You’re a gun owner and an advocate for Second Amendments rights, right? Well, like you, we have to ask ourselves just what we’re doing to get the word out about our sport and the progress we’re making to preserve those cherished rights. Using the tools of social media may be a big part of that equation. So, the question is, what do we actually know about social media? What is it exactly? I have to be honest here and confess that up to about four weeks ago I knew next to nothing about it and if someone asked me what it was, my response would have been something like, “huh?”

Like most everyone else who tries to make a buck these days we have to make sure that our efforts are paying off. That is true no matter what our priorities may be. Money and time are definitely finite commodities, and if your budget and time constraints are anything close to mine, you can not afford to waste either. Tapping into the social media express train may not only be time-efficient, but cost-effective as well. As gun owners and gun rights advocates, using the tools that social media offers just makes good sense. Here’s what some people a whole lot smarter than me suggest:

Know what you want to achieve in life and set some goals to get there. If it’s your business, you may want to outline your ideas in some fashion. If it’s your passion about progressing our Second Amendment rights, then you and I need to get very busy. We can’t let the decision making go only to the politicians, because how many of them have actually had your best interest at heart lately? Do you have a personal or business website? If so, you definitely may want to put in place the things that will drive traffic to your site.

Are you on sites such as Facebook? If you have like-minded followers, but they’re not on Facebook with you, why have you spent the last several months promoting yourself or your ideas there? We have to make sure that what we are doing fits our particular demographics, personal, business or 2nd Amendment issues.

I’ll be the very first to admit that I am not any kind of techie. I didn’t know I needed help, but for me help arrived unexpectedly and I am most grateful. We need to seek help when we need it, and I’m not afraid to say that when it comes to social media issues I was, and still am, in way above my head.

I have a sneaking suspicion that, while it has been relatively quiet for the last three years concerning our gun rights, if someone is given a second term in office we may see many of those rights eroded away. Look, I may be in the minority by thinking this way, but I have a feeling I’m not. It’s just that sense of uneasiness that seems to permeate out of Washington, DC lately, and I get the nervous sensation that things may turn very sour for gun owners if we are not really careful and steadfastly vigilant.

Do you want to get your word out, have your voice heard, and share with others your thoughts and concerns? How about using Twitter? Success on Twitter can best be measured by the number of retweets you get. Are you getting any, retweets I mean? Sorry, I just had to do that! You should be getting a few each week, and in that way you know that your voice is not only being heard, but is being shared with an ever-widening audience. You can determine the number of retweeets you get by going to sites such as retweetrank.com or maybe twitteranalyzer.com. Twitter is great for your business promotion ideas as well and definitely worth a second look.

Insofar as your website is concerned, how many hits are you getting there and are you watching your site’s statistics? Drive people to your site by using common search engine words that will encourage others to take a look. Use your business product or service, or concentrate on guns and Second Amendment wording. It all helps to get your message out.

Social media is all very new to me too, but gradually I am coming around and beginning to realize the enormous benefits we have by using the varied tools it offers. I mentioned a couple here, but there are lots out there. Tapping into any of them is much better than just allowing our rights and our freedoms to be whittled away because it’s the whim of some weak-kneed political appointee.

John "Chappy" Elliott

John "Chappy" Elliott

A forty-year law enforcement veteran, John Elliott worked for police agencies in Virginia, Rhode Island and Florida, as well as for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Customs Service. He also spent many years working with Interpol, and was a bomb disposal technician conducting land mine and unexploded military ordnance disposal in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Northern Africa. Thirty-seven of those years was spent working in concert with the U.S. State Department’s Office of Special Investigations and with Mossad in Israel. He started writing in 1969 while on a charter flight from the Far East to Travis Air Force Base in California, and is the author of eleven books, with three due for publication shortly. He has also written articles for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Quarterly Review, “The Thin Blue Line,” and wrote book reviews for the Audubon Society and the Smithsonian through the Humboldt Institute of Maine. He is an editorial writer for www.Guns.com. His articles appear weekly, many of them aimed at protecting our Second Amendment rights. Please feel free to visit him there. He is also a weekly on-air contributor for the BBC’s Sunday Morning Live show in Belfast, Northern Ireland and has been an occasional speaker for Radio Zabok in Croatia. John Elliott is also a member of SCBWI, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and a lifetime member of the Black Card Society. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in business, an MBA and Juris Doctorate degrees. He is the proud father of two daughters, and has five grandchildren, three girls and two boys.