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Originally Posted by overhead
My goal was to "plant a seed" in her brain that hopefully she will consider in the future. If I put her on the defensive or made her feel stupid I have zero chance of getting through to her. If i corrected her misunderstanding of "rights" or the gun terms she used it would have turned the discussion from a constructive to a debate. I did not want to do that. Hopefully I left her with the impression that we are not all "gun nuts" as the gun control folks suggest, we have reasoned arguments and are not just paranoid,scared or dangerous.
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Very well put. It's always polite to deal with people as equals, and in this case, I think it's essential. If the only thing we accomplish in talking to someone on the other side of this issue is to convince them that we're reasonable people, that's a victory. Next time, they'll be that much more likely to listen. I think it's easy to forget that most of the people we label as "antis" are just uninformed, scared of guns, and by extension, of people who own them. If we can convince some of them that we, at least, aren't scary, it's a start.