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

If you think of conservative beliefs as being driven by fear, that will explain almost all conservative idealogy.

First of all, thank you (sincerely) for the thorough response. It’s always helpful to understand how the other side thinks, even if I vehemently disagree with it.

I think at this point we’re at risk of going around in circles and maybe talking past each other, so I won’t try to respond to every point, but there’s a couple of basic comments I wanted to make, beginning with the bit that I quoted above. [ETA: this turned out to be much longer than I had intended, sorry! :slight_smile: ]

This apparent disinterest in what the rest of the world is doing – including countries that are very much like the US in their basic values – famously turns up all the time in gun policy debates. It also turns up a lot in debates about health care policy and universal health care, and is invariably introduced by conservatives. It’s hard to shake the notion that this is just willfully ignoring inconvenient truths and valuable lessons from reality, a willful blindness formalized by the fiction of “American Exceptionalism”.

One might wonder whether the fiction of American Exceptionalism in this regard would be so eagerly invoked if the experience of other developed nations happened to support the policies that conservatives wanted. Indeed, one doesn’t have to wonder. They have no problem bringing up the fact that there is a high rate of gun ownership in Switzerland, yet gun violence is very low, so we can supposedly conclude that there is no correlation between number of guns and gun violence. So international comparisons are just fine when they support their argument. Of course they forget to mention that Switzerland has the kind of gun control that would drive the American pro-gun crowd into fits of apoplexy.

Your point about “cross-variables” that supposedly confound such comparisons might have some merit if we were trying to account for relatively small differences in such metrics as gun violence, gun proliferation, or mass shootings. But when the difference between the US and those otherwise similar countries in these metrics is measured, not in a few percentage points, but in many multiples – 600%, 1000%, 10,000% – the “cross-variables” argument rings hollow. Just for another random example, for instance, a CDC study some years ago on gun-related deaths among children, comparing the US with 12 other developed nations, found that the rate of gun-caused deaths among children under 18 in the US was greater than in all 12 other countries combined.

As for “scoring cheap political points, and totally useless in coming up with actual solutions”, there is some merit in that last phrase but I would put it differently. What you find in looking at gun policy in other developed nations is that there is indeed a vast gulf between policies that actually work and anything that would be realistically achievable in today’s American political climate. I would consider it defeatist to think that examining how those policies work in those countries to be “useless”. Isn’t it more rational, if one is serious about ending the plague of gun violence, to consider such policies to be a model to work towards, in the long term?

I’m sure that’s true. The problem is that when everybody and his dog owns a gun, it only takes a very tiny percentage of those nominally “law-abiding gun owners” to wreak major carnage. Most of the horrific mass shooting of recent years were committed with legally owned guns – hardly surprising, since it’s so easy to legally own one or ten or a hundred. Here’s the basic message: every law-abiding harmless gun owner is law-abiding and harmless until he isn’t. This is the fundamental core of the American gun problem. Criminals having easy access to guns is just a side effect of their incredible abundance; if someone has such an extensive criminal record or mental health record that even near-useless US state laws might prohibit gun purchases, why, there’s always straw purchases or theft.

Do those things affect you personally, or the costs or the policies of your government? Because US gun policy does affect those things in Canada. You will note that in the stats I quoted upthread, while the rate of gun violence in Canada is more than six times lower than in the US, European countries (and Australia and many others) do much better. While there are multiple reasons for this, it is a fact that criminals in Canada get most of their guns smuggled across the border from the US, conveniently the gun capital of the universe.

Yes, because the fundamental problem is gun proliferation and ease of access. This is the fundamental lesson that gun advocate chooses to ignore. To re-iterate a quote I’ve made before:

If you have a country saturated with guns – available to people when they are intoxicated, angry or depressed – it’s not unusual guns will be used more often," said Rebecca Peters, a Johns Hopkins University fellow specializing in gun violence. “This has to be treated as a public health emergency.”

