Lambert here, a proposition: Unwillingness to own the externalities of one’s own consumer fetish correlates highly with intensity.
By Laurent Bouton, Assistant Professor of Economics, Georgetown University, Paola Conconi, Associate Professor at ECARES and CEPR Research Affiliate, Francisco J Pino, Postdoctoral Researcher in Economics at ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles, and Maurizio Zanardi, Reader in Economics, Lancaster University Management School. Originally published at VoxEU.
Despite support from around 90% of US citizens, expanded background checks for gun purchases failed in the US Senate. This ‘gun-control paradox’ can be explained by the fact that the intensity of voters’ preferences differs across policy issues, and voters only have one vote with which to hold politicians accountable on a bundle of issues. A model incorporating these features predicts Senate voting behaviour very well. Senators closer to re-election are more likely to vote pro-gun, and only Democrats ‘flip-flop’ on guns.
On 14 December 2012, 20 children and six staff members were murdered in a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Building on the surge in public support for gun control that followed this tragedy, President Obama announced the formation of a task force to provide immediate recommendations on how to introduce new gun regulations to end the “epidemic of gun violence shaking the nation.”
A year has passed and Congress has been unable to introduce stricter gun regulations, despite broad public support. As pointed out by The Economist, “when the push for more gun control began shortly after the Newtown shootings last December, the focus fell on three areas: assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and background checks. But the enthusiasm for new gun laws quickly faded, and it became obvious that efforts to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines would not win enough votes to pass. So gun-control advocates were left to pursue an expansion of the background-check system. In the end, even that was too ambitious.” (The Economist 2012).
On 17 April 2013 even the mild effort to require background checks on private sales at gun shows and online failed in the Senate. This may seem surprising, given that all polls carried out at the time showed that a vast majority of US citizens supported this measure.1 As President Obama put it: “How can something have 90% support and yet not happen?”
Explaining the Gun-Control Paradox
The reluctance of US congressmen to support gun-control regulations, despite the fact that most US citizens are in favour of them, has long been a puzzle in the literature. Schuman and Presser (1978) referred to this puzzle as the “gun-control paradox”. As argued by Goss (2006), one possible explanation is that “American gun owners are intense, well organized, and willing to vote for or against candidates purely on the basis of their position on gun control”. They are a “highly motivated, intense minority”, who prevail over a “relatively apathetic majority”.
In a recent paper (Bouton et al. 2013), we formalise this idea and provide empirical evidence that electoral incentives lead politicians to take a pro-gun stance, in line with the interests of a minority of the electorate. We propose a theoretical model in which politicians vote on a primary and a secondary policy issue. The former is an issue that a majority of voters cares relatively more about, such as the level of public spending. The latter is meant to capture gun control – an issue that a minority cares more intensely about. The minority may also be better-informed about the incumbent’s choices on the secondary policy issue. In this setting, citizens have only one vote to make their representatives accountable on a bundle of policy issues. Politicians may thus pander to the minority on the secondary issue, without losing too much support from the majority. The model delivers three testable predictions:
- First, politicians should be more likely to take a pro-gun stance at the end of their terms, when their policy choices have a bigger impact on their re-election prospects.
- Second, only politicians who are in favour of gun regulations and are concerned with re-election should ‘flip-flop’ on gun control, since they face a tension between their policy preferences and their re-election motives.
- Finally, election proximity should have no impact on the voting behaviour of politicians who are against gun regulations and/or are not concerned about re-election.
Voting Behaviour in the US Senate
To assess the validity of these predictions, we examine the determinants of Senate votes on gun regulations over the period 1993–2010. The staggered structure of the US Senate – in which members serve six-year terms and a third is up for re-election every two years – provides a quasi-experimental setting to verify whether election proximity affects the voting behaviour of politicians on gun-related legislation. For any given vote, we can compare the behaviour of senators belonging to three different ‘generations’, i.e. who will be up for re-election at different times.
In line with the model predictions, we obtain three main results:
- First, the oldest generation of senators (i.e. those facing re-election within two years) is more likely to vote pro-gun than the previous two.
The effect is sizeable, and robust to using different econometric methodologies and samples of votes, and to including a wealth of controls for other drivers of senators’ voting behaviour on gun control. The pro-gun effect of election proximity continues to hold when, rather than exploiting variation in the voting behaviour of different senators, we study the behaviour of individual senators over time.
- Second, only Democratic senators flip-flop on gun control – in the last two years of their term, the probability that they vote pro-gun increases by between 15.3% and 18.9%.
- Finally, election proximity has no impact on the voting behaviour of senators who are not concerned with re-election, either because they are retiring or because they hold very safe seats.
