“Shoulder thing that goes up.”

“Bullet-piercing bullets.”

“TEC-9 rifle.”

“Heat-seeking .50 caliber bullets.”

Semi-automatic assault rifles, high-power .223 Remington, .9 mm and 40 caliber bullets, flash hiders that make guns invisible to the target… And I’m sure you can add plenty more stupidities to the list of things victim disarmers say. It’s hard to find a news report on an anti-RKBA proposal that isn’t stuffed full of such absurdities, and harder to find a reporter who’ll call out the speaker on it. I used to make a hobby of contacting reporters to explain why that “submachinegun” wasn’t a submachinegun. I gave it up because I couldn’t keep up, and because never even once would the media whore make the correction.

I recently challenged a NYC congresscritter to identify a national army — anywhere in the world — that issues semi-auto AK or AR variants instead of the auto-capable assault rifles. Rather than correct his mistake, he settled for silence.

Moms Demand Action, as one of their early Facebook entries, posted a chart supporting the Kellerman “43 times more likely” claim. I commented, noting that that particular study had been thoroughly debunked (even by pro-gun control types). Shannon Watts (or more likely some intern) replied that they weren’t referencing the Kellerman paper, that it came from a different study, to which I pointed to their chart and noted that it was labeled with the Kellerman paper reference.

I became one of the first people banned by MDA, and my comments disappeared. The chart stayed. Since Watts has a habit of shoving both feet into her mouth clear up to the knees, you probably can think of similar examples.

Does stupidity cause gun control, or does gun control cause stupidity?

In all honesty, the most vocal gun grabbers cannot seem to get the most basic facts right. Sometimes it’s intentional, as in Sugarman’s desire to equate cosmetic “assault weapons” with select-fire assault rifles in people’s minds. Sometimes it’s sheer stupidity (-cough- McCarthy).

And it hurts their cause. On more than one occasion, I’ve been able to explain some actual facts to a victim disarmament supporter, and seen that person become outraged at having been lied to. One took up shooting herself. Another simply refused to take the Bradys seriously again, and called me to confirm or deny stuff she saw in the news after that.

So why do the disarmers do it? Are they stupid? Is that why they promote mass violation of human and civil rights, and create safe work places for violent criminals?

Or do they deliberately create outrageous, clearly false statements as a sort of social engineering filter? Like “Nigerian scammers:”

“Finally, this approach suggests an answer to the question in the title. Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.”

If Nigerian bankers can filter to ensure they’re dealing with the most gullible, why not anti-gun pollsters? That would account for the “90% of Americans want universal background checks” results. That would be 90% of everyone who didn’t say, “Are you [********] me? Take me off your call list,” and hang up.

“Shoulder Thing” McCarthy is clearly stupid, but Schumer is pretty darned smart; evil, but smart. When he calls a pistol a rifle, he knows the difference; he is sifting for gullible folks he can manipulate.

So, despite their words and actions, the victim disarmament leadership are not stupid. Nor do they truly hate firearms (else Schumer and Watts wouldn’t surround themselves with armed guards). They do have an over-arching agenda that causes them to fear guns out of their control.

The gun control foot soldiers — MMM attendees, writers of letters to the editor, silly petition signers — often are stupid, or at least gullible. Others are not really either, but haven’t looked into issues closely, for assorted reasons. They aren’t really gullible, but may not realize how blatantly the Schumers, Watts, and Bloombergs of the world are willingly to lie to them. The Große Lüge has a long history of effectiveness.

Aaron Zelman understood this. And he understood that propaganda of this sort is best countered with education. Thus, his informative Grandpa Jack comic series that explained issues in a down-to-earth simplified style, and documentaries on the true origins of gun control. If No Guns for Negroes could run just once on a major mainstream media channel, race-baiting gun banners would lose their poor, urban constituency over night.

Education comes in many forms, and is best tailored to the specific demographic.

Bloombergian Plotters: They aren’t stupid. They don’t expect gun control to solve problems of violence. For them, it is merely a tool of manipulation. They are best countered with ridicule. Every time one appears in public with an armed guard, photographs should suck up Internet bandwidth. Point out their hypocrisy and falsehoods. Laugh at them. Their lesson is that we are onto them, watching.

The Ignorant: These are the ones who bought the Big Lie. They need the Big Truth. If I had the funds, I would buy ad space in major outlets; whole page ads showing the functionally identical, but cosmetically differing, AR-15 and Aries SCR,noting that no national military has ever replaced their assault rifles with either. Below that would be the actual M-16A2 assault rifle. The text for that one would be: “Confused? That’s exactly what [insert name of local/national gun grabber] wanted. Learn more at www.zelmanpartisans.com.” Comparison charts of firearms deaths by country would be good, too. Chart 1: the usual showing the US at the top. Chart 2: the real raw numbers that show the middle ranking. Caption: “What else did they lie about? Learn more at…”

The Gullible: To some extent, the Big Truth will work with this group. But… they will often have a vested emotional interest in not admitting that they were used so cynically, that they were wrong. Like a puppy who won’t admit his mess, we have to rub their noses in it. Most often, I have found that works best one on one.

For instance, victim disarmers are real proud of that “if it saves just one life” meme. Recently, someone threw that at me during a discussion of prohibited persons. I responded with this:

“And how about if but one person is _killed_ by baseless restrictions? My brother died because immoral idiots prevented him having a defensive tool when he needed it, based on _one_ incident, not involving weapons, thirty years before.”

Presented with a hypothetical life, I countered with a real, personal to me, death directly blamed on the Lautenberg Amendment. Suddenly the troll shut up.

“No good guy with a gun…” My counter there is three personal incidents in which I did just that against multiple assailants.

“A woman is safer without weapons…” I tell them about my friend who was attacked on a gun-free campus. She stopped the sexual predator in his tracks with the pepper spray we gave her (and trained her on).

The gullible, with guilty consciences, won’t respond well to simple impersonal numbers, or news reports that run counter to their belief. Hit them with personal anecdotes and facts.

Nose, meet mess. Now clean it up.

None of this will be easy. To personally address every gullible fool requires every honest gun owner to step up and talk to them. Paying your annual TZP or GOA membership dues can help with media ads, but you still need to act personally.

Ad placement will be difficult, as the well-financed NRA has learned, with Comcast refusing to run ads that show firearms or a gun show vendor area even in the background. To start, I would probably try local print papers that cannot afford to turn down revenue. And niche magazines (truckers, cars, gardening and such, as opposed to big circulation general interest magazines like Time, People, or Cosmo).

If you have more cash on hand, try short local spots. Some might even run them at low/no cost to meet their public service requirements.

If inherent stupidity causes gun control, there is only so much we can do. But where gun controllers are trying to inflict stupidity, we can fight back.