One of the things that makes what passes for "debate" on gun laws, gun policy, gun control, gun safety, whatever you want to call it, so difficult is that so many of those who proclaim their opposition to these things always frame it in a way that pits them against things that are not happening, that no one is proposing, that no real person actually wants and that have no real chance of actually happening. There's a faction on one side of this debate that insists on, and persists in, being completely unreasonable. I'm starting to use the admittedly-snarky euphemism "gun-strokers" as shorthand for this faction.
Generally speaking, American gun laws (both federal and state) don't "ban," "grab" or "confiscate" guns, they don't "disarm" citizens, and they don't "take away" or infringe anyone's "Second Amendment rights." Americans will always be able to "keep and bear arms" of one sort or another, and as long as that's the case the Second Amendment is intact. Most people are smart enough to understand that there are some kinds of "arms" that the general public cannot, should not, and must not be allowed to "keep and bear." I think most reasonable gun owners and gun fans understand that anything they can have, other people can have as well, and if other people are walking around with automatic rifles, hand grenades and daisycutters, driving tanks or pulling Howitzers behind their pickup trucks, that puts them at risk. People have a right to keep and bear arms, but they also have a right to life and liberty, which includes the right to walk about in public without being shot, blown up, hit by shrapnel, etc., and without constant fear of same.
I've been trying to look beyond the rhetoric, the imaginary "gun-grabbing," the obvious mercenary interest of the gun lobby, and the many various paranoid/narcissistic fantasies of gun-strokers in an attempt to understand what is actually driving this opposition to reasonable gun control. By "gun control" I mean real gun laws, what gun laws in this country actually do, not what the gun-strokers' fevered imaginations fear they do or may someday lead to. I'm talking about things like registration, background checks, mandatory training, licensing and insurance, and so on; the things that are actually being proposed and that most Americans support. What gun laws do, in the aggregate, is place the risk and responsibility of gun ownership on gun owners, where it belongs, and in many respects increase that risk and enforce that responsibility.
"But," I'm always told at this point, "these laws will only make it harder for law-abiding citizens to obtain and own guns. Criminals don't obey the law, so they will still be able to get guns and use them to commit crimes. Therefore these laws will only hurt responsible, law-abiding gun owners and will do nothing to prevent gun violence."
OK, think about this for a second. First, most people understand that laws, as a general matter, do not and are not intended to guarantee that prohibited behaviors will never occur. The idea that gun laws won't stop "criminals" from committing gun crimes (and thus violating gun laws) is a non-sequitur, because it would have to follow that any and all other laws are equally meaningless and ineffectual. Speed limits don't stop people from speeding, arson statutes don't stop pyromaniacs from setting fires, yada yada yada, so why have any laws at all? There is, of course, a simple answer: What laws do is increase the risk of committing the illegal act. That's all they are meant to do, because that's all they can do. Even "criminals" have a risk threshold. Laws and regulations increase the risk of illegal behavior without concomitantly increasing the benefit/reward of such behavior. When you increase the risk, and increase the risk/benefit ratio, you make the behavior less likely to occur.
Second, gun-strokers always describe themselves and their cohort as "responsible, law-abiding citizens" or "responsible, law-abiding gun owners." But here's the problem: everyone is law-abiding, until they're not. And, everyone is "responsible," by their own definition and judgment. Take gun registration, for example. The purpose of gun registration is, in part, to tie that weapon to its owner, so if it's ever used in a crime, the owner can be held partly responsible. That should give gun owners an incentive to take responsibility for their guns, keep them secure, keep them from falling into the wrong hands, and report when they are lost, stolen, sold or transferred to someone else. It's the same reason we register motor vehicles. Gun owners should take and accept the risk that their guns might be lost or stolen -- something they failed to prevent -- and be used to cause harm.
So, if you're a "responsible, law-abiding" person, and you either own or want to buy a gun that a new law requires you to register, you have three choices: (1) obey the law, accept the risks, and take responsibility for your guns; (2) avoid the risks by not owning guns, or (3) ignore/break the law, accept the risks of doing that, avoid the responsibility, and most importantly, stop congratulating yourself for being a "responsible, law-abiding" gun owner, because you're not that anymore.
This, I think, is what a lot of this hysterical freakout over "gun-grabbing" is about, when no one is actually grabbing or proposing to grab anyone's guns. Gun-strokers subjectively judge themselves to be "responsible" and "law-abiding," and they want to continue to hold themselves to their own subjective standards of what those descriptors mean. The problem is that an individual doesn't get to decide for himself whether he is "responsible" and "law-abiding." The law does not make, and is not based on, subjective character judgments like that. But if you break the law, then objectively, you are not "law-abiding;" if you don't want to be blamed for any harm caused by your guns, then objectively you are not "responsible."
Gun laws therefore threaten the self-esteem, self-image, self-description, self-characterization and self-judgment of gun-strokers. Gun laws imply an objective standard for what it means to be a "responsible, law-abiding gun owner," and gun-strokers can't have that; they prefer their own subjective definition and to continue to judge themselves accordingly.
Obviously this would be a difficult thing to acknowledge or admit, which might explain why gun-strokers oppose gun control because of imaginary things like "confiscation" and "disarmament," and create these wonderfully imaginative hero-fantasies about armed resistance and insurrection, and the conditions and events that would necessitate same. It's an improv act, yes, but it's more than that. Everyone wants to be thought of as "law-abiding" and "responsible," but actually being either of those things takes effort.