When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. promised ideas for responding to the massacre, he said he was “
shooting for Tuesday” — even as he warned that there is “no silver bullet” for stopping gun violence. When President Obama noted that he was reviewing those ideas, he said on a different topic that he would not negotiate “
with a gun at the head.”
No wonder it is hard to get rid of gun violence when Washington cannot even get rid of gun vocabulary. The vernacular of guns suffuses the political and media conversation in ways that politicians and journalists are often not even conscious of, underscoring the historical power of guns in the American experience. Candidates “target” their opponents, lawmakers “stick to their guns,” advocacy groups “take aim” at hostile legislation and reporters write about a White House “under fire.”
The ubiquitous nature of such language has caused people on both sides of the emotional debate in recent weeks to take back, or at least think twice about the phrases they use, lest they inadvertently cause offense in a moment of heightened sensitivity.
“It’s almost second nature,” said Andrew Arulanandam, director of public affairs for the National Rifle Association. “They’re such mainstream phrases, you almost have to check yourself and double-check yourself.”
But it also says something about the long American romance with guns and the nation’s self image. “All of that ties into the frontier tradition, rugged individualism, a single American with a flintlock or a gun of some kind holding off the Indians or fighting off the British,” said Robert Spitzer, a scholar of gun control at the State University of New York at Cortland.
While Mr. Spitzer called that more mythology than reality, even he found himself using such references in a recent speech responding to comments by Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.’s vice president, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack. “My opening line was, his speech was a misfire; he missed the target,” Mr. Spitzer recalled. “I liked using the gun metaphor because I think it’s doubly appropriate for him.”
In that case, of course, he was doing it deliberately. And others use double entendre purposefully. The National Shooting Sports Foundation says on its Web site that it is “always shooting for more” to promote the future of sport shooting. For
an editorial last week criticizing Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, for his past solidarity with the N.R.A., The New York Times used the headline, “Senator Reid Takes Fresh Aim.”
But much of the time, such phrases come spilling out without apparent irony. Candy Crowley, the CNN anchor, introduced an interview by highlighting “our conversation with N.R.A. point man Asa Hutchinson.” Christiane Amanpour on the same network featured a story about a Tennessee lawmaker known for supporting gun rights. “So why did the N.R.A. take aim at her?” she asked.
After Alex Jones, a gun rights advocate, erupted during an interview with Piers Morgan, the Internet lit up. As of Tuesday, the phrase “Alex Jones goes ballistic” drew 357,000 hits on Google.
The Brady Campaign found itself in the awkward position of using a firm called Point Blank when it needed help last month. Point Blank, named for the Bruce Springsteen song, had an archery bull’s-eye on its Web site. But it has since dissolved and one of its principals, Debra DeShong Reed, has founded a new firm, called Five by Five Public Affairs, that is now working for the Brady Campaign.
The Brady Campaign’s own name attests to the sensitivity of language in the gun debate. Gun control advocates these days generally do not use the term gun control; instead, they talk about curbing gun violence, recognizing that “control” stirs opposition among legal gun owners who fear their rights being trampled.
The use of gun symbolism has at times provoked controversy. After Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head by a gunman in 2011, many criticized Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential nominee, for using cross hairs on her Web site to identify Democrats like Ms. Giffords who she said should be defeated for re-election.
Gun control advocates like Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden tend to draw less criticism when they use the language of guns. “We know that there is no silver bullet,” Mr. Biden said last week about stemming gun violence. But he said he planned to present an array of ideas to Mr. Obama that he hoped would make a difference. “I’m shooting for Tuesday,” he said.
At a news conference on Monday, Mr. Obama said he would review those ideas. But during a discussion on fiscal talks, he too used the terminology of firearms. “What I will not do is have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people,” he said.
Gun control advocates said such lapses are not surprising. “We do it, too,” said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an advocacy group co-founded by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York. “We notice and laugh, and we don’t think it goes to our core motivations. We kind of accept that there’s a piece of us that will always be based in the Old West.”
Mr. Glaze said he had slipped plenty of times. “I stopped feeling guilty about it a while ago when one of the survivors we work with somehow managed to squeeze in at least four gun references into a sentence that had nothing to do with guns,” he said. “Since then, I’ve let it go.”