And there truly are many things to be fiercely proud of. But also things that badly need fixing. Having by far the worst record in the developed world for gun violence is surely not something to take pride in. Lack of universal access to health care is another.

As long as the right kind of people are getting shot, most Americans don’t care (or in many cases see it as a positive).

Good. When you said “Most Americans that own guns (myself included) do not care how our statistics compare to other countries.” it sounded like you were making a broad statement about country comparisons.
But OK, you agree that country comparisons are fine in general but sometimes might be invalid or misleading. Sure.

This all seems like the typical flailing about though. I don’t see why any of this invalidates comparisons of gun homicides or mass shootings. They are all reasons why the US has this problem, not confounding factors in measuring the problem.

Then we come to your last point that the US has a lower homicide rate than some other countries. Which…yeah…the world’s wealthiest country has a lower homicide rate than some of the most dangerous countries in the world…in a world where generally wealth is inversely correlated with homicide rates. Party time?

This is a fast-moving thread but I cited statistics earlier to demonstrate exactly that point. To re-iterate:

The US has the worst homicide rate among advanced developed countries. All countries with a worse homicide record than the US are either less developed and/or have a history of domestic* violence or criminality. A few selected examples (full list at the link); numbers are national homicide rate per 100,000:

US 6.3
UK 1.2
Canada 2.0
Australia 0.9
France 1.2
Germany 0.8
Greece 0.8
Netherlands 0.6

Cite

And the homicide rate in Canada would be even lower (probably more like in those other countries I cited) if we didn’t live right next to the world’s biggest gun factory.

Also, when you look at actual gun-related deaths, the discrepancy between the US and all other developed countries is much, much greater than that.

No wonder gun advocates refuse to look at the realities in all other comparable countries.

* - clarification: by “domestic violence” I meant internal violence like civil wars as opposed to international wars.

No… because by and large people are not logical animals. There are many rational means to reduce gun-related violence but they are not politically or emotionally acceptable to enough Americans to make implementing them feasible.

As an example: eliminate all guns and you eliminate all gun violence - it’s entirely rational and logical. But it will NEVER happen in the US because Americans simply won’t stand for it

So let’s please stop pretending that this problem isn’t deeply rooted in emotional/psychological issues, as well as history and politics.

If neither side is willing to acknowledge the emotions of the other side we will never get anywhere. And a lot of those emotions are deeply rooted in fear. On both sides. A lot of anti-gun people (though not all) fear being shot, maimed, or killed or that happening to their loved ones. A lot of the pro-gun people (though not all) fear attack and thus feel a need to walk around armed at all times. It’s not just about controlling other people - a way I see the dispute frequently framed - it’s also about fear and how a person approaches their own and their family’s safety.

There is a LOT of fear in American society, and the more fear the more violence we get. Everyone wants to reduce violence but no one wants to talk about what we’re all so damn afraid of. Instead, a lot of people deny they even have fear and put on false bravado. I don’t think that’s a good approach to life, but then, few people ever ask me how to live their lives and I’m not really interested in ordering other people around.

Um… I don’t know about that. I’d be OK with certain categories of people being armed for self-defense, mostly people who are less physically able to defend themselves, people in wheelchairs or who are elderly or with mobility issues. As long as they could safely operate a firearm of course. The disabled are targets for mugging and physical assault because they are perceived (and often are) less able to fight back or escape.

So I could see a self-defense option, but one that would need to be justified.

I disagree with this stance (with the addition that I know you are not holding this as your personal position)

Seems to me a lot of “states’ rights” folks are very gung-ho on local control… except when it comes to local control they don’t approve of. Why shouldn’t a city be able to ban weapons within its borders? Are cities not local governments? Are their councils not elected by their citizens? Shouldn’t their citizens be able to have a say in local laws? If a city chooses to ban guns who are people outside that city to negate that?

Cities banning/regulating guns has a long history in the US. In the “Wild West” days cities like Dodge and Tombstone prohibited guns within their limits. The famous shoot-out at the OK Corral stemmed from an attempt to enforce local gun laws. It’s not cities banning/regulating guns within their limits that is a new thing, it’s overturning those bans that are the new things.

