# Two lobbies, one toolbox: how both sides of the firearms fight make their case Case studies Two lobbies, one toolbox: how both sides of the firearms fight make their case Illustration, not an archive object - Home - Case studies - Two lobbies, one toolbox: how both sides of the firearms fight make their case At a glance Since the late 1970s the groups for and against new gun laws have argued in the open, under their own names. They have also reached for the same devices When1977ActorGun-rights groups…Full record at propagandaarchive.org This page quotes a 1995 fundraising letter that compared federal agents to storm troopers, and remarks made after school shootings in which children died. ## What it said Two fundraising posters from the mid-1970s set out the whole argument, and the arithmetic fight that still runs under it. The gun-control poster came from the Committee for the Study of Handgun Misuse in Chicago in 1976. Over 70% of these handgun murders are committed by previously law abiding citizens against people they know. So if you own a handgun to protect yourself against a criminal, the odds are far greater that you will kill someone you know, or even love. Yet nothing is done. "We need handguns like we need a hole in the head," Committee for the Study of Handgun Misuse (Gun Control Project, Chicago), 1976, transcription in the FRAME collection record. It ended by citing the 1975 Harris Poll: when 77% of the public want handgun control legislation, as the 1975 Harris Poll states, something must be done. The answer came from the Second Amendment Foundation in Bellevue, Washington, in 1977, under drawn portraits of four prison inmates. Is the gun really the problem? Or is it the criminal? Less than one thousandth of one percent of the handguns in this country will be used to commit murder in 1977. "We asked four leading crooks for their opinion on gun control," Second Amendment Foundation, 1977, transcription in the FRAME collection record. That poster also said the foundation stood for the idea that the blame for firearms misuse must be placed squarely upon the shoulders of the criminals and lenient judges; not the law abiding American citizen, and that Swift and sure punishment is the way to fight crime. Each poster divided by the number that helped it. One turned a share of murders among acquaintances into a personal risk for every owner. The other spread murders across every handgun in the country. Swap the letterheads and the method is the same. ## Who made it and why The gun-rights side was remade in May 1977 at the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in Cincinnati, when a members' faction led by Harlon Carter voted out the leadership. The NRA's own American Rifleman later called the meeting the birthplace of the modern NRA, and Carter is reported as saying, Beginning in this place and at this hour, this period in NRA history is finished. The association moved from shooting sports toward political work against gun restrictions. The Second Amendment Foundation and the Virginia Citizens Defense League worked the same side. The gun-control side organized through Handgun Control Inc., renamed in 2000 and 2001 as the Brady Campaign and Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence; the Violence Policy Center; Moms Demand Action, which Shannon Watts started as One Million Moms for Gun Control after Sandy Hook in December 2012; and Everytown for Gun Safety, formed in April 2014 when Moms Demand Action merged with Mayors Against Illegal Guns, with a $50 million pledge from Michael Bloomberg. After Parkland, students formed March for Our Lives, which asked for universal background checks and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Both sides used their own names. Both raised money from supporters who chose to give it. That is the baseline, and most of this record is ordinary lobbying, questionnaires, petitions and rallies. ## What it got right or wrong The worst label on the gun-rights side is the 13 April 1995 NRA fundraising letter signed by Wayne LaPierre. It called federal agents jack-booted government thugs and said: Not too long ago, it was unthinkable for federal agents wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms to attack law-abiding citizens. NRA fundraising letter signed by Wayne LaPierre, 13 April 1995, as quoted in the sources on the FRAME case study. The letter leaned on two real events. At Ruby Ridge in 1992, gunfire from a U.S. Marshal and an FBI sniper killed Randy Weaver's 14-year-old son and his wife. At Waco in 1993, 76 Branch Davidians died in a fire after an FBI standoff. Those deaths were the government's to answer for. The letter's claim was larger: that they showed a pattern aimed at law-abiding citizens in general. Former President George H. W. Bush resigned his membership in May, writing that the letter deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor. LaPierre then apologized: If anyone thought the intention was to paint all federal law-enforcement officials with the same broad brush, I'm sorry, and I apologize. The generalization was wrong, and the organization said so. The 2017 NRA video in which Dana Loesch said They use their media to assassinate real news. They use their schools to teach children that their President is another Hitler, ending fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth, sorted the press and the schools into an enemy they. The NRA defended it. In March 2018 NRATV host Colion Noir told Parkland students your classmates would still be alive and no one would know your names. The NRA stopped producing NRATV in June 2019. The clearest admission on the gun-control side is in Josh Sugarmann's 1988 paper for the Violence Policy Center: The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons. Josh Sugarmann, Assault Weapons and Accessories in America, Violence Policy Center, 1988, as quoted in the sources on the FRAME case study. That is a strategy that counts on the public misunderstanding