The Hidden Weapon of "Gun Control" Advocates
By Kirby Ferris 1/29/09
Copyright 2009, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
Advocates of victim disarmament in today’s American politics owe their tactics and techniques to a man whose name is becoming more and more familiar: Saul Alinsky. Hillary Clinton actually sat at his feet. Barack Hussein Obama was spoon fed his teachings. Bill Clinton was Saul’s ideological son. And you can bet that freshman Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (Dem. NY) has been well versed in Alinskyism by her own mentor … Madam Hillary.
For decades gun owners have shaken their head in wonder as lie after lie from the gun grabbers results in more and more anti firearms ownership legislation. We can conservatively estimate that there are at least sixty five million gun owners in America today. That is an immense “interest group”. And yet, gun registration (and outright confiscation) schemes have never, in the entire history of our nation, loomed so ominously on the horizon.
How has this been done? The evolution of an America in the sixties, when kids took shotguns and rifles to school so they could go out hunting after classes, to a climate wherein today a kid draws a picture of a gun in class and gets hustled off to a shrink and likely suspended.
Lunacy reigns. But it didn’t happen accidentally. We’ve arrived at the endgame of a process, a process that Saul Alinsky, if he didn’t invent it, polished, packaged, and taught with unbelievable skill and cynicism.
Alinsky’s last book, published in 1971, a year before he died, is titled “Rules For Radicals”. These tactics are the “hidden weapon” of the more sophisticated “gun control” advocates.
Here are Alinsky’s thirteen basic rules. I’ve commented on each, and how they are used by the victim disarmament crowd. The old saw, “know thine enemy”, is ably served if you first understand what your enemy has been taught. The next time you see an anti gun politician or spokesperson spouting off about “responsible gun ownership”, or “keeping guns out of the hands of criminals”, or “the rights of hunters” understand that it is all deception based upon Alinsky’s tactics.
Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
Josh Sugarmann, Sarah Brady, Charles Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, and their ilk, are superlative grandstanders. Like verbally vomiting vultures, they immediately appear in front of the cameras whenever a Stockton, California or Columbine, Colorado shooting spree takes place. They actually seem pre-prepared, almost as if they knew something was going to happen. In the horror of the aftermath, they shamelessly silence pro gun advocates with a flood of emotionalized, illogical, irrational, and manipulative buzz phrases and clichés that a rabidly anti gun media presents to the American public with somber aplomb. Some of them, like that morally perverse harridan from New Jersey, Carolyn McCarthy, actually rise to power by irrationally and hysterically pandering their personal losses to the crowd. The queen of passive aggressiveness, Sarah Brady, used the same tactic.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.
The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
Sadly, the gun grabbers are better organized than most pro gun groups. Alinsky taught his students moral relativism. The end justifies the means. Look at the political killer instinct demonstrated by the leadership and active base of the “guns are bad” sub culture. The NRA operates on schmooze, backslapping, and insidious ground losing compromise. Handgun Control Inc. runs on secrecy, back stabbing, and unwavering betrayal of agreement. They are winning. We are losing.
Twenty years ago, JPFO (unaware of Alinsky’s teachings, it might be added) was founded with the realization that it was time someone countered the lies of the gun grabbers using some of the enemy’s tactics. Thankfully, JPFO doesn’t have to lie … ever. Watch JPFO’s documentary “Innocents Betrayed”,(trailer - - store purchase of full DVD) the graphic and unnerving chronicle of disarmed citizens and genocides in history.
There is a crucial difference between JPFO and our adversaries: We don’t need moral relativism because we don’t have to lie.
Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
This is easy for the Carolyn McCarthys, the Chuck Schumers, and the Dianne Feinsteins. They are liars. And gun owners are perhaps inculcated with a more fundamental, innate, honesty than any other easily definable social group. So when Feinstein or Schumer fights dirty, our side tends to cringe in disgust and confusion and disbelief. How many times have your heard a gun owner ask: “How can they lie like that?!” They lie because it is working!
Rule 4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
The alleged pacifism of the Jewish and Christian faiths, is used relentlessly against gun owners, many whom have deep religious beliefs and “old fashioned” moral constructs. Have you ever noticed that there is always a pastor, priest, or rabbi at an anti gun ownership rally? Always. Their message to gun owners is subtle and corrosive: “Thou shalt not kill". How can you even think of owning a gun?” The underlying subliminal context? Self defense is a sin. This is an insane lie.
And, by the way, the accurate translation of the Sixth Commandment is “Thou shalt not murder". It is not “Thou shalt not kill”. Think on that. (see: “2A Today for the U.S.A.”, JPFO’s crystal clear explanation of the Second Amendment.).
