Change we don't believe in

By W.W. | HOUSTON

I GUESS it was the 1984 massacre in a San Ysidro McDonald's. I would have been 11. I very much liked McDonald's. And I remember feeling startled and uneasy by the awareness that McDonald's might not be an entirely safe place, that someone might just stroll in and shoot me in the face while I blew on my steaming apple pie. Some time not too long after San Ysidro, my father took me to McDonald's. I can't now remember why, or what time of the day it was. Anyway, he was chief of police in our Iowa town, and still dressed for work, which meant he had a handgun in a shoulder holster under his suit coat. I can remember this at all only because I had an unsual thought that day, and that thought gave me an unusual feeling which left a lasting impression. No doubt some of it has to do with the fact that my father was a veteran cop, that protection was his job, and that his steady temper left no doubt that he could do it. But I remember thinking specifically about his having a gun. He has a gun, I thought. If somebody comes in here and started shooting, he won't get far. I felt that we were therefore inside a sort of bubble of security, that I was, after all, safe at McDonald's.

That sentiment normally dominates reason is a fact of human nature, and thus a fact of politics. We're always shouting vainly at one another, though rarely with the intensity of outraged moral certitude we see in the clash over the American right to bear arms. David Roberts, a blogger for Grist, is unusually candid about the effect of the guns issue on his mindset: "I can't even engage on this gun stuff. It makes me so furious I can barely form coherent thoughts". Mr Roberts happens to favour more stringent regulation of gun-ownership and worries that "my kids could get shot b/c a bunch of overcompensating revanchist nutbags have fantasies of armed rebellion". But he is hardly alone in his nearly incoherent fury. Incoherently furious conservative politicians are calling for Barack Obama's impeachment after a speech in which the president proposed to use executive discretion to slightly strengthen the enforcement of already modest federal regulations.

I won't pretend that my own opinions on this matter are especially rational or coherent. In part because my father's gun made me feel safe in a McDonald's almost three decades ago, I feel today that increasing the number of good people with guns is a perfectly sensible response to the threat of bad people with guns. The Newtown massacre left me wanting to buy a handgun, not wanting to ban them. And I'm pretty sure that if I had children, I'd want a gun even more, not less. I can't say that these preferences are based on an exhaustive analysis of the relevant bodies of empirical evidence. They're not. That's not how this works.

Nevertheless, I feel fairly secure in the claim that the reforms Mr Obama proposed today have little logical relation to the Newtown slaughter, would not have prevented it, and will not, as Mr Obama intends, "make sure that somebody like the individual in Newtown can't walk into a school and gun down a bunch of children in a shockingly rapid fashion". Even with the small shift in public opinion following the Newtown tragedy, it remains unlikely that Mr Obama's legislative proposals to ban large clips, to ban guns with certain cosmetic features, or to end the gun-show exception to mandatory background checks, will make it through Congress. Even if they do, mass shootings are going to continue to be a horrifying fact of American life. As Lexington wrote on the day of the tragedy, "I am not sure that tinkering with gun control will stop horrible massacres like today’s. And I am pretty sure that the sort of gun control that would work—banning all guns—is not going to happen." Indeed, according to Gallup, American opposition to an outright ban on handguns is at a "record high":

Gallup surmises that increasing opposition to a handgun ban in the wake of Sandy Hook "possibly [reflects] Americans' desire to defend themselves given the rash of high-profile gun violence". I should say so. If your city is gridded with heavily-subsidised roads, streets and sidewalks are dangerous for cyclists, and public transportation is perfectly lousy, what do you do? You get a car, even if it actively contributes to the regrettable status quo. There are deranged people out there, and millions upon millions of guns. So you go to McDonald's with a gun in your coat, if you can.

"I will put everything I've got into this, and so will Joe", Mr Obama said today. "But I tell you, the only way we can change is if the American people demand it".

He's right.