The Second Amendment contains the phrase well regulated, which seems entirely forgotten by those on the more extreme end of pro-gun rights. Rules ARE permitted.

We have a LOT of situations where the laws differ between city and rural, and for good reasons. Just look at the difference between driving in a city vs. driving in a suburb vs. driving in farm country. There are good and valid reasons why speed limits inside a city are so much lower than in open farm country or wilderness. There are good and valid reasons for much more traffic control devices, markings, and laws inside a densely populated city as opposed the the minimal regulation and control out in the rural areas.

Why should guns be different? Certainly, guns are used differently in rural Wyoming than in New York City. Why shouldn’t New York City regulate them differently than Wyoming? And why should Wyoming be able to dictate the rules to New York City, or New York City be able to dictate to Wyoming?

For a less extreme comparison - why should farmers in southern Illinois be allowed to dictate gun rules to the city of Chicago? Why should Chicago be able to dictate run rules to a farmer downstate?

And yet, it would seem many (though not all) of those same want to allow a business to deny service to people based on religious or other beliefs.

Nevermind that guns pose a greater potential danger than, say, gay people wanting a wedding cake.

I sort of feel this personally, working in a glorified grocery store where we have a problem with public misbehavior. Everyone needs to eat, including the dysfunctional, criminal, and disturbed, not to mention the rude and bigoted. If people behave we do our best to accommodate them, but we already have the police remove people all too frequently for various forms of misbehavior - theft being the most common but since January we’ve had a half dozen people removed for actual fights and one instance two people committing arson. We’d really prefer no one enter the store armed. We can deny entry, or have someone removed, who is intoxicated, why can’t we say “no guns”? Won’t stop a mass shooter like that nutjob in Buffalo, but it will cut down on what I would term spontaneous stupid use and lower the stress level.

As for government facilities not prohibiting use - that’s yet another case of someone with a bug up their butt wanting to tell everyone else what to do. If local states/cities can set their weapon rules then so can the Federal government. If that gets your panties in a twist you can purchase your stamps and ship your packages elsewhere. These same folks go ballistic if someone tells them what to do but have no qualms ordering everyone else about. Bunch of hypocrites.

I don’t think certain types of murder will decrease - as you note, mass murder can still be done by car or bomb.

But I do think certain types of murder will be become less frequent. Bullets travel long distances, through things like walls, and this adds to the “innocent bystander” death toll. A shoot out between two people in the street can result in people yards away, or inside nearby by buildings, being injured or killed even though they have nothing to do with the dispute. A knife fight will not result in an errant blade killing someone in a nearby building or car.

While not impossible, it is more difficult to kill another person with a knife or your bare fists, so in addition to lack of bystander casualties there is less risk of an emotional impulse resulting in another person’s death.

If I personally want to avoid getting into a bar fight I can simply choose not to go into bars. If I’m in a building next to said bar (for whatever reason) the bar people can start fist-fights or knife each other or stab each other with broken pool cues or bludgeon each other with furniture and it’s not my problem. If, however, they start shooting at each other flying bullets might harm or kill me as I go about my business in that next-door building. That’s a big difference between guns and a lot of other weapons. The bystander problem. The theft of choice of other people to avoid things they want no part of.

If the guy who lives next door to you decides to set his house on fire that concerns you because that fire might set YOUR property on fire and put YOU at risk. Likewise, guns aren’t just a problem for those who carry/use/mis-use them, they’re a problem for anyone around that could be injured or killed by a flying bullet. That’s the big difference.

Nations that don’t allow civilian gun ownership still have murders and violence, but they don’t have as many bystanders maimed and killed by it.

While I can follow your reasoning I do not agree with it.

Yes, there are circumstances where you being personally armed will make a difference. There are others where it will not.