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counter-attack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
Gun owners are “hillbillys”, “rednecks”, “macho”, “gun nuts”, “extremists”, “paranoid”, and, if the gun owner is male “in fear of their sexual inadequacy”. Come on, admit it, how many times have you wanted to kick smirking Chuckie Schumer. Bingo! He won. You just lost.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy. “If your people aren’t having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic.”
At the time Alinsky wrote this, the late 1960s, he was teaching mostly college age youths (most specifically Hillary Clinton, who he dearly wanted as his protégé) the secrets of “activism”. The leadership of our devious opposition has a flair for drama and theater. The true believers in Handgun Control Inc., the day in and day out worker bees, are mostly younger folks. They are energetic idealists with bagels for brains.
Meanwhile the staunch pro gun ownership activist is usually forty or older. Sadly, in the realm of pure energy, they’ve got us beat. This is why it is so important to get youngsters into shooting and gun safety and the moral issues involved with that most basic human right, the right to self defense. JPFO’s “Grampa Jack” series of educational comic books is the perfect way to introduce youngsters to our cause.
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag. Commitment may become ritualistic as people turn to other issues.
Here is where we can beat them. The pro gun ownership activist knows, with grim certainty, what waits at the end of gun confiscation. This somber understanding keeps our shoulders to the plow. Our foundational tactics are: Truth and history. It is that plain and that simple.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose.
They never stop, do they? Every sordid event that involves a firearm draws them like flies. That is, unless the event is the morally righteous use of a firearm that leaves a violent criminal dead or crippled, and an innocent citizen alive, instead of dead. Then you don’t hear a peep from Chuckie or Sarah or Dianne, do you?
Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.
Alinsky used to arrange civil obstructions that would be financially damaging to a city. He’d call for a “sit in” or demonstration and then shake down the city politicians and get them to fund his pet socialist projects. Watch for the gun grabbers to call in their pimp politicians like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton when the “Big Threat”, the race card, needs to be played in a situation.
Rule 10: "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign."
Our adversaries never directly confront an issue. They can’t! Their entire premise is a lie! They outflank, snipe from cover, and retreat. They’ll push a cliché until it wears thin and then change pace, like a skilled quarterback switching back and forth from ground game to passing game.
Rule 11: "If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside... every positive has its negative."
This encapsulates Alinsky’s foundational cynicism and amorality. The victim disarmament crowd deep down believes that lying to achieve their goals is okay.
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” Vladimir Lenin.
Rule 12: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is where we can pin them between Heaven and Earth like wriggling worms. Because deep in the heart of every gun grabber is the dream of complete gun confiscation. They won’t admit it, but it is the truth. Many of these people are actually mentally ill. (see: Dr. Sarah Thomson’s article, “Raging Against Self Defense”. It is highly instructive.)
JPFO waves the lessons of history in the duplicitous faces of the victim disarmament advocates. JPFO is a solution oriented organization. It provides you with the intellectual ammunition to counter the lies of the gun grabbers. FACT: Repeatedly in the 20th Century, firearms registration preceded firearms confiscation preceded horrific mass murder by governments against their own people (see: JPFO's Genocide Chart). Sarah Brady and Chuckie and the rest of them, because they are venal liars, we can never let it go there. Never.
Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
This is why Michael Moore targeted Charlton Heston in “Bowling for Columbine”. Moore’s use of Alinsky’s tactics (specifically ridicule) is insidiously brilliant. We should learn from him.
Yes, study Saul Alinsky. Because therein we can learn how to spot the tactic, arm ourselves with the counter-tactic, and then ruthlessly and effectively retaliate and neutralize. It’s time to take the gloves off. It is brass knuckles time, friends. The future of our freedom, and the freedom of our children and grandchildren, depends on it. We must fight fire with fire. Nothing else will work.
Read our latest endorsements about the JPFO film "2A Today for The USA" … …
"An impressive. imaginative, and VERY professional production that portrays the right to arms in an authentic light." (David Hardy, Attorney at Law. Arms and the Law.com. Producer of "In Search of the Second Amendment".)
"2A today for the USA ... Nowhere can one find a better explanation of what the Second Amendment is all about and its historical relevance to our rights and liberty than the wonderful work by the premier defender of that document, the JPFO. Michael Gaddy, columnist for LewRockwell.com . Thanks, Aaron, for all that you do for the 2A."( Michael)
Frequent JPFO contributor and strategist, Kirby Ferris collaborated intensively with Aaron Zelman over the last two years. Ferris is now the Operations Manager of JPFO.
See all of Kirby Ferris’ articles.
© Copyright Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.