I gotta say that for a progressive such as myself, who just so happens to be pro-gun, it is strange experience.
Often progressives, particularly in the media will make fun of conservatives because we can clearly see how conservative media sources use scare tactics to rile up their base. But I've been discovering, particularly on the gun issue, how progressive media does the same thing with their own base.
So instead of demonizing the other side, how about we try to understand one another better?
Years ago I was struck by a study I saw that demonstrated that kids that go to college and live together in dorms, have less emotional maturity than those who go straight to the job market after high school. Education itself played little into this. It seemed that the environment of college students weren't all that different than high school. And socialization among a large group of people of the same age had the effect of retarding maturity.
Human beings have used this for our own advantage in the domestication of animals. For instance, a kitten will meow as a call from it's mother to help the kitten. A feral adult cat generally won't meow. A domesticated adult cat will. It seems that taking care of the cat, just as a mother cat taking care of it's kitten, retards the emotional maturity of the cat, and the cat ends up seeing you as it's mother. Similar behavior has been observed in dogs, and recently in Russian experiments to domesticate silver foxes.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/taming-wild-animals/ratliff-text/1
Human beings evolved in the wild. It took us some 90,000 years to develop agriculture and civilization. We spent most of that time living on the land in small groups. The closest equivalent we have to that in modern America is rural living. Many of the advantages of modern living in cities (public transportation, central heating and air conditioning, stores to buy the things you need like clothing, food, etc) are far more sparse living in rural America. Many farmers don't have a trash service, they burn their own trash. You don't take the bus, you drive your own truck, and when it brakes down, you fix it.
In other words, rural living demands that one must learn to be more self-reliant. And this has the effect of accelerating maturity, and taking on greater responsibilities.
This, I think, explains part of the reason why the left thinks gun control is a good idea. When people live in an apartment in the city, they commute to work, they order take out, they ultimately are living in a manner where the responsibilities one must take in order to survive are minimalized.
In this state of mind, gun control is a good idea. And average citizens carrying guns is a very bad idea. It would appear as dangerous as children carrying guns. Taking on an awesome responsibility like carrying a gun is so far out of the world view of someone who never has to learn how to change their tire, or fix their own plumbing, or even how to start a camp fire, just seems unreasonable.
As children, we never worry about having to protect ourselves. Mommy and daddy is always there to protect you, and when they're not, there's other adults like teachers or baby sitters to do the job. Some of us, as we become adults continue to hold onto this belief. That if anything goes wrong the police are there to protect you.
But what happens when the police aren't there to protect you? What if they suck at their job? What if they're more interesting in protecting themselves than protecting you?
Years ago, back when Michael Moore just had a little rinky dink TV show on Bravo called The Awful Truth, he did a funny little segment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkdek7Q_Rfw
So, the question is, if cops are that stupid, then why can't you learn to do the things they know how to do? If you can't be trusted with a gun, then why should they?
Another aspect of this is that I believe that many progressives have trouble with the idea of using a gun for self-defense, because it means that people they think of as crazed loons get to act as vigilantes, and serve as judge, jury, and executioner of a person they're accusing of a crime.
But that too, shows a lack of emotional maturity. It is wholly ignorant of the nature of human violence. How it happens and how fast it can happen. When a lunatic armed with nothing more than a knife can kill you in 15 seconds, dialing 9-1-1 isn't an option.
Many progressives are so abhor violence so much that they'd rather not think about such things. But I realized years ago that part of being an adult is having to think about things that you'd rather not, simply to prepare for whatever life may throw at you.
Alright, well, I suppose I've rambled enough for one night. Time for me to go back to bed.
