By Conor Friedersdorf
Yet I am troubled by something I’ve noticed in many of the calls for more robust gun control: the conceit that it’s a subject America has yet to debate — that “the gun lobby” has somehow imposed its will on an unwilling citizenry, and that “a conversation about guns” must begin now. I’m all for more conversation about guns. It’s just that we’ve already been having one for decades.
Pretending otherwise is pernicious, for reasons I’ll soon explain. But first, a bit about the gun-control debate itself.
Shortly before the Newtown shooting, The Atlantic published an article by my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg on gun policy. He argued that the U.S. should tighten regulations to ensure that everyone who buys a gun is subject to a background check; ban high-capacity weapons that have “no reasonable civilian purpose;” and encourage lots more trained, vetted, law-abiding civilians to carry guns in public so that would-be mass murderers face resistance.
He isn’t alone in having added to America’s conversation about guns in the pages of this magazine. In September 2011, Adam Winkler suggested that Americans are often ignorant of the true history of guns in this country, noting (among other things) that the Founding Fathers “instituted gun laws so intrusive that, were they running for office today, the NRA would not endorse them.” Few Americans even owned guns before the Civil War, Richard Slotkin wrote in November 2000, asking, “What happened?” [Note: Several alert readers point out something I hadn’t realized – that the academic source cited in Richard Slotkin’s article was widely celebrated when the article was published in 2000, but that the source’s scholarship was later called into question, with Columbia University rescinding a prize it gave his work, and Emory University ultimately accepting his resignation. For a detailed rundown of the controversy go here.]
Daniel D. Polsby warned in 1994 that focusing on guns diverted our attention from the roots of our crime problem. Erik Larson pronounced that the United States was suffering from “a gun crisis” in a 1993 article tracing the history of a semi-automatic handgun used in a shooting at a suburban school. And Dorothy Weil satirized Second Amendment activism in 1977. In addition to those print articles, The Atlantic has published numerous web items about gun control in recent years that include perspectives on both sides of the issue. In the last several days we’ve produced all manner of analysis and opinion on the subject.
