I shall use a friend of mine, who can more eloquently put how we view the gun control case in better words:
First of all, I have a much broader dislike/distrust of the new wave of neoliberal/”the world is flat” leftism that is prevalent among a lot of the younger middle class. This is the generation that has internalised their parents’ anxieties about the Soviet Union and the dangers of communism, has thus been spoon fed notions of American exeptionalism (‘but, like, the United States is just good, right?’) by the media and government, pays attention to things like Kony 2012, and whose idea of a great thinker is Thomas Friedman.
The thing that irritates me so much about this group is that the political positions they espouse (shallowly) contain generally zero application of critical thought or credence to anything resembling a properly underlying theoretical basis. They may believe the “right” things, but there is no understanding of why this is or in what way such a belief is a consistent application of that theory (e.g. there is no attention paid to ontology or epistemology, even if it’s not in those terms).
This is coupled with a particular sense of arrogance or appropriateness that many conservatives find irritating about “liberals”. It annoys me as well. It is not difficult to take some university classes and then be able to regurgitate the same repetitive, hollow lines. These people use their ‘knowledge’ to lecture, bully, and belittle others who don’t “get it”, rather than having a discussion stemming from true understanding of issues. There is very little broader explanation of concepts because many people don’t bother to understand the positions they hold.
Now, to bring it back to gun control: every time a violent event takes place and a lot of people are shot (coincidentally, most often by middle-class white people), these hollow liberals see the bad situation, have only the critical thinking skills to go “this is bad”, and take up a position based on no other information. Comments from conservative gun owners do not spring from a vacuum. Every time, the same hollow adherents to broad “left” and “right” political doctrines (not theories) trot out and make the same staid, done-to-death, repetition-of-the-familiar arguments and that environment is fostered.
Gun control is a complicated issue that almost never has a complicated discussion. If someone is broadly in favour of more restrictive gun laws, they are branded as a hippy pinko who wants to de-arm white people. If someone is broadly in favour of more relaxed gun laws (a mistake, in my opinion), they are branded as a nutcase who lives in fear of the rest of society.There is often a cultural schism between, roughly, city folks and country folks who each have a different relationship to guns. From my experiences, I can say that I believe that the “city liberals” are pretty often ignorant about the issue and its complexities.
The conversation from both sides should be more about gun crime taking place at the bottom echelons of society. The bigger menace posed by guns is through gang and drug violence, not from the occasional person who goes off the handle and shoots up a movie theatre. But one is a spectacle, and one happens to “other” people. (As an aside, I always find it amusing that the people who insist more people with guns would be able to stop shooters sooner are predominantly whites, who enjoy significantly more protection from police forces than non-whites. These also tend to be the same whites who, under the guise of needing to “protect themselves”, end up going out and hunting down ‘criminal types’ à la George Zimmerman [and on racial lines].)
Liberals and conservatives who believe that gun control is about people with hunting rifles or a pistol locked up in their house, or even a school shooting, are missing the real dangers of guns and nullifying meaningful discourse.
The televised and often revisited occurrences of these events are made spectacles of. You see, it's very easy to get drawn into discussions that don't really matter, and politicians on both sides have used this fact effectively to get people to pay attention to them and issues like this, and by consequence, increase their voting margin.
People will talk about this shooting in Colorado for weeks and months, but no one will talk about how the United States is escalating the drug war into Africa. The drug war which is directly responsibile for THOUSANDS of deaths here and abroad, for poverty here and abroad, for our criminal justice system being swamped with BS crimes, and for continuing racial tensions.
When you can make the point, which is completely valid, that most gun crimes are carried out with weapons that were obtained illegally anyway, it's pointless to insist on more stringent laws that will affect people LEGALLY buying weapons. Stopping the occasional shooting deaths with legal guns is a drop in the bucket compared to the gang and drug deaths that no one seems to know about.
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