good read - Slate "Why Are Conservatives So Obsessed With Gun Rights Anyway?"

[NRaleighLiberal]

Belief in gun rights hasn’t always been a conservative ideology. Psychology helps explain how it took off.
By JOHN EHRENREICH

https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/why-conservatives-are-so-obsessed-with-guns.html

Why has support for gun rights become a hallmark of the Republican Party? There is nothing inevitable about the combination of economic and foreign policy conservatism with social conservatism. As late as the mid-1980s, conservative icons including Ronald Reagan supported gun control measures such as the Brady bill and a ban on assault weapons. Support for gun control legislation actually increased among Republicans in the 1980s. Unambiguous support for gun “rights” didn’t appear in the Republican Party platform until 1988. Even the National Rifle Association did not become fanatically opposed to any and all gun regulations until the late 1970s.

During his 2008 primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama famously proposed a crude psychological explanation for why traditionally Democratic-leaning groups of voters were being drawn to Republican positions on social issues. Industrial jobs had disappeared from the small towns of Pennsylvania and the Midwest, he noted, and Republicans and Democrats alike had failed to address the distress of these communities. So, he said, it’s not surprising that “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion.”

Obama’s explanation was superficially plausible (and has been widely adapted to explain the appeal of Donald Trump), but the facts provide little support for it. For one thing, the increase in attachment to guns that Obama lamented never actually happened. The percentage of American households owning a gun has declined steadily since the mid-1970s. For another, support for gun “rights” is actually stronger among more affluent Americans than among poorer Americans, the very ones who are supposed to be “bitter.”

In any case, events do not precede their causes. It is hard to find much evidence of the “Great Bitterness” before the past two decades, long after the decline in manufacturing and agricultural employment was already underway and long after the Republican Party’s shift to strong opposition to gun control.


snip - long read, very interesting. Read it all at the above link

[underpants]

1. God Guns and Gays

Lee Atwater's three pillars of the Reagan Revolution. They've had incredible success with identity politics in terms of the gun crowd. Less success with the God crowd (white evangelicals yes) and the Gays issue drastically turned on them within the last 5 years or so.

[procon]

2. Here's the damning quote:

"Some project their own anger onto others, fantasizing that people of color, immigrants, and feminists are the cause of their own inner torments. Anger, if nothing else, makes them feel bigger and more powerful."

Says it all, right?

[TheSmarterDog]

7. .

[smirkymonkey]

8. Perfect!

[Thomas Hurt]

3. Because at the heart of conservatism is a hyper-individualistic streak...

they think they live in a John Wayne movie. The rugged individualist on the frontier fighting off the savages, wild animals, and outsiders...magical thinking, fear of change and the "other"?...congenital low-grade paranoia?

[haele]

5. Unfortunately, there is no longer an indifferent frontier for them to leave bones drying...

...as a warning to others who flee social pressures for the illusion of ultimate freedom and are still woefully unprepared to take responsibility for their own actions...

Those "hardy, individualistic" pioneers emigrated to the territories and frontiers in groups for a reason. And the laws they established amongst their groups were stricter and harsher than any laws in the "civilization" they left, because the group had to survive in extremis for several years before they could be considered "thriving".

The problem with freedom is one has to work for it internally much harder than it is to work for it externally. Exposure to the universe as a whole is complete, and the risk one takes just to do anything...including just finding a safe place to sleep...is can be perilous. The chances of dying alone and un-noticed are very great.
It takes a particular mindset to be able to handle freedom, and most people aren't capable of handling it without going insane as well as feral. Just ask anyone who's been homeless for over a year - in fact, the reality is that homelessness is the result of practicing ultimate individual freedom if you don't have enough money to purchase your preferred level of comfort for any length of time.

I don't think that going feral is what most people want to do. They still want to be comfortable in their "freedom".

Haele

[Downtown Hound]

4. Because deep down they are extremely insecure, afraid people

And having a gun makes them feel better.

[Saboburns]

6. Because Republicans are afraid of all those brown people.

Whom they are sure are all criminals.

It’s not hard to understand Republicans. Once you understand just how racist, sexist, and ignorant they are.

Don’t over-think why Republicans do the things they do, and think the way they think.

Racism.

Sexism.

Ignorance.