Wednesday, the Senate rejected several attempts at gun control, including expanded background checks, which received a majority 54 votes but not the 60 it needed to advance. The outrage from gun control advocates was swift. “This was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” said President Obama. “Shame on them,” said Gabrielle Giffords. Even the generally calm left-leaning economist Justin Wolfers got a little worked up: “How many kids have to be slain before Congress finally tries to prevent monsters from getting their hands on guns?(Apparently more than 20)”
These emotional appeals paper over some inconvenient gaps in logic. This four-month push for gun control was a response to the Newtown tragedy, as we have been constantly reminded every time Obama brings the parents on stage or lets one give a weekly radio address. But expanded background checks wouldn’t have stopped the Sandy Hook shooter, who failed an existing check and then stole his mother’s guns. (Background checks wouldn’t have saved Giffords from the Tucson shooter, either, who passed a background check to get his weapon.)
If we’re going to enact legislation in response to the Newtown tragedy because we want to prevent similar tragedies, why are we upset that we can’t pass legislation that wouldn’t have prevented that tragedy in the first place?
Let’s say children on a school bus perished in a horrific accident from a highway collision with a semi, even though all the kids were wearing seatbelts. Somebody wanted to stop that from happening again, so they said, “Hey, you know, some buses don’t even have seatbelts! Let’s make all buses have seatbelts! IF YOU OPPOSE ME YOU MUST HATE ALL CHILDREN.” Universal seatbelt checks may not be a bad idea, but it’d be a little dishonest to emotionally tie it to a tragedy that had nothing to do with it.
Common Sense?
But maybe I’m thinking too literally. Perhaps the Newtown tragedy simply awakened us to the general need to make children safer. We accept that we cannot make all children perfectly safe. We are just trying to reduce the number of future tragedies, so it is not relevant whether or not that reduction includes the specific type of tragedy that awakened us. If our legislation saves just one life, it’s worth it (and nevermind that this logic would also have us calling for 10MPH speed limits).
Once we have severed the logical connection between “Newtown” and “background checks” (though we still want to use the emotional connection as much as possible), we can judge the legislation on its own merits. It’s just common sense! We already require background checks for some purchases, so why not close some loopholes! Besides, polls consistently show 85-90% support! It must be the big bad gun lobby preventing the common sense reforms that most Americans want!
I do find such arguments compelling, though unconvincing. The best conservative spin on the poll numbers is that 48% believe background checks “could” lead to confiscation, so maybe some of that 90% supports it in principle but is still quite alright with it not actually happening. And as reddit user upturn points out, “Most of the polling we’re seeing is on the idea of universal background checks, not the specific Senate bill itself.”
Still, those are pretty weak defenses. It’s clear that expanded background checks are not considered a radical or extreme position in the current American political landscape, even amongst conservatives. And since the government already does background checks on an arbitrary set of purchase types, I’m not convinced that adding more arbitrary purchase types to that set is any dangerous threat to our freedoms, 2nd Amendment rights, etc.
Everyone Just Calm Down
But if the arguments against expanded background checks are weak, the arguments for it aren’t very strong, either. The “gun show loophole” isn’t as big as many people think, since licensed dealers perform checks at the shows already. And we’ve already seen that it wouldn’t have stopped recent tragedies.
Basically, I saw the measure as both too weak to do much good preventing violence and too weak to do much harm restricting liberties. I didn’t really care about it much either way. So now I can’t decide what’s more amusing…. the conservatives who were all worked up after Newtown that Obama was gonna come take their guns away when an extremely weak measure couldn’t even pass the Democrat-majority Senate? Or the liberals who are all worked up about the shameful, corrupt Republican blocking of an extremely weak measure that wouldn’t have even prevented the tragedies that inspire their emotional appeals?