If it was a different study I was confused on, then I apologize. But the methodology for the study often cited was conducted by telephone survey of 4977 people. That the same one?
The middle is unsexy and boring; it involves exasperating haggling over details.
If it was only a question of a scale of utility vs risk, a middle ground would be fine. The problem is that there is a Boolean yes/no decision regarding limiting or prohibiting firearms. The question is “should the people be forbidden to possess a class of weapons reserved to the government?” If you answer “yes”, then you have a conflict with the political theory the USA was founded on. It would be like a late-eighteenth century government declaring that muskets were “too dangerous” for the people to possess, but they could have swords, knives and clubs for their personal defense, and bows and arrows for hunting. The whole point of owning guns was to make the people well armed enough that the government couldn’t impose a dictatorship at bayonet point. If a monopoly on “serious” weapons is reserved to the government, then you’ve tossed out what was considered a founding principle of freedom: to possess the power of resistance to government.
Now of course modern weapons technology has cast that into doubt. But as late as the 1930s the National Firearms Act was framed to not ban the possession of automatic weapons in theory (though it virtually did in practice), and most people acquiesced to that because is was regulation and not a ban. If we went by the theory the Founders used, everyone should have an unfettered right to own at least a full-auto assault rifle, and maybe RPGs, shoulder-launched SAMs, artillery and tanks if they want to pay the expense. If you decide that the Founders couldn’t have foreseen the vast increase in lethality of modern weapons, then there’s a legitimate debate over whether the entire theory of an armed populace needs to be rethought. But ideally it should require explicitly amending the Constitution to reflect such a radical change how we want our society to be structured.
I think OP did a good job of summing up the debate.
FWIW, I am pro-gun. I like to think that I am a highly competent and safety-conscious gun owner. When I see people on this website call me “crazy,” “stupid,” or compare me to “Yosemite Sam,” it does not inspire confidence in you or the legitimacy of your argument. Rather, it appears to be an emotional appeal to sway moderates to your side by insulting the opponent and painting them as extremists. This portrayal is false and unhelpful, and makes me less likely to cooperate. As I am the one with the guns, my cooperation might be important in the face of any debate or legislation.
I will say this: Something is going horribly, horribly wrong in our world today. Guns are a part of it. The NRA has had its way for years, and their model of an armed society is clearly not working. Gun control appears to be the easiest solution because it is the easiest thing to legislate… as opposed to treating people like human beings or creating a peaceful culture. And not once have I seen anyone in the anti-gun stance explain how they will deal with illegally owned guns in the hands of criminals. The paradox of disarming the peaceful in full knowledge that the criminal will retain his weapons has never been resolved, aside from the notion of adding security by increasing the difficulty of acquisition. I agree with the posts above which explain why capping the number of firearms a person can own is irrelevant. Likewise, any law which prevents future purchases while grandfathering existing guns is also irrelevant and would not have prevented these crimes.
But what disturbs me is the idea that I am about to punished for a crime someone else committed. The question, in my mind, is whether it is morally right to surrender my firearms… knowing that they are secure in my possession… because someone else misused theirs?
If I give up my firearms, I have not contributed to anyone’s safety (since I wasn’t planning on killing anyone anyway).
My perception of the anti-gun argument is that my rights and my property are not important. I should give up my property because other people have done wrong. More importantly, my concerns are irrelevant because I am a nonhuman. All the posts that call me insane, or stupid, or delusional, or compare me unfavorably to cartoon characters are dehumanizing. The message I receive is that I am an unworthy non-person, that my rights are not important, and that I am not deserving of respect or consideration.
Unfortunately, knowing that my opponents dehumanize me and treat me with contempt only hardens my resolve to protect my property.
Well said.
I was in a situation recently were I expected the guys my Wife was a witness against to come through a door or window for several weeks.
I had a loaded duck gun leaning in the corner of the bedroom.
I’m bumping this because of something I would like to add to the OP. I wrote that the basic conflict on firearms comes down to perception of utility. That’s true but I now think that there’s another fundamental disagreement contributing to the conflict; namely trust. The anti-gun position is that they trust the government more than they trust their fellow citizens; the pro-gun position is the opposite.
Certainly the history of gun control in America fits this hypothesis; limiting the right of “those” people- African-Americans, immigrants, the poor, leftist radicals, striking workers, etc.- to have guns has always been popular. And it’s a testament to how trusted the government was until roughly the Watergate era that most people were unafraid to allow police a monopoly on carrying guns in urban areas. The anti-gun people see police as the trusted guardians of society, protecting the public from crime and violence. Many, including one or two on this board, see the government as the guarantor of rights, defending minorities from the tyranny of a fascist, reactionary majority who would use guns to terrorize and oppress liberals and progressives. The dismal picture- almost a caricature- of gun owners that they hold speaks to a profound distrust of their pro-gun fellow citizens.
