3. Politicize Disaster, Unabashedly
This may make some progressives queasy. But if you don't have the stomach for hardball politics, just accept that you're going to be steamrolled by the NRA — which shamelessly stokes the emotional power of national tragedies like 9/11, Katrina, and Superstorm Sandy to convince Americans that social collapse is around the corner, and you really should be buying that AR-15.
This isn't complicated: Making a political issue of the tiny coffins of dead children in the wake of a school shooting isn't just a thing that helps pass strong gun-control, it's practically the only thing in the last quarter century that's moved the needle on anti-gun-violence laws. Recall that the catalyst for the 1994 assault weapons ban was a 1989 school shooting in Stockton, California, that killed five kids and wounded 29 other children.
It's not distasteful to act in the name of victims of gun violence. What's distasteful to squander the burning anger and intense political focus that such senseless bloodshed inspires. There's nothing dishonorable in taking the swift and necessary action to prevent other children from being massacred by an idiot with a war rifle.//