Our results of the determinants of gun-control votes can help understand why Congress has not introduced stricter gun regulations in the wake of the tragedy in Newtown, despite overwhelming public support. Our empirical model does indeed predict the failure of the Senate to pass the Manchin–Toomey amendment on background checks last April.2
Concluding Remarks
In representative democracies, policy choices often diverge from what the majority of the electorate wants. Our analysis suggests a twofold explanation:
1. Voters differ in the intensity of their preferences over different policy issues; and
2. They only have one vote to make their representatives accountable on a bundle of issues.
Obviously, financial pressure by lobby groups can also contribute to the lack of congruence between politicians’ choices and the preferences of the majority. Indeed, our empirical results confirm that senators who receive larger amounts of campaign contributions from gun-rights lobbies are more likely to take a pro-gun stance. Still, financial pressure by lobby groups cannot account for the pro-gun effect of election proximity on senators’ voting behaviour – even after controlling for the contributions received by individual senators throughout their terms, we find that they are more likely to vote pro-gun when they are closer to facing re-election. The power of gun-rights lobbies like the NRA may thus not only lie in their deep pockets, but also in the fact that their members are single-issue voters.3
In principle, citizens’ initiatives could help to achieve better congruence between citizens’ preferences and policy outcomes, by unbundling different policy issues (Besley and Coate 2008).4 In particular, stricter gun controls could be introduced in US states that allow ordinary citizens to place new legislation on a ballot for approval or rejection.5 However, even in the case of citizens’ initiatives, the intensity of voters’ preferences matters. For instance, organising initiatives is very costly both in terms of time and money, and citizens who strongly oppose gun regulations may be more willing to incur such costs. In addition, pro-gun citizens may be more willing to incur the costs of voting (e.g. spending time to register, rearranging work schedules, getting to the polls, and gathering information on the candidates). Thus an intense minority can still prevail over an apathetic majority.
References
Besley, T and S Coate (2008), “Issue Unbundling via Citizens’ Initiatives”, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 3: 379–397.
Bouton, L, P Conconi, F J Pino, and M Zanardi (2013), “Guns and Votes”, CEPR Discussion Paper 9726.
The Economist (2013), “Over before it began”, 24 April.
Goss, K A (2006), Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America, Princeton University Press.
Schuman, H and S Presser (1978), “Attitude Measurement and the Gun Control Paradox”, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 4: 427–438.
1 For example, an ABC News–Washington Post poll carried out in April 2013 showed that 86% of respondents supported background checks on gun purchases at gun shows or online. According to a CBS News–New York Times poll carried out in January 2013, 92% of US citizens supported universal background checks.
2 Based on our estimates for the period 1993–2010, we would have correctly predicted 93 out of 99 senators’ votes on the Manchin–Toomey amendment on 17 April 2013, excluding the Majority Leader Harry Reid, who voted against the amendment for procedural reasons. The Senate came short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and move ahead with the legislation. Our predicted margin (51–48) is very close to the actual one (53–46), again excluding Harry Reid.
3 As pointed out in an article on Slate, “the NRA is considered by many the most powerful lobbying group in the country, despite relatively modest financial resources and just 4 million members. […] The NRA focuses almost exclusively on gun control, which enables its leaders to doggedly pursue their legislative ends. Perhaps more important, many NRA members are as single-minded as the organization itself. Polls often show that more Americans favor tightening gun control laws than relaxing them, but gun rights advocates are much more likely to be single-issue voters than those on the other side of the question.” (Slate, 29 June 2012.)
4 The direct initiative process allows citizens to draft a petition in the form of a legislative bill or constitutional amendment. If the petition receives sufficient popular support, the measure is then placed directly on a ballot, without the need to first submit it to the legislature.
5 For example, the Washington Universal Background Checks for Gun Purchases Initiative, also known as Initiative 594, may appear on the 4 November 2014 ballot in the state of Washington. If approved by voters, the measure would require background checks to be run on every person purchasing a gun in the state of Washington – even those who are doing so via private sales.
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What a coincidence! I almost brought the failure of background checks up in a response on the latest post on Obamacare. While gun rights is a high intensity issue, Medicare for all has broad support but is a low intensity issue. Most likely this is in large part due to most people having employer-subsidized health insurance they are happy with. Until one has a large claim, one really has no clue how good one’s coverage really is. Few have shopped in the grossly overpriced private insurance market, where administrative costs have been running 30% and higher. Both gun rights and for-profit healthcare also have strong special interest groups to advocate for their interests, including the meme that government isn’t up to the task of managing large programs, and that “freebies” for poor (as opposed to wealthy) welfare queens foster a culture of dependency.
If progressives want to kill rent-seeking legislation, associating the legislation with leading to infringements on the Second Amendment will result in the right doing for the left what they are unable to do for themselves. (After the two year budget deal negotiated this week, with self-congratulations by Democrats for warding off cuts to SS and Medicare, a defeatist attitude is justified.)
“The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?”
“The fact that the gun is a reverenced god can be seen in its manifold and apparently resistless powers. How do we worship it?” Gary Wills, “Our Moloch,” counts the ways:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/dec/15/our-moloch/
Society seems ever more angry and ever more lethal.
“Stand Your Ground” laws have become a license for any fool with a firearm to walk the streets and to shoot anyone they fear.
David Simon on the fear fantasy that drives the ideology behind television’s The Walking Dead:
“On television the other evening, I caught a glimpse of a drama in which some future America was overrun by zombies, a thrilling narrative in which survivors could only rely on force of arms to keep the unthinking, unfeeling hordes at bay. And I realized: This isn’t mere entertainment, it’s national consensus. More than that, it’s a well-executed and starkly visual rendering of the collective fear that governs us. We know that they’re out there: The less human. The poor. The godless. The frightening other. And they want what we have, they are going to take what we have, and they understand nothing save for a well-placed bullet. It’s my understanding that the show I encountered is quite popular; in this America, it may even be called populist in its argument — a morality tale that speaks to why we must arm ourselves, and carry those guns with us, and stand our f***ing ground; it declares that we can’t rely on collective, utilitarian will to achieve a safe and viable society, that government by the people and for the people is, at this point, an empty catchphrase for fools and weaklings. No, our future is every man for himself, and a gun in every outstretched hand, and if a classroom of six and seven year olds is the requisite cost every now and then, so be it.”
http://davidsimon.com/newtown-conn/
Having seen all too often the tragic results of gun shootings working at an urban trauma center, gun violence is a significant public health problem.
Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast – Understanding Suicide, “In study after study, a gun in the home has been shown to be significantly associated with a higher risk of suicide, especially among the young. Impulsivity, when coupled with an accessible and deadly method, adds to the psychological and psychiatric vulnerability in this age group.”
Danielle Ofri, “Lives Cut Short by Depression,”
“But it was the fact the he’d shot himself in the face, in his childhood bedroom, while his parents and brother were watching TV downstairs that caused the most intense pain. How could someone who defended flies against the barbarity of flypaper find in himself the capacity for such violence? … The graphic nightmares of the gunshot, of his family scrambling to the bedroom, of the unimaginably horrific site that greeted them, have receded. But he comes to me from time to time, and I mourn the child that he was, and the adult that he never had the chance to become. As I watch my own children grow, I have a slip of insight into the exquisiteness of his parents’ pain — pain that surely travels with them always.”
http://danielleofri.com/lives-cut-short-by-depression/
Gun violence research: History of the federal funding freeze:
“In 1993, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published an article by Arthur Kellerman and colleagues, “Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home,” which presented the results of research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The study found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide. The article concluded that rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance…
The 1993 NEJM article received considerable media attention, and the National Rifle Association (NRA) responded by campaigning for the elimination of the center that had funded the study, the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention. The center itself survived, but Congress included language in the 1996 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill (PDF, 2.4MB) for Fiscal Year 1997 that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” Referred to as the Dickey amendment after its author, former U.S. House Representative Jay Dickey (R-AR), this language did not explicitly ban research on gun violence. However, Congress also took $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget — the amount the CDC had invested in firearm injury research the previous year — and earmarked the funds for prevention of traumatic brain injury. Dr. Kellerman stated in a December 2012 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Precisely what was or was not permitted under the clause was unclear. But no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency’s funding to find out. Extramural support for firearm injury prevention research quickly dried up.”
http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/02/gun-violence.aspx
Some years back i was made ware of the concept of Every Day Carry. It may have started in the firearms community, but has since ballooned out to a general debate about the things people carry with them daily, and why.
In any case, one “taboo” i came across was that one do not discuss Z(ombie) readiness. As best i could tell, Z was used as a euphemism for riots and other urban breakdowns of social order.
Those scary minorities.
““Stand Your Ground” laws have become a license for any fool with a firearm to walk the streets and to shoot anyone they fear.”
Not really.
Just Black people they fear.
If Trayvon was white Zimmerman would have been convicted, and we all know it.
Its really just a legalized vigilante system to keep apartheid going on in the south.
It’s about who people identify with. Zimmerman was presented as a law-abiding citizen using his right to self defense. If it had been Trevor Martin,presented as a white juvenile delinquent with a history of violence who was acting suspiciously and got shot after starting a fight with a neighborhood watchman, no one would have cared, no one would identify with him simply because he was white, he would be written off as a piece of white trash who got what he deserved. Even if these characterizations were false, people go with the presented narrative unless they have a strong reason not to. If there had not been a racial element, it would have never made it outside of the local news.
You certainly can interpret the zombie apocalypse craze in those terms. Other writers have analogized the zombies as the stupefied public, steeped in mass advertising and blind to anything but the mindless desire to consume, consume, consume… a nation of consumers.
The ragtag band of survivors are the counterculture trying to build a new way of life amid the ruins. And yes, they’re armed…. and if the zombies get too close they’ll rip you apart or infect you and turn you into one of them (scary!).
The zombie apocalypse as a meme probably had little to do with guns and started because people were tired of carrying around the burden of far more real worries (economic, ecological etc. – I mean it’s heavy). So worry about zombies was funn in response.
But as interpretting other human beings as zombies (that what, must be shot?), is dehumanizing, is pathological.
Let me start by saying I don’t own a gun. With regard to this article, the authors never seem to confront the straight forward fact that the Second Amendment exists to protect citizens from a tyrannical regime.
Students of history know that a self-governing Republic is a fragile thing.
Some of us see the danger of sliding into the Augustan Imperial mode, as Obama consistently does extra-constitutional and out right lawless actions. I, for one, believe it’s a very short path to outright suppression of any disagreement with the collective, in any way, shape or form. As Orwell’s “Animal Farm” taught us, some animals cloak their tyranny by the claim that some are “more equal” than others. Progressives think they are the Pigs in Animal Farm: they know best and they should have the power. The rest of us think not and the Second Amendment exists to protect us.
Disclosure; I own 4 handguns and 3 long rifles and I’ll be damned if the Second Amendment was written “to protect citizens from a tyrannical regime.” Those who declare themselves as non-progressives, conservatives, libertarians or simply gun nuts may wish it so, but these people would do well to READ the latest SCOTUS opinion in its entirety, in particular what Justice Scalia wrote about what should be considered reasonable possession of firearms for defensive purposes.
