I was just reading the (recently locked) thread on "why liberals should support the second amendment" and while I can certainly understand the reason for closing it, someone brought up an important point that I think bears further discussion: Why is it that opinion about right to carry issues splits so starkly down political lines?
There are some issues like taxes, welfare and abortion that are intuitively predictable by what we might consider the definitions of conservatism and liberalism, but to my mind gun control isn't really one of them. Liberalism is typically associated with civil rights, (if you don't agree that this is true in practice, hopefully you will agree that it's true at least in intention and self-identification; you would hardly accuse the ACLU of being a conservative organization) and yet on this one issue which I think most on this board would agree that RKBA is one of the most important civil rights we have. (I don't mean to imply that this is contrary to the ACLU's position.)
Before I go any further I'll tell you that I'm probably in the minority here in considering myself to be mostly of a liberal bent, and I'm also in the minority of liberals in my wholehearted support of the second amendment (although this isn't as small a majority as you might think). Also, I know it's my first post but don't think this is a hit and run; I've been lurking for a quite a while and I plan on sticking around.
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This is an interesting question for me because many of the people I know who have fairly similar political positions otherwise have very different second amendment positions. One of the best explanations I've heard for the underlying bases of liberalism/conservatism was given in a
TED talk by Jonathan Haidt on the very issue. It's a bit long, but I think quite eye-opening and actually very good at defining philosophies as a function of basic moral senses.
If you don't end up watching it, his basic point is that five parameters of morality go a long way toward defining us, he gives them as
*Harm/Care
*Fairness/Reciprocity
*Ingroup/Loyalty
*Authority/Respect
*Purity/Sanctity
The basic idea is that liberals tend to emphasize the first two, conservatives tend to elevate the final three, though not to the exclusion of the first two.
So why might this discrepancy help explain this split? Issues like this are difficult to analyze if you don't understand the perspective of the opposition, which admittedly can be difficult if you're rarely exposed to someone opposed. We're all familiar here with the pro-gun stance, but If you haven't tried looking at things from the other side in a while, I'd like to try and illuminate just what the other half are thinking on this issue.
First of all, I think there is a cultural difference in perception and exposure to firearms among liberals that might be difficult to understand if you've been around guns your whole life. Since liberals tend not to own guns (lets take this as a given for the moment), pretty much the only exposure to firearms comes from the news and entertainment media (movies/tv). Excepting the latter, news reports involving guns mostly break down into a) Military conflict, both involving the U.S. and not, and b) violence, i.e. armed robbery, gang violence etc., c) accidents. There are occasional reports of guns used in defense, although fairly rare. This causes the inevitable perception that the use of a gun is inevitably bad news. In some sense I don't think this is entirely wrong. Whenever anyone gets shot it tends to be a tragic event; and even in a justifiable self defense shooting it's still an unfortunate situation. I think this perception is heavily tied to the Harm/Care issue mentioned above: When firearms are the cause of pain/injury/death, we tend not to like them very much. I think there are probably some on the right that at least would agree that this argument works in principle: no guns means no shootings.
Before we're quick too quick to contend with the obvious, and mostly true cliche, "guns don't kill people, people do," I the idea that guns cause violence, rather than merely facilitating it, has a kernel of truth to it. Hear me out. The first issue is that of escalation. The contention is that what might end as a fistfight in the absence of guns can easily become a shootout in their presence of them. We know it's not that simple, but I don't think the scenario is totally impossible either. The "only outlaws will have guns" argument is subject to a similar refutation—the rapidity with which a law-abiding citizen can become a murderer is frighteningly quick. It may not happen often, but we do see the occasional case of a CC permit holder acting illegally, and sometimes even murderously. The majority of these cases do in fact seem to be cases of elevation. Wether road rage, a power trip, crimes of passion, etc., The presence of a firearm certainly has the potential to make a bad situation worse, and this is the central fear that drives liberal anti-gun sentiment.
Related to the cultural differences in exposure and perception of guns is that of association of the right with the military. It's both stereotype and fact that conservative people and families tend to be more closely associated with the military, and I think that this agrees quite well with the above Loyalty and Authority dimensions discussed. When guns are viewed in the context of the guardians of the free world, the perception shifts a great deal from that discussed earlier; into a downright positive light. I think this also manifests on a family level, where, on the other side of the "bad situation worse" coin, we see the potential for a firearm to fix a dangerous situation, and protect our family, our "tribe" per se.
Discuss, and I hope this time we can keep the conversation civil and on topic enough for the mods
