Guns are a product just like anything else. That’s why the NRA and gun manufacturers lobby so aggressively, and advertise the way that they do: to sell the product. The second amendment is secondary to profit motives for gun lobbyists.
Who else in the world has products that have literally annexed rights in the constitution? Not a bad gig for them, eh?
Alas, I digress, the point is: if it’s impossible to pass laws that make people turn in their guns by force (which it is… Americans are too scared as a culture), then you have to create a product that is more effective at filling that consumer need. I don’t care WHAT people say about hunting and tradition – the core, primal motivation to own the most bad-ass looking and shooting gun is fear, and the power people feel from possessing that weapon.
The NRA and gun makers have done wonderful jobs – almost entirely underground, no less – to make gun owners desire more guns to protect against the fear of retribution – like parents want the hottest toys for their kids on Black Friday… or was it Black Thursday this year?
The solution: make a better product for the same purpose, but one that does not lend itself to mass murder. Or at least get the smartest marketing people on the planet to conjure up a good “it’s waayyy better than owning a gun” marketing plan.
You’ll never eliminate all the guns in the United States when proponents are 100% convinced that guns define freedom (literally) and protect them from all their various fears of which they usually can’t even define beyond vague impressions of the Other. In any form prohibition, people will still desire – so the trick is: make them want something else. In general, people are scared, and people want money – that’s why guns have been such a successful product. Now: we just need to find a better one.
People – also in general – we ain’t that smart or sophisticated (me included). We are easily persuaded. We love shiny objects, we desire power (strength in that other people fear us rather than the other way around), we desire sex, and we desire things that we think will help us have more sex (car commercials, perfume commercials, jewelry commercials, drug commercials …. all commercials.). To add to his volatile human condition, we’re scared and skittish as the average prairie dog or fraidy cat.
More gun laws will never work to achieve the lack of violence that exists everywhere except the US – it’s too late for that. However, creating a new product that makes people feel MORE powerful than they do while holding a gun (while simultaneously making sure it’s not a tool of mass murder) … that fullfils the consumers’ need… and people will wait in line for hours to buy it.
Perhaps it’s time for the anti-gun lobby to hire brilliant marketers and product managers, and stop fighting a losing battle to remove guns. Fighting to make people want something else that makes them feel even MORE powerful or MORE important than owning a gun does… THAT will help solve the problem. People are too selfish to try and do it with laws and reasoning.
There are simple starting points for fulfilling certain needs, but clearly they aren’t pushed onto the consumer population in the right way yet. Hunters, for example; those who claim the right to own 10 guns because they love hunting. Hunting does NOT require guns. Cross bows? Compound Bows? Spears and knives? Heck, a pellet gun can take down a bird, right, and there’s a darn fine chance a human can survive getting shot multiple times by a pellet gun. The problem: none of those are cool, and none of those have ben correctly marketed to make “MEN!!!” feel more manly. Men who wear camo need to feel like they can take down anyone and anything in the room. Since they all can’t be Rambo with a knife, guns are their answer.
And what about phasers? Where’s the brilliant group of MIT students working on a Star Trek-like weapon that’s always set on stun? People would buy that over a gun any day! Why in the world have we stopped on something as barbaric as a gun as the primary means of “defense”? Aren’t we more resourceful that that? Why in the world is the best technology for protecting oneself a technology that’s thousands of years old? It doesn’t make any sense.
To professional and wicked-smart product managers: find something better than a gun to offer gun lovers. Like any product, if a better one comes along, people will buy it. Develop something to better fulfill the need of the hunting lobby: makes hunting MORE manly, MORE impressive, and down right more cool. Design a weapon that makes women swoon, but can’t kill by the dozens. Masters of business do the same thing every Christmas: creating fads out of meaningless plastic toys, car leases, diamonds cologne and Chia Pets – you can do it with socially-acceptable weapons as well.
And if you make a good product… a better product… more powerful… AND safer for society than a type of weapon that was first fired over 1000 years ago… and you sell that product to millions of people who want to feel powerful…. you’ll be rich – which I hear is a pretty nice thing.
The other dominant gun lobby argument is “Protection” (a lobby that shares beds with home schooling and the evangelical wing, which, well… Washington, DC isn’t the only place packed with hypocrisy. Again, for this, I think any Manly Man would feel much, MUCH more manly if he were to pull out a freakin’ cross bow and take out a home invader who is threatening their life. Why not cross bows with special arrows that double as tasers? “Electo-Bow: Protect Your Family, Get Your Man Card Back” (I’m sure the ad guys can think of a better slogan to get that one started.)
When Tennessee reacts to the most recent mass shooting by introducing a bill to have MORE guns… laws will never solve this problem. We’re dealing with primal, irrational fear and the overwhelming desire to have something powerful to protect oneself from that fear. The desire for guns is much deeper and darker than something laws can prevent. The desire to own and the fear that motivates ownership has been instilled in Americans for generations. We live in a country were parents in Colorado encouraged their elementary school-aged some to take a gun to school “to protect himself” after the Newtown shooting.
You can fix that sort of irrational fear with laws. You either make guns 100% illegal and literally collect all 300 million of them (might have some constitutional issues on that one), or you realize that people, Americans in particular, are just scared consumers – all you need is a better product and people will give up their guns because they aren’t cool anymore, because they aren’t as effective as “the next big thing” …
… and this time… we can design “the next big thing” so that it can’t be used by one person to kill 6 teachers and 20 children on a Friday morning in December.
Published: by | Updated: 03-16-2013 10:30:36
