Prohibitionists Exploit Republican Women’s Ignorance and Feelings in Polling on Guns

U.S.A. — “When it comes to guns, Republican women don’t always agree with Republican men,” Lauren Leader, “co-founder and CEO of All In Together, a nonprofit women’s civic education organization,” declares on Politico. “As gun violence grows in our country, GOP women seem to be thinking more like Democratic women.”

“Despite mass shooting after mass shooting, most efforts to regulate gun ownership, even in ways that have a majority of support from voters, have run aground,” Leader laments. “But new polling by my organization conducted in partnership with Republican polling firm Echelon Insights suggests there’s a significant disconnect between Republican women and Republican men on guns.”

“Polling”? Like the saying goes, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.  And a cursory glance at Leader’s internet footprint shows she’s not exactly politically impartial and unbiased. Her Twitter retweets give a pretty good indicator of where she stands on prosecuting Donald Trump and a Google search shows her regularly featured on MSNBC, claiming “American democracy is at stake” because of the Supreme Court decision to  overturn Roe v. Wade, and praising “Nancy Pelosi’s pioneering legacy.”

The All in Together Facebook photos tell the story: They’re Democrat apparatchiks. And Leader’s a seasoned propagandist with a dog in this fight who credits New York’s Kathy Hochul as “a transformational mentor.”

The polling was conducted by Echelon Insights, per Leader, a “Republican polling firm,” Leader reveals, creating the aura of bipartisan objectivity. That said, Echelon pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson is an “on-air political contributor at CNN” “whose work has appeared in The Daily Beast, Politico, and HuffPost,” and a connected insider sitting on various think tank and nonprofit boards. Don’t think MAGA, think “moderate” Jeb Bush/Mitt Romey establishment and Swamp. Think Vichycon.

Couching her arguments in terms of “mass shooting after mass shooting” and using the loaded term “gun violence” in her lede show Leader purposefully parrots the prohibitionist narrative and injects emotion right out of the starting gate. The demonstrable reality, that those she influences will not be informed about is that:

“Statistics on global mass shooting incidents from 2009 to 2015 compiled by economist John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center show that the US trails many other advanced nations in mass shooting frequency and death rate.”

As for “gun violence,” the late Mark Glaze, former executive director of Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, laid out the strategy:

“‘Gun control’ suggests big government telling Americans what to do. ‘Violence prevention’ — well, that’s something everybody could support in theory.”

That lets them mask that what they’re really after is not “gun safety,” which they’re wholly unequipped to advise on, but gun bans. It’s why the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence changed its original name from the National Council to Control Handguns, and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence shed its National Coalition to Ban Handguns monicker and has further added a phony aura of scientific authority after merging into the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

Poll numbers show the ploy can work on the uninformed.

“We found women are worried that gun violence could directly impact them and their families and communities,” Leader goes on to explain. “More than one-third (35 percent) of Republican women feel the same way.”

“Worried.”  “Feel.” Absent is the word “know.”

“39 percent feel that they or someone in their family is likely to be a victim of gun violence,” Leader continues. “39 percent feel that they or someone in their family is likely to be a victim of gun violence.”

See a pattern? It’s repeated in the poll itself, which represents itself as measuring “support” for:

• “Restricting the ability of someone under the age of 21 from having a gun.”
• “Implementing laws that make it easier for law enforcement to take firearms away form individuals who might be a threat to themselves or others.”
• “Restricting the ability to purchase certain types of firearms.”

Compare those goals to what California Governor Gavin Newsom is demanding for his “28^th Amendment.” (And who thinks the women in the accompanying article photo are basing their support on anything but feelings?)

Left unexplored – deliberately – is what poll respondents actually understand about the questions they’re giving answers to, and the very real threats to liberty such usurped authority creates. Yet based on “beliefs” that have no basis in informed and competent assessments, we’re told:

“Half of women say guns are a ‘dealbreaker’ issue and won’t support a candidate who doesn’t agree with them.”

And:

“Women think it is more likely that a mass shooting will happen near them than restrictions on gun purchases.”

“Think” or “believe”? There’s a big difference, and the prohibitionists are counting on the latter.

“As the ninnies who bleat for government destruction of our rights have consistently demonstrated, it’s not about results,” I wrote for GUNS Magazine back in 2005. “Commentator Martha Blume, in Chesapeake’s Bay Weekly calls for a Constitutional amendment: “The right of the people to feel safe from gun violence in their homes, neighborhoods, schools, places of worship, employment, on the streets and in any other public places shall not be infringed.”

Compare that to what propagandist Michael Moore declared in his version of a 28^th Amendment:

“The inalienable right of a free people to be kept safe from gun violence and the fear thereof must not be infringed and shall be protected by the Congress and the States.”

Our rights are now dependent on ignorant neuroses ginned up by professional fear mongers…?

Like the love song says, it’s about “Feelings, nothing more than feelings,” and Lauren Leader, whose “mission statement” is all about “Elevating the power and voices of women for a stronger democracy,” is an accomplished manipulator.

Because “democracy,” a term nowhere mentioned in the Constitution, is a Second Amendment-eviscerating trap. What those who endorse “two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner” really mean, although they’ll couch it in terms the ignorant and emotion-driven will embrace, is mob rule, with all the terror and misery that universally devolves into.

If the Republicans are having trouble keeping women informed, it’s incumbent on them to find out what the problem is and fix it. They expect support from gun owners—let them show gun owners they’re proactively working as a Party to deserve it.

And let gun owners tell them they expect that of them and will help if asked.

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.