After every mass shooting, people’s feelings of anger and frustration quickly turn political, since Republicans are the ones who oppose the passage of new gun laws that many feel would help solve the problem. The most common explanation I’ve seen for why Republicans don’t want to pass new gun laws is that Republicans are beholden to the NRA & the gun lobby. That they can’t pass anything that would put a dent in the gun industry, for fear of losing the support of these influential donors, and ultimately losing elections as a result.
I can’t say the NRA explanation doesn’t have any validity to it — but in my view it oversimplifies a complicated situation, and it doesn’t address any of the legitimate concerns there are with passing new gun laws.
I’ve been a conservative all my life and I’ve heard all the various arguments against gun control, and I know there are some legitimate reasons why Republicans and conservatives are averse to passing new gun laws — reasons that have everything to do with public safety and saving lives, and also a belief that passing new gun laws won’t do much to stop future mass shootings from occurring.
I write this to share where conservatives are coming from on this issue, and I also think it would be a mistake to ignore these aspects of the problem when crafting solutions. It could make a bad situation worse.
So here goes… As I see it, many of the conservative arguments against gun control can be grouped into a few basic categories.
1. Guns are often used for protection and self-defense.
When conservatives think about guns, they think about people having the ability to protect themselves and their loved ones from harm. I saw a Gallup poll that said the number one reason people choose to own guns is for personal safety/protection (as opposed to hunting or other recreational uses).
And it appears that guns are used for protection more often than you might think. A major study from 2013 found that “almost all national surveys indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals.” Some surveys suggested that guns were used much more often for self-defense than for crime.
Some of the new gun laws being proposed involve banning certain types of semi-automatic weapons, typically referred to as assault weapons. But a good friend of mine who knows guns well said that the AR-15 (an assault weapon) is arguably the best weapon for home defense for the average person, due to its relatively low recoil and ease of control compared to other guns. He says the AR-15 is more accurate than handguns, more maneuverable than shotguns and traditional rifles, and its high capacity makes it more dependable than other guns (you’re less likely to run out of ammunition when defending yourself). I found a couple of gun experts online (here and here) who said similar things about the AR-15 being the weapon of choice for home defense.
I found case after case where an AR-15 was used successfully to fend off attackers and quite possibly save lives.
On the other hand, the things that make the AR-15 a great weapon for self-defense are probably also what made it a weapon of choice for numerous mass shooters in recent history. Its accuracy, ease of handling, and high capacity make for a deadly combination. Perhaps a ban on the sale of certain categories of weapons like the AR-15 would leave mass shooters without such easy options for high-volume killing, and yet still leave law-abiding people with great options for self-defense / home defense. This article, for example, found that 4 of the 8 gun experts they interviewed choose to use a handgun for home defense, as opposed to a AR-15 or other rifle.
Another element of gun control legislation has been to restrict the magazine capacity for guns. But I remember a great passage from my favorite writer Thomas Sowell on this subject:
“People who know nothing about guns, and have never fired a shot in their lives, much less lived in high-crime areas, blithely say such things as, ‘Nobody needs a 30-shot magazine.’
“Really? If three criminals invaded your home, endangering the lives of you and your loved ones, are you such a sharpshooter that you could take them all out with a clip holding ten bullets? Or a clip with just seven bullets, which is the limit you would be allowed under gun laws in some places?”
I think that people who fight for the right to bear arms do so mainly to make sure that good, law-abiding people have the ability to defend themselves and their loved ones as they see fit. It is about protecting and saving lives.
2. Guns deter crime, even when they’re never used. A lack of guns emboldens criminals.
I think there are more guns than people in this country, which is something a lot of people lament, but is something that arguably prevents a lot of crime from occurring.
Criminals don’t want to get shot, and in many cases they have no idea who’s armed and ready to fight back. I’ve read that in America, about 28% of burglaries are committed when residents are home, whereas in Great Britain (where guns are nowhere near as prevalent as in America), about 59% of burglaries are committed when people are home. American burglars say they avoid occupied homes for fear of getting shot... British burglars have admitted that it’s preferable to steal from homes when people are home so they can take their wallets and purses — which ends up putting more people in harm’s way. This is just one data point (well, two) but I think it’s a good example of how criminals are emboldened by the lack of guns waiting for them on the other side.
A survey of criminals in U.S. prisons found that 40% of them had at some point in the past decided not to commit a crime because they “knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun”.
