The Left and The Right’s Flawed Gun Debate
I’m calling B.S. on the prevailing popular arguments from both political wings on guns.
A common right wing argument is that more guns and less restrictive gun laws has a correlation with less crime and gun violence.
A common Left wing argument is less guns and more restrictive gun laws has a correlation with less crime and gun violence.
The less spoken argument is the wider the gap between the rich and the poor has a correlation with more crime and violence. The smaller the gap the less crime and violence.
No one can prove that the correlation of more gun laws will net less violence. It’s a correlation equals causation argument. Just like people arguing less gun laws an more guns equals less violence. There are areas where people have more gun laws that have less crime or more crime just like there are places that have less restrictive gun laws which have high crime rates and others with lower crime rates.
The Knee Jerk reaction by liberals to immediately start talking about new gun laws after every tragedy or conservatives arguing that more guns or some master marksmen civilian being near the crime scene is the equivalent of someone putting anti itch cream on their privates because they have athletes foot. With the exception of the Virginia Tech shooting most gun laws people advocate after a Tragedy would NOT have prevented the tragedy from happening if the proposed law was in place prior to the tragedy. So convince me of what gun law would prevent the tragedy at hand or past tragedy.
The correlation no one talks about is the Gap between the rich and the poor. If you look at the industrial rich countries and compare them, you’ll see the wider the gap between the rich and poor correlates with the increase of crime. Yet neither side has been pushing this as something which creates an atmosphere that is ripe for people looking at violence or crime as a necessary means.
I suspect the reason why neither side offers the wealth gap as a possible source is because it undermines both of their prevailing arguments around guns. And may expose both of them for using gun tragedies to advance their other political objectives.
For example Conservatives are usually hostile towards any conversations about the wealth gap between the rich and poor. They think any discussions about it is rooted in the envy of the rich. The wealth gap correlation argument could be used by them to refute liberals claim that too many guns is in itself the root cause. Therefore this ends up being a conflict of political interest.
Liberals primarily are very anti aggression and anti violent which leads them to being hostile towards guns in general. For them to propose the wealth gap correlation argument would mean they would have to admit that guns themselves is not the root cause. So this ends up being a conflict of political interest for them.
If you look at industrial rich countries you’ll see places like Switzerland that has the highest amount of gun ownership in the world next to United States yet Switzerland’s Homicide Rate is Very close to France which has a lower per capita gun ownership but a similar smaller wealth gap.
Once we acknowledge this correlation we can then attempt to dissect it. Until then everyone have fun putting anti itch cream on their privates to get rid of that athlete’s foot problem.
Further Reading:
Wealth Gap Correlation with Violence
Comparison of the wealth gap between provinces in canada and usa