what those states produce are culture war policies. I'm pretty sure that people do realize the problem is real in red states; the 7 million who voted for Biden pay attention to the denials and silence around red state behavior and values (which is why a few red states are growing purple).
Below is not a be-all/end-all claim, but it is a review of studies about guns and death levels, which likely (no one knows for a fact) are used to justify the "shrug" policies about AR's and mass shootings. I'm not endorsing this, just bringing it to folks' attention.
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/concealed-carry/violent-crime.html
it is not possible to reach any scientifically supported conclusion because of (a) the sensitivity of the empirical results to seemingly minor changes in model specification, (b) a lack of robustness of the results to the inclusion of more recent years of data (during which there were many more law changes than in the earlier period), and (c) the statistical imprecision of the results. The evidence to date does not adequately indicate either the sign or the magnitude of a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates. Furthermore, this uncertainty is not likely to be resolved with the existing data and methods. If further headway is to be made, in the committee's judgment, new analytical approaches and data are needed (p. 7).
Data are interpretable, dismissable, deniable. Rethugs will not talk to us because, as their 'enemy,' talking to our side legitimizes us.
Re guns or anything else, I'm thinking that we know that our political differences about the value of human life are at the core of all our political differences. Again, We know this. Rethugs pretend not to know this.
= new reply since forum marked as read