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I think this is applying conflict theory where mistake theory would be more appropriate.
Handguns are, in practice, orders of magnitude more dangerous than long guns, looking at (murder, suicide and negligent) death tolls. The difference between America and other broadly pro-gun countries like Switzerland and Canada is that America has ubiquitous legal private handgun ownership, and lots of people shooting themselves or each other with said handguns. The pro-gun movement in America largely consists of people who routinely carry a handgun for personal self defence (or would like to if it was legal in their jurisdiction). And they (you?) are winning politically.
And yet the anti-gun movement's best argument is to point at spree killings and call for bans on scary-looking and/or high-powered rifles, because blue tribe normies who are susceptible to anti-gun messaging are not actually worried about the chav-on-chav shootings going on in the rough parts of their own cities, they are worried about the spree shootings they see on TV.
If the anti-gun left were serious, committed gun-grabbers at both the elite and mass levels, I don't think they would be so stupid about guns. I think normie fear of spree killings is very real, is largely driven by media amplification (which in turn is driven by if-it-bleeds-it-leads incentives, not partisan bias), and is grossly disproportionate to any real threat. But the pro-gun right don't have a very persuasive response to it - the real argument they believe is "one classroom of dead kids in a every 4-5 years in a country of 300 million is a good tradeoff for the advantages of widespread rifle ownership for shooting sports, hunting, rural home defence, and tyranny prevention." And that is a non-starter in the public debate because most people are innumerate. [FWIW, I think the tyranny prevention argument is mostly bullshit and I still think the tradeoff points in favour of broadly legal long guns. But if I got my sense of how common spree killings actually are from the MSM, I wouldn't]
tl;dr - the reason why the debate about long guns isn't as one-sidedly pro-gun in the US as it is in Switzerland is because normies overstate the risk of spree killings, not because of a conspiracy of evil gun-grabbers.
WP says it is more like about a classroom of dead kids per year, though not all of them might are part of mass shootings. Sadly, kids are also vulnerable to guns outside classrooms, with a couple of thousands dying every year. The most common way a minor is shot is because his fuckwit parents owned guns and did not secure them adequately.
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I would have to disagree with this. The anti-gun types could get a lot of concessions and/or enhancement of their credibility if they agreed to national shall-issue concealed carry. The data is pretty overwhelming that automatically issuing concealed carry permits to anyone who passes a background check does not result in a significant increase in crime.
What concessions do you realistically think the pro-gun people would be willing to make?
In exchange for national shall-issue concealed carry? At a guess:
No private sales of firearms -- all sales must go through a registered dealer who does the necessary background checks;
Laws that handguns must be kept secured while not in use if there are minors living in the same residence;
Laws limiting purchases of handguns to one per month.
Obviously I don't speak for all pro-gun types, but I'm pretty confident that the anti-gun types could get at least 1 out of those 3, perhaps even all 3 if they agreed to national shall-issue concealed carry.
By the way, I asked you a question in the last thread and I am still waiting for an answer. Do you have any case authority for your claim that 18 USC 1014 applies only in the context of credit applications? Do you concede that in the past, people have been prosecuted under that provision for opening up fictitious bank accounts?
Yeah, I'll get to the question later. I've been working quite a bit and didn't have time to give a proper answer. Hopefully I'll get to it later today.
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The Brady campaign is currently a numerate, cogent, reasonable organization aimed at gun control supported by the data(they didn't used to be, but they are at the moment).
They are not popular or influential, because gun politics in the US is 100% partisanbrained conflict theory. The NRA and the Brady campaign are both doing things that meaningfully(but perhaps not massively) reducing gun deaths with things like safe storage campaigns and range instructor training. They're not the most popular organizations on either side.
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If only this innumeracy applied to "a few dozen mauled kids every year in a country of 300 million is a good tradeoff for the advantages of widespread
dog piss, dog shit, dog slobber, dog barking, dog dander, dog odorwhatever people see in these things."I think conflict theory is apt here. At the end of the day, if most people liked guns at even 0.1% of their emotional investment in dogs, they'd overlook the tradeoffs too. Some people just really like guns and are fine with a couple classrooms paying the tradeoff ("Some of you will die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make"). Other people don't care at all about owning guns, so for them no societal cost is really worth it. But a blanket gun ban costs these people absolutely nothing. They were never going to own a gun anyways. Ask them how many babies mauled by dogs per year is acceptable before they're willing to let the government take away their precious doggos and you'll get a very different attitude.
I think dogs, like guns, are not all created equally. A pitbull is orders of magnitude more likely to maul a kid than a golden retriever.
And there is certainly a legislative push to restrict ownership of the more dangerous breeds, at least in Europe.
Personally, I would push for a license requirement to keep any kind of mammals (including kids) for animal welfare reasons alone, and ways to mitigate danger to third parties could be easily added to such a process.
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As somebody from a country with very low levels of Civilian gun ownership and who has fired a firearm like... three times maybe in my whole lifetime which was cool to tick off but not some profound experience I need to revisit. I get the nominal self-defense argument, but I also feel like widespread gun ownership in the USA has a bunch of secondary and tertiary effects creating a loop of 'there is more violence since people expect guns to enter encounters since people expect more violence'.
If I'm personally exceedingly unlikely to own a gun I'd rather be in a disarmed society since IMO PR(Random encounter happens where somebody else belligerent is armed who wouldn't be otherwise) is significantly greater than PR(Random Encounter where I both have a gun and have an occasion to use it prosocially to successfully defuse something)
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In the United States, gun control is so conflict theory that nobody even tries to convince anyone anymore. When Democrats get power, they simply implement all the gun control -- Virginia demonstrates this perfectly. Anti-gun states have been banning AR-15s (most popular RIFLE in the US) and Glocks (most popular pistol) left and right. Republicans, being divided on the issue, sometimes reduce gun control, sometimes do nothing, and sometimes increase gun control. But the convincing stage is long since over.
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You make some good points, but I don't think it quite addresses the, as you say, unseriousness of the anti-gun left. They used to lean much more deeply on the crime angle, but there are too many fatal weaknesses to that take for it to be effective in a less controlled/favorable media environment. The normies get upset about spree-killings, but not in a way that obviously and naturally leads to blaming the tool. One can easily imagine a slightly different world where the mass media blame was displaced onto, say, SSRIs, possibly with a "greedy, overprescribing pharma companies" angle. But the pattern for sprees is something hitting the news bigly once every 2-3 years, with maybe a few copycats in the following weeks, and then most everyone goes back to not caring. That doesn't translate into political will.
The reason there are safety people at all seems much more driven by outgroup dynamics. Gun are red tribe totems, and attacking enemy totems is always a fun time.
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