Gun Debate Metaphors

Multimedia to Begin Class

"Loaded Words: How Language Shapes The Gun Debate"

Class Work

Analyze the following sets of metaphors. First determine the metaphor repeated by each selection. Next, analyze how each author uses the particular metaphor. Which side do you think benefits most from the connotations of that particular metaphor?

CASE 1

Barack Obama, “President Addresses Vigil for Sandy Hook Shooting Victims”
Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America -- victims whose -- much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens -- from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators -- in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of NRA, “Standing Guard: Making Our Nation’s School Children Safer”

With the horrific series of mass murders culminating in the cold-blooded killing of children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December, this latest iteration of “gun control” is entirely directed at making the sane pay the price for unthinkable acts committed by the insane. It is the root of the civil disarmament movement in America today.

But for the evil acts of these and other deranged killers, all of the sane people in America are supposed to pay the price with the loss of our freedom. On its face, that very concept is, well, insane. And the gun-banners know it. They cynically exploit these tragedies and their elite media enablers amplify what they, too, know to be a big lie: that, somehow, homicidal maniacs are going to be stopped through legislation, as if you can legislate morality, or sanity, for that matter.

In late January, NBC headlined its coverage of a Biden meeting and quoted Obama’s official gun-ban czar as saying, “Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting.” So what on earth is all this push for massive new gun controls on innocent citizens about?

CASE 2

Tom Brokaw on Morning Joe

Gun control "reminds me a lot of what happened in the South in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. Good people stayed in their houses and didn't speak up when there was carnage in the streets and the total violation of a fundamental rights of African-Americans as they marched in Selma, and they let Bull Connor and the redneck elements of the South and the Klan take over their culture in effect and become a face of it. And now a lot of people who I know who grew up during that time have deep regrets about not speaking out . . . Now it's time for the people who do have strong feelings, who are feeling that they can't do anything about it, to kind of band together and have something to say here."

David A. Keene, “We Will Prevail” NRA President’s Column
The Sandy Hook murders gave the president and his allies in Congress, the left-wing media and activists the political opportunity they had been waiting for. . . .

What the president and his allies didn’t count on was your deep belief in freedom and the Constitution, the tenacity of those of us dedicated to preserving the rights handed down by the framers of our Constitution and the good common sense of most Americans . . .

We are awake now. There are millions of us and we will not be cowed. The struggle to preserve our rights will get ugly, and there will be additional attempts to demonize us, divide us and limit the rights of gun owners who have never done anything wrong.

Millions of Second Amendment supporters are rallying, speaking up and letting their elected representatives know just how they feel. [There are] tens of thousands of new members joining the NRA and the continuing flood of calls to Congress are making it very clear that we will Stand and Fight when our rights are threatened. If we don’t let up, we will prevail.

Bob Scheiffer on CBS News
Let's remember: there was considerable opposition when Lyndon Johnson went to the Congress and...presented some of the most comprehensive civil rights legislation in the history of this country. Most people told him he couldn't get it done, but he figured out a way to do it. And that's what Barack Obama is going to have to do . . . What happened in Newtown was probably the worst day in this country's history since 9/11 . . . Surely, passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do; and before that, surely, defeating the Nazis, was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby.

CASE 3

NPR Barbershop Segment, “Is Public Numb to Mass Shootings?”

IZRAEL: Thank you for the info, Michel. All right, fellas, so some people say these stories won't get the same attention that earlier shootings did, you know, and that maybe Americans are just getting a little too used to this kind of violence. Paul Butler, you live in the D.C. area. Do you see - do you think there's any truth to that at all?

BUTLER: Of course. I work about a mile from the Navy Yard. And it was kind of weird to go outside on Monday and wait in line at the food truck as if, blocks away, 12 people had not been gunned down. So I don't know if we're desensitized or if we're just suffering from combat fatigue because I've got some bad news - there's going to be another mass shooting this year and then another one after that. We know that from statistics. But is that supposed to change the way that I live my life? Am I supposed to be scared every time I go to work? I'm not going to live that way. So I wouldn't call it desensitized - I would call it a way of coping with a violent, scary world.

Emily Miller, “Inside Obama’s War on Guns: Rick Perry Decries Effort to Disarm Americans.” The Washington Times
The biggest fight in history over Americans’ right to keep and bear arms is being waged today. There were attacks on the Second Amendment in the early 1990s with the passage of the Brady bill and the “assault weapons” ban. The gun-control battle of 2013, however, could easily see the greatest losses of Second Amendment rights ever.

There are two key factors that make this assault more serious: billionaire New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is willing to spend anything to win, and a longtime anti-gun fanatic Barack Obama, who is applying the full power of the presidential bully pulpit for the gun-grabbers’ cause.

Jules Witcover, “Obama’s Limited War on Guns” Chicago Tribune
The rich and influential Bloomberg so far is waging a more pointed and expansive war on the NRA and the nation's gun culture than is the man in the White House. Obama's pitch to Congress that the recent gun victims on the streets and in the schools of America "deserve a vote" pales in comparison to Democratic [predecessors].

President Obama should do no less now in the fight against gun violence, regardless of Harry Reid's grim reading of the prospects of restoring the assault weapons ban in the Senate. Better to fight and go down swinging than to concede defeat once again to the NRA and its grip on weak-kneed or wrong-headed lawmakers on Capitol Hill.