It is naive to evaluate gun control proposals based on their stated goal of reducing gun violence. If this were the priority, stop-and-frisk would be the top proposal.
The lens of friend/enemy politics gives a clearer picture. 🧵 1/9
Gun control primarily imposes restrictions on law-abiding middle- and working-class gun owners and would-be gun owners.
This is a heavily Republican group. 2/9
Criminals continue to have easy access to guns, and this is not likely to change in a country with a vast trove of existing guns. (Stop-and-frisk would make this riskier/less convenient).
This group is a tool—and sometimes more direct client—of the left. 3/9
Thus Democrats oppose policies that would most reduce access to guns for their political allies, and advocate policies that would restrict such access for their political enemies. 4/9
The most likely political use of guns by citizens will be to protect against anarcho-tyranny. We saw a mild version of this in the tacitly regime-sanctioned mobs in summer of 2020; a more extreme version could look like China’s Cultural Revolution or the French Revolution. 5/9
In such scenarios, guns—especially AR-15s and the like—provide citizens on our side significant protection against hostile mobs. They need not defend against tanks or SWAT teams; they simply need to motivate a mob to move on or disperse. 6/9
Many on the left know these mobs help advance their agenda, and recognize citizen gun ownership threatens this. They are pushing for gun control measures that will both disarm such citizens, and add tools to prosecute those who do use guns against these mobs. 7/9
In contrast, many in these mobs are armed with the sort of weapons not threatened by gun control laws: rocks, Molotov cocktails, black market guns (often the sort stop-and-frisk would have removed).
Gun control measures thus shift the balance in their favor. 8/9
In sum: any time you see an apparent inconsistency (or the “hypocrisy” normie conservatives like to trumpet) in Democratic gun rhetoric, reevaluate through this friend/enemy lens. Behavior should make more sense. 9/9
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