In today's politics, virtually no other issue has Democrats and Republicans more at odds than guns. Just look at this tweet from Speaker of the House Paul Ryan on the day President Obama announced his executive action on guns. Complicated with a mix of cultural values, special interests, and an imperative desire to increase public safety, the gun debate in America is pretty much at an epic standstill and, regardless of President Obama's recent executive action which actually do very little to current laws, are almost sure to remain that way.
At first glance, the gun debate may seem to be yet another classic case of Washington gridlock where both parties simply disagree without a clear compromise to be made but that is just not true. The standstill is occurring due to misinformation from Democrats as well as extreme ideological distrust from Republicans who see any attempt to strengthen gun laws in even the slightest fashion as a "1984" style colossal overreach of government power.
It's first important to understand that current gun policy in the United States is blindingly unrepresentative of the attitudes most Americans hold towards guns. Federal gun policy currently allows a "gun show loophole" which allows individuals involved in the private sale of firearms to bypass a background check. However, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 85% of Americans support background checks for gun shows and private sales. There is also support for other policies not currently in existence in the U.S. For example, 70% support the creation of a federal database to track gun sales, and 57% support a ban on assault-style weapons. So, why can't Democrats and Republicans find a resolution and achieve some policy goals that most Americans seem to support and more importantly might save lives?
Here's the problem:
After nearly every traumatic mass shooting the President along with hundreds of others of elected officials flock to twitter to announce their views on guns and urge support for certain policy actions. When listening to Democrats respond to shootings, there are many references to European countries like the United Kingdom and Germany as well as other countries with unimaginatively (from an American perspective at least) low rates of gun violence and high levels of gun control like Japan and Australia. Democrats urge people to question why the United States is the only advanced country on the planet where gun shootings on this scale occur as well as the only country to tolerate it by not passing "common sense" restrictions such as universal background checks.
Democrats often try to inexplicably link gun control with an immediate and direct decrease in gun violence. Yes, more guns do result in more deaths as shown in the chart from Mother Jones. The correlations exist but as the data regarding the effects of specific gun control legislation on gun violence show and as Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times, "it's complicated." For example, while gun sales have been on an upward trend for quite some time, the gun homicide rate has remained stable since 2000 after a steady decline observed from the early 1990's. Although I believe requiring background checks for purchasing items designed to kill with great efficiency is common sense, it should be understood that passing universal background check legislation will NOT decrease gun violence to the levels seen across European countries and other advanced nations.
Discussions of gun violence are often centered on homicide but in reality the leading cause of gun death, according to the Center for Disease Control, is death by suicide. CDC data also show that of all suicides in the U.S. in 2015, over half involved the use of a gun. Guns are incredibly efficient at killing and the odds of a person being successful in their suicide is greatly increased by the presence of a weapon designed to kill compared to other means of suicide. Background checks simply do nothing to prevent these tragedies.
Although there is debate among the effects of certain gun control legislation on mass shootings, there is empirical support that suggests limiting access to guns could significantly decrease suicide rates. For example, in Australia where roughly 650,000 guns were confiscated after a 1996 mass shooting which left 35 dead and many wounded, there was a 74% decrease in suicides by guns where suicide rates by other means remained unchanged. However, it is currently unfathomable to believe that a gun policy like the one enacted in Australia could actually be implemented here in the United States.
In short, Democrats advocate decreasing gun violence to European levels by requiring background checks even though the only real way to achieve such low levels of gun violence would inevitably require drastically reducing the amount of guns available to everyone. This is why Republicans are currently so opposed to any tightening in gun laws, even those common sense reforms that a large majority of Americans support and have the ability to meaningfully keep guns out of the hands of criminals. They see even the slightest reform to gun policy as a slippery slope that could eventually lead to proposals to abolish the Second Amendment which is unfortunate when there is a credible middle ground to be reached.