Members-Only Article
In my previous post I got at one of the evolutions of the gun issue over the last decade. There’s another, over a considerably longer period, which seldom gets discussed but is, I believe, extremely important. As strange as it may seem today, one of the biggest supporters of restrictive gun laws used to be police unions. On its face this is hardly surprising. A central feature of the state is that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. That state sanctioned violence is primarily exercised by the police. Who wants to be outgunned? Police unions as a consistent supporter of gun laws remained the case as recently as the Clinton era. But that has shifted markedly over the last twenty to thirty years.
The reason barely requires explanation. Indeed, it’s so intuitive it can take a few moments to put it together. Police are demographically more or less an exact overlap with the part of American society that is most pro-gun. Disproportionately male and white. Police are also disproportionately conservative. At the most basic level, one of the defining characteristics of American police officers is that most if not all of them carry firearms as part of their essential job responsibilities. Of course, they’re going to be into guns, though in the past that didn’t necessarily go hand in hand with opposing any restrictions on their ownership and use. When you put all the overlapping Venn diagrams together it’s obvious that police as a group will be overwhelmingly pro-gun rights and that this will overwhelm any remaining desire not to be outgunned in a violent confrontation.
It is important to note that police officers, officers of the law, will always tend in a conservative direction. After all, they are charged with enforcing civil authority. So it is an inherently authority-confirming occupation. But while officers of the law have always tended in a conservative direction, “conservatism” didn’t always mean supporting the unrestricted use and ownership of guns.
Politically, this shift had major consequences. As recently as the 90s this was a key part of gun control advocacy. That’s the origin of “cop killer” bullets and the attempt to ban them. The support of police unions allowed gun control advocates to appeal to conservative beliefs and anti-crime sentiments. Today, determined political support for police — as exemplified by the blue line flags and the like — is almost indistinguishable from pro-gun advocacy, if not necessarily logically than certainly in terms of those who support the two lines of advocacy.
