When deep-voiced Massad Ayoob, president of the Second Amendment Foundation and recognized author and self-defense expert, tells an audience of gun rights activists they have logic on their side, it’s time to listen and learn.
Ayoob, speaking at the recent Gun Rights Policy Conference in San Diego, opened his remarks by explaining the “10-80-10” rule. In any polarizing debate, there are 10 percent of the people at one extreme, another 10 percent at the other extreme, but 80 percent in the middle who are “still open to argument and open to logic.”
These are the people to whom the Second Amendment community can successfully reach out and perhaps educate them with the facts about the right to keep and bear arms, armed self-defense, and the parallel logic of having a fire extinguisher in the home and in the car in case of a life-threatening emergency, and having a gun to defend yourself and your loved ones.
“Historically,” Ayoob observed, “logic has been on our side, and we’ve won a great many victories with that.”
A retired reserve police captain and nationally-known firearms instructor and expert witness, Ayoob quickly added, “The other side falls back on emotion simply because they don’t have the logic, they don’t have the legal principles on their side.”
The author of “In the Gravest Extreme,” Ayoob has spent more than 40 years teaching the principles of armed self-defense across the country. He reminded the audience that when TIME magazine began writing about gun-related violent crime, there would be invariably photographs of the victims, especially in mass shootings.
He contends that the firearms community must “bring forth the faces of the survivors.” Show who these survivors are and tell their stories.
“Their faces need to be seen and their voices need to be heard,” he said. “If the other side wants to play that emotional game, we can enter that game and we have a pretty strong hand of cards to play.”
Ayoob is no wallflower when it comes to making a point. He alluded to gun-free zones where, as in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado where a killer murdered a dozen people and injured dozens more before being confronted by an armed police officer.
“Forgive me,” he remarked, “but every time I see ‘gun-free zone,’ I see ‘hunting preserve for psychopathic murderers.”
Noting research which has shown in more than 90 percent of defensive gun uses, a shot is never fired.
“The other side counts then deaths,” he stated, “and they dance in blood. They ignore the survivors.”
He mentioned research done by Prof. William English which indicated there are at least 1.67 million defensive gun uses ever year.
The gun issue, he said, is tied with the abortion issue as the most polarizing subject in the country. However, unlike the abortion debate, “we who choose the right to be armed to protect life, unlike the other debate, we get to be pro-life and pro-choice.”
When the middle 80 percent of people who haven’t made up their minds suddenly make the connection between being armed for personal protection to having fire extinguishers, is when this principle kicks in: “Sometimes you have to touch their hearts to make them open their minds.”
