The gun debate

Two more terrible mass shootings in the last week, one racially motivated  in Buffalo, New York, the other a suicidal youth in Uvalde, Texas, have brought the debate over guns back to the fore. 

As usual Democrats have called for banning assault rifles and more gun control generally, and the GOP has blamed mental health, lack of armed teachers and the rest of its regular litany of alternative explanations that might divert the conversation away from gun control.  So no surprises there.

What is becoming clear is that the argument is not about guns at all, but about identity. It has morphed into a debate about individualism versus collectivism.  The individualists want the right to bear arms in part because they do not trust the state to provide protection; indeed many do not trust the state at all and think their guns are their last line of defense against what they perceive as state oppression.  The collectivists believe that some curtailing of individual rights (gun control) is needed to reduce the number of gun-related deaths, at the same time trusting, indeed expecting, the state to protect its citizens.  This dichotomization of identity happens to line up with the rural vs. urban divide and the right/left divide.    

On the vertical axis is the rate of gun related homicides, on the horizontal a function of the ratio of democratic to republican votes in the 2020 general election, for all fifty states. There is a clear relationship between high rates of gun related homicides and right-leaning states.  What is so tragic is that in the twenty years since the Sandy Hook shooting, not to mention Columbine and all those since, almost no action has been taken by either party; the Democrats are stymied by the filibuster in Congress and an increasingly right-leaning Supreme Court.  

The GOP on the other hand has no excuse for inaction, and anyone interested in curbing the rate of gun related homicides in America should be asking the GOP two questions. First, from the list of possible causes (mental health, for example) what actions have been taken? Then two follow-up questions; if the answer is nothing, then "why not"? and if the actions have been taken then "to what extent have the worked"? My guess is that in those states favoring solutions other than gun-control, little if anything has been done. But if things have, we need to know if anything worked so that the same measures might be applied elsewhere.