NRA-ILA 2/6/2023
Ambitious gun control advocates have long sought a “whole of government approach” to stamping out the right to keep and bear arms. This involves weaponizing not just the ATF and FBI against gun owners and the industries that support them but a roster of less obvious agencies as well. Recently, firearm prohibitionists have refocused their attention on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as the latest conscript in their war on firearm-related freedoms. How they plan to do so provides an enlightening case study on the politicization of government for partisan and ideological ends.
As is typical of the agencies whose function it is to enforce the statutes passed by the political branches of government, the FTC describes its mission in vague and benign terms. Its website claims its dedicated to “[p]rotecting the public from deceptive or unfair business practices and from unfair methods of competition through law enforcement, advocacy, research, and education.” This includes, among other things, policing what the agency considers “unfair or deceptive advertising in any medium.”
Stated simply, this means “advertising must tell the truth and not mislead consumers.” And most would likely agree that a company which intentionally misleads the public about its products should be answerable for any harms that result. But to a gun control activist, the FTC’s authority to control what sort of advertising reaches the public suggests it could be a powerful tool in censorship and propaganda.
Controlling the public narrative on firearms is one of the gun control movement’s top priorities. Eric Holder, a firearm prohibitionist who was appointed U.S. attorney general by Barack Obama, spoke on the matter with unabashed boldness in a speech he gave while acting as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia in 1995. He had been appointed to that position by another anti-gun stalwart, Bill Clinton.
Part of the “gun initiative,” Holder stated, would be “an information campaign.” “[W]hat we need to do,” he stated, “is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that’s not acceptable, that’s not hip … .” This would involve, he said, a cooperative effort between the government, advertising agencies, newspapers, television stations, entertainers, athletes, community leaders, and schools. Every school day, Holder insisted, should include “some kind of … anti-gun message: every day, every school, at every level.” He continued: “We need to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”
Holder illustrated the type of “brainwashing” he envisioned by invoking the public shift in attitude toward cigarette smoking. “Over time, we changed the way people thought about smoking,” he said. “And so now we have people who cower outside of buildings and kind of smoke in private and don’t want to admit it.”
Indeed, gun control proponents have long sought to use the tactics activists successfully employed to marginalize and suppress smoking in the U.S. to marginalize and suppress gun ownership. This involves rebranding firearm ownership and use as a “public health crisis,” the “cure” to which involves coordinated action between the government, private activists, and litigators.
More:
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20230206/prohibitionists-seek-to-weaponize-yet-another-federal-agency-to-target-guns