There have been “mass shooting incidents” where one of the people in the crowd was armed. It doesn’t always work out like in the movies. In the recent Tops incident in Buffalo there was an armed guard on the premises, a former police officer (thus, a person with some training in firearm use and also someone with experience of violent situations) who did shoot and hit the gunman… but did not stop him and wound up dead himself. Arguably, his actions did enable some others to run away, but we can’t really be sure of that. Here is an account of an armed citizen who stopped a shooter and was then shot by the police. Here is an article about a man who stopped a shooter and was shot dead by the police. Personally, I think it unlikely that a random citizen will be able to be the hero in a mass shooting, and even if that person did stop a bad guy the mere fact they have a weapon in their hands makes it far, far more likely the police will shoot them. As counter-intuitive as it might seem, you might be safer to be unarmed in a mass-shooting rather than armed.

Actually, that would not be true of most of the gun owners I know. But then, most of the gun owners I know are not extremists. You also might not know they have guns for a long time after you meet them, because they don’t fetishize their weapons. They don’t wave around their guns any more than they wave around a table saw or ratchet set. They own them quietly and use them responsibly. In fact, most of them vote Democrat and are quite liberal. One I know is a Trumpist but he’s still a quiet and responsible gun owner who is quite gonzo about gun safety and responsibility.

The problem is a sub-set of gun owners who have an… odd relationship with their weapons. Who are loud and in your face about it. Who want everyone to know they own guns.

^ This is arguably the biggest gun problem we have right now.

It would really help if urban people wouldn’t try to solve this by banning ALL guns everywhere. It would really help if rural people wouldn’t try to prevent cities from regulating guns within city borders. In other words - stop trying to tell people in very different circumstances from yourself what they should or shouldn’t go or how to live their lives.

Evidence would indicate that the answer is an emphatic, “NO!” In fact, many of them insist that, if we had MORE guns, we’d be safe from the crazies who seem to have access to as many guns as they want. Sandy Hook and other school shootings? Their thinking is that, if everyone in the school had a gun, no one would dare come into the school and shoot them.

City level regulations are worthless. Chicago isn’t Tombstone. The Sheriff can’t approach every traveler into Chicago to check them for weapons, and people can travel hundreds of miles in a few hours to get any weapon they want in a friendly jurisdiction.

If we actually want to successfully reduce the number of weapons in Chicago, we must make it so that Chicagoans can’t hop in a car, drive to a store, buy a gun, and drive back to Chicago with it. We must make it so that a person can’t buy a dozen guns, drive to Chicago and sell them on the black market. What I mean is NOT that we need to make these acts illegal, we need to make them not happen.

While I don’t want to be either Canadian or European or anything other than the American I am, I also don’t have a problem with looking at how other nations deal with problems. I am NOT under the delusion that we always have the right answer. Why shouldn’t we change an adopt a better solution that was invented elsewhere? We won’t stop being American if we admit we’re less than perfect and borrow better ideas from elsewhere. Or at least, being an American shouldn’t be so fragile that adopting a better solution from elsewhere would shatter our identity.

There are some really bad, serious problems this nation has and we are fools if we don’t examine how others deal with these problems better, whether it’s crime, health care, maternal mortality, or a lot of other areas where America’s performance is less than stellar.

And this is a point on which we both agree - suicide by firearm is a problem linked to mental health. And you know what? We are shit when it comes to mental health care in this country. Yet no one seems to be serious about actually doing something about it.

And yet you’ll have extremists shouting about rights, regardless of whether or not that person is a danger to self or others.

We did not have guns in the house when I was growing up because my mother had severe depression issues and was exactly the type of chronically anxious/frightened person who would shoot a family member who got up in the middle the night to take a piss or drink a cup of water. We were, if you will, responsible NON gun-owners. Mom was not safe around guns, either to herself or others. Not because mom was a bad person, or evil, but because she had mental health issues.