OK, I have a less sophisticated conjecture. I don’t know if it is right, but I think it is worth investigating. Here is the conjecture:
CONJECTURE: People who don’t carry guns are afraid of the people who carry them.
When liberals propose policies which the gun crowd doesn’t like, the gun crowd responds by buying more guns and increasing the volume of implicit and explicit physical threat. Liberals then back down, because they are afraid of the scary gun nuts.
The gun lobby is a gang of bullies who loudly advertise their acquisition of guns, their zeal for guns and their fondness for carrying guns in order to intimidate other people.
It’s amazing how they’ve converted bullying into a “right.”
It works in economics too.
I’d say they advertise simply to tell the government to stay out of their lives. Has nothing to to with bullying. How often do you see a gun owner pulling out his weapon to get something he wants? So the gun owner standing fifth in the queue at the grocery store makes all non gun owners give up their place? Rather than intimidation, I’d say it is a case of those who don’t want to own guns trying to force their ways on gun owners.
Not really. It’s more a case of those of us who don’t own guns don’t want to be shot by people who do own guns. Simple.
How many people do you know who have been shot by legally owned guns? or how many times have you been shot at? You’re more likely to be killed in a car so let’s confiscate all automobiles.
Every mass murder since Columbine has been perpetrated by people whose guns were legally purchased. You are correct. Legal does not mean safe. That’s why every state requires you to pass a drivers license test, purchase automobile insurance, and drive a registered vehicle. Now if only we could apply the same rules to guns….
PaulW said:
“Has nothing to to with bullying. How often do you see a gun owner pulling out his weapon to get something he wants?”
Well, there’s one incident just a few days ago (Nov. 18, 2013) when George Zimmerman threatened his girlfriend with a gun. In her 911 call, she can be heard making the following statement to Zimmerman:
“…you put your gun in my frickin face and told me to get the fu*k out, cause this is not your house…”
When it comes to picking poster children, the gun lobby sure knows how to do it.
And of course the MSM has completely failed to give this event the coverage it deserves.
Why do you believe that is?
Is it the gun lobby manipulaitng the MSM? Or are there other, larger forces out there calling the shots?
Oops!
Here’s the link to the 911 call so you can listen to what Zimmerman’s girl friend says with your own ears:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KyyGU_HtLM
Maybe reporters are afraid that if they cover gun outrages, some gun nut will shoot them.
I said after the trial that he would be in trouble again. He’s dangerous, with or without the gun.
Why isn’t he a cop? Did he try to be? Did the shrinks laugh at his application? Were they right to? Is there any evidence of this left?
Given his family’s huge local political pull, he should a chief by now. Unless everyone in the police dept(and the family) knew they didn’t want him to carry a gun, or more entitlement.
There’s probably a pretty good story there, somewhere….
How often do you see a gun owner irresponsibly brandish a weapon for imtimidation purposes? Frequently. On a coastal town during an Obama rally (cops didn’t arrest due to open carry laws) and in a small cafe on our main St.
Or just do this: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tx+moms+against+guns+threatened
When I first moved to my current home, by son and his friend came running into the house one day and said “There is a guy walking around the neighborhood with a gun!”
So I called the cops, and they said, “Was it holstered?” And the answer was yes. So they said, “Nothing we can do about that. he has a right to carry.”
Turns out this ornery old coot was given to striding around the neighborhood each day with a sidearm, for no particular reason – I guess to just make some kind of display. He said he was afraid of wild animals, but I didn’t really buy that.
I do see people with hunting rifles around the neighborhood and town from time to time, and frequently hear them shooting out in the woods. It doesn’t bother me, although there is one guy in the neighborhood who I think is in his eighties and has had a stroke. He doesn’t walk steadily and has lost the vision in one eye. He’s always out shooting things and sometimes shoots squirrels and chipmunks in the road from his front porch. I like him, but he does worry me a bit.
Your comment reminded me of an article Bill Moyers had linked on his site not too long ago.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/11/10/291121/dallas-gun-advocates-protest-restaurant-gun-control-advocates/
This whole issue of bullying in public and political discourse is serious. Remember the link NC had to the school meeting where the parent was arrested for asking questions? And look at say anti-fracking advocates. I have seen info booths they have set up at public functions on public property being harassed and their materials taken by what looked to me to be prof goons. And then of course there is the government itself which would rather make sure we know our local police forces are now armed with hummers retired from over-seas service and para-military squads than our rights. I know that went way off the topic, but i remember reading a stat that back in 2008 after the crash when states budgets were being slashed there was a huge jump in private para-military citizen forces. We have a seriously armed and trained sector of the public in this country.
Your comment reminded me of an article Bill Moyers had linked on his site not too long ago.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/11/10/2921121/dallas-gun-advocates-protest-restaurant-gun-control-advocates/
This whole issue of bullying in public and political discourse is serious. Remember the link NC had to the school meeting where the parent was arrested for asking questions? And look at say anti-fracking advocates. I have seen info booths they have set up at public functions on public property being harassed and their materials taken by what looked to me to be prof goons. And then of course there is the government itself which would rather make sure we know our local police forces are now armed with hummers retired from over-seas service and para-military squads than our rights. I know that went way off the topic, but i remember reading a stat that back in 2008 after the crash when states budgets were being slashed there was a huge jump in private para-military citizen forces. We have a seriously armed and trained sector of the public in this country.
