Responding to a dozen posts, without quoting them:
To simplify, the population is in two camps.
- The larger camp is worried about gun violence, which includes mass shooting / massacres, crimes (often within/among gangs, but also crimes of passion), and accidents. They don't see a purpose in having guns.
- The smaller camp sees guns as a fun hobby, and/or is interested in personal liberty (example: to have guns because I'm allowed to, not because I enjoy them or use them), often as part of a political statement: being anti-authoritarian and anti-government.
Many people fall in neither camp, and just don't care either way. This is an important observation: most people really don't care strongly about gun politics. The division between these camps is not particularly neat, there are overlaps. Personally, I am solidly in both groups.
In the last few generations, the members of the two camps have sorted themselves neatly into political alignment, with the first group strongly associated with democrats, the second group weakly associated with republicans. Conversely, the two parties have recognized that serving the wishes of the two camps is an easy and cheap way to get votes, and to get supporters energized. There is a feedback loop here: People in these camps organize themselves (into organizations such as "moms demand action" and the NRA), these organizations work with politicians who are willing to listen, and form symbiotic alliances. This is why moms demand action is so closely tied to D politicians, and why the NRA is nicknamed "National Republican Auxiliary". In reality, most politicians are in the "don't care about gun law" group, but they are willing to work with their pressure groups, since it has significant benefits for them (votes, turnout, donations). Why did I say "weakly associated" for republicans? Because they have a long history of talking the talk, but no walking the walk: democratic lawmakers are good at actually passing and enforcing anti-gun laws; republican lawmakers usually do nothing, or are somewhat anti-gun if political control or public safety demands it (recent example is Ms. Bondi).
The cost of that political sorting is that gun rights and gun law has become a pawn on the political chessboard. Today, most anti- and pro-gun legislation and lawfare is not done for good reasons (such as reducing crime and violence, or expanding rights), but to annoy the opposite side. That's because most politics has become negative, and is driven by hate for the others. To a typical D voter, it has become more important to make an R voter angry than to improve the world, and the same statement is true if you switch the letters D and R. There are other issues (in particular abortion and LGBTQ rights) that have a similar function in our political "discourse": most people don't care about them, a few believe in them fervently (pro or con) and are willing to organize, and politicians use these true believers for their purposes. And this is why getting angry is so counter productive: Anytime a pro-gun R voter resorts to insults like "Newscum", Newsom is winning! He has managed to get the other side to be angry and irrational, which will please his side. Above, I had said to someone "you are part of the problem", and this is why.
If we want a rational approach to this, a few things need to be done. The first and most important one is on the sociological and political end. Both sides need to get cooled down, and need to be dragged out of this being a political fistfight. This means that any time Newsom or de Santis do something stupid but publicity seeking (as just happened with the Glock ban that started this thread), we need to stop just over-reacting. Work on public opinion (such as: take people who are not interested in guns or slightly anti-gun to the range), and wait for the courts to sort this out. Stop supporting scammers (such as Alan Gottlieb, Brandon Combs, the Giffords center people, or most of the NRA leadership), which suck money out of doing useful things, and become the laughingstock for the other side. Let me repeat that: Under La Pierre, the NRA became the strongest anti-gun organization in the country, and it did more damage to gun rights than Bloomberg or Giffords could ever have hoped. But Wayne was rich (and presumably well dressed, fed and laid), good for him.
The next thing that needs to be done is to break the alignment of gun rights with partisan politics. As long as it is an easy target for an R/D politician to be pro/anti-gun, the situation will not get better. For this two organized groups need to exist (yes, BOTH are needed): pro-gun democrats and anti-gun republicans. Without such groups, it's too obvious for politicians to simply take the default action, which is to serve the wishes of their supporters, and anger their opponents. The moment politicians (both elected and in the party smoke-filled rooms) need to start triangulating, their regulatory fervor will cool down a lot, since it gets hard.
The first group (pro-gun democrats) is easier for us to accomplish (by "us" I mean people who like and want guns, which includes me). But this only works if gun people stop insulting and pillorying democrats wholesale. And that includes D-aligned groups, such as PoC, immigrants, LGBTQ, and first and foremost women. Messages that are often heard (and visible in the subtext of some messages in this thread) such as "women are dumb, therefore they are anti-gun" are incredibly damaging to the cause of gun rights. Because if the public at large becomes convinced that pro-gun people are all SWAM (straight white American / able-bodied male) driven purely by hatred of all other groups, we are losing big, since traditional SWAM are a small minority today.
For me personally, I used to put considerable effort into working with pro-gun groups. Such as getting California legislative staffers (democrats) to gun ranges, so they can actually see and shoot the things they are trying to ban. I stopped doing these efforts about 15 years ago, since working with other people on the pro-gun side is just too hard, since they are mostly scammers, obnoxious
s, or both.
and propaganda a mile away. Women have evolved to be smarter simply because they are not bigger and stronger.
