Why Gun Control Loses, and Why Las Vegas Might Change That
We do keep having a debate over guns in the United States; it’s just that the side that’s convinced that new regulations will prevent another Newtown or Orlando or Las Vegas keeps on losing the argument.
.. gun control is substantially less popular than it was in the 1990s — and gun rights is one of the few issues where the Republican Party is actually in touch with what many Americans seem to want.
.. Why is gun control losing? One answer is structural. Gun ownership is a form of expressive individualism no less than the liberties beloved in blue America, and it makes sense that a culture that rejects erotic limits would reject limits on self-defense as well. Especially since the appeal of gun ownership is also linked to individualism’s dark side — to distrust of your neighbor and your government, to the decay of communities and families, to a sense of being unprotected and on your own.
.. Anti-gun activists seize on the most horrifying acts of killing, understandably, and use them as calls to legislative action. But then the regulatory measures they propose, even when they poll well, often lack any direct connection to the massacres themselves.
.. If you go back through the list of recent mass atrocities, for instance, you don’t see many killers buying guns through the supposed “gun show loophole” or without a background check.
.. In a free society, madmen and monsters find a way to kill — as the killer in Vegas, a man of means and no significant criminal history, almost certainly would have even with tighter gun regulations and stiffer background checks.