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I think it's pretty clear that the reason why gun ownership is widespread in America and virtually unheard of in places like Australia and the UK is 1) the second amendment and 2) an active movement of conservatives who continually fight for their gun rights.
Australia is what happens when conservatives don't want people to have gun rights.
I'd qualify that somewhat?
Australian conservatives: 1) do not specifically desire that gun rights be protected or expanded in Australia, and 2) also do not specifically desire that Australians lack gun rights.
That is, I don't think the Coalition want people not to have gun rights. I think the Coalition just doesn't care very much. The Australian people in general do not care about guns very much. There is a small constituency that does (SFF exist, and One Nation mention it every now and then), but it is numerically small, not particularly wealthy, and not very effectively mobilised.
The situation here is basically that the Greens are strongly anti-gun, both Labor and the Coalition are inconsistent and opportunistic (Labor are probably a little more anti and the Coalition a little less, but neither are that devoted, and both usually signal anti-gun stuff in the aftermath of shootings), and the few pro-gun voices are marginal. I would expect the Coalition to turn out to be pro-gun if they thought there were votes it, but there aren't. SFF have very few seats, they don't have much of a lobby, and pretty much all SFF voters are preferencing the Coalition anyway. Same for One Nation. This is Australia, so turnout/mobilising-the-base are irrelevant; elections are about swinging moderates. And moderates do not care about guns.
I think the key difference in America is simply that there are a large number of people who either regularly use and therefore care about guns, or for whom guns have this almost talismanic power as symbols of liberty. As such there's a reasonably-sized constituency of people who care about them and will fight for them. America has low-turnout elections so mobilising people does matter, firearms enthusiasts and manufacturers have a powerful advocacy group in the NRA, and the Second Amendment provides a fantastic banner to rally to. As such firearms are one of the few of - perhaps the only? - culture war issue in America where the right has been consistently winning.
I'm always a bit surprised when I talk to Americans in terms of just how important the gun issue sees to them. I'm Australian and I am in fact in favour of liberalising our gun laws (seriously, the buyback scheme after Port Arthur did not actually reduce firearm violence), and even then I... kind of don't care. I'd like to liberalise our gun laws, but it is pretty low on my list of priorities, and I would be happy to trade it for other things I care about. As a point of principle, I want to relax the laws, but it's a pretty minor issue all things considered. I agree with the Americans in terms of overall position, but the issue is just so much less salient to me, and I think to most Australians.
Fully agreed, this is a fuller description of the situation. I feel like our gun laws should be liberalised at least a bit - people have had heirlooms from the world wars confiscated and destroyed, as if anyone was going to go and commit a crime with an antique Luger. But it's pretty abstract for me - crime is low, I don't need or want a gun for protection. And gun ownership does seem to meaningfully impact on suicide numbers, and that's less abstract for me because I used to deal with suicides for a living (they're awful, I do not recommend). And I'm one of the tiny minority of people who grew up with guns.
I've been meaning for a while to finally make the time to go down a local range and fire a gun for the first time - it's cheap, they lend out weapons for first-timers, and they sound pretty friendly. I just keep putting it off for dumb reasons.
Still, I feel like it would be good for me, in some respect, to at some point just... hold a rifle in my hands, aim at a target, and pull the trigger. I hope there would be some learning in that, in experiencing a gun not as a vague idea or symbol, but as a physical object in my hands. I hope there would be something demystifying in that.
Or maybe it'd just be a fun afternoon. I don't know. But it seems worth doing.
Anyway, on the laws, it's mostly just that my starting point for most regulations like this is that when in doubt, err on the side of liberty, and as far as I can tell the more restrictive post-1996 firearms regulations just haven't really had a positive impact. And insofar as there are people who have legitimate uses for firearms, and derive real enjoyment out of owning them, collecting them, using them recreationally, etc., there are no grounds for me to deny them.
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Gun ownership impacts firearm suicide rates; skip past that particular bait-and-switch and the evidence is mixed at best, with massive substitution effects.
