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| Illustration by Nolan Pelletier for The New York Times |
The country's deepest cultural divide might be on guns, and it "has a profound political dimension, reliably driving rural Americans into Republican arms," writes Robert Leonard, the news director for rural Knoxville, Iowa, radio stations KNIA-AM and KRLS-FM. In a thoughtful essay for The New York Times, Leonard digs into the gun debate and what it means for America.
While he grew up hunting small game with his grandfather, he says he's come to understand and appreciate arguments for gun control too. Guns are important to the culture in his conservative town of 7,313, so he said he wanted to understand more about pro-gun opinions.
Leonard spoke to a local police officer who believes better background checks could prevent some gun violence, and said people need to do a better job of keeping their guns locked up. But the officer doesn't think rural Americans will ever approve of significant gun-control measures, and says other officers have told him they'd rather quit their jobs than start taking away others' guns. He also said that gun control won't stop criminals from getting guns.
"To understand why many conservatives in rural America believe this, you must start with first principles, because the argument ultimately isn’t about guns; it runs even deeper than the Second Amendment," Leonard writes. "At a 2015 campaign event during the Iowa caucuses, J. C. Watts, the former congressman from Oklahoma, spoke about perspectives on original sin. It helps illuminate the differences in worldview between many conservatives and liberals. Mr. Watts said Democrats think people were born basically good, so when good people did bad things, something in society (in this case, guns) needed to be controlled. Republicans think the fault lies with the person — the perpetrator of the evil. Bad choices result in bad things being done, in part because the perpetrator lacks the moral guidance the Christian faith provides."
If Democrats want to connect with rural Americans, Leonard writes for the Times' primarily Democratic audience, they must understand rural ideals.
It really all is as simple as stated in this article. What causes a teenager to murder his classmates? sin. And that answer vexes those who think that passing a law will fix our ills.
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