First of all, perhaps we should probably stop harping on “gun control.” The hard-core right-wing NRA devotees will never stop fighting all kinds of control. That’s a dirty word to millions. It’s in their bible: “Don’t you dare try to control me you weak-kneed, government-pandering, lily-livered mother-lovers.”
It just doesn’t matter to them how many children are accidentally shot by their parents or each other https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/09/deaths-of-children-are-the-most-devastating-effect-of-our-gun-culture-the-nra-has-no-idea-what-to-say-about-them/ , or wives by their husbands https://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/userfiles/file/Children_and_Families/Guns.pdf , or husbands by their wives, or men and women by their dogs https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/27/a-dog-shoots-a-person-almost-every-year-in-america/. Accidents happen. What is important to these don’t-try-to-control-me-my-gun-is-my-life devotees is their freedom—their freedom to bully, to threaten, and to defend themselves against all the threats, known and unknown, that surround them in this too-much-government country.
So, how about an alternative term for “gun control.” “Gun reform” probably appeals to a lot of progressives, but “reform” probably sounds leftish to the hard-lined be-ready-to-kill-anybody-if-they-look-at-you-wrong advocates, not to mention its association with schools for delinquents.
Maybe we should talk about “gun sanity.” Maybe a gun sanity movement can remind people that nobody is perfect, that even gun-lovers who advocate gun-safety can end up accidentally shooting themselves.[ http://www.citylab.com/crime/2014/09/americans-who-carry-concealed-weapons-keep-accidentally-shooting-themselves-in-public-bathrooms/380327/ ]
Better yet, how about “gun sense”? or “gunsense”? Sounds like a no-nonsense expression, linked to commonsense, which should appeal to everyone. And there is a grassroots gun sense movement http://readwrite.typepad.com/gunsense/ emerging within several states, including Texas http://www.txgunsense.org/ , Georgia http://gunsensega.org/, and Vermont http://www.gunsensevt.org/ , a movement that may succeed in promoting sanity at local levels while the U.S. government waffles under the control of the NRA. Plus there are a whole lot of moms around the country working to fight gun violence http://momsdemandaction.org/moms-demand-action-campaigns/ and who can argue against the power of moms?
For those who remain convinced that you can’t legislate morality or even do anything to reduce violence, check out this study https://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/1/140.abstract
And this one
http://gun-sanity.com/largest-study-to-date-finds-powerful-evidence-that-gun-control-actually-works/
and think about what you can do to promote sanity and good sense.