Communicating with anti-gun people

How can you communicate more effectively with an anti-gun person who is using
unhealthy defense mechanisms? There are no quick and easy answers. But there are
a few things you should keep in mind.

Anger and attacks do not work

Most gun owners, when confronted by an anti-gun person, become angry and hostile.
This is understandable, because gun owners increasingly face ridicule, persecution
and discrimination. (If you don't believe this, ask yourself if anyone would seriously
introduce legislation to ban African- Americans, women, or Jews from post offices,
schools, and churches. Even convicted felons aren't banned from such places – but
peaceful armed citizens are!) But an angry response is counterproductive.

It's not helpful to attack the person you're trying to persuade. Anything that makes
him feel more fearful or angry will only intensify his defenses. Your goal is to help the
person feel safe, and then to provide experiences and information that will help him to
make informed decisions.

Be Gentle

You should never try to break down a defense mechanism by force. Remember that
defense mechanisms protect people from feelings they cannot handle, and if you take
that protection away, you can cause serious psychological harm. And because
defense mechanisms operate unconsciously, it won't do any good to show an
anti-gun person this article or to point out that he's using defense mechanisms. Your
goal is gently and gradually to help the person to have a more realistic and rational
view of the world. This cannot be done in one hour or one day.

As you reach out to people in this way, you need to deal with both the illogical thought
processes involved and the emotional reactions that anti-gun people have to firearms.
When dealing with illogical thought processes, you are attempting to use reason and
logic to convince the anti-gun person that his perception of other people and his
perception of firearms are seriously inaccurate. The goal is to help him to understand
that armed citizens and firearms are not threats, and may even save his life.

Reversing Irrational thoughts

The Mirror Technique

One approach that can be helpful is simply to feed back what the anti-gun person is
telling you, in a neutral, inquisitive way. So, when replying to my anonymous e-mail
correspondent (above), I might respond, "So you fear if your neighbors had guns,
they would use them to murder you. What makes you think that?" When you simply
repeat what the person has said, and ask questions, you are not directly challenging
his defenses. You are holding up a mirror to let him see his own views. If he has very
strong defenses, he can continue to insist that his neighbors want to murder him.

However, if his defenses are less rigid, he may start to question his position.

Another example might be, "Why do you think that your children's schoolteachers
would shoot them?" You might follow this up with something like, "Why do you entrust
your precious children to someone you believe would murder them?" Again, you are
merely asking questions, and not directly attacking the person or his defenses.

Of course the anti-gun person might continue to insist that the teachers really would
harm children, but prohibiting them from owning guns would prevent it. So you might
ask how using a gun to murder innocent children is different from stabbing children
with scissors, assaulting them with baseball bats, or poisoning the milk and cookies.
It's important to ask "open-ended" questions that require a response other than "yes"
or "no". Such questions require the anti-gun person actually to think about what he is
saying. This will help him to re-examine his beliefs. It may also encourage him to ask
you questions about firearms use and ownership.

The "What Would You Do?" Technique

Once you have a dialogue going with an anti-gun person, you might want to insert him
into a hypothetical scenario, although doing so is a greater threat to his defenses,
and is therefore more risky. You might ask how he would deal with a difficult or
annoying co-worker. He will likely respond that he would never resort to violence, but
"other people" would, especially if they had guns. (Projection again.) You can then
ask him who these "other people" are, why they would shoot a co-worker, and what
the shooter would gain by doing so.

Don't try to "win" the argument. Don't try to embarrass the person you're trying to
educate. Remember that no one likes to admit that his deeply held beliefs are wrong.
No one likes to hear "I told you so!" Be patient and gentle. If you are arrogant,
condescending, hurtful or rude to the anti-gun person, you will only convince him that
gun owners are arrogant, hurtful people – who should not be trusted with guns!

Defusing Emotional reactions

The "You Are There" Technique

Rational arguments alone are not likely to be successful, especially since many
people "feel" rather than "think". You also need to deal with the emotional responses
of the anti-gun person. Remember that most people have been conditioned to
associate firearms with dead toddlers. So you need to change the person's emotional
responses along with his thoughts.

