I'm starting to believe that much of the gun debate is about something else than guns. [View all]

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The level of irrationality displayed on all sides of this issue is astonishing. It has come almost to the point were facts don't matter any more. Everything is reduced to slogans like "Gun culture kill people, gun owners have blood on their hands" or "Guns don't kill people, people do" that do little justice to the complexities of gun ownership and the dynamics of an armed society.

Likely the truth lies somewhere in the middle: In some regions, under some circumstances, gun ownership probably is correlated with larger homicide rates. Under some circumstances, in some regions, with lower ones. Sometimes guns are used for self-defense, sometimes for murder. There is a possibility that various restrictions on gun ownership might bring down homicide rates. There is likely a limit to what such policies can achieve. There are definitely a large number of people who should never own a gun. And there is likely a large segment of the population who is capable of responsibly handling one.

The tone of the discourse puts me in mind of the abortion debate and leads me to believe that it is more about a culture war than anything else. Some people here on DU have openly proclaimed that they would support a verifiably ineffective restrictive policy simply to "stick it to the gun cultists and deprive them of their fetishes" to paraphrase. Others romanticize gun possession based on some sentimental idea about "the founding fathers", or peddle crazy fantasies such that "armed citizens would have stopped Hitler".

I think the whole debate is out of its mind. I think the only way forward is to toss all emotions and look at the situations objectively, without references to ideology and "culture", but that is just my personal bias showing...