I might consider gun-control if it were conceived to apply to everyone w/o exception, including government employees. Otherwise I must think of it as a bankster-inspired fetish. Consider Abner Diallo: an externality.
I think background checks have validity but it is, for me, something I don’t consider very important. People who are passionate about something and are willing to vote on their passion/fetish have inordinate power in a population of people who are largely asleep or indifferent to the commons. A small number of Cubans can dominate American Cuba policy for decades, pro-Israeli Jews dominate American ME policies or have for decades as well such that it is almost impossible to publish a story critical of the Israeli state. This is not the fault of pro-Israeli Jews, anti-Castro Cubans, or “gun-nuts.” The fault lies in the general public that just wants to go shopping so to speak.
Having said all that, we need to understand the motivations of the pro-gun people. First, they tend not to trust government at any level and believe that an armed populace keeps tyranny at bay (the Alex Jones position)–personally, I think they have a point. Second, they fear for their own safety–for example, in rural areas crime has increased quite a lot due to a rapid increase in drug addiction–many people don’t believe the police do an adequate job of protecting people due to changing attitudes by the police and budget cuts.
In an ideal world guns should be licensed in the same way cars are–but the gradual fragmentation of society is no likely to change anytime soon so distrust of others is pretty high. I know of an incident here in my town where someone approached a woman she lifted her jacket to show her gun and he turned around. Later that same person (matching the description abducted a woman half a block away in broad daylight in the same parking lot my own step-daughter works.
Banger said:
“A small number of Cubans can dominate American Cuba policy for decades, pro-Israeli Jews dominate American ME policies or have for decades as well such that it is almost impossible to publish a story critical of the Israeli state. This is not the fault of pro-Israeli Jews, anti-Castro Cubans, or “gun-nuts.” The fault lies in the general public that just wants to go shopping so to speak.”
It’s amazing to me how you always manage to construe things so that it is the general public, and not the lords of capital, who are the engines behind all the madness.
I agree with you that even though these small groups may be the proximate causes of the insanity, they are certainly not the ultimate causes. The tail does not wag the dog. But when it comes to identifying ultimate causes, you and I couldn’t be further apart.
Let’s take the gun debate, for instance. I see the causal chain as follows:
lords of capital → Southern strategy → law and order doctrine → gun lobby → Zimmerman trial
And I use Zimmerman because he became the poster child of the collective symbolic and cultural capital marshalled by this entire causal chain. This collective symbolic and cultural capital is as much an effect of discourse and a product of struggle as it is any reflection of underlying reality. Do you really believe the underclasses have had the upper hand for the last few decades when it comes to the use of discourse and the state’s instruments of violence?
Well, so we blame the money people then what? Do they indeed bear 100 per cent of the blame? And if so, why is there so little outrage even in leftist circles? I was around in the late sixties when many of us were out there doing some serious sh!t and running away from cops.
Of course the oligarchs who profit from the situation are an important dynamic in all these questions. But they don’t exist apart from the culture as a whole which could, if it wanted to, change the situation. When everyone in the propaganda media supported a new military adventure in Syria the people turned a stony face to that venture and there was no war. So what do you make of that?
But weren’t there even more protests against Iraq than Syria (and worldwide)? Something odd went on with the Syria thing, but I’m still going with internal divisions among the power elite. It being unpopular may not have helped but I don’t think that’s enough by itself.
Retired Colonel Lang over at Sic Semper Tyrannis has posted some things on this lately.
“I think background checks have validity but it is, for me, something I don’t consider very important.”
Bingo. The nature of the anti-gun control advocates are a problem, they often seem to be too willing to focus on mere lobbying and not on electioneering. Conservative Democrats might be vulnerable to pressure, and even certain House Republicans. I think they are too focused on trying to bring in anti-gun elected officials instead of scaring whats in Congress.
Getting back to your point, gun control is almost the perfect upper class, white liberal issue because nothing they call for will affect them. The weapon at the Navy Shooting Yard is on Joe Biden’s “good gun” list. Are these people really committed to this issue? I think its a tribal signifier which is why Kerry and other Democrats aren’t attacked by these same voters for playing with guns in photo-ops.
The most important point is I don’t a firearm. My father hates guns and kept his only weapon on the base. My mother’s father hated guns, and the only weapons my mother had access to were at her grandparent’s house (it was Vermont before the hippies moved in). I don’t think about guns on a regular basis. The random victims are few and far between or are often the result of gun violence in their own home.
How long will I continue to care about this issue? Immigration Reform is a similar issue. Even if the Democrats were pushing for a decent policy instead of militarizing the border and creating a guest worker class, when are we going to see the advocates of reform demand votes because their messaging isn’t getting traction because its not an issue which affects everyone? Healthcare affects everyone. Taxes affects everyone. Infrastructure affects everyone. The mail affects everyone.
The only way I think to pass these bills is to pass them and for the advocates to understand that they have to put the fear of god into the people they expect to support them because if their party isn’t afraid of them that same party will use them in the next election. For example, it took Obama and the Dems 3 years after O took office to reform student loans, but it was only done when Obama’s rating among young people started to drop when the legislation was ready to be voted on and delivered to the President’s desk on the inauguration in ’09 because no held them accountable.
