EDITOR:

The marketing process convinces people they want something they didn’t know they wanted. Purchase follows and hopefully, leads to “repeat purchase behavior”, the true end goal of marketing. Get people used to a product and discourage them from straying. This way their thoughts can be controlled.

Social thought follows a similar pattern. Take “safety”… lowering the speed on highways to 55 mph can save lives. Raise the drinking age to 21, we can save lives. Society will be safer if women don’t work and stay home to raise children. Safely is market using the concept of “common sense”, for awhile, it was a way of life and persisted for years.

“Common sense” was never open to debate. It was simply accepted by an entity exercising power (the government/employers) – “common sense” was “declared.” Now, common sense has evolved into 65 mph on Rte 2, and 75 mph from the bridge to Lansing. The voting age has been dropped to 18, and a majority of urban women now work outside the home and delegate child-raising to day-care.

“Common sense” declared (again w/out debate) women should earn less then men in the workplace due to their increased absence and lower productivity. Women should not consider math or science vocations, they “just aren’t good at them.” It’s common sense that women should not run for public office because, well… it’s just “common sense”.

Ladies, how’s that “common sense” thing working for you? Have you bought into that? Do you want those concepts to continue? Let’s consider the following.

Firearm violence has been a component of every society possessing that technology. It was used primarily by armies doing the bidding of those powerful or in authority. Sometimes it’s used in rebellion. On a vanishingly small basis it is used by persons for a nefarious purpose (crime), sometimes an even smaller number employ it to do their misguided bidding (murder). Attempts at regulating the use of firearms passed only when society had “common sense” marketed to them. Otherwise, the regulations become dictated and deprive persons of established rights.

Marketing by individuals and the media have you believing that anything looking like a “military” firearm is more dangerous than its sporting equivalent — “common sense” says there is no difference. The number of projectiles delivered without reloading should also be regulated… “common sense”, but no understanding of the functional difference between “cyclic rate” and “capacity” explained, simply dictated.

“Common sense” is not driven by fact, it is amalgamated by the use of emotion and subjectivity. It is common sense that “firearms are bad.” If all guns are bad, it is common sense then that all use of a firearm is bad… all firearms should be banned. A form of logic which has led to the deaths of vulnerable innocents at the hands of criminals and governments.

If you’re willing to buy what is being sold as “common sense”… good luck. I’ll remained armed and cover you until you regain your senses (common… senses).

Michael A. Glass

Nahma