Another perspective. [View All]

[russ1943]

Ideology, Politics and Guns…………………………….
.......Chait's distinction between liberalism and conservatism may have even more to say about the debate over gun control than about economic issues. As should be unmistakable from the comments to this blog, the opposition to gun control arises from a deeply felt ideology. Restrictions on guns are impermissible per se, as invasions of a "god-given" freedom.

In contrast, gun control proponents start with the existence of a problem (100,000 Americans killed or wounded every year by gunfire) and propose various reforms not because they are valuable per se, but because they are seen as pragmatic ways to attack the problem. Indeed, there is much debate in the gun control community over which reforms will be effective, much as there is robust debate among liberals generally about what economic policies will be effective.

This kind of internal debate is foreign to the "gun rights" crowd, for which the freedom to possess and carry guns is an unquestioned good and the only task is to identify and defeat threats to that freedom. The work of scholars showing the benefits of gun regulation, or the danger of gun carrying, is automatically dismissed as "biased" because it cannot be reconciled with the "gun rights" ideology. Chait's description of conservative economic reasoning is equally true of "gun rights" reasoning: "It begins with the conclusion and marches back through the premises."......................
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-a-henigan/ideology-politics-and-gun_b_780570.html
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