I have had several cases where blue state women find out that I am a firearms instructor and they are first incredulous, then contemptuous, then curious, and soon they are students.

I think that they need a real human face on the sport before it starts to become less of a caricature. And once that happens, the inhibitions fall fast. Blue state women want to feel safe and self-sufficient and this is an empowering moment. As a liberal wife of a very conservative friend told him on their second date (when he offered to teach her about guns), “there is no power in NOT knowing how to do something”

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I think a lot of the disconnect comes from the fact that blue voters have very little familiarity or experience with guns — and what they *do* have comes from watching TV shows about gangs and drugs. Ask a blue voter what they think of when they think of guns, and they’re probably going to think of a drug dealer. Ask a red voter and they’re probably going to think of hunting. For the blue voter, their picture of a gun is far-off in the hands of someone else who’s a threat to them. For the red voter, their picture of a gun is in the hands of a buddy who enjoys the shooting range or hunting. So of course we don’t understand each other — we’re not even talking about the same thing when we’re talking about guns.

My wife points out that this also applies in another context: when blue voters talk about businesses, they’re almost always referred to as faceless evil corporations. Starbucks, Microsoft, McDonalds, Halliburton… that’s what blue voters think businesses are, because that’s the businesses blue voters interact with on a regular basis. How can red voters possibly be pro-business? That’s like being pro-evil, right? (Aside: a friend of mine once said, it’s easy to be anti-war. It’s like being pro-kitten.) Well, for red voters, their picture of business is the corner store, or their buddy who owns the small trucking firm, or the restaurant where the same waitress has served them for 20 years. So of course they’re pro-business! The businesses they interact with have familiar faces of friends who’ve served you for as long as you can remember, while the businesses blue voters interact with have some college kid making minimum wage asking unenthusiastically if you’d like fries or an extra shot of mocha.

Simply put, there’s a huge credibility gap there (and it goes the other direction when we’re talking about things like inner-city public schools.) Sometimes we’re trying to give an informed opinion about a reality we don’t have any experience of, and it makes us look like fools.

Just one more example: not 5 minutes ago, a friend of mine told me we should have more troops in Afghanistan. I asked him if he knew how many were there. Nope — he guessed 10,000 but he had no real idea. I asked him if he had a number of troops in mind for how many he wanted. Nope — just “more than are there now.” I asked him if he knew what operations the troops should be performing. “Get Osama.” Well, yeah, but how? “I don’t know.” Exactly — he has an opinion about the troops in Afghanistan, but he has no experience of the reality surrounding the situation on the ground, so he has no credibility. People who have an opinion about what the public schools should do but haven’t stepped foot in a public school classroom in 20 years have the same lack of credibility (just FYI, I spend about 6 hours a week in the Seattle public schools as a math specialist.) And people who talk about guns who don’t know how to fire one have the same lack of credibility (just FYI, I’ve only ever once fired a gun, doing target practice with my grandpa when I was too young to be able to actually load it, so I don’t pretend to actually know anything about guns.)

I guess… it’s kinda like the old Jack Chick tract about Dungeons & Dragons, where he’s like “D&D is evil and occultic and dangerous!” and it’s obvious he’s never played a game of D&D in his life, or even seen anyone play it.

Maybe that’s the way to pitch this idea to blue state voters. Tell them how much they sound like Jack Chick talking about D&D when they talk about guns they’ve never even touched.

David N. St. John