Perhaps I’m a glutton for punishment, but I find left-wing “explainer” journalism consistently fascinating. I always like to read the best expressions of opposing views, and some of the most talented young liberals pour themselves into explaining the world through their ideological lens. Reading their heavily charted, link-rich think-pieces, I frequently learn something new, and I’m always interested to watch leftist conventional wisdom form before my eyes.
Best of all is when a writer tries to explain to their cocooned, polarized readers the very existence of people like me. Shortly after the San Bernardino attacks, Vox’s David Roberts wrote an extended piece that purported to explain “why mass shootings don’t convince gun owners to support gun control.” It begins:
One thing I often hear in the wake of these endless mass shootings is, “Surely this will convince those gun people. Surely the carnage and suffering are bad enough now that they’ll feel compelled to support some gun control.”
To explain why gun owners not only stubbornly cling to their guns but also resist further legal limits on gun ownership, Roberts turns not to the legions of think-pieces and data-packed “explainers” written by conservatives, but rather to behavioral science. Pointing to a paper by NYU Professor John Jost, Roberts writes that conservatives are more sensitive to “negative stimuli,” and that means we conservatives have a “propensity for anxiety, fear, and occasionally alarm.” He continues:
If fear threatens loss of control, many traits common to conservatives can be seen as efforts to reassert control. As Jost and colleagues summarize: “Research consistently finds that conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety.”
Roberts concludes that guns are thus a “last-ditch effort to impose control on a world slipping away.” He then paints a picture of a white guy in his 50s, a man watching the world spiraling out of control, and taking comfort in the knowledge that “he can draw the line . . . at his door, on his private property, because he has a gun.”
#share#This makes no sense, even on its own terms. Isn’t the leftist response to mass shootings an appeal to fear? By demanding that the government intervene to allay their anxieties — in spite of the microscopic chance that they’ll fall victim to a spree killer — aren’t liberals seeking far greater systematic “order, structure, closure, and certainty” than defenders of individual liberty ever would? Conservatives carry guns in part because we understand that order is impossible. In the leftist heart, the hope for order is irrepressible.
Gun owners aren’t driven by some incomprehensible psychological flaw, but by principle and practicality.
Conservatives carry guns in part because we understand that order is impossible. In the leftist heart, the hope for order is irrepressible.
On principle, we often have a fundamentally different view of the role and authority of government than gun-control advocates do. The Second Amendment doesn’t merely preserve a right to self-defense (or a right to hunt); it serves as an intentionally crafted brake on the power of government. Thus, even if one could imagine a society without crime — without the need to guard against an armed robber or a spree killer — the right to keep and bear arms represents the citizens’ last line of defense against tyranny.
Moreover, there is an even more basic principle of sacred responsibility to one’s family and neighbors. It’s a matter of honor that I view myself as my family’s first line of defense against evil. The idea of voluntarily abdicating that responsibility to the government — or to anyone else — is repugnant, not just to me but to millions of Americans who share my values.
#related#And there’s also the significant matter of practicality. In a world where guns — or knives or baseball bats or even human fists and feet (which kill more people than so-called “assault rifles”) — exist, there will be always a need for instantaneous self-defense, which the police simply can’t provide. If each of us has an inalienable right to self-defense and the defense of our families, don’t we have a right to effective self-defense?
Roberts is correct that the gun-control debate has become tribal, and that “differences run deeper than evidence.” But that always happens when core principles are at stake. I doubt my dedication to self-defense and my suspicion of government power will persuade Roberts or any of his friends. But I do know that if the worst happens, and a member of his tribe faces mortal danger alongside a member of my tribe, his friends will be grateful indeed that someone in that room resisted elite cultural pressures, stuck to his core principles, and gave everyone a fighting chance to live.
— David French is an attorney and Staff Writer at National Review.