A Satirist’s Sketch of How to Trigger a Comeback for Firearms : Gun lobby: Defeated in a squeaker on assault weapons, it might try wrapping its cold-steel message in social-science fuzzies.

The gun lobby may be down after its setback on assault weapons, but don’t count on it. Here is how the firearms community aims to trigger a comeback:

* Constitutional revamp. The planned rewrite is unique in the annals of constitutional reform in that nary a comma would change. The proposal calls for the First Amendment and the Second Amendment simply to swap places; the right to bear arms thus would become the First Amendment and the freedoms of speech, press and religion the Second Amendment.

For the record, spokesmen say that the renumbering is intended merely to update the Bill of Rights--to validate the country’s evolution from a handful of sparsely populated rural states when expression and worship were priorities to an era where densely packed cities and crime demand the primacy of self-protection.

Privately, gun hobbyists-lobbyists admit that they expect wide backing for the battle to bear arms from folks who believe they’re espousing free speech.

In this respect, the lobby is counting on history to repeat itself. Pro-gun forces years ago chose to name their organization a rifle association, despite a large handgun constituency, to capitalize on the high approval rating of the New Deal’s National Recovery Administration. To this day, much of the National Rifle Assn.’s legendary clout comes from old-timers grateful to the NRA for rescue from the Depression.

* Alms for arms. The gun lobby mocks Willie Sutton’s maxim, “Rob where the money is.” If Sutton’s advice were sound, they observe, crime would be highest in high-income neighborhoods and lowest in low-income areas. The reverse is true, the lobby explains, because the well-off are well-armed, whereas those too needy to afford arms are easy pickings for thugs and thieves. In fact, According to firearms theorists, the lack of access to arms by the law-abiding indigent is the root cause of poverty. As one arms thinker commented, “If you can’t protect it, why earn it?” Firearms analysts calculate that every dollar invested in guns by low-income households boosts take-home pay tenfold. The gun lobby’s anti-poverty remedy: its Equalizer/Pieces for the Poor program in which persons at or below the poverty level receive gun stamps redeemable for arms from licensed dealers.

* Guns for juveniles. The firearms community is convinced that the crackdown on gun ownership by minors poses its gravest challenge. School locker searches and metal detectors are considered especially destructive of the right of juveniles to bear arms. The centerpiece of the campaign will be litigation tied to a landmark 1969 Supreme Court decision that said the Constitution “does not stop at the schoolhouse gate” and thus protects the right of students to sport anti-war armbands. The gun lobby’s position: The rights to bear armbands and arms are indistinguishable.

At one time, the gun movement relied exclusively on bare-knuckle lobbying. Clearly, it has learned from the assault-weapons debacle the need for finesse, for economic and behavioral research and for reaching out to the poverty and civil liberties communities. You thought maybe the gun lobby was licked?