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After some of my recent rethinking about violent crime, I have realized that while before, I leant towards a pro-2nd Amendment position, I am now leaning against the 2nd Amendment, at least theoretically (I will explain more about what I mean by this further below). I could be into a more narrow version of the 2nd Amendment that restricts gun ownership to only certain highly vetted groups. However, I think that too much of American public is simply too stupid, impulsive, and/or antisocial to be trusted with guns. For a similar reason as to why I would not give children in general guns even though a certain fraction of them are capable of using them properly, I do not trust the American public in general with guns.
The main reason why I have had a pro-2nd Amendment position in the past was because I believed that the 2nd Amendment is a bulwark against government overreach. However, while the US is to me unquestionably more free when it comes to civil rights than, for example, Europe, I am not sure how much this has to do with private gun ownership. I have also seen the class of people who share my attitudes about the 2nd Amendment being a bulwark against government overreach repeatedly fail to actually use their guns even when they believe that such overreach exists. When I hear that something like half of Trump supporters claim to literally believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, yet I also see that basically none of them used guns to do anything about it, it gives me some doubt about this whole "bulwark against government tyranny" train of thought. And almost needless to say, widespread public gun ownership did nothing to stop NSA domestic surveillance or, long before that, things like the WWI-era Espionage Act. Or, for that matter, slavery.
Now, I do believe in the argument that "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns". Hence the part about "theoretically" in my first paragraph. Changing the 2nd Amendment now would likely be a bad idea for the simple reason that there are already so many guns in the US that there is no plausible way that simply getting rid of the 2nd Amendment would lead to any outcome other than a bunch of pro-social people handing in their guns while a huge fraction of anti-social people keep them. And that would be very bad. Hence I mean, I still support the 2nd Amendment in practice as a defense against anti-social people. But I am questioning whether it might not be better now if the US had gotten rid of the 2nd Amendment say, a hundred years ago or so.
I should make clear that I am not clearly against the 2nd Amendment even theoretically. Like I said, I am just beginning to lean against it. I am no longer convinced that its supposed upsides are worth the downsides.
It is clear to me that the modern Democratic Party is essentially an enabler of violent crime, and that is one of the main reasons why I cannot imagine myself voting for a Democrat. However, I also see how the Republicans' pro-2nd Amendment position has contributed to the problem, and I cannot let them off the hook.
Edit: I should note that I would vastly prefer a hardcore crackdown on violent crime that does not take away pro-social people's guns, as opposed to taking away most people's guns. I believe that only a very small minority of Americans commit violent crime. However, I am not sure how likely it would be for such a crackdown to work in America to reduce the level of violent crime to what I would like it to be (not zero, but something like Japan levels), given the sheer size of the country and the sheer number of guns that exist here.
The game theory for making sure individuals maintain an offensive advantage remains. It makes the land generally inhospitable to tyrants. It is true that there are costs but I tire of people that think simply pointing them out and also the that the decaying retirement home husks of once vital nations don't pay them should make me jealous. To put it as kindly as possible, I am not jealous of these nations. Pointing out that these once giants and now living museums have adopted a policy in the last few hundred years makes that policy sound as appealing as rat poison. I don't have any particular attraction to guns. I own none and despite having been shooting with friends on a few occasion generally recognize no personal appeal. But I hate the idea of being part of a disarmed population. I will not childproof my my home for my own safety. Fuck that.
I will note that there's a certain bimodality here. Small arms alone don't help against tyrants these days unless the tyrants have the gloves firmly on; you want at the very least MANPADs and anti-tank (recoilless) rifles, and probably private tanks and mortars, if you really want to make tyrants have a bad time (also tunnel systems that the tyrants don't know about, which has certain conflicts with building permits).
The argument that having an armed populace increases the lethality of crime and thus reduces total crime by attrition of criminals holds water with small arms, but this argument doesn't.
(NB: This is not a reductio ad absurdum; militia maximalism is a colourable position. I'm merely pointing out where the goalposts are.)
I think the Waco and Ruby Ridge stories show that while the state can defeat partisans in battle with small arms, this isn't always a win for the state. There's a convincing case in my opinion that the state lost the wars there: even decades later they're still treating groups like the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff and the Bundy conflicts with kid gloves. And even despite that, the government lost most of the resulting court cases even when you'd think there was clear evidence of their case.
Absent a huge swell in public opinion away from small-armed partisans (most obviously: poor trigger control and injuries to uninvolved parties), I think actually rolling out the jackboots might well burn public support faster than it can put down rebellion. And I don't think that's purely right-coded either: I doubt squashing riots in 2020 would have brought a more peaceful resolution there, either. There's a fine, if observably fuzzy, line dividing public support for state violence from denouncement: even the Ma'Khia Bryant shooting was controversial.
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