But what if mom didn’t have relatives around her to help her feel safe? What if there were no laws and she could have easily purchased a gun? (Mom couldn’t under current laws - history of psychiatric hospital stay along with a suicide attempt. I think it was pills but I’m not sure - I was a newborn at the time and have no direct memories of the time.)

I agree - we should not deny rights to the vast majority because of the problems of a few. But we should still regulate to address “the problems of a few” so they don’t become the problems of other people. That means those regulations have to have real meaning and some real teeth.

What would bring some of that total down is addressing the source of those problems - something conservatives are often loathe to do, because it requires spending money on something that doesn’t feed their ideology or their personal pocket book. We have some very bad problems with defects in our society and yet, due to our own pride arrogance and refusal to even look at how other people approach these problems nothing is ever done to address those defects.

Poverty and crowding breed violence. Yet affordable housing is become scarcer and scarcer (nevermind decent housing - even slums are becoming expensive), CEO’s and executives make more and more every year while people who work a full time job (or two!) at minimum wage can’t afford to house and feed themselves, the people who handle your food at restaurants and grocery stores don’t have paid sick time and risk losing their jobs if they admit to being ill… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Want to reduce violence in general, and not just gun violence? Do something that actually reduces poverty and let’s people live in decent, uncrowded conditions.

Here’s the thing - rich people crammed into high rises don’t devolve into gangs shooting each other. Poor people can and too often do. What’s the difference?

Here’s the difference - your cancer can come through my bedroom wall and kill me while I’m sleeping in my own bed. Your heart disease can’t shatter my kitchen window and explode my skull while I’m cooking dinner. Your diabetes won’t end my life while I’m watching TV in my front room. Bullets can do all of that.

I can take steps to reduce my personal risk of cancer, heat disease, and diabetes. My risk of dying from a gun right now depends on the people around me and what they do. If I do come down with those conditions my poor health will not put those around me at risk, even potentially. Firearms owned by my neighbors are not under my control, and mishandling by others could end my life. That’s what makes gun deaths difference from deaths from cancer/heart disease/diabetes.

I agree that the Chicago ban on guns was pretty damn useless. I don’t think that automatically makes ALL city-based gun regulation useless. Note I did not say bans, I said things like rules and regulations. They are not the same thing.

I think there is a role for sensible and practical regulation, and I think that it’s perfectly reasonable for those regulations to differ depending on the environment (such as “urban” vs. “rural”)

That was considerably hampered by the east border of Chicago being an entirely different state. It wasn’t just that the city regulations stopped at the city border and the state regs took over, if you cross the eastern border of Chicago entirely different laws and rules apply, and there wasn’t even a physical barrier, like the Mississippi river between St. Louis and southern Illinois or Detroit and the Canadian border made up of the Detroit river. That border between Chicago and Indiana is invisible on the ground, you can cross it without knowing you have done so, thus making moving across it for illicit purposes much more difficult. Combine that with hostility between over-bearing Chicago and Northwest Indiana municipalities and you had a situation where one side sabotaging the other was almost inevitable. Add in a few bad cops in the Lake County, Indiana sheriff department getting involved themselves in gun-running and illegal sales for profit and yeah, the Chicago attempt crashed and burned.

Even for legal gun owners the change in law when you cross that border can be a headache. Not just for the Chicago-Indiana traffic, but also the South Suburb-Indiana traffic.

Yes.

We need to get at the source of these problems and not just treat the symptoms. I’m not going to sit here and claim I have the answers. I don’t. I do know that what we’ve been doing the past 20-30 years is not working. So it’s time to look at why it hasn’t worked, what other people have done, and try a different approach.

Let me throw out an example of how I think Illinois does something right and Indiana doesn’t which I have personally experienced.

