Why is it that conservative (politically) Christians might recognize that guns cannot cause murder yet still blame other things for the actions of those who misuse them? On this issue, they might correctly utilize rationality, but on others they might succumb to the same arguments that someone might use to claim guns make people commit murders (or other crimes). The cognitive dissonance can be distinct and rather obvious. Note that I am not saying that all conservative Christians have this cognitive dissonance--I am only reporting observations I've made of some conservative Christians in my life.
All arguments for the universal illegality of a particular type of weapon in civilian hands are based in fallacies--in slippery slopes, question-begging arbitrary lines, circular reasoning, and non sequiturs, and the naturalistic fallacy. Regardless of what his or her subjective preferences are, no one can soundly argue that a specific kind of weapon should be illegal. To some extent, at least, politically and theologically conservative Christians I know seem to tend to understand why this is the case. Misuse of something does not mean that the thing is immoral in itself or that it caused the misuse. And an autonomous human cannot legitimately blame an inanimate external stimuli or object for his or her actions (short of some sort of hypothetical mind control), nor can he or she legitimately blame another person. The reasons for this are readily apparent to rational minds.
The thing I find so interesting about the typical conservative Christian stance on this subject (which happens to be logically and Biblically correct) is that many conservative Christians I've met embrace an asinine double standard. I've met many of them who recognize that guns don't cause murder or robbery--that they can't cause illicit violence--but they might say that video games can cause violent sins [1] or that nudity (or lesser exposure of the human body) can cause lust or sexual sins [2]. But there is nothing sinful about me owning a gun if I want to (Deuteronomy 4:2, 1 John 3:4), and guns cannot cause evil acts to occur. Likewise, there is nothing sinful about me playing video games like God of War if I want to. There is nothing sinful about me watching the Saw movies if I want to; neither video games nor movies can cause somebody to commit acts of violence anymore than inanimate guns can. And there is nothing sinful about me exposing my body if I want to or about women seeing it (and vice versa). Fallacious arguments about causality are sometimes selectively used by the conservative Christians who easily identify how stupid they are in other contexts.
Why would some conservative Christians I know (like my parents) decry gun control as an illogical response to gun violence but then turn around and condemn video games, R-rated movies, bikinis, or nudity as causing sins? Because they are slaves to their own assumptions and fictions, not to reason and reality. They have a set of conclusions that they do not want to back away from, regardless of how much evidence is mounted against them--even regardless of whether or not one can use logic alone to discredit the conclusions entirely without a more prolonged search for evidence. At best these people are inconsistent hypocrites who use confirmation bias to arbitrarily structure their worldviews. At worst, they are firm enemies of reason itself. Either way they deserve to be treated in accordance with their irrationality.
Of course universal prohibition of certain firearms is arbitrary, unbiblical, and not rooted in logic. But the same is true of the asinine condemnations of entertainment and the human body that some Christians don't want to give up. Rational people, when an error is demonstrated to them, will acknowledge and seek to avoid that error. When a person does not abandon an error after it is pointed out, he or she seeks to falsely perceive reality in order to sustain an ideological fantasy. To call such a person a seeker of truth is laughable.
[1]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/10/can-video-games-cause-violence.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-artistic-legitimacy-of-gaming.html
[2]. See here:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/bible-on-nudity-part-1.html
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