The Gun Control House of Mirrors

The House Of Mirrors is a staple of county fairs across the land.  It's a maze with mirrors for walls - the fun is in the confusion caused to the patrons as they try to get through to the end.  Sometimes mirrors are convex or concave to distort the reflection, sometimes a mirror is replaced by normal glass to add to the confusion.

Interestingly, the concept first appeared in The Phantom Of The Opera in 1911, although that scene got cut in Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical.

What makes the House Of Mirrors notable is that your visual senses are overwhelmed, sometimes with true images and sometimes with distorted ones.  Sometimes what you see is real, through normal glass rather than a reflection.  After some time in the House, your brain's ability to sort real from fake will suffer.

This is exactly what we are seeing with gun control today, particularly in Virginia.  Well funded Democrats seized the entire state government - Governor, Senate, and House of Delegates - from what looks like a complacent and disorganized Republican Party.  Much (or even most) of the funding came from Michael Bloomberg's gun control organization, and so there's been a tidal wave of proposed draconian gun laws.  The media, biased as ever, is going right along with this.

Virginia gun owners have rallied.  The most spectacular result of this is the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement, which has signed up over 90% of Virginia's counties.  These counties are on record saying that they won't participate in law enforcement actions against gun owners exercising their constitutional rights.  What this will mean in practice is anyone's guess, but without doubt this is a big PR loss to the Democrats.  Go, Virginia!

But it isn't stopping there.  The Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) has held annual "Lobby Day" events where a bunch of gun owners descend on Richmond and buttonhole their Delegates to let them know that they have some clout.  VCDL is planning another such event for the week after next.  The problem is that they're about to walk into a House of Mirrors.

The Media is firmly in the Democrat's camp, and the prospects of a thousand gun owners assembling in front of the Capitol gives the cameras all sorts of ways of distorting the image.  If 90% of gun owners show up in suits while the other 10% show up in Tactical Camo, which do you think will be shown on the Nightly News?  If Agents Provocateurs mingle in the crowd (as was the case in Charlottesville), who do you think will be shown on the Nightly News?

Remember, this is the same news that ignores the pictures of the Governor dressed in KKK robes.

It seems to me that there are two groups of people who matter in the audience, and I can't see a path to successfully engaging either:

1. The general public.  They will get their news from TV, from the paper, from Youtube, and from Social Media.  Each and every one of these can be assumed to be in full censor mode, suppressing good messaging and images while hyping any dumbassery (whether natively among the protesters or from false flag operators).  The VCDL has zero control over this.  Expect for public support for gun ownership to slip somewhat in the aftermath of this media House Of Mirrors.

2. The Delegates.  Democrats here will not be impressed; after all, they just won an election and swept to control over the entire state government.  Republicans will watch the effect on the general public.  If support for gun ownership goes down (whether a little or a lot), then the whole lobby day exercise will be driving in reverse.  Again, VCDL has zero control over this.

What is particularly unfortunate is that this comes hard on the heels of an overwhelming victory in the sanctuary movement.  That effort played to gun owners' strengths and avoided their opponent's strengths.  There was very little formal media presence in the almost 100 county meetings discussing sanctuary resolutions.  Almost all social media was from the pro-gun side.  This was key in the PR triumph.

That's not what will happen the week after next.  Indeed, it will be the reverse.  Why would anyone expect a massive PR win for the Democrats under these conditions?

Aesop seems to be shouting into the wind, although he speaks the Truth:

Yet again, the choice for Virginians is not doing something vs. doing nothing.
It's a choice between doing something stupid and futile, vs. doing something smart.

Anonymous commenters at his place make it plain that they have no intention of even looking at the yawning chasm that they're about to tumble into.  This is unfortunate because most of us find ourselves tethered to them, and they're fixin' to pull us all in after them.

Sure, it's a Cold Civil War.  Sure the Democrats are doing this to show the Deplorables who's boss.  Sure, none of this will change violence or crime levels one bit.

But it's stupid.  Sometimes it's easier to not do something stupid than it is to do something smart.