a technical line. FRAME found no gun-rights document of the same kind. The NRA's journal America's 1st Freedom argues that gun safety and gun violence prevention are relabelings of gun control; the renamings happened, and whether they stretch the words is the argument itself. The counts are where both sides most often go wrong. In February 2018 Everytown's figure of 18 school shootings that year spread widely; the Washington Post called it flat wrong. The definition took in any discharge on school grounds, including a suicide outside a school that had been closed for months, which Everytown later removed. Its defense was that Every time gunfire breaks out on school grounds, it can shatter a child's sense that they are safe in their school and in their community. From the other direction, some gun-rights advocates object that gun deaths totals include suicides, 54 percent in 2021, when those totals are used for measures not aimed at suicide. Survey estimates of defensive gun use run from roughly 60,000 to 2.5 million a year depending on the survey, by RAND's summary. A reader should ask the same two questions of every number: what counts as a case, and what is it divided by. The virtue words are matched too: freedom and law-abiding citizens on one side, gun sense, common-sense gun laws and safety on the other. Each names something the opponents also claim to want, in place of a specific measure. ## Both movements are what the First Amendment is for Both movements are what the First Amendment is for. Members chose to join, chose to give, and petitioned legislatures under their own names. The archive's record ties no violence to either organization. Two of the largest moments were peaceable crowds. On 24 March 2018, March for Our Lives drew hundreds of thousands to Washington, where Emma González stood silent for six minutes and twenty seconds. On 20 January 2020 about 22,000 gun-rights supporters came to the Virginia Citizens Defense League's Lobby Day in Richmond, under Gadsden and Come and take it flags, and it ended with no arrests. Both were citizens assembling and petitioning, and both deserve to be described that way. Where the reading is open, prefer the one that asks who holds force. Ruby Ridge and Waco were federal operations in which people died; skepticism of armed state power after them is not paranoia, and the libertarian reading takes it seriously. The NRA's 1995 mistake was to turn that fair question into a smear on every officer, which Bush rejected and the NRA withdrew. The same rule cuts the other way: a campaign that counts on voters confusing automatic and semi-automatic firearms is asking the public to support a law on a misunderstanding, and laws that restrict a right ought to rest on definitions voters can read in the bill. The Second Amendment Foundation named itself for the constitutional text, and Heston's From my cold, dead hands! at the NRA convention on 20 May 2000, rifle raised, made the founding era a prop, as did the colonial dress and Gadsden flags at Lobby Day. FRAME's record for this page does not include court rulings on the Second Amendment, so this page does not summarize what the courts held; it reports what each side said, and leaves the case law to a page that cites it. ## Its legacy The 1970s poster pair still describes the debate. LaPierre's line of 21 December 2012, after Sandy Hook, The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, and his claim that gun-free school zones tell every insane killer in America that schools are the safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk, offer one remedy for a frightening picture. The 1976 poster offered one remedy too, repeating nothing is done beside a bullet hole. Political scientist Matthew Lacombe traces how the NRA built a gun-owner identity around being law-abiding citizens; March for Our Lives said There cannot be two sides, which frames its goal as beyond debate. Both are identity statements, though the second does not tell supporters to distrust critics as a group. The fair test for both lobbies is a swap. Put the other side's name on a letter calling agents storm troopers, or on a paper that welcomes public confusion over technical terms, and the judgment should not change. On this record it does not. ## Sources - FRAME case study "Gun rights and gun control: persuasion on both sides of the U.S. gun debate," for the chronology and quotations. propagandaarchive.org - FRAME collection records and transcriptions: "We need handguns like we need a hole in the head" (1976) and "We asked four leading crooks for their opinion on gun control" (1977), Library of Congress, Yanker poster collection. 1976, 1977 - NRA, American Rifleman, "Cincinnati '77: Birthplace of the Modern NRA"; America's 1st Freedom, "The Danger of Gun-Control Speak"; Daily Beast on Harlon Carter. - This Day in Quotes (2016), the 1995 letter; Washington Post, 11 and 18 May 1995, Bush's resignation and the NRA apology; The Trace on Bush's letter; History.com, Ruby Ridge. - Las Vegas Sun, 21 May 2000, Heston at the NRA convention. - GBH and Slate, 21 December 2012, LaPierre press conference. - MPR News and The Hill (2017), the Loesch video; Everytown press release on the ad; Washington Post, 24 March 2018, Colion Noir video; Variety, June 2019, NRATV. - Reason (2018), quoting Sugarmann (1988). - Brady, "Our History"; Moms Demand Action, name change; Everytown launch (2014); CNN (2014), Bloomberg pledge; Gun Sense Voter FAQ. - ABC News and Participedia, March for Our Lives 2018. - Washington Post, 15 February 2018, "18 school shootings"; CNBC on Everytown's definition. - Johns Hopkins (2023), 2021 gun deaths; The Trace (2021), suicides and gun-violence totals; RAND, measuring defensive gun use. - NPR and 13News Now, 20 January 2020, Richmond Lobby Day. - Matthew Lacombe, Firepower (Princeton, 2021); Kristin Goss, Disarmed; Adam Winkler, Gunfight. Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/case-studies/gun-control-and-gun-rights/