Democrats, Lose these Five Phrases, Part III
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Then, go Win Elections
Part III: “Gun Control”
In this five-part series, I’ve been urging Democrats to create our own, meaningful political phrasing rather than to repeat the loaded ones Republicans invent. They have very deliberately devised phrases which create emotional images rather than foster thought. If we try to argue issues of substance using their language, then we will fail.
Part I discussed the word “Democrat” when “Democratic” is the proper term.
Part II explored the word “Entitlement,” which is used to portray people who use public programs as undeserving.
If you’ve been following me, then you know I promised that Part III would be about the term “Identity Politics.” In light of yet another mass shooting, I thought I’d discuss another term that is used frequently, but which is not helpful to the Democratic cause.
III “Gun Control”
Every sensible person not, only in the U.S., but in most of the world, knows that the United States has a sick, and sickening obsession with firearms. Americans own 120.5 firearms per 100 people. (Source, BBC News.) Americans are four percent of the world population, but own 46 percent of the total of civilian firearms in the world. (Source, CNN)
Those guns do not remain idle. They are used dozens of times yearly to kill large numbers of people at a time for no reason at all, other than the anger of a killer. Those killers don’t rely on pistols to do their work. They use arms that no civilian needs, with bullets nearly the size of a woman’s pinky finger. They create blood and gore and turn flesh and bone into pulp. We need to have serious conversations about guns. More than that, we need elected officials to step up, stop snorting the drug of NRA dollars, and pass laws, but we cannot call it “gun control.”
I’m a red-blooded American, and no Democrat is going to “control” me.
So, “gun control” is another loaded term. Its interpretation is that some entity…
