I’ve always found statistics in gun debates useless in the sense that we will always gravitate towards the statistics which affirm the position we already hold, and there is no shortage of convincing statistics on both sides of the gun debate. So when discussing these differences I prefer to look at this from a much simpler standpoint; if we step back, any argument using statistics to favor less gun restrictions is ultimately arguing that more guns results in less gun violence.
This argument is of course absurd on its face, or to be more diplomatic, counterintuitive. So to be charitable, I believe that most gun enthusiasts who make these arguments fail to recognize the core of their own position.
To try and steel man it; the idea is not to reduce gun violence. This is about the rights of law abiding citizens to protect themselves, and their safety should not be compromised because of those who don’t follow the law. As Wayne Lapier famously stated “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”.
I have always been amazed at both how wide spread and also how childishly simplistic this kind of thinking is. Essentially, the world is full of good guys and bad guys. That’s it. There’s no nuance here we should be concerning ourselves with. No moral dilemmas, no good guys who made bad decisions, no “bad guys” who are also themselves victims, etc.
So if one has convinced themself that gun violence is the result of bad guys with guns, then the next logical step is to accept that the places where gun violence is at its worst are the places with the most bad guys. And what do you know, it just so happens to be black neighborhoods.
Acceptance of this narrative is the very thing the “woke left” is talking about when it points out racism in America. Telling someone they are a racist does not mean accusing them of hating back people and spending their weekends at clan rallies. It’s pointing to, among other things, a mindset where one views the black community as less than to the point where a problem like gun violence could easily be accepted as “their own fault because they don’t know how to conduct themselves responsibly”.
To be clear, one can find plenty of other reasons to oppose gun control so I’m not arguing that all 2A enthusiasts are racist, but when you step back and look at the national conversation, you look at who benefits and who loses from our unwillingness to do anything about gun safety in America, and you put them together, it becomes very obvious that racism plays a big part of it. If white neighborhoods were plagued by gun violence the way black neighborhoods have been I sincerely doubt the “bad guy with a gun” narrative would resonate anywhere nearly as strong as it does.
