This week, a Missouri town banned openly carrying firearms. The measure came after local businesses became concerned that the presence of guns might make tourists think twice about visiting: "We've had a tough time over the years promoting Lake Ozark as a family area," a local politician told the Associated Press. "We want you to bring your kids down here and let them loose."
Lake Ozark's business community isn't the first group in America to reasonably conclude that guns in the hands of citizens, rather than law officers, inspire fear and not trust. Recent demonstrations by Texas Open Carry have been so unpleasantly in-your-face that Chipotle, Chili's and Sonic have now all banned guns from their premises – and even the National Rifle Association called them "downright weird" and "scary". It's almost funny how the confrontations that have made gun advocates reconsider their strategy – if not their ideology – are wholly symbolic and, while menacing, functionally harmless. Controversy over the mere sight of guns – and not, say, the slaughter of children – has finally got the gun nuts concerned about bad PR ... and maybe about getting less nutty.
Of course, the NRA later distanced itself and attributed that statement to a single staffer and his "personal opinion" (a lone gunman, you might say). And the gun ban in Missouri has predictably enraged some.
Fortunately for Lake Ozark's pro-gun reactionaries, a ballot initiative before Missourians this fall could change the state's constitution to spell out gun rights in a way that doesn't just trump the small town's ordinance but restrictions implied by even the most generous interpretation of the Second Amendment. Should the amendment be ratified, it has the potential to turn Missouri from the Show-Me State to the "OK, OK, I see your gun already" state.
Still, perhaps open carry activism has finally found the edge of the gun nut universe.
Second Amendment absolutist Glenn Beck has cautioned pistol-packing shop-goers that bringing guns into public spaces might (somehow!) turn public sentiment against them. And the US Concealed Carry Association (USCCA) has come out against the practice as well, with its founder writing in a more-sorrow-than-anger tone:
I wish it was commonplace for people like you and me to stop by our local coffee shops carrying AR-15s over our shoulders ... [but] actions like those in Texas tend to push the neutral people to the anti-side.
Concealed carriers even admit there are tactical reasons to keep your guns under wraps – and not just from a PR perspective: "By practicing open carry," writes Kevin Michalowski of Concealed Carry magazine on the USCCA website, "you give up the tactical advantage a concealed weapon gives you."
Hey, at least he's thinking practically about gun use. And most gun owners are even more practical: they use their weapons to hunt animals and not puff up their own sense of self-importance.
No, could the gun lobby's newfound self-awareness – Whoa, we look kinda like freaks – prompt the kind of hunters and sportsmen's association that the NRA used to be?
Three times as many people in the United States go hunting as belong to the NRA (13.7m versus 4m). Pew polling numbers suggested that those hunters could be the base for a gun rights' group more firmly established in reality: 85% of gun owners after Newtown supported proposals to require background checks on private gun sales; 60% supported the creation of a federal government database to track all gun sales – both proposals that have sent the NRA into apoplectic direct-mail solicitations.
But the recent past is littered with the corpses of moderate gun owners' associations. Back in 2000, Americans for Gun Safety was supposed to snap up the sanes, only to merge with the only slightly more effectual liberal think tank Third Way. In 2005, it was the American Hunters and Shooters Association to the rescue; it folded in 2010. A new organization, Evolve, has positioned itself as a home for gun owners who place an emphasis on responsibilities as well as rights. Founded by marketers, the group launched with a clever ad:
There are several other regional and specialist organizations scattered around the country that address some specific beef with the NRA's way of doing things. Most of them, including the largest, Gun Owners Association of America, are to the right of the NRA.
Of course, striking out to the left of the NRA party line – even by a hair – is risky, no matter how sincere one's enthusiasm for guns might be. Firearms expert Dick Metcalf, a competitive marksman and lifetime NRA member, was fired from his post as a Guns & Ammo columnist after writing that "all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be". And Republican Senator Joe "Shot the Cap and Trade Bill with a Rifle" Manchin of West Virginia broke with the NRA after Newtown and held his ground through the failure of his background checks bill, but the pressure seems to have gotten to him. Asked if he would take another run at that kind of reform, Manchin said, "Not unless there's a movement" – which I guess means more than the 85% of Americans who supported background checks last December, down just six points (and one point outside the margin of error) from a post-Newtown high of 92%. I guess "movement" also means a group of more than the majority of Americans who don't like our gun laws.
But if you really want to see the plight of the moderate gun owner, look no further than this plaintive query from one "Jsquared, senior veteran" on the forums at MilitaryFirearms.com:
I am looking for information on activist groups, NPOs, and lobbyist organizations that cater to gun enthusiasts and 2nd amendment rights who are more politically-moderate than the NRA and GOA. ... Both organizations have left a bad taste in my mouth regarding their agendas, especially in the information they put forth while trying to garner support and donations from members.
Mainly I am wanting to get involved in the decisions made regarding my civil liberties without having to support a group I don't align with politically. Honestly, this is proving a lot harder than I thought it would be. Does anyone know of any major national-level RKBA organizations that are not overly Conservative in nature?
The first alternative group suggested in the forum – with apparently earnest helpfulness – was Pink Pistols, a gun ownership group for gays and lesbians.
Alas, the journey back to a more moderate gun owners' organization with real power has one enormous, obvious hurdle: the tens of millions of dollars that the gun industry gives the NRA and its carnival barker doomsayers. That money gives the NRA its lobbying muscle, but also the resources to buttress the parallel universe in which gun rights extremists exist: the one where Obama is coming to get your guns ... and you're going to need them.
It's that parallel universe – a dystopian hellscape, really – that poses a more subtle challenge. Because it's one thing to undo an organization, but it's another to unmake an ideology or, more specifically, to coax paranoiacs out of their fear.