Polarization between progressives and conservatives is one of the only things on which all of us can agree. It’s getting worse, and it’s spreading to more issues that were not originally politicized. What I don’t think everyone realizes is how many of these issues are class-based. Liberals must do a better job of marketing progressive ideals. This can only be done when we try harder to understand the conservative perspective, and that means the low-income perspective more often than not. Educated, middle-class liberals do not have an intuitive grasp of what totem objects like guns signify in the working class world.
Autonomy is everything. This is why low-income people like tattoos. When almost every source of income that is open to you requires you to wear a uniform and a name tag, possibly a hairnet, body art asserts ownership of your body. It’s almost the only thing you can buy that can’t be stolen or repossessed, something that you carry with you even if you have no home, no vehicle, and no family. Choosing a tattoo is one of the few affordable forms of personal expression in a poor person’s life, the highest quality artwork we can buy with our scarce resources. Hold this image in mind while considering the role of highly resonant material possessions.
A working man’s life revolves around his truck, his tools, and his firearms. These are extremely potent symbols of masculinity. They are also tribal identifiers. When I see you sitting in your truck, you automatically enter the first circle of trust. When I see you using a tool or a firearm, you’re demonstrating competence that puts us in the same world, the same value system. Middle-class people place significance of this level on grammar, grooming, and etiquette. These traits seem effete in the working class world. A university-educated person who cannot use tools or perform basic practical tasks seems comically useless, even emasculated. Working-class people are wary around middle-class people, and with cause, because the managerial class wields the power of severing a man’s livelihood, usually over trivial reasons. This is why there is such deeply abiding rage over the “jobs vs. environment” canard. When we focus our educated, empowered attention on a man’s guns, we’re threatening one of the few sources of strength, autonomy, and power in his world.
What makes a man a man? The traditional role of protector and provider is one of the few truly appealing personas on offer. When gun owners talk about protecting their families, they are talking about a blood oath. It is a matter of sacred honor. They aren’t kidding around here. A working-class man with a precarious financial foundation doesn’t have much else to bring to the table. He can’t give his family the lifestyle he’d like, but he can give his life. He can die fighting to protect them, if necessary, just as he can die serving our country.
An educated middle-class person who was raised in comfort will only begin to understand the background level of anxiety in the world of the poor after experiencing a total loss of financial security. Take away the prompt arrival time of emergency responders. Take away the safe, quiet neighborhood with the good schools. Take away the financially successful, educated neighbors. Take away the reliable transportation. Take away the network of references and connections. Take away the home ownership and the food security. What is left? In constant, justifiable fear of job loss, eviction, fines and fees, violence and interpersonal conflict, everything else seems much scarier. Home invasion is one of these justifiable fears, much more likely in certain neighborhoods than in others. The threat of a rogue killer breaking into the house is not a foolish fantasy; it’s a thing that happens. Simply put, progressives are more optimistic about it not happening to our families, partly because of where we happen to sleep at night.
Guns are about mattering in the world. A gun is an object of power that can instantly transform any situation. It’s as close as we can get to an actual magic wand. It can stop predators, whether animal or human, and it has a way of bringing conflicts to a decisive end. If we want to change the conversation about gun ownership, we’re going to have to do a much better job of returning power and autonomy to those who lack it in every other meaningful way.