Since 2000, the percentage of Americans who want stricter gun laws has fluctuated between 45% and 60% while the percentage in favor of fewer restrictions has been only 5% to 15%. And when it comes to some specific proposals, more than 90% of Americans support universal background checks.
So, why in the wake of routine gun massacres like the one that just took nine innocent lives in Oregon, does nothing happen in Congress?
To strip it down to its essence, the answer is passion. Those of us who support stronger gun safety laws also might support more funding for public education, action on global climate change, more transportation options, reproductive rights, addressing the nation’s racial disparities and on and on. Gun control might rank someplace in the bottom middle of our list of priorities.
But for gun advocates there is almost nothing else that matters in their lives. I am an outlier. I am a gun owner myself, but to me my deer rifle and my shotgun are just means to an end. They provide an excuse to sit in the woods or a field or on the edge of a river for hours and hours and enjoy the outdoors. If I get a chance to bring home some venison or a duck breast, so much the better. But I believe that my American freedom is defined by the First Amendment, not the Second.
For true believers, the gun is a symbol of America itself, the guarantor of their freedom, and a strong statement in the culture wars about who they are and who they are not. For these folks, a couple of dozen dead children here and almost a dozen or so dead community college students there is a small price to pay for their very lives and their lifestyle, which they believe their guns protect and represent. As for the mass killings, well, “stuff happens.”
So, President Obama now tries to reframe the issue as a public health debate. He reasons that guns are just like dangerous roads that we’ve made safer or flooding rivers that we’ve tamed or viruses that we’ve fought with immunizations. His target here is not the slim but powerful minority that favors absolute gun rights at the expense of everything else we hold dear, but that fluctuating 15% of Americans who make the difference between 45% support for tougher laws and 60%.
The president’s efforts will not have any short-run success with this Congress. If anything, Congress has become even more extremely pro-gun in the wake of these horrors. But in some progressive states (not Wisconsin), tougher laws have passed, and more might be coming. Ultimately we need to shut off the spigot of semi-automatic weapons and handguns and start to reduce the available supply. This worked in Australia, where that nation’s response to just one of these awful gun massacres has resulted in a dramatic decrease in gun deaths. Australia now has only .14 gun deaths per 100,000 citizens, while the U.S. has just under than 3.
What we’re witnessing right now is the power of passion. A small minority of zealots are preventing progress that a strong majority of Americans want. As long as we take the attitude that we can’t do anything we won’t do anything. And as long as we allow the issue to be framed as freedom through the gun versus tyranny through control of the gun, rational arguments will keep falling short. The president’s attempt to recast the debate in terms of a public health threat may be the answer. But it’s probably not because it’s so rational, and this issue is all about irrational and passionately held belief systems.
Still, it’s worth a try. Those of us in the gun control majority are out of any other kind of ammunition.