NotTimothyGeithner said:
“How long will I continue to care about this issue? ….when are we going to see the advocates of reform demand votes because their messaging isn’t getting traction because its not an issue which affects everyone?”
Essentially what you are arguing is that, when it comes to salience in politics, reality is more important than perception. I disagree.
The flip side to your argument — the argument of the gun lobby — was given by Banger:
“Having said all that, we need to understand the motivations of the pro-gun people…. they fear for their own safety…. “
To begin with, polls show the public very much does believe violent crime is increasing and is becoming more fearful of it by the day:
“Despite sharp declines in youth crime, the public expresses great fear of its own young people. Although violent crime by youth in 1998 was at its lowest point in the 25-year history of the National Crime Victimization Survey7 , 62% of poll respondents felt that juvenile crime was on the increase.8 In the 1998/99 school year, there was less than a one-in-two-million chance of being killed in a school in America, yet 71% of respondents to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll felt that a school shooting was likely in their community. Despite a 40% decline in school associated violent deaths between 1998 and 1999 and declines in other areas of youth violence, respondents to a USA Today poll were 49% more likely to express fear of their schools in 1999 than in 1998.9”
http://www.theppsc.org/Archives/School.Violence/Off-Balance-Youth.Race&Crime.In.The.News.htm
Furthermore, this climate of fear is being propagated and flamed by media manipulation:
“The public depends on the media for its pictures of crime. Three quarters (76%) of the public say they form their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news, more than three times the number who state that they get their primary information on crime from personal experience (22%).15 In a Los Angeles Times poll, 80% of respondents stated that the media’s coverage of violent crime had increased their personal fear of being a victim.16 A 1998 report by Public Agenda found that daily TV news viewers were more likely to think that crime and drugs were Baltimore’s number one problem than were those who watch the news less frequently (67% vs. 42%).17 Despite declining crime rates in Baltimore, one woman there stated, “I get more nervous and worried the more I see, so the less I see, the less crime I would feel is going on out there.”18
These survey results are consistent with communications research finding that the news media largely determine what issues we collectively think about, how we think about them, and what kinds of policy alternatives are considered viable.19 News portrayals of juvenile justice issues are significant for how they influence policy makers and the public regarding what should be done to ensure public safety. Issues are not considered by the public and policy makers unless they are visible, and they are not visible unless the news brings them to light. “
Is all this media manipulaiton just incidental and spontaneous?
Most people I have met who oppose registration do so because they believe it may one day be a basis for confiscation. Basically they don’t trust the US government. Considering the articles that are posted daily on this site, there anyone here who can give a good reason why we should trust congress at this point?
I don’t, and I’m willing to bet that most people who support increased gun rights for citizens, see this as a “consumer fetish” issue. If you keep inanely insisting that that’s all it’s about, you’re never going to win anyone who isn’t already in your camp. In fact, those of us who believe in increased freedom see proposals to restrict gun rights as rather narrow minded and short sighted and trying to impose your own narrow minded framing of the issue onto those with a completely different mental framework is both ridiculously offensive and threatening, and–as you have no doubt noticed by now–ineffective.
I really ought not to be telling you that because your willful ignorance is serving my interests just fine, but there is something about the “consumer fetish” comment that inspired enough contempt in me to make me want to correct your error in thinking a bit. Or don’t correct it for all I care, and keep getting the same “results” you have been: the increased general availability of firearms and pro-firearms legislators whenever you campaign against guns.
So your hobby is more important than preventing another Viginia Tech or Sandy Hook?
How about limiting your hobby to 3 round magazines so the rest of us can live free of the fear of masscacres in restaurants, schools, churches, and everywhere else?
Citizens agree to limited freedom and that is called the social contract. That is what creates civilization. The Wild West was not civilized and neither is Darfur or Somalia.
OK, when you’re done with this stellar analysis how about applying the same standard to “the paradox of late-term abortions?”
Anyways…
The author of the VoxEU paper equivocates and shifts the ground of discussion. The only area on the gun control debate where there is a clear majority is with respect to background checks. But the author subtly shifts the ground and treats the desire for expanded background checks as if its the same as a desire to control guns.
And that’s the rub, isn’t it? When you say you favor strict gun control laws, you’re not really talking about expanded background checks. Expanded background checks are nice, but in and of itself this initiative is not satisfying for a true gun control advocate.
Gun enthusiasts, on the other hand, see expanded background checks in terms of a sliding slope to a repeal of the 2nd Amendment and therefore dig in. [Vox does get this part right.]
So let’s be clear with this silly VoxEU paper: There is only a “Gun Control Paradox” if you’re too stupid to understand that what the majority of people think of in terms of “Gun Control” is far more restrictive than expanded background checks. If you frame the issue in terms of what most people think of when they think about Gun Control—i.e. Gun Bans–than there is no “overwhelming consensus and therefore no Gun Control Paradox. Rather, we’re left with “An Expanded Background Check Paradox”, which really is not a paradox when you consider why this fails to inspire the Left while it inflames the Right.
