Gun Control Activist Calling on Fellow Travelers to Say Quiet Part Out Loud

We all know it’s gun control, even if they use phrases like “gun safety” or “gun violence prevention.” We know because their solutions are always about restricting the right to keep and bear arms. Always.

Oh, they might offer some kind of education, but even that generally boils down to, “You’re too incompetent to be trusted with a gun, so you really shouldn’t get one, and if you do, the only way to be safe with it is to make it useless for self-defense, so here’s how.”

It’s stupid.

But Po Murray, co-founder and chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, thinks it’s time to take the euphemisms and toss them.

In the years that followed, I embraced the language many in our movement adopted. I spoke about “gun safety” and “gun violence prevention” because we were told these terms would resonate more broadly, reduce polarization, and help us reach people who might otherwise shut down when they heard “gun control”. That strategy had value. It opened doors and helped grow the movement, but it did not change the fundamental political reality we are up against, and it has not been enough to meet the scale of this crisis. I strongly believed in that approach, and for many years, I used that language intentionally. I even castigated my husband for using “gun control” during the first year of my advocacy journey.

But as I reflect on where we are today, I no longer believe this is a choice between one set of words or another. I believe we need all of them, and we need to use them more intentionally.

At the same time, we need to be clear about what this work is ultimately about. It is about freedom. Not abstract freedom, but the freedom to live our daily lives without fear. The freedom to send our children to school, to gather in our communities, to worship, to work, and to simply exist without the constant threat of gun violence. When that fear shapes how we move through the world, our freedoms are no longer fully ours.

Of course, me being disarmed would mean I have to live in fear, which never seems to factor into their equations. It seems their fears are the only ones that matter. Strange, isn’t it?

I’m also trying to figure out how gun rights are “abstract freedom,” but freedom from someone that you’re probably never going to experience anyway isn’t abstract.

Anyway, I get that Murray wants to be safe. She even talks a bit about the benefits of “gun safety” and “gun violence prevention,” then she gets to the money shot, the one where it’s clear what this is all about, and it’s about how she doesn’t want gun control activists to keep the quiet part quiet.

Some worry that reclaiming “gun control” will alienate people or undo years of coalition building. I understand that concern. I once shared it. But this is not about abandoning “gun safety” or “gun violence prevention”. It is about recognizing that each serves a different purpose. Safety speaks to individual behavior. Prevention frames the public health approach. Control is what makes policy change possible.

Now, understand that with “gun safety” or “gun violence prevention,” these terms were soft enough that people could retreat behind them when we countered their calls for restriction by asking if they wanted total gun bans. “Oh no,” they’d say, “we just want some commonsense gun safety rules,” or something along those lines.

Neither of the euphemisms really suggested control, which was the point. Gun control was a non-starter for years precisely because Americans don’t like being controlled.

But Murray makes it clear that the term “gun control” puts more on the table for her and her allies, which probably means things like gun confiscation and gun bans, to say nothing of gun registration and other incredibly problematic things that most gun-grabbers have spent years trying to distance themselves from, at least publicly.

Murray wants them, instead, to embrace it and keep saying the quiet part out loud so everyone knows what they want.

And I’m cool with it.

No, seriously, I’m glad she’s saying it. I hope more of them say it. I want them to be upfront and honest about what they want for a change and quit pretending they just want a couple of rule changes that they swear won’t impact me and mine, but are just about the bad actors who always seem to find a way around them anyway.

Be honest, I say.

I mean, I’m honest. I think same-sex couples should be able to protect their marijuana plants with recreational fighter jets, heavy artillery, full-auto weapons, drones, and a few tanks, just so long as they’re willing to leave me and everyone else alone to live our own lives as we see fit, too.

I don’t rule out recreational nuclear weapons, either, though I’d hate to have to deal with the upkeep on one of those.

So now, people like Murray want to own up to what they want? Freaking great. Do it. Tell the world you don’t just want safety or gun violence prevention, but control over a constitutionally protected right that the Founding Fathers expressly said: “…shall not be infringed.”

I’m glad to see it.

But don’t think it’ll do you any favors with literally anyone else except those who already agree with you and are just glad they now have permission to take the masks off.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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