I promised this one a while ago. With luck, today starts another string of my actual daily entries instead of good intentions separated by silences.
Back to gun control.
Let's be clear, gun control is popular. It is also politically toxic.
What's the difference?
Well if you actually ask most people if they want gun control, a vast and staggering majority will answer yes. People generally understand that guns are dangerous equipment and should be handled the same way as any other similarly dangerous hardware. We're not just talking progressives here, we're talking about a good majority of Republicans, NRA members, and the whole kit and kaboodle. But there are two elements embedded in this popular idea that usually bring any legislation to a screeching halt.
The first reason gun control is politically toxic is that while almost everyone wants gun control, the same people are highly suspicious of that control being determined by anyone other than themselves. The reason for that is that there is very little common ground between people who want gun control. If you take a hundred people and ask them what 'reasonable gun control' means, they will give you eighty different answers, any one of which will be too lenient for half them and too strict for the other. The result is that as the dialogue about gun control waxed and waned, people figured out that while everyone wanted something done about the vast proliferation of gun violence, nobody really trusted anyone else to handle it. This makes proposing gun control legislation really tricky. Pleasing the majority who want gun control feels like trying to balance a quarter on the point of an upturned pin; It's always leaning too far in SOME direction.
The second is that it is nearly impossible to predict where people will stand on gun control in a given voter demographic. American views on guns are not limited by political party or geographic region. While there are trends, like veins of ore, that can be traced through libertarian and Republican support of free gun ownership as well as a general pro gun control sentiment in Democratic groups, none of it is accurate beyond reasonable doubt as to the impact being pro or anti gun control will have on a given population.
Elected officials loathe unknowns. They don't like to take a stance without already having a very solid idea in their head about where their constituents stand on it. With gun control, even surveys turn up misleading information. People answer what they think they SHOULD answer when it comes to such questions and then vote what they really think.
Both factors make elected officials want to avoid gun control like the plague.
But we're dying out here.
Literally.
As I mentioned, the odds of an American dying to gun violence are 15 times higher than anywhere else in the first world. If you own a gun, you are 22 times more likely to die in a gun related fatality than if you don't. American deaths from guns are 12-15 times higher than the top 25 industrialized nations combined. These stats make our fear of dealing with this issue akin to plugging our ears, closing our eyes, and yelling 'la la la la la' as a survival tactic when trapped in a burning house.
So again, what could we do?
There are reasonable choices out there that would not require us to delve back into the toxic waters that I lay out above. The three big ones that almost everyone seems to agree on would be to a) fund and enforce the existing gun control laws, b) Close the loophole for gun sales at gun shows, and c) create some oversight into information sharing between the states, the federal government, and the military to ensure that failed background checks and criminal or drug flags are known universally by those who sell firearms.
If you notice, these three options can be boiled down to “Do what we already agreed to do, dammit.”
There are no further 2nd Amendment implications here. We're not further restricting guns beyond what they already have been. We're also not asking for congress to create new laws at all. We ARE asking congress to fund what they already passed, update the law to fit where guns are sold, and ensure the organizations most involved in enforcement have the information tools to make the right choices.
The question outstanding is whether or not the NRA can back away from fighting against every single move that might impact firearm ownership and whether our congress can grow a pair and step up simply to ensure the laws on the books get enforced. Ultimately this serves the interests of streamlining government, avoiding expanding government, and hopefully reducing costs in the process – a powerful bi-partisan opportunity if you consider the goals of both sides.
But these waters have been poisonous for so long, do we have any politicians out there who are willing to give them another try after one of their own takes a bullet to the head?
Time will tell.
Back to gun control.
Let's be clear, gun control is popular. It is also politically toxic.
What's the difference?
Well if you actually ask most people if they want gun control, a vast and staggering majority will answer yes. People generally understand that guns are dangerous equipment and should be handled the same way as any other similarly dangerous hardware. We're not just talking progressives here, we're talking about a good majority of Republicans, NRA members, and the whole kit and kaboodle. But there are two elements embedded in this popular idea that usually bring any legislation to a screeching halt.
The first reason gun control is politically toxic is that while almost everyone wants gun control, the same people are highly suspicious of that control being determined by anyone other than themselves. The reason for that is that there is very little common ground between people who want gun control. If you take a hundred people and ask them what 'reasonable gun control' means, they will give you eighty different answers, any one of which will be too lenient for half them and too strict for the other. The result is that as the dialogue about gun control waxed and waned, people figured out that while everyone wanted something done about the vast proliferation of gun violence, nobody really trusted anyone else to handle it. This makes proposing gun control legislation really tricky. Pleasing the majority who want gun control feels like trying to balance a quarter on the point of an upturned pin; It's always leaning too far in SOME direction.
The second is that it is nearly impossible to predict where people will stand on gun control in a given voter demographic. American views on guns are not limited by political party or geographic region. While there are trends, like veins of ore, that can be traced through libertarian and Republican support of free gun ownership as well as a general pro gun control sentiment in Democratic groups, none of it is accurate beyond reasonable doubt as to the impact being pro or anti gun control will have on a given population.
Elected officials loathe unknowns. They don't like to take a stance without already having a very solid idea in their head about where their constituents stand on it. With gun control, even surveys turn up misleading information. People answer what they think they SHOULD answer when it comes to such questions and then vote what they really think.
Both factors make elected officials want to avoid gun control like the plague.
But we're dying out here.
Literally.
As I mentioned, the odds of an American dying to gun violence are 15 times higher than anywhere else in the first world. If you own a gun, you are 22 times more likely to die in a gun related fatality than if you don't. American deaths from guns are 12-15 times higher than the top 25 industrialized nations combined. These stats make our fear of dealing with this issue akin to plugging our ears, closing our eyes, and yelling 'la la la la la' as a survival tactic when trapped in a burning house.
So again, what could we do?
There are reasonable choices out there that would not require us to delve back into the toxic waters that I lay out above. The three big ones that almost everyone seems to agree on would be to a) fund and enforce the existing gun control laws, b) Close the loophole for gun sales at gun shows, and c) create some oversight into information sharing between the states, the federal government, and the military to ensure that failed background checks and criminal or drug flags are known universally by those who sell firearms.
If you notice, these three options can be boiled down to “Do what we already agreed to do, dammit.”
There are no further 2nd Amendment implications here. We're not further restricting guns beyond what they already have been. We're also not asking for congress to create new laws at all. We ARE asking congress to fund what they already passed, update the law to fit where guns are sold, and ensure the organizations most involved in enforcement have the information tools to make the right choices.
The question outstanding is whether or not the NRA can back away from fighting against every single move that might impact firearm ownership and whether our congress can grow a pair and step up simply to ensure the laws on the books get enforced. Ultimately this serves the interests of streamlining government, avoiding expanding government, and hopefully reducing costs in the process – a powerful bi-partisan opportunity if you consider the goals of both sides.
But these waters have been poisonous for so long, do we have any politicians out there who are willing to give them another try after one of their own takes a bullet to the head?
Time will tell.
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