One way to do this is to put the anti-gun person (or his family) at a hypothetical crime
scene and ask what he would like to have happen. For example, "Imagine your wife is
in the parking lot at the supermarket and two men grab her. One holds a knife to her
throat while the other tears her clothes off. If I see this happening and have a gun,
what should I do? What would happen next? What if after five minutes, the police still
haven't arrived?"

Just let him answer the questions and mentally walk through the scenario. Don't
argue with his answers. You are planting seeds in his mind than can help change his
emotional responses.

The Power of Empathy

Another emotion-based approach that is often more successful is to respond
sympathetically to the plight of the anti-gun person.

Imagine for a moment how you would feel if you believed your neighbors and
co-workers wanted to kill you and your family, and you could do nothing at all about it
except to wait for the inevitable to occur.

Not very pleasant, is it?

This is the world in which opponents of armed self-defense live. All of us have had
times in our lives when we felt "different" and had to contend with hostile
schoolmates, co- workers, etc. So we need to invoke our own compassion for these
terrified people. Say something like, "It must be awful to live in fear of being assaulted
by your own neighbors. I remember what it was like when I was the only (Jew,
Mormon, African-American, Republican) in my (class, football team, workplace) – and
even then I didn't think anyone was going to kill me." It's essential that you sincerely
feel some compassion and empathy; if you're glib or sarcastic, this won't work.
Using empathy works in several ways. First, it defuses a potentially hostile interaction.
Anti-gun people are used to being attacked, not understood, by advocates of gun
rights. Instead of an "evil, gun-toting, extremist", you are now a sympathetic, fellow
human being. This may also open the door for a friendly conversation, in which you
can each discover that your "opponent" is a person with whom you have some things
in common. You may even create an opportunity to dispel some of the misinformation
about firearms and self-defense that is so prevalent.

This empathy technique is also useful for redirecting, or ending, a heated argument
that has become hostile and unproductive. It allows you to escape from the dead end
of "guns save lives" vs. "the only reason to have a gun is to murder children." With
empathy you can reframe the argument entirely. Instead of arguing about whether
more lives are saved or lost as a result of gun ownership, you can comment on how
terrifying it must be to live in a country where 80 million people own guns "solely for
the purpose of murdering children".

You should not expect any of these approaches to work immediately; they won't. With
rare exceptions, the anti-gun person is simply not going to "see the light," thank you
profusely, and beg you to take him shooting. What you are doing is putting tiny chinks
into the armor of the person's defenses, or planting seeds that may someday develop
into a more open mind or a more rational analysis. This process can take months or
years. But it does work!

Corrective Experiences

Perhaps the most effective way to dissolve defense mechanisms, however, is by
providing corrective experiences30. Corrective experiences are experiences that allow
a person to learn that his ideas about gun owners and guns are incorrect in a safe
and non-threatening way. To provide a corrective experience, you first allow the
person to attempt to project his incorrect ideas onto you. Then, you demonstrate that
he is wrong by your behavior, not by arguing.

For example, the anti-gun person will unconsciously attempt to provoke you by
claiming that gun owners are uneducated "rednecks," or by treating you as if you are
an uneducated "redneck." If you get angry and respond by calling him a "stupid,
liberal, socialist", you will prove his point. However, if you casually talk about your
M.B.A., your trip to the Shakespeare festival, your vegetable garden, or your
daughter's ballet recital, you will provide him with the opportunity to correct his
misconceptions.

If you have used the above techniques, then you have already provided one
corrective experience. You have demonstrated to the frightened, anti-gun person that
gun owners are not abusive, scary, dangerous and sub-human monsters, but normal,
everyday people who care about their families, friends and even strangers.

As many gun owners have already discovered, the most important corrective
experiences involve actually exposing the fearful person to a firearm. It is almost
never advisable to tell someone that you carry a concealed firearm, but there are
ways to use your own experience favorably.

For example, if you're dealing with an anti-gun person with whom you interact
regularly and have a generally good relationship – a coworker, neighbor, church
member, etc. – you might indirectly refer to concealed carry. You should never say
anything like "I'm carrying a gun right now and you can't even tell," especially because
in some states that would be considered illegal, "threatening" behavior. But you might
consider saying something like, "I sometimes carry a firearm, and you've never
seemed to be uncomfortable around me." Whether to disclose this information is an
individual decision, and you should consider carefully other consequences before
using this approach.