The "We're Up In Arms About Arms" Edition

If Donald Trump doesn't cause mass violence, gun policy probably will

The Big Idea

I could build forever off of last week’s newsletter about the risks of civil conflict associated with the future of Donald Trump—he's still talking about staying in office beyond 2024—but that would be letting the rest of the country off the hook. As I’ve noted, fear of “white replacement” is driving much of our violent conflict risks. Beyond Trump, what might trigger white replacement grievance to violence? Well, what seems to get people up in arms is: arms.

Even post-Charlottesville and the Malheur Wildlife Refuge takeover, I’m genuinely surprised that within a month of my starting MSU, there have been not one, but two incidents of armed civilians marching on state capitols, in Virginia and Kentucky, out of fear of “losing” their “right” to possess certain types of firearms. It’s not my fault! Gun ownership historically has tracked closely to white identity politics—to put it mildly—so a strong push to limit gun ownership is the most likely non-Trump trigger to mass violence among people already insecure in white identity status.

That said, the lower-level violence we experience right now from lone-wolf white nationalist terrorists and general whack-jobs is unacceptable, and must be reduced, and part of that has to include limiting access to firearms. How do we thread this needle to reduce current conflict without igniting future conflict?  Our challenge is to a) set a moral framing for guns that most gun-owners can relate to, and b) develop a suitable policy framework to build on that moral framing.

Part of the Topography

To say America is “armed” is to say Nepal is “mountainous,” or Afghanistan “grows lots of poppy.” With as many guns as people, America would be awash in guns even if every manufacturer, importer, and store closed tomorrow. Because they’re built to exacting tolerances, guns also work for decades, or even centuries, if well cared for. This is why gun advocates have a hard time believing gun control isn’t meant to be confiscatory—any policy that isn’t confiscatory isn’t serious. So how could they possibly believe gun control activists who swear we’re not coming for their guns?

Australian comedian Jim Jefferies has the greatest and funniest insight on guns in the U.S., and correctly flags that sure, there’s not necessarily a good reason for (most) people to own a gun, but lots of people do, they like them, haven’t done anything wrong, and don’t see why they should lose a right they haven’t abused. He also notes the people who “gave” us this “right” also gave us the “right” to own “slaves.” His money line: “I’m a responsible slave owner—I keep my slaves locked up!” It’s hilarious—and misleading.

Slaves, Guns, and Liquor

The Constitution makes specific reference to only three forms of tangible asset: slaves, arms, and alcohol. These are the only three forms of property our Framers ever felt the need to address specifically. The Original Framers tolerated slavery within bounds; the 13th Amendment banned it; the 18th banned alcohol, and the 21st gave it back while saying states can regulate it. The 2nd… it’s complicated.

Slavery is inherently immoral. Even most of the Framers who owned slaves and wrote slavery into the Constitution were uncomfortable with it. As their heirs failed to address the inherent contradiction of a free republic built on slavery, they did the predictable human thing when confronted by cognitive dissonance: move from apologizing for something, to defending it, to advocating for it. By the 1840s, Southerners predicated their remaining in the Union, not on preserving slavery, but on expanding it.

As the Southern view became more extreme, so too did the Northern: there were few true abolitionists, but an overwhelming consensus against slavery’s expansion. Then came Dred Scott in 1857, and suddenly it looked as if Southerners could bring their slaves into the North and West, indefinitely. Northerners were galvanized by Lincoln’s warning, “We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave state. (italics from the original)” The North broke for the new Republican Party, prompting the South’s secession and the Civil War.

For a brief period of time we had enough of a consensus alcohol was immoral that we banned it, before deciding that was a mistake. It appears whatever health and minor-crime benefits came from Prohibition were outweighed by increases in organized crime and decreases in employment and tax revenue as a productive industry was shut down. Oh, and Prohibition politically was seen as a way for rural, white Protestants to stick it to urban, ethnic minorities, if that doesn’t sound familiar to you. Today, we have a general consensus that alcohol is okay, but also strong social, civil, and even criminal penalties for its abuse.

I hope it should be obvious that guns have a lot more in common with alcohol than with slavery—which is not to say you should use both at once! Going back to Barack Obama’s “clinging to guns and religion” statement—which sounds a bit like urbanites sticking it to rural folk—it has been a tendency in the gun-control movement to belittle or mock people who choose to own guns; I just contributed myself by linking to Jefferies’s comedy routine.

We cannot let ourselves get to where we consider gun-owners inherently immoral or foolish. That just pushes them into the arms of the extremists. Guns are not slaves—one can own a gun morally. Full disclosure: I own a pistol, and I’m practicing with it, and taking up skeet-shooting, because it’s fun and might be useful if things get weird.

If you live in a big city with good police like I do, keeping a gun for protection may seem stupid. But if you live in a rural area, crime rates are rising, and local police capacity has declined, so having a gun for protection may not be crazy at all.