How many people in America are kept safe from criminals and criminal activity due to the heavy presence of guns in this country, and the fact that would-be criminals don’t know who does / does not have a gun and is able to fight back?
I’ve always said that I wouldn’t mess with anyone wearing an NRA hat — and I don’t think anyone else would either. You don’t want to mess with someone you think might be armed.
To that end, schools and places of worship seem like such soft targets, where shooters know that people inside won’t be armed and that they can kill as many people as they want to without facing return fire. This is what’s behind the idea among conservatives that schools should have armed guards or armed teachers (if the school district approves and if teachers are trained and willing) — to deter school shootings and better protect students and teachers if anything does happen.
When it comes to implementing new gun control laws, you’ll often hear conservatives say something like, “people who are intent on committing murder are already willing to break the law; it’s only law-abiding people who will be restricted by new laws.” I think conservatives look at new gun laws as shifting the balance of firepower away from ordinary Americans and toward those who seek to do harm, just emboldening them to attack now-softer targets.
3. Conservatives believe that new gun laws would do little to stop mass shooters.
I’ve gotten the sense that a lot of conservatives feel that passing new gun laws won’t do much to stop mass shootings in America.
One reason is the general belief that anyone who is hell-bent on committing a mass atrocity (already very much against the law) isn’t going to be stopped by a new law. It seems that these people are going to do whatever they have to do — steal guns and ammo, buy them from whoever will sell it to them... they’ll find a way around whatever law you pass.
Conservatives also doubt the effectiveness of particular gun control proposals that are out there. Take the assault weapons ban that was proposed in Congress this year — banning the manufacturing or sale of all assault weapons. It just seems that there are so many assault weapons and parts already in existence, that there will be a way for sick people to get their hands on one. (Although making it more difficult for these killers to get an assault weapon should stop some from getting them.) Or perhaps they’ll just use non-assault weapons to commit their atrocity (although this would be better than the alternative, if it resulted in fewer lives lost).
Or take expanded background checks — requiring background checks for all gun sales. This sounds like a good idea, and the vast majority of Republicans polled do support this. But a New York Times analysis of 19 recent mass shootings found that in 17 of these cases, the guns used were purchased legally, with the purchaser already passing a background check. In the other 2 cases, a background check was started, but the shooter was allowed to purchase the weapon because the background check was not finished within 3 days.
Based on this, it doesn’t seem like expanding background checks to include private sales (closing the “gun show loophole”) will make much of a difference in terms of preventing mass shootings. If anything, it seems like the background check process needs to be improved and strengthened, instead of just expanded to cover private sales. In their analysis of 19 recent mass shootings, the NYT concluded, “At least nine gunmen had criminal histories or documented mental health problems that did not prevent them from obtaining their weapons.”
Back in 2015, Senator Marco Rubio said, “None of the major shootings that have occurred in this country over the last few months or years that have outraged us, would gun laws have prevented them.” This statement was fact-checked by Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post — and he concluded that Marco Rubio was correct. (This material is a bit dated at this point, but it still shows where Republicans are coming from, with some validity to back it up.)
I do think it’s important to try and decrease the number of mass shootings or the impact of them, even if you can’t stop them outright. It’s just that many conservatives doubt how effective new laws will be at doing that — and they already see downsides to gun control laws in terms of self-protection and public safety, as discussed above.
I would support any law I thought would make it harder for would-be mass shooters and criminals to acquire and use guns, if it ensured that law-abiding citizens would still have the ability to defend themselves effectively using guns. We wouldn't want to pass a law that saves some lives but loses even more lives in the process. This is why I support improving and expanding background checks — I think it strikes the right balance here.
But for a lot of the other gun control proposals, conservatives don’t feel confident that these laws will thwart mass shooters and also preserve the means of protection for ordinary Americans. That’s why conservatives tend to favor non-gun control solutions to thwarting mass shooters and gun violence, such as a greater emphasis on mental health issues (finding better ways to identify and address problems before they reach a breaking point); keeping armed guards/teachers in schools (to deter and/or minimize the impact of shootings); and longer prison sentences for violent criminals (a major source of gun violence appears to be people who had committed violent crimes in the past).
I’m no expert on the subject of gun control — I probably should’ve told you that before you spent time reading this — but I do know a thing or two about where conservatives are coming from on the major issues. And this is my honest attempt to explain why conservatives and Republicans are generally opposed to passing new gun control laws — even in the midst of these awful shooting tragedies.
