Social media tells only half the story

Huffington Post has an interesting story on their site, “The Real Reason One Side Seems Louder in the Debate About Gun Violence,”

“… The fact that a large number of “grassroots” gun control organizations have suddenly sprung into existence doesn’t necessarily mean that the country is more or less supportive of gun restrictions versus gun rights than it was twenty years ago.  There’s simply no way to compare the noise levels from one communication environment to the other.  What we can compare is the volume of pro-gun versus anti-gun sentiment through an analysis of social media to get some idea of which side might be outshouting the other … The Facebook connections made by gun people are so much higher than the anti-gun Facebook connections that we appear to be playing in different arenas … Guns are a lot more important to people who own them than to people who don’t … An organization called Moms Rising recently brought five groups together on their blog to issue statements about gun violence, including the Children’s Defense Fund … Together the Facebook pages of these five groups total slightly more than 100,000 supporters and this number probably represents numerous duplicates.  The NRA is just shy of 2.5 million.  That’s a joke, and not a funny joke …”

Considering the crap HuffPo is known for publishing this is a halfway decent analysis.  What the author fails to really address is the level of commitment.  It takes no effort to simply like a page or follow a feed.  Our side follows through by acting upon what they read on social media sites, either by contacting their elected officials, writing letters to the editor, making donations or deciding who to vote for.  Antigunners don’t do any of that.  Author Mike Weisser acknowledges that “… in the age of digital communication it doesn’t take much to secure a presence in the public debate …”  This is true.  Weisser now just needs to go the extra step and admit the fraudulent nature of the gun control movement.