The Second Amendment Foundation has secured a leaked document which we are dubbing, “The Democrat’s Gun Control Playbook.”

The 70+ page document (click to download) has instructions on how anti-gun groups and politicians can divide pro-gun supporters, fight the NRA, and even how to capitalize on national shooting tragedies in order to further an agenda of more gun control.

According to Opposing Views,

The document states that “The most powerful time to communicate is when concern and emotions are running at their peak … The debate over gun violence in America is periodically punctuated by high-profile gun violence incidents including Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson, the Trayvon Martin killing, Aurora and Oak Creek. When an incident such as these attracts sustained media attention, it creates a unique climate for our communications efforts.”

According to the SAF’s Alan Gotlieb’s article on the document, it also lays out ways to discredit the 5 million member strong NRA,

As revealed on Page 23 of the guide, they found a “sharp ideological divide,” with self-described liberals concurring with the “extreme” statement by a two-to-one margin, while conservatives by a whopping 81 percent margin agreed with the “mainstream” description. The report acknowledges, “outside of our base, an easy assumption that people think of the NRA as an out-of-control, extreme organization would be misplaced.” So far, the NRA has not taken a position on either Washington initiative, but the guide appears aimed, at least in part, at demonizing the five-million-member association as something of a national bogeyman.

Gotlieb also points out how the document calls for attacking “stand your ground” self defense laws. The document basically admits that the real purpose of the law isn’t likely to cause alarm, and the laws need to be sensationalized with more extreme language.

On Page 45, the guide addresses Stand Your Ground laws and counsels the use of provocative substitute phrases including “Shoot First” and “Kill at Will,” asserting that these terms are “more accurate and persuasive.” In the process, it also identifies terms that should be avoided in public debate, among them the term “duty to retreat,” noting that the term may be an established legal principle, but it coveys weakness to the public and is “hard to defend.” In Washington State, court rulings dating back almost a century have enshrined the principle that there is “no duty to retreat” from an attack that occurs in a place where the victim has a right to be.

Anti-gunners like to say gun owners are being manipulated by the NRA and the political right, however after looking at this document, if anti-gunners think they aren’t being manipulated, they’re blind.