The Wearing of the Orange: What gun owners can do about this new/old anti-gun tactic
Greg Camp for Guns.com reports:
Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization formed from a coalition of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Shannon Watts’ Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, has announced the 2nd of June as a day to wear orange for National Gun Violence Awareness Day. This day is being promoted on Twitter with the hashtag, #WearingOrange. Their choice of color comes from Project Orange Tree, a commemoration of the life of Hadiya Pendleton, a teenager who died from violence in Chicago. According to the latter group, orange was selected because that is the color that hunters wear for safety.
This is a choice reminiscent of efforts to co-opt the mocking of one’s opponents in defiance—the American takeover of the song, “Yankee Doodle,” comes to mind here. Gun control advocates frequently claim that they’re not trying to take away the guns of hunters, as if hunting is the whole and only legitimate purpose of gun ownership. This is a well worn, divide-and-conquer strategy, trying to separate hunters from other kinds of gun owners, which has been attempted in the past….
….I ask gun control advocates regularly what gun laws, current or proposed, would make people safer and don’t get any answers that go beyond expressions of faith, and that’s exactly what’s happening again with this idea of wearing orange. We’re being asked to feel, rather than think, by donning the team colors. This goes back to the playbook of gun control, Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging, a document that encourages emotionalism over wonky debates about data. If gun control can be emotionally identified with the gun owners who are popularly deemed acceptable, Everytown’s message becomes normalized.
Read the full story at Guns.com.
