This is a bit disjointed, although its something I've been thinking about for a long time and is one of the things I want to see happen, so bear with me, and help me flesh this out and see what we can do about making it happen.
I believe we need to change what we're doing in promoting guns. I'm all for working within the law, and we will *always* need to do that..guns are, by definition of the 2nd Amendment, political.
But we need to move beyond that.
What has always struck me was Harley Davidson's marketing strategy, that took biking from the domain of scary white guys, and brought it into the mainstream, and made it "cool."
If we are not able to do this with firearms ownership and shooting sports, we're ultimately going to lose. I attend events related to guns all the time..and while we're up to about 20% of those being women, and maybe an equal number of those people there being under 30, the vast, vast majority of the folks you see at shooting or gun-politics events are middle aged white guys. Minorities are statistically almost non-existent.
I'm also absolutely convinced, based in personal experience, that the way to bring new shooters into this is *not* to scare them. Women don't want to hear about attackers in parking lots, black people don't want to hear about the racism of gun laws. They want to have fun and shooting *is* fun, right? The self-defense and political part comes later, usually as a natural consequence, but initially, we want to get people to enjoy themselves and not feel threatened when they see a gun. Remember the reaction of people in the 70's when they saw a Harley? That whole perception has changed. We need to change the way people see when they see an AR15.
We even have some advantages over Harley: Guns are not typically large machines, and so almost anyone can take part. They can be expensive, but don't need to be.
The disadvantages are obvious: We're not in this for a profit and so its harder to keep our focus.
I believe we need to change what we're doing in promoting guns. I'm all for working within the law, and we will *always* need to do that..guns are, by definition of the 2nd Amendment, political.
But we need to move beyond that.
What has always struck me was Harley Davidson's marketing strategy, that took biking from the domain of scary white guys, and brought it into the mainstream, and made it "cool."
If we are not able to do this with firearms ownership and shooting sports, we're ultimately going to lose. I attend events related to guns all the time..and while we're up to about 20% of those being women, and maybe an equal number of those people there being under 30, the vast, vast majority of the folks you see at shooting or gun-politics events are middle aged white guys. Minorities are statistically almost non-existent.
I'm also absolutely convinced, based in personal experience, that the way to bring new shooters into this is *not* to scare them. Women don't want to hear about attackers in parking lots, black people don't want to hear about the racism of gun laws. They want to have fun and shooting *is* fun, right? The self-defense and political part comes later, usually as a natural consequence, but initially, we want to get people to enjoy themselves and not feel threatened when they see a gun. Remember the reaction of people in the 70's when they saw a Harley? That whole perception has changed. We need to change the way people see when they see an AR15.
We even have some advantages over Harley: Guns are not typically large machines, and so almost anyone can take part. They can be expensive, but don't need to be.
The disadvantages are obvious: We're not in this for a profit and so its harder to keep our focus.
