How has the framing of the gun-control movement changed in recent years?
Historically a really effective framing device has been to talk about the protection of children and families, particularly children. If you think about the anti-abortion movement, their entire premise is, “It’s a child, not a choice,” right? So abortion is baby-killing. The anti-smoking movement—when did it really take off? When they started talking about youth smoking, Joe Camel and whatnot. The gun-control cause traditionally was framed in terms of crime prevention. In the early ’80s, but mainly in the ’90s, it started being framed as a public-health menace. And when you think about gun violence as a public-health problem, it focuses your attention on the victims, rather than on the perpetrators. The public-health frame softened the ground for talking about guns and kids. In the ’90s we had this run-up in juvenile gun violence. And then you have the school shootings. Because the nature of the problem was shifting a little bit, it was easy to start framing it in terms of child protec
