By David French
Friday, December 11, 2015
If the last decade of culture war has taught us anything,
it’s that the Left has become extraordinarily good at shaming America into
political change. On issues from same-sex marriage to transgender rights, once
the Left persuaded itself of the proper course of action, the unified power of
media, pop culture, and the academy proceeded to deliver the proper cultural
scolding. America was divided into the good people and the bigots, and no one
should respect a bigot.
Consider this: In the last ten years of movies and
television, have you seen a truly sympathetic portrayal of a religious opponent
of same-sex marriage? When Bruce Jenner announced his “transition,” how much
did the mainstream media or even the sports establishment entertain the idea that
he might not be “liberated” but rather deeply troubled? There was no nuance in
the discussion, and suddenly the “extremists” were the people who believed that
biology was relevant to gender.
This unified liberal front has proven to be
extraordinarily powerful — so powerful that it appears the Left is now aiming
to marginalize “gun culture” in much the same way it has marginalized
opposition to same-sex marriage. The “thoughts and prayers” controversy during
the San Bernardino terrorist attack is a harbinger of things to come. Boiled
down to its essence, the argument was that “thoughts and prayers” represent the
way those (usually Christian) gun nuts express false sympathy for the carnage
they’ve made possible. So unless they’re willing to repudiate gun culture, they
should just shut up.
The next level of stigma is comparing the NRA to
jihadists and its leaders to terrorists. The argument isn’t that the NRA
advances bad ideas. No, they’re bad people
— the worst kind of people, in fact.
At the same time, there has been a marked increase in
discussion of outright gun bans, repeal of the Second Amendment, and gun
confiscation. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have spoken favorably of
the Australian model of mandatory gun buybacks — a program that simply can’t
happen. Congress would never enact it, and the Supreme Court would never permit
it.
At least not yet, answers the Left. Gay marriage was
arguably less popular 20 years ago than the Australian gun buyback is today,
yet look where we are now. Cultural change is happening fast, and why not aim
at the real problem — American gun culture and the very notion of a true
individual right to keep and bear arms?
While shame is powerful, it has its limits. It’s one
thing to browbeat people into supporting the way other people choose to live
their lives (or at least to browbeat them into keeping their objections to
themselves), but it’s quite another to hector people into changing the way they
choose to live their own lives —
especially when that change would require abandoning deeply held convictions
about the very nature of citizenship and the responsibility of a man or woman
to protect his or her own family. Especially when that change makes a person
feel more vulnerable.
Boiled down to its essence, gun owners perceive the Left
to be telling them that they’re terrible people for wanting to defend their
families. They perceive the Left to be telling them that their government is
worth trusting with their very lives. They perceive the Left to be describing
them as “dangerous,” when they’d be willing to lay down their lives to protect
their families, their friends, and even complete strangers who are being
victimized by evil men.
The shame campaign will succeed, however, at further
dividing and sorting Americans. With the Second Amendment one Supreme Court
justice away from dramatic revision (including effective repeal), we could
conceivably face a scenario where there are effectively two Americas.
Gun-owning Americans in the bluest states would watch their legislatures race
to impose ever-stricter regulations, including confiscation, while Red America
would maintain broad state constitutional and statutory protections. Driving
across state lines would be even more perilous than it is today.
America’s gun culture is a key aspect of American culture
— imprinted within our cultural and moral DNA. Millennials and their parents
support gun rights in similar proportions, and while mainstream pop-culture
hostility against gun ownership is strong and growing stronger, so too is the
self-reliant American counterculture that believes government is accountable to
an armed citizenry and that the first responsibility for self-defense lies not
with the police but with the adults in the home. You simply can’t mock those
beliefs out of the American public. The Left will try, it will fail, and
America will become even more fractious because of its attempt.
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