Now let's make this clear, I do not identify myself as a liberal. I definitely do have more liberal beliefs than conservative, and I am registered as a Democrat (specifically for Bernie Sanders); however, I also have some conservative viewpoints. I am a moderate liberal, if anything. I just do not like to put labels on myself, maybe it's the hipster in me. Anyway, I want to show everybody that it is possible to favor guns in the U.S. AND more gun control while still being a liberal. This is in response to the many right-wing conservatives that believe liberals just want to take guns away and the many liberals that believe we should get rid of guns in the U.S. completely.
The argument of keeping guns in the U.S. is actually very logical. If you want to take it as a political argument, then go head.
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It all has to do with the state of our current economic system. Our economy is set up in a way in which inequality thrives. I can get into the history behind this, but that would take about two separate articles to write. All I will say about the origin of inequality is that it stems from a huge change in our economy that happened during the early 1980s and it has continued to thrive due to a mixture of policies from this economic change, unequal opportunity, and a few other socioeconomic related factors. I'm not saying that inequality, in general, is a bad thing. I mean, you need inequality in order to have capitalism; however, when inequality is as huge as it is in the U.S., then many problems will arise.
Just think about it: if there are people in this country that are literally worth billions of dollars, while there are a numerous amount of others that literally have nothing to their name and cannot move up much further from their financial situation, no matter how hard they try, don't you think some problems would arise? Things like unhealthiness, unhappiness, and mental instability thrive in the U.S. compared to other developed countries; and they all show strong correlations to higher inequality. There is one factor, though, that is strongly correlated to inequality and directly related to my argument about guns: crime.
The U.S. has one of the highest rates of crime among developed countries. Crime includes anything from robbery to murder. I say "developed countries" because it would make no sense to compare a developed country to an undeveloped or emerging country because obviously developed countries would have less crime, overall, than undeveloped countries.
This means that even if you take guns out of the U.S., crime will still happen because of the inequality from our economy. Countries like Australia were able to take away guns completely because they have more equality and less crime, due to how their economies are set up. In a country like the U.S., taking away guns might even be worse since people would then have nothing to protect themselves with. Until we fix our economy, thus lowering our crime rate, people need guns in the U.S. in order to protect themselves. Even if people don't truly need them, many people will think they need them and many might even riot against it.
Now you see that you can be a liberal and still believe in keeping guns in the U.S. The whole "inequality from our economy" argument is liberal, while the "keeping guns is necessary due to crime" argument is actually very logical and not conservative or liberal in my opinion.
