuing gun ownership and gun safety classes for urban/suburban children rather than saying 'just move to Texas! Let them rot!' As Denver goes so will Colorado, as Austin and Houston so will Texas. Not tomorrow, perhaps, but twenty years from now. Both environmental preservation and agricultural support structures are beginning to be aware of this need to pay attention to the urban population if they want to recruit the next generation's support. It is long past time for the gun owners to do likewise, unfortunately our own cultural disdain for urban/suburban culture works against us.
"Going to the Gun Range With Family Got These Students Suspended From School"
Excuse me? What the flaming f*ck does that school administration think it is doing? Can you say "Civil rights lawsuit"?
If I was the head of that school district I would fire the idiot(s) involved so fast their shadows wouldn't catch up with them for a week.
I've had the same thoughts as Anonymous 0828 many times.
I understand it. For the last several years, gun rights in Florida were stagnant, with no real advances. This year, they're being whittled back. Among the proposals to the state legislature were complete confiscations and complete destruction of private gun ownership. How long until a complete attack succeeds? Yeah, I've thought of moving "somewhere else", too.
However, two can play at this game you're describing. Anti-freedom people can be ostracized and parodied as well. I don't want to deny them jobs, I want them to feel uncomfortable denying other people those jobs.
Americans still have a streak of freedom and react with "you're not the boss of me". If they see this for what it is, they'll resist it. Our job is to make sure they see it for what it is.
The broad brush approach is technologically possible, but given that about half of the population owns one or more guns, I suspect this would backfire in fairly short order.
As with so many other issues it has become very apparent that the various groups of people living in America simply cannot live amongst each other. Their beliefs, heritage, culture and life ways are so different as to be totally incompatible. The things required for a functioning, healthy nation no longer exist in the USA. No amount of arguing, comprising, debating, persuading, accommodating or flag waving is going to change that. We can debate how and why this happened until we're blue in the face but it doesn't change the fact that it has and there's no fixing it. There's going to have to be some form of separation. Is that more state autonomy with a weakening of federal government control? Is it peaceful partition with independent nations within the boundaries of the former USA? Is it a violent bloody civil war where several factions fight for dominance and the elimination or expulsion of the other? I don't know how it will shake out and I dread what's coming. The unfortunate fact is that the American Nation as envisioned by the founding fathers and the government set out in its founding documents is dead and has been for quite some time. Hopefully the inevitable separation will be peaceful and Heritage America can return to the principles it was founded on and safeguarded against the forces that led to its destruction. Those who want something different can have a society that reflects their values and aspirations and they can be rid of those they find undesirable and wholly incompatible with their vision of the world.
Peter,
From all that I can see what side your on. Only that the point is about secret lists.
My take is that the list can be made of those espousing a specific plan such as attacking gun owners. Those that do so can be named and noted and listed. Once the list grows enough there is the medium, the internet is one great light bulb, its is the environment and there are many that know what posters to put up. Get enough names on the list and out int he light. Rather than secret, though its easy to do that as well. All you need is a network, not always electronic.
Like the others have said, a knife cuts both ways. Any tool can be used and the useful idiots are there to be a tool.
They've already begun this, not so much with a formal list, but by seeding popular media with their ideology. I don't really believe they can win what they expect to win this way, however. As has already been noted, the gun-owning segment of society is large and growing larger — and, I might add, is generally the more productive portion.
But as Anonymous says above, we can make lists of our own. If they really were able to push society that far, we'll be able to take what we need from the listmakers. We already know they'll be unarmed, and we'll be the ones with the will and the means.
Goatroper
anon @ 8:28
Why would anyone expect "conservatives" to move from blue states when they have not, and will not remove their own children from the government indoctrination system that are called "public schools"?
It is right there, in primary, secondary and college level where the feed-stock for the devolving culture has been appropriated for generations.
Some of you here might remember Khrushchev's threat to conquer the U.S through "your children". It was not an empty one. The locus of the most thriving hotbed of communism in the world is in American schools.
Unless and until you take the children back, it is over.
So they're plan to stop people from owning guns, who they are afraid are dangerous and unstable, is to openly and socially ostracize them at every turn? Wow, now that's a perfect plan!
Aren't these the same people who cry rivers about tolerance and anti-bullying?
However I suspect this will make the pro-gun crowd much more tight knit and show the crazies for how intolerant they truly are. Almost half the people in this country own guns. This will only solidify them into a more cohesive group and swell the membership of the NRA. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Inevitably the quiet but tough gun folk will push back. But as we've seen, these kids aren't exactly that good at thinking ahead. We're wise to their game. All we need to do is see where things are going and head them off.
Heck, why not take the offensive? Too much we've been playing a defensive strategy. And those who play exclusively from a defensive position inevitably lose. Instead point out the reality of the situations and show the crazy anti-gunners for the nut-bars that they are. "These guys can't tell a 22 from a 50 BMG, and they want to make the rules on guns?"
I've never met an anti-gunner who knew anything about guns. They fundamentally operate from a position of profound ignorance. Anti-gunners making laws about firearms is like the Amish making laws about the internet. TM EC for that line, but feel free to quote me.
Point is, this is really good stuff to be aware of. Now that we're aware of what they're playing at we can counter them. Keep up the fight gents. It's clear that at this point we've got them on the run and they're running out of tricks to play. Just need to keep up the winning streak.
They should remember this quote from one of their heroes:
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
–Mao Tse-Tung
Weaponizing social pressures,like so many other socialist notions, may well blow up in the wielders'hands. As the people most likely to be victimized by this ploy begin to respond – moving out, finding other jobs, going to more sympathetic locales – more and more towns like San Francisco and Portland are going to go the way of San Juan and Caracas.
If home schooling were a corporate enterprise I'd buy stock in it.
Anonymous @ 0828
+2
They can push whatever agenda they wish but they will also suffer the consequences of their actions. Adults don't worry about tinkerbell games
"A list built in part using leaked/stolen government data and through the reporting of friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, and more. "
Then pollute it. Start using the various tech tools for video manipulation, our own reports, etc. to add false sightings, etc. until it's worthless.
Hey, go ahead and put me on your list.
I have a list too.
Shouldn't that last line be "…THEN you need to open your eyes".
I have a statement of my own: "When trying to make a point one should make sure they have good grammar skills and know how to spell".