The gun control lobby is borrowing the playbook from one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in history: anthropogenic global warming.
From engaging celebrity activists to bullying private industry to portraying opponents as murderers, the well-funded and highly-orchestrated gun control lobby is copying the same approach that has been successfully deployed by the international climate change movement to sell the dubious claim that humans are causing global warming.
Indoctrination and Exploitation of Children
Textbooks are filled with bogus scientific “studies” about global warming and dire warnings about its consequences. Schools commemorate environmental holidays like Earth Day, so they can push climate dogma. Teachers are encouraged to tag climate change in every subject area from science to health to history. And whoever disagrees, or even mildly objects, is portrayed as a child-hating monster. After all, who wants to deny a safe future for our kids? Climate crusaders are even using children as litigants in lawsuits to sue the federal government for violating “the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as fail[ing] to protect essential public trust resources.”
Gun control activists are now seizing on that strategy. They are shamefully capitalizing off the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last month, turning teen victims into celebrities and peddling these kids to news outlets as if they were candidates for public office. Just like the climate change cabal, powerful gun control interests will hide behind the façade of children to promote their policy agenda.
Despite early assurances that the Parkland students’ uprising was purely organic, we now know that it was not: Deep-pocketed powerbrokers including former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the country’s largest teachers’ union began funding and coordinating the campaign mere hours after the massacre ended.
Last week, millions of schoolchildren — with the approval of their parents and educators — defied normal rules and walked out of class in an act of fealty to the gun control lobby. The walk-out was strongly supported by the National Education Association:
Since the horrific shootings in Parkland, Florida, students across the country have launched an inspired movement to demand long overdue action on school safety and gun control. NEA, its affiliates, and members throughout Florida and the nation, support these calls to prevent further school massacres. Educators may also wish to discuss school safety and gun violence issues with their students.
The pile-on continues this weekend. Children will gather this Saturday in Washington, D.C. and around the country to participate in the March For Our Lives, the latest protest purportedly organized by kids to demand that adults enact strict gun control laws: “March For Our Lives is created by, inspired by, and led by students across the country who will no longer risk their lives waiting for someone else to take action to stop the epidemic of mass school shootings that has become all too familiar. School safety is not a political issue. The mission and focus of March For Our Lives is to demand that a comprehensive and effective bill be immediately brought before Congress to address these gun issues.”
Marc Morano, the head of Climate Depot, a website devoted to exposing the climate cabal’s phony science and shady tactics, writes about how children are weaponized by adult activists in his latest book, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change:
If you can’t convince adults, who is a more willing and pliable audience than children? Kids from kindergarten through college are prime targets for the climate change fear promoters’ propaganda. Politicians, academia, Hollywood, and global warming activists have focused on kids, feeding them a steady diet of fear and doom, using vulnerable children to promote climate fears. The media amplifies these tactics.
Sound familiar?
Since Feb. 14, the gun control lobby has closely emulated the winning game plan of the climate change movement. Here are a few examples:
Recruiting A-list Celebrities
Several Hollywood titans are supporting the March For Our Lives. George Clooney and his wife, Amal, contributed $500,000, an amount that was quickly matched by Oprah Winfrey. Other benefactors include Steven Spielberg and wife Kate Capshaw, and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg. Celebrities such as Reese Witherspoon, Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and Jessica Alba are busy one-upping each other on social media with posts and tweets demanding gun control legislation.
And, just like the hypocritical climate celebrities who fly private jets and cruise on pricy yachts powered by fossil fuels, these folks all benefit from armed bodyguards and live in gated mansions. As Morano writes about climate celebrities: “Stars regularly harangue Americans to sacrifice in order to save the planet. They call for more austerity for the rest of us, but are they willing to walk the walk in their own lives? I think you already know the answer.”
Would Oprah, Clooney, et. al. be willing to forsake their private security detail? No chance.
Threatening corporations: The climate mob has long targeted fossil fuel companies for their alleged role in causing global warming, filing nuisance lawsuits to inflict debilitating financial damage. (A hearing in the nation’s first climate science lawsuit was held on March 21 in San Francisco. The defendants are being blamed for rising sea levels.)
Since gun makers don’t have the same deep pockets as Exxon-Mobil, the gun control lobby took a different route. Almost immediately after the shooting, activists began coercing companies to abandon their support for the National Rifle Association; several did. Dick’s Sporting Goods, United Airlines, and Enterprise Holdings were among the businesses bullied into submission. The move backfired on one company: The Georgia legislature revoked $40 million in scheduled tax credits for Delta Airlines after it publicly ended a discount program for NRA members.
Reviling the Opposition
If you oppose either gun control or climate change, you are a killer. Republican lawmakers, NRA members, and regular citizens who oppose stringent gun control laws are accused of having “blood on their hands.”
Alleged comedian Chelsea Handler summed it up with this tweet:
We have to elect candidates that are not funded by the NRA in November. We have an opportunity to elect candidates who won’t allow kids to go to school and get shot. It is disgusting how many times this has happened and Republicans do nothing. You all have blood on your hands.
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) February 14, 2018
Climate change deniers and gun control detractors are also denounced as industry shills, bought off by special interest groups. Activists routinely post the amount of money politicians have accepted from the NRA or fossil fuel companies and attempt to intimidate lawmakers into rejecting those blood-soaked contributions. Parkland student-activist David Hogg warned: “We’re going to hold these sick politicians who prefer the murder of children to [losing] their reelection. We’re going to hold them accountable. And that’s what we’re doing.”
Their animus for anyone who disagrees with them goes so deep that they hope the Grim Reaper will lend a hand. Bill Nye the Science Guy last year said the only way for the climate change movement to advance is for older climate deniers to die. Twitter tough guys have heinously targeted the children of NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch:
https://twitter.com/cptjaneway2017/status/974696792737681408?refsrc=email&s=11
Their venality has no boundaries.
The end-game of both the climate change and gun control movements are the same: subverting individual rights and choices while empowering the state. It has nothing to do with “the children,” no matter how many phony marches and scripted interviews they organize.
