When I’ve tried to motivate gun owners to get involved in political campaigns, one of the most common excuses given for not helping out is that one or more of their local lawmakers is anti-gun. Well, that’s just dandy, but what about the pro-gun guy/gal running statewide? They still need every vote they can find in every region of a state.
That’s the attitude of a winning campaign. And, to give the man credit, that’s exactly how Obama ran his campaign. I’m reading the legacy report right now between surfing for gun news, and this tidbit really popped out for me:
We didn’t win a majority of votes in every neighborhood, but every neighborhood helped us reach 51 percent in states and 270 nationally.
Basically, they sought out every single vote they could find because they knew that it would all add up in each state. I didn’t matter if it was in a Congressional district that would go overwhelming GOP, every Democratic vote they could find there would help the top of the ticket.
There’s much more to consider when it comes to campaign organizing in the report. However, I think it can be summed up as a form of making volunteer efforts social. The numbers show that it works. The people who made it a social network were nearly 3x as likely to spend 10+ hours a week volunteering for the campaign.
I find it frustrating in many ways because we already have the resources to repeat this kind of success on gun rights. They are called gun clubs and gun ranges. They offer facilities, networks, and can even pool together some money for cheap activism tools like pens, paper, and stamps. Many have enough to pay for things like phone lines that members could use or meeting places for people to put together campaign signs or prepare literature drop materials. Now we just need more of the culture that is willing to put together such events now and/or at election time.
That’s how Claire McCaskill defeated the incumbent in 2006, by a narrow 49.6% to 47.3% margin. She went everywhere in the state (of Missouri), even in these deepest of deep Red State portions, to get every Democratic vote she could get.
Not sure how to apply these state-wide strategies to narrower, often jerrymandered races, but then again if we can find a way to let our brethren in enemy territory contribute to the fight—very possibly anonymously, since e.g. that would cost too many their jobs—it would certainly help the effort.
We really need to adopt Rahm’s saying “Never let a good crisis go to waste” here. I have at least two new work buds that are engaged and write letters when needed with legislative changes. I suggest that NOW is the time to engage these people socially, when we have interest up.
Once the social hook is set, then it can be maintained or sustained, so to speak.
I think we need a new twist/approach for Gun Clubs and Ranges: Gun clubs are around guns, and guns can lend to singular focus, so to speak. Target ranges are commercial, and operators sometimes decide to keep it strictly business.
I think the only thing I’ve seen is that the local range requires NRA membership, so perhaps that could be a way to approach these local ranges through NRA contacts (just trying to think outside the box).
I’m hoping that the antis overreach now gets pro-rights people engaged long term. If we can beat back the present attacks and keep the people involved in building on what we’ve accomplished since 1994, that could be huge for us long term. It was all before my time, but my impression is that the 94 AWB galvanized at least some of the activists that led to the massive expansion of carry rights that followed. If we avoid the major loss while gaining the backlash against the attempt, where could we be in in 2030?
If we are unable to band together and use a winning formula, then we might as well turn in our firearms now. Conservatism seems to be waiting, like an eager but otherwise unmotivated kid. Until they get over their passivity (thanks to leftist public school) this is going to be a near vertical slog. How do we change that tide?