Prof. Renee Lettow Lerner, George Washington University Law School – Funny, she’s very funny. She’s going into the self defense laws like the “Make My Day,” “Castle Doctrine,” and “Defense of Premises” bills. Stories about Colorado’s passage of the law, NRA getting calls every week about when self defense is okay. Examining the NYT coverage of situations in Florida and others. (On only a slightly related note, it’s amazing how the crowd was wrong on some issues of the law and convinced a speaker they were right. A lot of myths are still out there on gun laws. I’m sure I’m guilty of promoting some as well.) Can we stop promoting the Hammer, please? Sorry, not a fan. She says that it’s obvious that people want clear rules about what’s legal and not when it comes to these issues and these laws provide that clear rule.

Prof. Brian Patrick, University of Toledo – He’s not a law prof, but rather a communications professor. I heard him at the NRA meeting when I was representing Cam’s fan club at the panel on media. He’s talking about the disconnect between the sources of power and law and the average citizen. Of course this means we have to really consider the role of who the interpretive experts between the sources of power and the citizen. Using the example of the Catholic Church when the clergy were supposed to be those experts. He points out the structure of NRA that means the more you attack, the more members they recruited. Of course his focus is on the criticism from the media, but of course those are generated by attacks in politics. Old gun culture is dying off. He means the older guys who don’t care about concealed carry who consider it’s somehow unmanly to defend yourself with a gun in a fight. These would be the guys who really just want their shotguns and to be left alone. They don’t feel threatened politically or physically. They don’t care. Back to communications – propaganda of the vertical type versus of the horizontal type. Vertical propaganda often just gives people an attitude. However, horizontal propaganda changes behavior. I disagree with him that we’re not doing vertical propaganda. I think most of our issue does horizontal propaganda, but I think there’s still at least one level of vertical from the leading organizations simply because it’s needed to give a bit of structure to the movement in order to change the distant power structure. He is hitting a lot of topics here today. I swear, the overarching arguments he’s making could each make a lecture. Being a communications geek, I would love it. The notion that reporters are part of that class of interpretive experts was created by reporters. He thinks this glorification of journalists should go away. Also connects this with McCain-Feingold and how it shuts out voluntary associations out. In follow up, Prof. Lerner is also highlighting how NRA is an interpretive expert. Bowling Alone was brought up with a question on joining associations and what role the internet may play in replacing those. Blogging has come up and he’s optimistic about it. I wonder if a few years from now when there’s more data to consider if he’ll study gun blogs and even how the community around that is somewhat of a negative reaction to the somewhat top down structure of NRA.

UPDATE: Some people are a little confused because this is random commentary. I was liveblogging an event and this was one topic. For full coverage, visit the Sweet, Sexy Gun Talk archive.

UPDATE II: Dave Hardy has a much better summary. I guess that’s the good part of not live blogging, you’re focused on writing about the topic instead of just typing whatever random thought pops into your head at the moment. Not to mention, this particular panel inspired me to surf Amazon for new communications books while I was listening because I was reminded of why I loved it so much in school.

No obviously related posts.