I had some fun after the recent shooting spree at an elementary school.
I went to a far left American blog with lots of visitors (American far left = centre of social democrats or left wing of conservatives on the German scale) and posted comments.

I didn't really argue for either side (except with some fatalism about how regulations could possibly have an impact on 200+M guns), but provided lots of fact.
"magazines", not "clips", how 30 rds is really the normal assault rifle magazine capacity, that tiny 5.56 mm bullets don't really do the most unbelievable things to a body, that assault rifles in military use are really not for killing many people quickly, that calling 30 rds mags "massacre magazines" is needless polemics and so on.

To my surprise, the blog posts I posted on ended up having a suspiciously small quantity of comments overall - as if the facts had somehow discouraged others from spewing easily refuted BS.
The one guy who tried to press back at me even quitted after a while, politely thanking for the discussion and wishing a good night.


I wonder if bringing more military- or guns-related facts to a public discussion could probably help a lot. We all know how often public discussions are almost devoid of facts and people with some actual knowledge can easily spot lots of fallacies among the arguments.
Now if even fact contributions on a most emotional topic, brought forward at a political far wing blog can score - shouldn't it be possible to succeed with the approach more often?


Shouldn't the national security-related institutions with all their more or less knowledgeable people contribute more regularly to public information?

So far their PR appears to be mostly about either recruiting, protecting their leader's careers or about securing a big(ger) budget for themselves.