From another blogger...

 who has some legal experience...

Fair warning, this is about gun violence!

But after President Biden gave a speech Thurs. evening, I'm gladly posting this. I got permission from the author, when I said I couldn't find the words to say this, because I'm too angry. I think a lot of us are!

Don’t Play Their Game

Posted on June 2, 2022 by Hecate Demeter | 

Picture found here.

Lawyers know that if you can control how the issue for trial is presented, you can likely control the outcome. Thus, the first part of a good legal brief often spends some time phrasing the issue in a manner most helpful to that side. If we can make the trial about how much compensation this poor widow deserves for the loss of her beloved husband, instead of whether the estate of a negligent worker is entitled to burden a productive employer with excessive costs, well, guess which side is likely to win. Similarly, if one side can force the other to use up its allotted words chasing several “red herrings,” well, advantage them.

Gun fetishists know this, too. And they’re very good at immediately shifting the subject for debate. And too many of us are far too willing to go along with them. If you’re like me, you get a nice little endorphin hit from tearing apart a faulty argument. But we’ve got to quit seeking those endorphin hits because the gun nuts are using them to manipulate us.

How?

Let’s look at some of their responses to the massacre in a Texas schoolhouse. “It’s mental health, not guns!” “We need to ‘harden’ schools!” (Note the use of militaristic, not to mention sexually-charged lingo. “Harden” means “lock the doors,” but that doesn’t give the gun-nut base the same little sexual charge.) “We need to arm teachers!” And so on. Each new massacre of schoolchildren gets a slightly different reaction but the common denominator is that they (1) take the emphasis away from gun safety protections and (2) send us off down the rabbit trail because it will make us feel so good to show how they’re wrong.

And, of course, we all know that, for example, locking up the schoolhouse will make it more difficult to exit during a fire, isn’t a good way for our children to live, can be undone by shooting off the locks, etc., etc., etc. But I’m going to suggest that you not respond by providing all the logical and factual arguments against the distraction du jour. Because that’s what they want you to do. When you do, when your play their game, the argument can spiral through dozens of even more insane iterations until, once again, we just give up until the next massacre.

If you’ve ever had training in dealing with disturbed people (or very young children), you may have learned the technique of simply repeating your demand, over and over and of not responding to all of the “distraction” arguments.

“I need you to put down the knife.”

“No! You always side with him! He’s your pet.”

At this point, what you do NOT do is start to try and show that you are objective and don’t have a pet. Because that’s not your goal. Your goal is to get the person to put down the knife. And even if you were able to show that you’re not being unfair, it would only lead to the next distraction.

“Everyone here hates me!”

You don’t respond to the distraction. You calmly repeat your demand. “I need you to put down the knife.”

Similarly, we don’t need to respond to the pro-massacre side’s distractions with anything more than, “That’s just a distraction. We need to [outlaw AR15s, pass red flag laws, require gun owners to carry insurance — whatever our current, specific demand is.]

“But you’re politicizing a tragedy.”

“We need to outlaw AR15s.

“Let’s arm teachers so they can protect the children!”

“We need to outlaw AR15s.

“You hate Americans and our freedoms.”

“We need to outlaw AR15s.”

Don’t play their game. They’ve gotten too many of us to play it for too long and children are dead as a result.

Reposted with permission from:

https://hecatedemeter.wordpress.com/2022/06/02/dont-play-their-game/