There have been a couple occasions when I had to enter a government building in Indiana where various things like both firearms and cellphones are not permitted. The firearm thing isn’t an issue for me, but the cellphone certainly can be. If you get to the entrance and go “oops!” the only recourse is to return to your vehicle and stash the item there. Which… isn’t the most secure thing, as there is a risk of people breaking into your car while you’re doing your business. I have also had reason to enter a similar building in the South Suburbs. At that location, at the entrance, they had lockers where you could deposit your items, lock 'em up, and take the key with you while you did your business, and said lockers were in a much more public location where attempted theft would be noticed and presumably stopped by the nearby law enforcement officers. This was particularly handy for people arriving by bus, who would have no vehicle in which to lock anything up.

The Illinois solution strikes me as superior. You are giving people a secure location for their valuables (of any sort) so they can be responsible in securing them. There is less incentive to try to sneak through, no one is getting their stuff confiscated, or having to leave it in a less than ideally secure situation. I’d be totally in favor of that being adopted here in Indiana.

Is it going to solve every problem? No. But it would help people comply with “please leave your firearm outside the court/government building”.

I really liked every aspect about this post (except the tragic parts of your mother’s life).

A few more rather general thoughts (none of this is specifically addressed to you, @Broomstick ):

  • American exceptionalism: to whatever degree there are aspects of the US that are excellent, we got to that place in spite of the exceptionalists, not because of them. They do look to other nations, but only to reassure themselves that we’re better (see: how do Mexico and Saudi Arabia treat illegal aliens ?). Collectively, they are actively disinterested in evaluating, understanding, and promulgating best practices. That’s idiocy (or pathological tribalism, or both);
  • Addressing the societal determinants of poverty and crime would be great. In the long run, they might help to bring down gun violence (and have no end of salutary knock-on effects). But – much like the abortion issue (fighting against contraception, choice, and comprehensive sex education leaves people with nowhere to go. It corners them without solving any problem), fighting not to address the numerous social determinants of poverty, addiction, etc., that statistically increase violence … while fighting against any further gun regulation … is demanding that all of us pay so that ‘you’ don’t have to relax your grip on your vacuous, reflexive ideology (see: 'Murica, Freedom !)

Another thought:

In aggregate (I emphasize that), the US gun situation has begun to epitomize the notion of opting out of the social contract; it’s the ‘rugged individualist’ or ‘Social Darwinism’ ethos on steroids.

Americans have begun not to care:

  • about clean drinking water for all. They have whole-house filters or bottled water delivery
  • about a world-class education for all. Their kids go to the best schools in the world
  • about high crime rates in our cities. They live in gated communities and have high-tech alarm systems. And as many firearms as they like
  • about our infrastructure. They have backup generators (grid failures), leviathan SUVs (crumbling roads), etc.
  • about health care for all. For the most part, if you have money, the best health care in the world is accessible to you in the US

I could probably go on, but I presume the point is made. There used to be a notion of the common good that seems to be a fading memory. And it was integral to the advancement of our country.

It’s really been replaced by “Fuck you. I got mine.”

#Murica !

One more (thoughts coming slowly this morning. Sorry):

I think the US gun violence problem has some parallels to the international idea of nuclear weapons.

We work for nuclear non-proliferation (on the hubristic assumption that ‘the good countries’ are responsible and ‘valorous’ enough to have nukes) while striving to ensure that nukes don’t wind up in the wrong hands.

Which is an effort to reduce the unimaginable in our world.

But just scale that down, and you’ll have the American gun violence issue, writ small.

It’s hard to justify an ethos that proliferation of firearms in the US is A Good Thing in any material, rational way, or that its effects have worked to the collective benefits of the majority of its citizens.

It’s the system effectively used in my own country (and, I gather, several others). There is a self defence firearm licence type. Good luck getting a new one if you can’t prove your life is actively in danger. Not hypothetical danger, but e.g. a celeb receiving death threats (and even there, it’s not certain).

I just personally would not allow even that loophole.

I mean I won’t speculate on why this is the attitude, but I was trying to at least be somewhat deliberate in attempting to explain the American attitude. I believe my explanation of it is quite accurate, most Americans really do not care what outsiders think–it isn’t just something hyped up in comedy and media, that is honest to God the “man in the street” norm in this country. Right, wrong, or neither it is reality, and thus my main point is that “appeals to Canada/Europe” are just supremely unlikely to be a successful effort at fixing any of America’s problems.

