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To distill @mattyglesias' take: gun politics are bad for Democrats, gun policies aren’t effective enough to be worth the sacrifice, so progressives should just cede the issue in favor of other priorities. Why I think he’s wrong (a thread): https://www.slowboring.com/p/national-democrats-misguided-re-embrace
In the wake of this election, he’s not the first left-leaning pundit to throw gun violence under the bus — @ericlevitz beat him to it: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/2020-election-results-biden-won-democrats-senate-loss.html
But are gun politics really bad for Democrats? Yglesias argues that reformers’ message invariably collapses into “gun control > gun rights,” which polls poorly and puts them fundamentally at odds with gun owners. But to end gun violence we need not take the path of “gun control.
The science backs focused deterrence & violence interruption to address community violence, lethal means counseling & protection orders to reduce suicide, & yes, commonsense laws strengthening norms for safely selling & storing guns. @Abt_Thomas https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/09/can-thomas-abts-bleeding-out-curb-gun-violence/596164/
For Yglesias, the big test for his theory is the 2013 Manchin-Toomey vote on background checks, which he says “failed." But does it really illustrate his point? Toomey & Manchin both won reelection. And Senators who didn't were generally were those who voted *against* the bill.
Arkansas' Mark Pryor tried to curry favor with the NRA by opposing the bill—and they backed his opponent! And Sandy Hook survivors drove New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte to defeat. Certainly seems like it was "a potent issue in the subsequent election.” https://www.concordmonitor.com/Manchester-NH-3364848
Since then, the House has passed its own background check bill, and six purple states have closed the background check loophole —and the sky didn’t fall. https://maps.everytown.org/navigator/trends.html?dataset=background_checks#q-bc_required
Yglesias is beholden to the old myth that gun hobbyists are some uber-powerful bloc—but they’ve never been more than a fraction of the population, and they're increasingly matched by single-issue voters on the other side who have finally gotten organized. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/new-poll-finds-virginia-voters-focused-on-gun-policy-ahead-of-pivotal-election/2019/10/03/db034922-e472-11e9-a331-2df12d56a80b_story.html
But even if gun violence prevention policies aren’t unpopular, are they ineffective? Yglesias offers only the straw-man argument that they don’t prevent mass shootings, ergo they aren't worthwhile.
Reformers know mass shootings account for just ~1% of homicides. They favor universal background check requirement because there is more evidence to back it than any other major policy, and reason to think it would impact many types of gun violence. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6075800/
Gun policy doesn’t need to be radical to be effective. Likely more than 99% of firearms are already in lawful hands. The question is whether we can slow their seepage into the much, much smaller “swamp of illegal circulating firearms.” Background checks are a plausible answer.
My final bone to pick with all this is the theory of political change it espouses, that leaders pick policies and then watch how voters respond. In other words, Dems pivoted on guns because Obama *chose* to, at “the very peak of liberal hubris about cultural issues.”
Or could it be that people who care passionately about an issue work diligently to build power, and then make their leaders adopt that agenda as their own? People like @shannonrwatts @AMarch4OurLives @GiffordsCourage
Could that be why Georgia—which per Yglesia, exemplifies how rural white Democrats could win seats if they embraced NRA-talking points—just re-elected outspoken gun violence prevention advocate @lucymcbath by a 9-point margin? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-georgia-house-district-6.html
Or Arizona, where Gabby Giffords' husband @CaptMarkKelly easily ousted an incumbent? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/us/politics/arizona-mark-kelly.html
Bottom-line: if you do the hard work of building public support, addressing a national scourge (and one that falls grossly unevenly across the population) through moderate and evidence-based means can be good politics and good policy.
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