Is Gun-Ownership the New Smoking?

With gun control defeated in the Senate, Democrats are stepping up efforts to turn guns into the 21st century cigarette and shame gun owners–and their Senators–into submission.

Warnings of this approaching storm have been apparent for decades. As in 1995, when then-U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Eric Holder said:

What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we’ve changed our attitudes about cigarettes.

Now the shame-game is in full force. Once gun control was defeated in the Senate, Obama emerged to call it a “shameful day,” NBC reported “cries of shame” from gun control supporters, and Gabby Giffords penned a “shame on you” op-ed to Senators who’d opposed more gun control. 

In ’95, Holder said, “You know, when I was growing up, people smoked all the time. Both my parents did. But over time, we changed the way people thought about smoking, so now we have people who cower outside of buildings and kind of smoke in private and don’t want to admit it.” 

Those using the tactic of shame right now want gun owners and gun rights Senators to cower in a similar way.