"It is disgusting and vile and it tarnishes the reputation of the good ones. Our reputation is mud to the left and murky to the moderates."
There's plenty of disgusting and vile to go around; it ain't like we (or anyone else) has a lock on
that market. I will say that in 'neutral forums' --which is to say neither here nor the Brady homepage nor some random local newsrag page, but rather one of the large and well-respected news sites (not news aggregators which are typically heavily biased as part of their business model)-- discussion about guns is usually something approaching civil, at least for the internet. You have people on both sides calling "idiot," but apart from that and the trolls you are left with gun right supporters largely decrying the ignorance or false motives of the anti's, and anti's preaching righteous indigation --to put it
very mildly.
Gun supporters
really do tend to try to have a civil discourse, universally thinking their one pet fact or construction will 'wake up' the opposition. Even more often than degrading into troll-shouters, gunnies will get lost in the weeds debating which caliber or platform is most effective,
even while in the midst of a discussion with opposition. Restrictionists
really do tend to rely on poorly supported or emotional arguments appealing to shallow rationales that don't hold up under scrutiny, but sound definitive through frequent use of rhetorical terminations*. Gunnies really are often tone-deaf in how they present overly technical, 'callous', or distracting information, and restrictionists often put forth illustrations of utter ignorance regarding the issues as a point of pride.
My point is that we are clearly right, while they are clearly wrong (I know that's not a 'fair' position to debate from, but the anti's
chose their position first), but we are very much prone to addressing them incorrectly, and get distracted by minutiae. That's a
presentation issue, not so much an image issue. Our "image issue" is simply the result of intentional selection bias on the part of our opposition, and being the result of their actions, not something we can reasonably hope to control.
Complain about fat dorks all day long if you wish, but think about what good that is likely to accomplish. Every side of every issue has their share, already (Chipotle guys, "shoulder thing that goes up"), and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
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FWIW, NAGR has some other stuff going on that I won't get into here. Suffice it to say there is a lot of evidence to suggest that activism is not their chief priority. Check out Google result
number 2. Google result number one is their sponsored home page
. For that matter, check out Google results number three-through-infinity for similar experiences.
TCB
*there's some Debate Club term for these, I'm sure, but I refer to those declaratory phrases that can't be fairly defended against. The classic "so you stopped beating you wife, then?" constructions with no correct answer and "for the childrens" which primarily serve to indicate that
debate has ended and no further arguments will be considered.