Matt Yglesias is right that gun control is not a great issue for the Dems. But while he emphasizes the optics of the issue, I have a different argument: I think that at this moment in American history, liberals need to own more guns.
I also think liberals should join the military more.
But there's an additional reason that I didn't mention in that post.
One reason Republicans are going so crazy, I think, is the Turner Diaries fantasy -- the idea that "the Right has the guns", and so civil disorder and breakdown will favor the Right.
In reality, the U.S. Military (with the help of the National Guard) would win any civil war easily.
But that has not disabused the Right of the belief that they are armed, while their opponents are unarmed.
And that belief makes civil strife sound more attractive to them.
Equalizing gun ownership across the political divide would send a message that there's nothing to be gained by pushing the U.S. toward institutional breakdown, chaos, and violence.
When that message has sunk in, THEN we can talk about gun control.
Just because bad guys do a bad thing and don't go to prison for it doesn't mean it's "normalized". The bar for normalization is much higher than that.
In particular, Trump's presidency never felt normal, and I would argue it was never popularly regarded as normal or treated as normal by our institutions or culture.
In fact, newspapers articles regularly now label Trump's claims "false", "misleading", "baseless", and even "lies". Which is of course correct, but also suggests that Trump got *less* normalized over time.
This could be an illusion from talking to two different sets of people, but it seems like the folks who say "We're the richest nation in the history of the world, of course we can do X" are the same folks who say "We're a tottering dysfunctional empire on the verge of collapse"..
Of course in reality both are fantasies, we're a developed country with some unique structural issues and challenges but overall a pretty good place to live.
And of course, both "we're the richest" and "we're about to collapse" are histrionic statements intended to motivate policy change and counteract status quo bias, which of course both statements fail to do.
China's working-age population will hold roughly steady until about 2030, after which it will go into a steep decline. This is already baked into the demographic cake.
If a rapidly shrinking working-age population weakens a country significantly, then China has about one decade left in which to increase its geopolitical power before demographic pressures start to bite.
Which is one reason I'm kind of worried about the 2020s.
In the runup to WW1, Wilhelmine Germany was afraid that every day, Russia's power grew relative to Germany's. It was one reason they wanted a war -- to beat Russia before it got too strong.
Countries that feel like they're on the clock can be very dangerous.
It's hard for some supporters of student loan forgiveness to understand the antipathy toward the idea. But I think a lot of it is this: America has developed into a class society divided between college-educated and non-college classes, and student loans felt like an equalizer.
In other words, I think many people look at the college-educated class, who earn more then them, get more respect, have nicer jobs, have more job security, suffer less employment in recessions, etc., and think "well at least I don't have to pay off a bunch of student loans."
That's not to say I agree with this attitude or that I feel this feeling myself. I don't. I'm just trying to explain it.
What we actually need to do is compress this class society back into a middle-class one, raise wages, improve job security, reduce unemployment, etc.