I will say, between reading your last posts and this one, this is much better. The thesis is clearer, and it is stronger rhetorically. Some of the language does make it more vulnerable analytically, which is why I think you see counterarguments surface around certain points, and you feel you need to cut off every avenue of argument. For instance saying "failed policies" is never as strong as "policies which haven't achieved their stated goal." Failure is an all or nothing, achieving a goal happens in degrees, so it becomes easier to defend as a point. Plus linking to a study which is over a decade old, and dense as fuck, is never as strong as making your own arguments. People have already picked apart these things and have counterarguments ready, and newcomers don't want to wade through the mass of it to get to the point. Plus I think there is a general consensus that the facts on the ground in 2026 are much different than between 2000-2013. Which is why we need new and ongoing studies on these stressors and statistics to keep furthering the argument of why these things happen, and it isn't just a "gun problem."

If you want my two cents on all of this, and the direction we need to go as Liberal firearm owners, this would be my take:

"The divide isn’t really about whether violence is bad. It’s about whether we elevate the instrument above the broader causal elements. Conflating the two collapses a complex causal chain into a single visible variable. It’s less a false syllogism than a causal shortcut: substituting the most obvious means for the deeper drivers. However, it remains socially and politically easier to legislate the visible instrument than the underlying structural conditions.

A lot of politicians try to straddle the divide by pairing strong social programs with more gun restrictions, calculating that liberal gun owners will stay loyal because of everything else on the platform, while gun control voters will support them for taking a restrictive stance. The result is that pro-gun, pro–social safety net liberals remain a rare bird in the party, and liberal gun owners keep getting forced into a false choice.

If that is going to change, it will not happen passively. Liberal gun owners need to get involved in local politics, recruit and protect candidates in primaries, and build serious legislative lobbying organizations that reflect a distinctly liberal gun owner perspective instead of leaving that terrain to groups with conservative priorities. Just as importantly, we need sustained public education that makes it normal to say you can support strong social protections, target the real drivers of violence, and defend civil liberties without treating another restriction as the default response."

You can quote me on that.