The pro-gun side sees things differently, perhaps because they own guns themselves, along with many of their family members, friends and other acquaintances. They see good, decent people keeping and using guns responsibly, confident that the armed people they know are not criminals, sociopaths or psychotics, almost certainly no danger to any innocent person. As for the government, most hold at a minimum the opinion that the government cannot always protect them. Many feel that the police are far more human and fallible than is often acknowledged. They are dismayed at laws and proposed laws that blindly lump the innocent with the guilty, and that the government seems not to care about the distinction. Some look at known abuses of government power and fear what would happen if a government with a monopoly on armed force ever decided that no obstacle to defying the will of the people stood in its way.
While today these two positions roughly correspond to liberal/conservative political views, there have been and are exceptions. “Law and order” conservatives have favored gun control, while liberals distrustful of the government have opposed it. The defining factor seems to be the ratio of trust in the populace to trust of the government.
The first time I read a post that long rather than skimming it. 
Very good points.
I believe most people post from the abstract; until they went to prison, I feared that criminals who tried to rob my Wife would break into the house to kill her. However unlikely, that is certainly something to worry about.
In a nearby neighborhood of the wealthy, the police routinely wait fifteen minutes to respond to burglar alarms due to false alarms when Soccer Moms get home and forget to turn off the alarm.
I’m scared.
I consider myself a moderately “anti-gun” person (although I’d describe myself as “pro-gun-control” rather than “anti-gun”) but I don’t fit the description you’ve given.
I don’t think most guns or most gun owners are a problem. I think the average gun owner is able to handle his or her firearm in a responsible manner and doesn’t need any special training. If I were given absolute power of gun control, I would not confiscate the majority of firearms in this country.
To me, our nation’s firearm-related problems (and I do feel we have such a problem) is caused by the proverbial one percent of the people who cause ninety-nine percent of the problems. I think our gun control policy should be directed at keeping firearms away from these people.
But realistically, gun control isn’t going to happen in this country. I’m not willing to ignore the Constitution just because I disagree with it. So to me, the first step in gun control would be the huge hurdle of repealing the Second Amendment - and I don’t see that happening in my lifetime.
I think that’s a bit simplistic. Some of us are less interested in the principle of the thing* than we are in practicality.
I was for the War on Drugs until I realized it didn’t work. I’m for gun control because I know it does work**.
*I don’t think there’s anything weird about wanting a gun for home defense, but I do think the idea that private firearm ownership will save us from a tyrannical government is nutso; I also think open carrying is really weird.
**assuming it’s done on a national level and not the pointless patchwork deal we’ve had in the US.
I believe you are missing quite a few points of “middle ground”, all of which I believe are completely Constitutional under a fair reading of the phrase “well-regulated”. For example, one could easily allow all firearms but require national registration and training, and perhaps even proof of competence. Or could require a mandatory background check, including pysch eval, for all purchases including private sales.
I don’t believe your absolutist reading of the Second Amendment is valid, and as far as I know neither does SCOTUS. A well-regulated militia could, both in the 1970’s and today, limit what types of arms the common militiaman bears. It just can’t keep him from bearing arms in general.
What do you suggest?
In principle all that sounds fine, and I wish it could happen. It would be within the government’s explicit power to require the “body of the yeomanry” (in the 18th century parlance) to undergo training, and be disqualified for gross incompetence or adjudged mental illness. But it’ll never happen because almost no one on either side of the debate wants that.
Cite? Where has it worked?
In the UK.
Please provide a cite that shows the drop in crime that happened almost a decade later had anything to do with gun control.
Cigarettes harm people via secondary smoke and thus are regulated in places in the same way that cheeseburgers are not.
Are you under the impression that the UK did not have tight gun restrictions prior to 1997?
OK provide a cite for the early legislation and show where the law had a direct effect on the homicide rate.
Or are you unable to back up your unsubstantiated claims?
I assume this is an admission that the 90’s legislation did nothing to reduce the homicide rate.
Here you go. There are fewer than 1,000 homicides in Britain per year. It’s not because it’s a place full of nice people, I can assure you. It’s because nobody has a gun.
Yet Switzerland has lots of private guns and almost half the homicide rate of England!
But you are moving the goalpost. You haven’t provided any evidence that gun control reduced the homicide rate.
If you are going to claim gun ownership rates are correlated to homicide rates you need a cite for that too. As far as I know there is no obvious pattern.