Excellent points. Two other things to consider:
1. The rich and powerful really control this country. Things like gun control, gay marriage, and abortion, are not things that impact their fortunes and so are allowable for public discussion. Things like our cheap-labor immigration policy do, and any such discussion is either suppressed or denigrated as ‘you hate immigrants’. The success of the anti-gun control people is thus largely because, for now, the rich live in gated communities surrounded by armed guards (!) and don’t care enough to crush the pro-gun forces.
2. We could, nonetheless, learn a lesson from the gun-rights people. They vote their interests. They don’t get seduced by pretty words, or play lesser-of-two-evils, or any of that. They vote on the records. The rest of us should do the same. Faced with a corporate shill like Obama who repeatedly stabs us in the back we should swear vengeance and throw our support behind an opponent. The labor and progressive movements used to do this – they played hardball, they held grudges, they weren’t polite, and they won victories. Somewhere along the line we lost that vitality.
Repeat after me: Obama is a right-wing corporate scum who sold us out for money and I will not fail to mention this anytime that his name comes up in a political discussion. If I see him in public I will boo. I will vote for an Obama clone like Hilary Clinton or Joe Biden when Hades freezes over. It might not sound like much right now, but give it time….
Timothy Gawne said:
“The rich and powerful really control this country. Things like gun control, gay marriage, and abortion, are not things that impact their fortunes and so are allowable for public discussion.”
Also, I think these issues have been given precedence because they distract from economic issues and from the real criminals in this country: the political and financial class.
True. I do wonder if it’s even in the lefts interest to keep pushing this issue. Economics, people, economics (oh and since it is the modern world and not a century or two ago, this requires addressing things like the environment as well).
I’m not so sure what “the lefts interest” is. Perhaps it is the same as the right’s?
As Robert Hughes put it:
“Somewhere along the line the obvious fact that rap and hip-hop are not the agents of a desired or feared apocalypse, that they are just another entertainment fashion, gets lost. And it is lost because one side needs the other, so that each can inflate its agenda into a chiliastic battle for the soul of America…..
In effect, the Republican and Democratic parties since 1968 have practiced two forms of conservative policy…. Both are parties of upper-middle-class interests: the last genuinely progressive tax reform proposed by a President, for instance, was put forward by Jimmy Carter in 1977 — and it was immediately sunk by the vote of a Democratic Congress. The whole apparatus of influence in Washington is geared to lobbying by big business, not to input from small citizen groups. As E.J. Dione eloquently aruged in his recent book Why Americans Hate Politics, there is no bloc in Congress or the Senate that truly represents the needs or opinions of people in the enormous central band of American life where workers and the middle class overlap.”
–ROBERT HUGHES, Culture of Complaint
I understand your feelings about Obama. What puzzles me is why you expressed no scorn for Republicans. At a national level, the Reps, including the Tea Party members of Congress, are lackeys of the rich and powerful.
Perhaps this will help:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/why-barack-obama-more-effective-evil
Banger said:
“A small number of Cubans can dominate American Cuba policy for decades, pro-Israeli Jews dominate American ME policies or have for decades as well such that it is almost impossible to publish a story critical of the Israeli state. This is not the fault of pro-Israeli Jews, anti-Castro Cubans, or “gun-nuts.” The fault lies in the general public that just wants to go shopping so to speak.”
It’s amazing to me how you always manage to construe things such that it is the general public, and not the lords of capital, who are the engines behind all the madness.
I agree with you that even though these small groups may be the proximate causes of the insanity, they are certainly not the ultimate causes. The tail does not wag the dog. But when it comes to identifying ultimate causes, you and I couldn’t be further apart.
Let’s take the gun debate, for instance. I see the causal chain as follows:
lords of capital → Southern strategy → law and order doctrine → gun lobby → Zimmerman trial
And I use Zimmerman because he became the poster child of the collective symbolic and cultural capital marshalled by this entire causal chain. This collective symbolic and cultural capital is as much an effect of discourse and a product of struggle as it is any reflection of underlying reality. Do you really believe the underclasses have had the upper hand for the last few decades when it comes to the use of discourse and the state’s instruments of violence?
politicians barely care about gun *restrictions* because they aren’t big-business-related, and therefore provide no additional campaign finance lucre.
Interesting out of three remaining angles – magazine, assault weapon, background checks – focus on background checks were chosen. Amazing that the so-called non-violents here think any of this is not tyrannical.
None of the three choices rise to a level either myopically or wholly nonviolent. It’s more of that enemy vs perfect/good nonsense in the making. And I had to belly laugh my way through yet another post which begins by pointing out the opposite of what it says it concludes… we live in a representative democracy. Ha!
To me nonviolence in terms of guns means we as a nation must start with or at least simultaneously include laying down the the big guns, the military, the police state, the drug war, earnestly abolish hunger, establish basic income and health care for all. At least as much as myopically chipping away at the common citizens basic 2nd amendment liberty. I would love to be a part of an organized wholly nonviolent movement in this country, but I can’t find one anymore than I can find representative democracy. So I will renew my membership in the NRA (buy time).
But we have a so-called left in this country who loves their droner in chief and his war mongering dem party who wouldn’t even reduce the pentagon (big gun) budget by 22 billion this week… who loves a US led illegal war upon Libya… says nothing about covert war both arming and hiring al Qaeda types in Syria and thinks that public opinion against further escalation had something to do with our recent decision not to attack by air. Of course it was Russian big guns which played a deciding role in US escalation… not public opinion.
