[WS:] I agree, to a large extent. I think that focus on objects (guns) instead of social relations in which those objects are used is fetishism.
This holds for both the right and the left sides of the debate.
However, I also think that this debate goes much deeper than bamboozling the gullible public - it reveals the attitude toward fighting and violence.
Guns epitomize the "right" to use force and violence by individuals - even though they are not the only means of violence (fists are far more popular). In other words, guns are "hierophanies" or objects whose material form makes them particularly suitable to visual manifestation of the "sacred" (cf. Mircea Eliade) - which in this case is male power and virility. It is no coincidence that it is a macho man thing, albeit some women fall for it as well. Liberals are more likely to abhor the use of force,personal violence and machismo more generally than conservatives, hence use the gun as a fetish to express this attitude. With the radical left, it is a different story. Many of them are closet or open macho men who are attracted to radical politics because it gives them an excuse in promoting or engaging in violent fights - be it fighting the cops or rival gangs or the revolution as a glorified form of warfare. These guys are closer to gun toting right wingers than to liberals, whom they perceive as wussy and effeminate (i.e "bourgeois").
>From that pov, the gun debate is not just wool over the eyes but one of the
dividing issues that splits the left-of-the center. Or to be more precise,
it is a canary in the coal mine that reveals the presence of much more
noxious forces that split them - machismo and attitude toward personal
violence.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."