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"Gun Safety Laws", "Common Sense Gun Laws", "Sensible Legislation", "Assault Weapon", "Gun Crime", etc.

How many other misnomers do the gun prohibitionists use to obfuscate their true goal? If we are to keep our Rights protected and remove onerous legislation our battle must be fought with semantics as well as the activism like that which passed Washington's SB 5956 and defeated Oregon's SB 1551. No more reacting to the prohibitionists newspeak in the manner that they desire. They must react to ours. Mr. Workman has a thread and article on just this topic and there are many more.

http://www.northwestfirearms.com/threads/new-gun-control-effort-with-a-playbook.161929/
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From our Canadian cousins
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http://www.progressivemajorityaction.org/gun_messaging
 
It's called "semantic infiltration" and both sides do it. If you can control the language used to discuss an issue, you can control the debate.

The anti-gun side will use terms like "Assault Weapons" and "High Capacity Magazines" while the gun rights side uses terms like "Modern Sporting Rifles" and "Standard Capacity Magazines."

Just unpack the terms. Each one has associations. "Assault" and "weapons" both carry negative baggage for a civilian audience while "modern" and "sporting" appear positive.

If you ask someone who is not a gun owner if he or she is against "high capacity magazines" the person will probably say, "Yes." If you ask the same person if he or she is against "standard capacity magazines" the person will probably say, "No." The choice of language obscures the fact that the person has no idea what constitutes "high capacity" or "standard capacity." It taps into existing biases and leads individuals to support the position of the person who controls the language being used to discuss the issue.
 
I was aware of how it works, but not that it has a name. In any event we must make them react to our language rather than reacting to theirs. That alone could give us an edge, but I suspect it is much easier said than done. Persistence and consistency would be key.
 

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