Cosby

First, liberals and conservatives both confidently assert that the evidence is incontrovertible that gun control {increases, decreases} crime. I haven’t studied the data closely enough to have a strong opinion one way or the other, and frankly I suspect most of the other people with opinions on the question don’t know what they’re talking about either. But both sides seem able to marshall at least plausible arguments in their favor, which means that while I’m not confident of the sign, I am reasonably sure that the magnitude of the harm (or benefit) is small.

And therefore, as a liberal, my general attitude is that in the absence of compelling evidence of harm we should have a bias toward letting people do as they please. Owning a gun may not, on net, improve your safety, but it’s certainly no more dangerous than smoking, drinking, having unprotected sex, or many other activities that people are free to do in the privacy of their own homes. A lot of liberals seem to have a strange blind spot about this; liberals generally have a strong presumption in favor of letting people do as they please in the privacy of their homes, but that seems to get forgotten when the subject is owning guns.