[WS:] This is the main reason what I am in favor of gun control - as a purely political move against conservatives of various stripes. However, I am fully aware that such a move is totally ineffective - in the same league as delegalization of drugs or for that matter earthquakes. Gun control would certainly do absolutely nothing to prevent Lanza's mother from buying her arsenal - she was upstanding citizen that could obtain necessary permits even under very restrictive laws.
I would go even further and say that gun regulation debate is a distraction from the real problem - American culture that glorifies guns. You seem to portray gun ownership as an response to a perceived threat. In this view, the end may be mad but the means are rational and instrumental. This explanation may have some traction, but I also think that it misses a larger and sociologically more interesting aspect of it - namely that in case of gun ownership the medium is the message, the means are the end, and both are not rational.
Corey Robin once made a point about democratization of slavery in the old South - the fact that every white person, no matter how poor, could own a slave (albeit most of poor whites did not) democratized hierarchical power relations by creating an illusion that every white person is a member of "power elite" regardless of his class status. Having power in this context is equal to being able to control and denigrate another human being. Robin also claims that this works in sexual relations as well.
I would take the next step and claim that gun ownership plays the same role as well. Gun is a fetish of power - its very possession gives a sense of power i.e. ability to control and destroy another human being. Most males are obsessed with power. In the US, the way this male fantasy of power is manifested by acquisition of fetishes of power - guns. The very possession of a fetish gives its owner a certain benefit, which in case of guns is power = ability to control and destroy other human beings. Lax gun regulations mean democratization of this form of power relations, as everyone can buy as many fetishes as one desires without any restrictions. By the same logic, gun regulation means taking these fetishes of power away, and that means emasculation.
Fir that reason, I sincerely doubt that any meaningful gun regulations are even possible in this country, not to mention their effectiveness.
The problem is not the material object (i.e. the gun) but the social relations that turned that object into a fetish of power. An effective way of dealing with this problem is not regulating the acquisition of objects, but destruction of the culture that turns them into fetishes. I do not believe this is going to happen any time in our life time. -- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."