U.S. politics move through familiar cycles. Here’s one of them: A mass shooter kills lots of people, most (or all) of them children. Media attention and public outrage follow. Many in the GOP dismiss the incident, blaming mental health and framing Democrats as opponents of gun rights. Democrats use the incident to push their usual set of ‘gun control’ solutions to gun violence – background checks, assault weapon bans, and targeted limits on who can own guns (e.g., red flag laws).
The Uvalde shooting at Robb Elementary School, of course, serves merely as the most recent example of this cycle.
Don’t Go Medium
The GOP and the Democrats agree on at least one thing: both adopt a ‘gun control’ frame when they talk about solutions to gun violence. Democrats do it because they want to pass certain kinds of laws, citing polls that show most in the U.S. support gun control in the abstract. The GOP does it because it knows gun control motivates more opponents than supporters to vote. This basic situation once led me to identify gun control as the worst political issue for Democrats.
But did Uvalde change any of this? No, it did not. I think it will play out about the same way as usual.
Why? Democrats repeatedly try to “Go Medium” on gun control. They release lots of proposals that feel big, but wouldn’t have a major impact. Things like assault weapons bans, bans on high-capacity magazines, possibly even red flag laws, and so on. These things probably won’t reduce mass shootings, and almost certainly won’t reduce overall gun violence rates. I reviewed some of the evidence in the previous post.
Go Small or Go Big Instead
I wrote the post in the context of a proposal by German Lopez to ‘go big’ on gun control. Lopez admitted that Democratic ideas wouldn’t work. And he wanted to do more. What would it look like to ‘go big’? Democrats could push for gun licensing and the banning of broad categories of semi-automatic weapons. They could confiscate existing weapons that violate new restrictions, and so on.
The major benefit of the ‘go big’ route is that it would probably work. At least, it would work over the long term. In the short term, it would likely lead to all sorts of Waco and Ruby Ridge type incidents. And police and prosecutors would almost certainly apply it in a racist manner. But, gradually, it would work about as well in the U.S. as it does in the other places that apply these very strict policies.
However, nothing the Democrats are doing right now would help them go big. The same old ideas about banning assault weapons and instituting background checks won’t add up to a ‘go big’ strategy. To go big, Democrats need to mobilize people for a constitutional amendment. And to get there, they need to undertake much broader efforts for change.
Alternatively, Democrats could ‘go small.’ Almost all Americans support a few gun control ideas. And these ideas don’t much offend gun control opponents. Modest bills on background checks and safety training, for instance.
Once Democrats accomplish those things, they could focus gun violence prevention efforts on the social democratic reforms that reduce gun violence far more effectively than gun control: universal access to health care, including mental health care and suicide prevention, better funding for education, expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, other cash assistance programs for the unemployed, and so on.
Again, Don’t Go Medium
Here’s why it doesn’t work to Go Medium: Going medium has all the disadvantages of going big with none of the advantages. And it has all the disadvantages of going small with none of the advantages. It’s unpopular with dedicated gun control opponents, but it doesn’t accomplish anything and it wouldn’t build consensus or open up opportunities for better solutions to gun violence.
Democrats arrive at the true heart of darkness on gun control when they run candidates like Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke puts a ‘radlib‘ spin on the standard ‘go medium’ strategy. He walks on stage saying “hell yes” he’s going to confiscate guns. In other words, he pretends to support going big. And then he runs for office on a ‘go medium’ platform.
Don’t do that. Why maximally annoy opponents while failing to even attempt to get the kind of results supporters want?
