We are being manipulated by an advertising campaign: NRA and guns

I said in another post a day or two ago that I believe Americans are becoming more and more gullible. So here goes.

The NRA is behind a lot of this anger about guns. But we are not seeing the NRA for what it really is: a lobby for gun manufacturers. IOW, an organization that's promoting profit-making businesses. So please bear with me.

Gun manufacturing from 1986 thru 2009 was at about the same level: an average of four million units a year: http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2015/08/huge-increase-in-u-s-gun-production-in-recent-years/

Other sources provide pretty much the same numbers.

From 2001 thru 2005 the numbers started to dip; in '01 they were actually lower than in '86. Not good for profit-making businesses, right? They went up slightly in '06 thru '08, but not enough to get out of the old average. "So what can we do?"

I have to believe that somewhere, someone turned to the NRA (or vice versa) with an idea: Hey, here's a new president, a Democrat, who's African-American to boot. He's already made some noise about guns. So let's create an advertising campaign (read that again: an advertising campaign) based on the idea that he's going to take our guns away. And make it look like it's not an ad campaign.

Bingo. The campaign worked: people who were afraid of, or didn’t trust, this new guy, and who liked guns, started to buy guns. The numbers went up from just under six million in '09 to over ten million today. That's a fantastic increase.

We already know some of that. We've heard it before. It's not news. But I think we fail to realize that this is all an advertising campaign which points to the government to create fear and sell people on the idea that they have to buy more guns. That’s what ad campaigns do: they convince people to buy something. Is there a Russia connection? I don't know, but that's a separate issue from the ad campaign; if anything, Russia is contributing money to the campaign for their own purposes.

I can imagine a few things, but then again I have a good imagination: I can imagine people sitting around a conference table saying, okay, that campaign worked; what other products can we offer while the going is hot? Ahh-ha! bump stocks. Sure. We know there's going to be a response to this, so let's produce and sell as many as we can before they're outlawed. I can also imagine reps from gun manufacturers congratulating NRA and its ad agencies for the increase in sales. And I can even imagine -- get this one -- people at NRA sitting around that same table agreeing that Trump and the GOP (and possibly all of Congress?) are just idiots who are falling for an ad campaign. They would probably toss the whole gang under the bus if a better idea came along. Maybe not, but I can imagine it.

All the mass shootings and deaths? All the anger and divisiveness the campaign has created? They’re what the military calls “collateral damage,” but they help sales. As Tom Hagen said in the first Godfather movie, “It’s business not personal.” Is Fox in on the ad campaign? I would guess not: they’re just in in it for the controversy, which keeps angry people coming back to watch their shows and therefore the commercials.

Are we being gullible here by believing this whole thing is political and going along with it (and getting more and more angry and divisive) instead of exposing it for what it is and what it’s doing to the country?

I’m going to anticipate that, someday in the future, this whole thing is going to be studied in advertising classes as an inspired move, a campaign that was created at just the right moment and was promoted perfectly to just about double the production of a product in just a few years. And that it’s also going to be labeled as a total and complete violation of ethics and decency. But then again, as Tom Hagen said, "It's business not personal."

Now, if somebody would like to offer a rebuttal in an adult, civilized manner, explaining why they don't agree with my points, I'd love to hear it. Maybe I'll learn something.