I could say more here but I think both of us have said our piece and further back and forth on that aspect isn’t going to change anything. I will note that the U.S. is not unique among OECD countries in having high crime, and that it is pretty blasé to gloss over the many ways countries like Germany or Sweden are different from the United States or Mexico to suggest that it’s really easy and logical to compare those quite societally different European ethnostates with U.S. and Mexico which are much more historically violent New World republics.

FWIW I do not think mass shootings are that big of a problem as compared to gun homicides more generally. Mass shootings are unfortunate but I think when you deliberately choose to focus on the most sensational crimes, and not the larger systemic crime picture, it is the entirely wrong approach–and I think this is one of the first things gun rights advocates will do when the first approach of gun control advocates is to seek bans on specialized long guns, that are used in some mass shootings, when as an overall percentage of gun crime they are involved in single digit percentages.

It is Canada’s responsibility to keep guns out of their country if they don’t want them there.

The idea that if you have more guns, to some degree you will have more gun crime, is fairly uncontroversial, but frequently overstated. As I mentioned there are several OECD countries in the Western Hemisphere with higher homicide and violent crime rates than the United States. These countries invariably have much stricter gun laws and have much fewer guns–so whatever association there is between presence of guns and crime, it is not strictly linear, or the United States would literally have by a massive margin, the highest rate of homicide in the world, and that just isn’t the case.

I feel like a common counterpoint is “well, you can’t compare America to some of the less developed countries, because those countries are poorer, have various other issues etc”, which seems like the same sort of argument people just dismiss when I say you can’t just compare America 1:1 to countries like Germany and Sweden. The reality is that the United States government likely has at no point in its history had a realistic option of “confiscating all the guns”, for one we have a system of strong Federalism, which would have precluded any centralized attempt until at least the 20th century, and even then, I just don’t see it as being feasible. Most countries with very small numbers of guns never had significant personal firearm ownership, and have more centralized countries where a regime can come in and impose fiat rules on the entire populace far, far easier than can be done in the United States.

It is not idle talk that for much of our history any effort at national disarmament likely would have precipitated massive amounts of violent resistance, possibly even a civil war, and certainly large swathes of States simply refusing to comply at all which would require Federal military intervention.

Countries like Britain and Germany are made of different stuff than the United States. We were founded in violent rebellion to (fairly reasonable) taxes, within the first decade of our existence as an independent country we had major rebellions against national rule over taxes. We had a long history throughout the 19th century of having huge swathes of the country exist with almost no central government oversight or control, policing was generally unprofessional and ad hoc. Half the West was settled by settlers who deliberately chose to ignore signed treaties between the Federal government and Indian Tribes.

There was never a big switch America’s politicians could have flipped that turn us into Britain, Germany, Sweden etc. If you want the guns you will have to fight for them–and that would be true at any point since 1776–in fact if you recall the first violence of the American Revolution was a British attempt to disarm the Massachusetts militia.

Edit to add: Note there are significant numbers of elected Sheriffs and appointed Police Chiefs in America who have outright said to the media–they will not participate in any mass gun confiscations, regardless of what the law says. This attitude of resistance to central authorities did not end after the Civil War.

It’s not the first approach, it’s the only one with a chance in hell of happening. Gun control advocates want more than anything else control over handguns. They are not morons, they know handguns kill way more people than long guns, but that ship has sailed, it’s not happening here, not today at any rate.

Specialized long guns are the one category of weapons that is both responsible for the most heinous individual killings in our history, and is basically a toy rather than a tool.

I disagree, I think after the fallout of the 1994 AWB, any approach that starts with banning any guns based on features, is dead in the water. There are other things you could pursue–licensure, mandatory safety training, etc–not now, but in some world where the country is not so polarized, and at least some such proposals have pretty strong support.