The science is settled

Via ‏@ItsRobbAllen we have an article about a paper demonstrating that mass shootings do not usher in a new age of gun control. In fact it is just the opposite.

Correlation is not causation but from looking at the numbers it seems pretty clear that horrific mass shootings are followed, a year or so later, by less support for gun control than just before the mass shooting.

The authors of the paper are clearly in favor of gun control. They ask, and answer, the question of how to go about “Breaking the Cycle”. The cycle being the “regression to the mean” and a continued drop in support after an initial surge in support for gun control following a particularly horrific mass shooting.

Their answer, in part, is:

To change the shooting cycle, gun control advocates must change the gun culture. But to change the gun culture, gun control advocates must explain, or at least distance themselves from the position that causes the fiercest opposition—that the Brady Campaign sees as its ultimate goal the criminalization of possessing guns. Nelson “Pete” Shields III, a founder of Handgun Control, Inc.—the aptly named progenitor of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence—openly advocated for the elimination of all handguns: “‘We’re going to have to take this one step at a time. . . . Our ultimate goal—total control of all guns—is going to take time.’ The ‘final problem,’ he insisted, ‘is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition’ for ordinary civilians ‘totally illegal.’”197 John Hechinger, a sponsor of the D.C. handgun ban and a board member of Handgun Control, Inc., put it simply: “We have to do away with the guns.”198

The anti-gun people have difficult hurdles to overcome. They must attract supporters that are willing to donate money and time to, at best, only make small incremental, paper-work type, changes to gun laws. They cannot speak or even whisper of banning guns. Without banning, and perhaps even with draconian bans, people with any smarts about them will realize “universal background checks”, “gun free zones”, and restrictive carry laws are just crazy talk. How many people are willing to spend time and money on something that only benefits their cause in some abstract way of encumbering “the gun culture”.

If they could speak of grand plans to ban guns and create a “gun free America” if only given enough money and time then they probably could get more support. But doing so increases their opposition more than their support.

So how to “change” (eliminate) the gun culture? That is another huge hurdle. There are no “anti-gun ranges” or “anti-gun shows” to take people to for fun, learning, and familiarity. A process/cycle has been identified for which the chances of the anti-gun forces breaking is very low. To disrupt the cycle requires a raising the bar to gun ownership such that the propagation of “the gun culture” is inhibited. But raising such a bar is virtually impossible at this time because of the courts and the resistance with which disruption is met with.

It’s a similar problem to that faced by those who advocate for reducing greenhouse gases which contribute to “Global Warming”/”Climate Change”. People like the benefits of those activities which produce the greenhouse gases as a side effect. Any effort to break “the cycle” of greenhouse gas production encounters very stiff resistance on the specifics of the proposed legislative action even though some polling data indicates a sizable portion of the (mostly ignorant) population agree with the vague, overall goals.

One could say that this paper settles the science on the politics of gun control. The gun control people are losing and as long as we continue expanding our culture they will continue to lose.

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17 thoughts on “The science is settled

  1. “The ‘final problem,’ he insisted, ‘is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition’ for ordinary civilians ‘totally illegal.’”

    They meant to say “Final Solution” but found themselves so directly and obviously connected with their ideological roots that they had to change the word to “Problem”. We all know what it means, Guys.

    I take the whole quote to mean;
    “Being honest simply isn’t going to work. We need better and more sophisticated deception and manipulation tactics.”

    I say go for it, Progressives. We already know your motivations and goals, and if you think a new set of ruses, a new play book, will help, then go ahead– this should be entertaining.

    The problem for the Progressive way of thinking of course is that evil, although very powerful and highly motivated, has a pretty small bag of tricks, it’s kind of dumb and ridiculous, and more than a little suicidal.

  2. Yep, their plan is to completely conceal their motives….and they’re doing a TERRIBLE job at that. There are countless instances where gun banners have said they would do a total ban and door-to-door confiscation, and praising the confiscations and bans of places like the UK and Australia.

    They’re liars, but they can’t say “Yeah I was a fool for saying that”!

    • And you’ve had personal experience with the effect barriers to entry have on growing the gun culture.

      One of the more interesting things about the Feeding Frenzy of last year was many antis were open about how much they hated the Culture and saw it as the biggest threat to their dreams.

  3. Statists have to be circumspect (read: lie) about all of their end goals. If they were honest about it, even the LIV’s would balk. Nearly a century ago, they realized that violent and/or abrupt revolution would only succeed in backward economies with no middle class. That realization gave us Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and the Fabians. Just use Obamacare as an example. From Zero on down, they told advocates we would be getting single payer, but in a single jump, it would never happen. For the general public, mock even the idea that they want single payer. Pure Alinski, which strangely enough, Obama taught for years.

  4. The problem for ME is no one ever lays their hand on ME again with impunity; I submit these people have never been victims of violence. Those of us who have will never ask questions of others.

  5. “There are no “anti-gun ranges” or “anti-gun shows”

    If a gun and an anti-gun meet, is there an explosion?

  6. I kind of have to in part disagree with the paragraph you typed about the funding and support. In terms of funding they blow us out of the water. bloomberg and the VPC can if need be pump billions into the gun control effort and is probably one of the very few reasons why gun control has not died. Although I do agree with you that this also causes backlash among the general population and makes us fight harder. Also they may not have mass public support but they have near total control and complete support from the government, media and public and private education. And if Bloomberg wanted he can literally buy and election of just bribe them enough. And since he is an anti-gun statist who hates freedom he would get away with it. No way the government would stop it even if he openly and on film broke campaign finance laws.

  7. Somewhere between “no guns allowed anywhere ever” and “everyone must carry a gun 24/7,” there is a middle ground.

    • That is a somewhat common straw man. I have never heard any pro-gun person even suggest that “everyone must carry a gun 24/7”.

      It’s freedom of choice. If you want to carry a gun 24/7 there are very few legitimate situations where that shouldn’t be acceptable. But to demand everyone must or must not carry a gun is an abuse of the power of government.

    • And yet somehow that “middle ground” always means “Let’s ban guns based on cosmetic features.” “Make it so only the politically connected can carry.” And “Price guns out of the hands of the poor.”

    • There certainly *is* middle ground, and it’s this: every person free from prison and (possibly) from mental illness should be free to carry the weapon of their choice, 24/7, no questions asked, no background checks. *But* no one should be *required* to carry a gun, except in times of civil unrest (rebellion, lawlessness, revolution, etc).

      I’m willing to waver somewhat on the mental illness issue, because I have a sister who is a schizophrenic. It’s hard to say that she should be allowed to carry weapons, but she’s not at a level of danger that would require her institutionalization. Having said that, I think it should be a family decision to keep her away from weapons and dangerous objects–not just guns, by the way–but I would sooner trust the family to make such decisions over government.

      Finally, I would like to highlight that my proposition would include people who committed felonies, even violent ones. I would simply say this: if someone could be trusted with freedom, then we /implicitly/ trust them with arms, because there are so many ways to arm yourself (even illegally–with guns, of all things!) that we might as well not pretend that they are unarmed.

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