When you think of background checks, think of all we’ve learned about NSA, thru TSA in recent months and ask yourself if nonviolence was ever truly achieved through better tyranny, I mean background checks? The american so-called left is actually asking for more!
Disappointing post by Strether who I greatly respect! I would encourage NC to leave the alienating, leftist culture war off these pages and focus instead on capitalism.
There is no natural law that states social/cultural progressivism and economic progressivsm must go together. Anyone can be an economic progressive, including culturally conservative supporters of gun rights and the 2A. Historically, many supporters of economic progressivism have been conservative on social and cultural matters.
Um, reading comprehension fail. This post ran originally at VoxEU, which meant it was written by Respectable Economists and deemed fit to run by some of their peers.
“voters’ preferences…”
“In representative democracies…”
Ha, thanks for the laugh. I reject that premise. As Hugh would say, it’s a kleptocracy.
Truly, I would love to see the evidence that suggests voter preferences, rather than bribery and corruption and authoritarianism, explains public policy of the past couple decades.
The NRA opposes gun control because it aligns with manufacturers selling weapons. The NRA is much less vigorous opposing environmental destruction of wilderness areas where people like to hunt and fish because that does not align with the companies doing the polluting. It’s really that simple.
The reluctance of US congressmen to support gun-control regulations, despite the fact that most US citizens are in favour of them, has long been a puzzle in the literature.
Well, gee if the idea is to enact the citizens’ will into law, it makes you wonder why we bother with representatives at all. Why do we have to spend all this effort modeling representative behavior in an attempt to override a 10% minority of psychopaths, who want guns at any cost? Dispense with this nonsense entirely and recognize representative republics for what they are — a dodge designed to thwart popular will.
The “minorities” the Founders were trying to protect were themselves… rich property owners. Schoolrooms full of children are not the only price we’re paying.
I like the premise that intensity in an issue propagates to the policy, and is certainly true. But if I were to say that the 10% were propagate 10x more of there vote, I think it is more complicated. I am a libertarian. I owned a ranch once, and had to buy a gun to protect animals. I hated. hated. hated. it. Somebody offered to help, and a truck full of guys with laser sighted guns “helped”. I sold the ranch. Whole thing stills totally creeps me out. So I am at ‘best’ ambivalent, and clearly in the 90% as you define it. So I agree with the left on the issue, but am in disagreement with the left on so much else that my vote would seem to be an example of another factor at play. It is hard to discuss issues in isolation, it is hard to bisect a distribution.
I am assuming that ‘proposition’ invites careful debate?
“Lambert here, a proposition: Unwillingness to own the externalities of one’s own consumer fetish correlates highly with intensity”
I took 10 minutes to decode this, and I hope I did a fair translation:
“If a man likes women’s shoes, and those shoes cause African famine, then the man does not feel responsible for African famine because he really really likes those shoes.”
By taking the other side I only need to prove the ‘unwillingness’ word is wrong, and since that word is the opinion of someone within the 10%, then I have to prove one of the following two statements to be false.
1) Gun owners prefer “their toys” a whole lot more than they care about the harm from failing to pass a law.
2) Gun owners believe that the law will reduce an externality, which I will graciously define as “unwelcome violence.”
I think to point 1, Gun owners that I have known are more passionate about not having their self protection confiscated by a government they do not trust. You may not agree with this point, but there are certainly enough examples in history of armed governments and repressed people. that is not delusional, and certainly not a lie. I can’t get into gun owners minds, and nor can you. But if we are talking about 10%, I believe my point.
On point 2 there is also a lot of people who disagree with the premise that laws reduce violence. Policy debates are full of studies that prove both sides. I do not have to prove that one side is honest and the other full of shit. All I have to do is say that I am pretty comfortable saying that the 10% thinks the newer laws are window dressing for liberals.
If you had worded the premise, “unable” instead of “unwilling” I would have had a much tougher assignment.,
well… I myself dont own a gun and probably never will unless maybe I take up hunting but I do carry a decent knife in my truck because I will absolutely refuse to become a victim of robbery no matter how bad they need the money they can just ask and not threaten me.
But I dont get a good feeling about getting rid of guns or beginning the slow slide towards it and sure people will say an armed population cannot take on the military which is true but one would hope that at least the people in charge would not want to start a real serious civil war that kills a lot of people and destroys a lot of property because one thing I know for sure is that the military and police have a lot easier time beating protesters and throwing them in jail for a long time than to shoot and kill them or so one would hope.
There is still ways people can cause damage and death without guns as the Irish Republican Army with their car bombs prove or Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma bombing of which bombs are already illegal to make.
I dont believe in violence but maybe the possibility keeps Washington in check from acting worse (I know sounds ridiculous but you never know) and its easy for us to write about being peaceful in our warm houses while the other day I saw a homeless man walking down the street who absolutely looked cold and miserable while who knows how many people starved to death that day in the world so no matter what anyone does its a violent world out there.
This isn’t surprising at all, at least not to people who understand politics. Politicians will try to please the support that will go elsewhere if it’s not pleased with the results they achieve. That’s what the NRA does. The article and much of the commentary here just explain why the NRA does what it does.
Apply that principle to most of what Congress and the President do, and many things make sense that might not otherwise.