Newspeak on Gun Control

The Orwellian name change for anything that has to do with firearms continued this week and last with the President and Vice President's rebranding of the term “gun control,” with newspeak, "I don't view it as gun control, I view it as gun safety," Vice President Biden said. The term gun control is now oldspeak. From now on watch for the word “gun safety” to come from the mouths of politicians and the media because gun control just became an unword.

In case you haven’t read George Orwell’s classic dystopia, “1984,” Orwell envisioned a totalitarian society in which the government sought absolute control in part by changing the language from English (i.e. oldspeak) to a new language (i.e. newspeak) that eliminates “any vocabulary that expresses such concepts as freedom, free enquiry, individualism, resistance to the authority of the state . . .” – Wikipedia. 

Here are just a few of the newspeak terms that the government and the media have created to control your thoughts on the gun debate:

• Newspeak, gun safety. * Oldspeak, gun control and gun banning.
• Newspeak, military assault rifles. * Oldspeak, sporting rifles and hunting rifles.
• Newspeak, gun violence.  * Oldspeak, violence perpetrated with a gun.
• Newspeak, automatic weapons, i.e. machine guns.  * Oldspeak, semi-automatic weapons.
• Newspeak, high capacity clips.  * Oldspeak, standard magazines.
• Newspeak, "preserve" the Second Amendment. * Oldspeak, overturn the Second Amendment, ban confiscate all firearms, ammunition, and accessories starting with 158 popular sporting and hunting rifles.

So now, using newspeak, the government (Big Brother) can “preserve the second Amendment” (i.e. ban and utlimately confiscate all firearms starting with 158 popular sporting rifles and hunting rifles), get “military guns and machine guns” off the street (i.e. ban popular sporting rifles and hunting rifles), and increase “gun safety” (i.e. implement draconian gun control laws starting with a ban on standard magazines and more than 158 popular civilian firearms), and eliminate "gun violence" (i.e. disarm Americans and eliminate the Second Amendment) without actually saying so.

Mark VanSchuyver