> why there is such a hard push for more gun-control laws every year given this decreasing level of domestic violence. I'm embarrassed to cite a Batman film, b

> why there is such a hard push for more gun-control laws every year given this decreasing level of domestic violence. I'm embarrassed to cite a Batman film, but the off-touted speech the Joker gives sums it up quite well. People are generally not concerned about death and destruction. As long as it is predictable people won't fear it, even if it is statistically extremely likely to hurt them like cars or alcohol. What we fear is unpredictable violence. In order to sleep well, we don't need to be safe, we just need to know that we performed our safety ritual. Random violence casts our safety rituals into question, making it harder to sleep. So we need a secondary safety ritual: ruffled conversations with our peers about gun control and the like, and how awful our opposition is for bringing chaos into the world. Impractical aims like gun control are perfect because we can perpetually blame the failure on opposition, which makes our secondary safety ritual indestructible. “If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all ‘part of the plan’. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”