Is there X amount of mass shootings that would change gun supporters' minds, or is that the wrong way to think?

[Max_S]

@Martin_Hyde

The simple reality is the anti-gun crowd aren’t interested in a serious dialogue, they don’t like gun owners and they want you to know it.

There’s no need for such broad accusations when we have, in this very thread, an attempt - a step - towards serious dialogue. Velocity wrote that he is “in favor of a 2nd-Amendment repeal and banning/confiscating of most guns”. But the topic he started isn’t about that, it’s about understanding gun supporters. Specifically whether gun supporters believe X amount of mass shootings would change their minds.

I note that you, Martin_Hyde, haven’t directly answered the question du jour.

I suggest that the question has been answered in the negative, and invite @Velocity to return if he has any doubt left in his mind. Please find my summary of the members of the board and their relevant opinions below. I apologize if I missed or misinterpreted anybody.

No amount of mass shootings would change gun supporters’ minds

@Railer13

My personal opinion, with absolutely no evidence to back it up, is that if Sandy Hook couldn’t change anybody’s mind, no mass shooting will.

@Max_S

You may as well ask a gun supporter how many people must die before they are willing to give up living in a free State.

@Odesio

I think part of the disconnect is that many gun owners view the right to own and possess a firearm as a fundamental human right. So if you understand that, even if you don’t agree with it, I think you’ll have a better understanding of why the number of firearm related homicides, or suicides for that matter, aren’t going to convince a lot of gun owners to give up their AR-15s.

@Sooner

[…] for the majority, no number of mass (or day to day) killings is going to convince them they should give up their right to own guns. If anything, it seems to be the opposite; more of - in this violent society I need a weapon for self-defense.

@snowthx

I do not think you will ever convince gun owners to ban guns - that is probably a bridge too far, and I think using mass shootings as justification will not move the needle at all.

@steronz

Maybe you’re not aware of how hard conservatives have doubled-down on this issue, but the answer to gun violence is always more guns . If mass shootings start happening every day gun sales will skyrocket and Republicans will be falling over themselves to remove all gun restrictions and arm everyone.

@Crafter_Man

When I hear of a mass shooting, I am extra conscientious about making sure I’m armed when I go somewhere.

@Thudlow_Boink

Many gun owners hear about mass shootings or violence and think, “See? It’s a dangerous world out there. I need to be able to protect myself and my loved ones.” And they’re going to take a dim view of anyone who tries to take away what they perceive as their power to defend themselves.

@DrDeth

And that is why honest law abiding gun owners fight any gun laws, because that is on many peoples minds- a ban, door to door confiscation, etc.

@Chingon

There is no serious/effective legislation that gun supporters will allow to pass. Even those who play lip service that they will support Biden’s suggestions think the suggestions are pointless or are actually against them when they read the details.

@SenorBeef

How many people need to die before you’ll support banning alcohol? […]

What if I came to you with a news story every time it happened? What if we covered DUI deaths like we do mass shootings? What if I showed you a picture of a cute family every day and say “the 5 year old is dead, the mother is dead, and the father is in critical condition - all because you think alcohol should be legal… how many dead people do we need before you’ll change your mind?”

But you won’t change your mind, because you’ve just accepted that it’s going to happen and you’re okay with that tradeoff. […]

How is that any different from gun owners how gun owners who don’t want to ban guns feel?

[…]

People willing to accept gun deaths to keep gun legal aren’t thinking any differently than you, there are just personal preference, emotional, and salience factors that make you perceive it differently.

@Hampshire

Logical or not, I completely understand that mind set. The more occurrences of mass shootings the more people […] fear, rightly or not, that nutjobs committing these shootings probably never got these guns in a legal manner anyhow. Gun control measures would punish those who follow all the rules in obtaining, owning, using firearms while criminals doing illegal things would just continue doing illegal things getting their hands on guns.

Their next jump to conclusion is that now the law abiding citizen good guy (themselves) has their last line of defense taken away while the criminals continue to arm up like they always have, illegally.
In the “us versus them” mind set the bad guys suddenly have the upper hand.

@BrickBat

‘SeniorBeef’, that was an outstanding essay explaining the issue in an unequivocally objective and articulate manner.

@Saint_Cad

Raises a glass of bourbon on the rocks to Senor Beef and his post.

@LivingGhost371

Absolutely correct, there’s no amount of mass shootings that will change my mind. Besides that I actually believe in constitutional rights, if there’s a mass shooting every day, all the more reason I need my gun for protection.

@HMS_Irruncible

Gun lovers live in an alternate reality in which every mass shooting actually demonstrates the need for even more guns . It doesn’t matter if there’s a mass shooting every day. The cause is always a lack of guns (and probably somehow Disney is also at fault). The remedy is for every man, woman, and child to be strapped and ready to kill someone 24x7. If you ask how we entered this dark scenario, it’s because we took prayer out of the classroom and let women out of the kitchen.

@wolfpup

Anyway, to answer the OP, no. If neither the extraordinary rate of gun violence in the US compared to the rest of the developed world nor the extraordinary incidence of mass shootings has even moved the needle on gun supporters’ views of gun control, I don’t think any further incidents will change their minds. We’ll continue seeing bogus rationalizations like the ones above, and paradoxically, more mass shootings will probably drive up gun ownership even further.

Nuanced opinions

@k9bfriender

IME, the only thing that has ever changed a gun advocate’s opinion is when someone they know or love is harmed by them.

@Sooner

My starting position on most subjects is as a civil liberation, and as such I supported an individual’s right to own a gun. But Sandy Hook was the breaking point for me; after that it seemed the public good outweighed the individual right.

But I do think I am the exception; […]

@Fretful_Porpentine

No, there isn’t an X amount of mass shootings that would change my mind, short of some unlikely hypothetical situation where mass shootings became many times more common than they are. Mass shootings are pretty much the definition of a high-salience outlier event, and I think basing public policy decisions on one’s emotional reactions to rare and unusual events is almost always a mistake. It’s the kind of thinking that has brought us fifteen years of taking our shoes off at security screenings. I’m open to changing my mind on this issue (at least on points #1 and #3, above), but it would have to be on the basis of evidence that tighter gun control laws would work and wouldn’t be so politically costly that they reduced the chances of passing other stuff that I care about more.

With enough mass shootings, gun supporters would change their minds

[crickets]

Well, possibly…

@DrDeth

Well, sure “a Columbine every single day” would change things,

~Max