Yes, there’s no good reason for most of us to own a gun—but there’s also no good reason to drink, and most of us do that.  For millions of people, the first time a parent trusted them to hold a gun is an event as meaningful as the first time a parent bought their kid a legal drink. Being in a duck blind the first day of duck season is as significant on the calendar as being at Murphy’s Pub on St. Patrick’s Day.

We have to be respectful about this: responsible gun owners are real, and they are the center of gravity in the gun regulation debate. As with the rest of America’s security sector, we need the mass of gun owners on our side. That’s wholly achievable; the NRA and extremists are doing much of the work for us to alienate them. But it’s on us to be a welcoming home.

If we view guns as a controlled substance akin to alcohol, we can see what our best approach should be. As with Prohibition, outright banning of certain weapons likely is counterproductive—it alienates gun owners and a manufacturing base of hundreds of thousands of workers. Bans also are easy to circumvent with technicalities: California bans “assault rifles” with pistol grips, but you can just go buy this simple and legal modification. Or you can buy a Ruger Mini-14 that is just like an AR-15 but looks more civilized.  If there is hardware to be banned, it’s high-capacity magazines.

Guns Don’t Kill People, People Do—So Let’s Control the People

Gun regulation advocates are wise to support universal background checks and red flag laws, which have overwhelming support among gun owners and other sane people. It’s also smart to support gun-licensing laws akin to Massachusetts’s, where your local police chief has to sign off on whether or not you can get a license. Much like with alcohol, we should let communities make their own rules about who can possess firearms, but support aggressive state and federal efforts to crack down on trafficking between jurisdictions. Finally, it would be great to require gun owners to buy personal liability insurance just as car owners must do, and hold gun owners civilly and criminally liable for the misuse of their guns. Most gun owners would get behind these initiatives, because they see themselves as responsible citizens.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving didn’t try to recreate Prohibition or discourage drinking; they just demanded people drink responsibly, and they were wildly successful. Mothers Against Irresponsible Gun Ownership could have similar impact on gun violence in the U.S.

We need an offense too. We need to go straight at the NRA as a racketeering outfit serving foreign intelligence operations—Putin’s Little Green Men. Likewise, every state has supremacy laws outlawing armed groups that act without the assent of the state government. States must crack down on self-styled "militias". These are organized criminals and insurgents, not democratic interest groups

Beyond all of this, we need to reframe the security sector in the U.S. in a way that recognizes our massive armed population, and makes them a net positive rather than a net negative. But that’s for future editions. Since we’ve talked through the most proximate conflict triggers in Trump and guns, next week I’ll try to frame long-term stabilization—putting our country on a more stable path for a unified future.

Not a Good Week

So, it wasn’t quite the week of the Nazis’ post-Reichstag fire Enabling Act, but it was disturbing enough: from the unhinged this-man-is-not-well Party Rally in the White House East Room, to the purging of the Vindman brothers and Ambassador Sondland, to Attorney General Barr’s order that all potential election or campaign-finance cases get his personal approval to proceed, to Homeland Security punishing the citizens of New York for the policies of its state government, this was not a good week for democracy or the rule of law.

I think Trump should design his own medal for loyalty to him, and hand them out to Republican politicians whenever they do nice things for him. It would help him achieve the look he's trying for.

The Iowa State Democratic Party shit the bed. That’s no critique of the candidates, the national party, or the rest of the nomination process. Nor does it delegitimize whatever results the Iowa Democrats ultimately produce. I monitored more election rounds than I can remember in Croatia, Albania, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. I’ve seen a lot of screw-ups that still didn’t invalidate the key results: in this case, Bernie and Pete were strong, and Joe wasn’t. Everything else is noise.

Good Reads

As a good American, my first response to critiques of our system by the BBC is a reflexive “Brexit—STFU!” But as with most things BBC, there’s a lot to take aboard here.

Conspiracy theories that endorse violence are now mainstream in the GOP. I’m a regular at Comet Ping-Pong Pizza. This is no joke.

I just finished reading Ezra Klein’s "Why We're Polarized." It’s definitely worth your time, but I’d recommend pairing it with this Klein interview with Jill Lepore, where she’s got a few criticisms for him.

We assume campaign finance reform will make for a more stable system, but we may be wrong.

“He tells you what you want to hear… and I don’t know if it’s true or not—but it sounds good, so fuck it.” The 2020 election will not be free or fair.

James Carville is really smart. There’s a lot to be said for the idea that the right Democratic nominee is the one who best helps Democratic Senate candidates.

Other ideas or contributions for MSU? Send them to monganjh1@gmail.com, and follow MSU on Twitter at @MoreStableUnion. Please direct friends and colleagues to morestableunion.substack.com.