One of the biggest failures of the pro-2A camp is that we often forget that our enemies are playing a long game. In the stress of dealing with the (often media manufactured) crisis and threat of the day, we sometimes do things that seem like a good move tactically, but are strategically suicidal.
Number One: If a bad prerson with a gun commits a heinous crime and harms other people, Do not say that they could have been just as deadly if they had used a different gun. Stick to ways other than firearms that bad people use to murder others - arson/fire, driving motor vehicles into crowds, bombs, poison, stabbing, beating with blunt objects, etc.. Do not give them ammunition (pun intended) to go after a different type of gun - because their long term goal is to ban all guns.
Some of you may be too young to have lived through this, and others may be old enough that you've forgotten, but the type of gun that the anti-2A crowd used to demonize was the handgun. One of the things that we said in defence of handguns was "At least the people who are misusing them are choosing handguns, and not something more powerful, like a rifle." And suddenly, the monsters started using rifles. The trap snapped on us - and now rifles are being demonized, even though hammers are used in more murders than rifles are.
Now, when a monster uses a rifle to murder a group of people, and the cries form the anti-2A crowd are to "ban assault rifles", it is common for some of us to say "they could have killed just as many, just as quickly with a handgun". And that is us, falling into the trap again.
Bad people do bad things. Monsters do terrible things. Guns are not the only tools that can be used (or misused) to kill large numbers of people. What guns are used for - millions of times a year - is to protect innocent people from violent criminals. We just don't hear much about that from politicians and the media - so that is something 2A supporters need to be making sure that other people hear about.