Firearm suicides do tend to be messier and the not-immediately-fatal modes worse than almost anything short of the more aggressive overdoses, though.
There's a partial but not total substitution effect. Eg see here, where there is a steep decline in firearm suicides following Port Arthur and a correspondingly sharp rise in hangings, but it still nets out to a reduction in the overall rate.
Guns are quick and irreversible. You're holding the gun, you decide to do it, you pull the trigger, you're gone. Other methods take more time to execute, so you have time to snap back to your senses and think actually this is maybe not such a great idea.
That still gives an (age-adjusted) rate of 12.0 per 100k in 1985, which exceed all but 1993 (11.9 per 100k) and 2002-2013 (at minimum, 10.2 per 100k in 2006). That's better than it sounds -- the 'real' suicide rate is probably lower now than in 1985, despite the official numbers, due to improved data collection and reduced stigma -- but it's still a lot weaker and a lot less directly connected a signal than you're suggesting, especially given the nature of Australian suicides (and especially demographic concentration) and how the numbers have been measured.
You can smuggle some sort of causation out: perhaps it took seven years for the law to be implemented to some important threshold, and then there was some external economic pressure that fucked over a lot of people for the next decade after that or revision in the data-gathering. Or that it rode an already-decreasing rate from the more-suicidal early 80s, in ways that should have us comparing not pre/post Port Arthur or its laws but some other years. That might even not be wrong! But it's still mixed.
I know the theoretical fundamentals, but they seem insufficiently precise and a bit of a just-so story. There's no small number of other mechanisms with similar irreversibility and speed, some more available in Australia.
Hanging isn't one of them, and it's the one people mostly choose.
That… doesn’t seem like great evidence in favor of the academic theory.
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Wrong order. When there wasn't a large active movement of citizens fighting for gun rights, the 2nd amendment was treated like an inkblot.
I totally agree, and this is a big part of why I oppose a bill of rights. Ultimately paper laws are worthless in the face of public will, and so creating constitutional protections that are supposedly above the normal democratic process actually just creates incoherent law as judges pretzel around provisions that don't have support. That and the inherently vague nature of these broad proclamations inevitably lead to a politicized judiciary.
It's not above the normal democratic process. Congress could repeal the bill of rights tomorrow if they put their minds to it.
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The entire point of having a bill of rights is to give rhetorical ammunition to the pro-rights side- sure, "rule of law" is always going to be "rule by law" to some degree, but even an explicitly worthless bill of rights (like, say, Canada's) still codifies how the public should ideally restrain its worst impulses and, much like guns, provides a common co-ordination point around which political action might crystallize.
Sure, this depends on a bunch of things- mainly that the past was freer than the present (though that's why bills of rights from countries that post-date the US' founding are all much weaker than the US's BOR in the first place!)- but giving [classical] liberals the ability to convict traditionalists and progressives of institutional and intentional unfairness is still a big deal especially when those factions start losing political ground, and gives those who might be in favor of returning to that stated ideal the same cover of "I just want to be treated fairly" that the corrupt enjoy when public opinion favors them.
I think the constitution is the wrong place to put rhetorical ammunition. If it were statutory law (like the Racial Discrimination Act which our government just suspends when it gets in the way), not so bad. There's value to making the government explicitly say "yes we are in fact abridging this right". But the current system rewards people for pretending that actually the second amendment wasn't meant for weapons of war or other similarly asinine things.
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On balance I do favour a Bill of Rights, but with a get-out - either something like the Canadian notwithstanding clause, or a Constitutional amendment process that is easy enough that a stable 55% majority who know what they want can amend the Bill of Rights in order to get it.
I think the ability of a court to ask the political branches "Are you sure your really want to do this?" is valuable because the nature of politicians is that sometimes they do stupid stuff for a quick headline, and the sort of rights that get put into Bills of Rights ought to be taken seriously. And the possibility of being overruled acts as a deterrent to judges who want to get their inner politician on.
Yeah this is fair. I wouldn't massively object to a statutory Bill of Rights that effectively just forces governments to own their decisions when they come into conflict with it.
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