Why, you might ask, is the debate over gun control so fierce in the united states? While the arguments either side present might be completely different, they're both coming from the same cognitive bias, and both are based primarily on emotion as opposed to a reasoned look at what the facts say.

First, what is compensatory control? It's a cognitive bias that causes humans to seek order out of chaos. Rob Brotherton in the book "suspicious minds" sums this up:

We have a few options when it comes to finding compensatory control. A popular one is to believe we have a powerful ally. Religions based around the idea of a benevolent, controlling God assure believers that everything happens for a reason. Or, keeping things more down-to-earth, we can put our faith in institutions like the government. Psychological studies show that when people’s sense of personal control is eroded, they are more inclined to believe in an interventionist God (but not in a more hands-off deity) and to support increased governmental controls.

Another way to achieve compensatory control is to believe we have a powerful enemy. This might seem paradoxical—what could be more troubling than imagining people scheming against you? But having enemies has its perks. Remember, the thing we want to avoid above all else is seeing the world as haphazard. If things happen to us because of pure chance, we have little hope of comprehending, predicting, and controlling our fate. Believing that someone somewhere is in control—even if they don’t have your best interests at heart—is preferable to thinking that the course of your life is dictated by nothing more than chance. Unlike faceless randomness, identifiable enemies can potentially be thwarted, managed, or at the very least understood.

This isn’t a conscious decision. Our brains do most of the work for us, without us necessarily even realizing why we feel anxious to begin with. Roderick Kramer, another social scientist specializing in paranoia, describes how threats to our sense of control spur our brain into action. We become hypervigilant, scrutinizing people’s behavior more carefully than usual and ruminating on the potential motives behind it, searching for clues to help restore order and understanding. Zealously gathering and dwelling on this ambiguous data makes us more likely to read sinister intent into innocuous events and to misinterpret innocent behavior as threatening. As a result, we can easily become fearful that somebody is untrustworthy or out to get us, which leads to even more heightened vigilance and rumination. Before we know it, our suspicions can run away from us, leading us to overestimate the degree to which other people or forces are in control and mean to do us harm.

A handful of recent experiments show how easy it is to set this process in motion. Psychologist Daniel Sullivan and colleagues, for instance, designed a series of experiments in which unsuspecting participants had their sense of control toyed with. In one study, the researchers asked people to rate how much control they have over things like “whether I am exposed to a disease,” or “whether my family members suffer or not.” A different group rated more innocuous statements, such as “I have control over how much TV I watch.” The first group—the ones who had been subtly reminded of uncontrollable existential threats—were significantly more likely to buy into a made-up conspiracy theory about a rigged election.

This is why you see so many false-flag conspiracies too, but that's for another post.

The point is, when you tell a rightoid you want to take their guns, you aren't just attacking their guns, you're attacking their very sense of security and control. Sure - it might be a false sense of security and a false sense of control, but it's still comforting. This is why rightoids refuse to listen to basic facts and are forever trying to justify firearms as somehow beneficial to society. They want to convince themselves the facts support their immediate emotional reaction.

For leftoids, it's the same. But in the case of the leftoid, he seeks his compensatory control not from owning a gun himself, but from arbitrary government intervention. Why, for example, do you think the gun control debate flares up in such an intense way around every mass shooting event in the united states? One could argue it's because liberals actually care about preventing mass shootings, and that might be part of it, but in reality the liberals are seeking to bring order to chaos. If they can get the government to pass some arbirtrary law that limits gun ownership in someway, even if it wouldn't have prevented the most recent mass shooting, their sense of control is restored. They simply want to feel like they're doing something.

I think Sandy Hook was when this hit peak compensatory control, which is also why Sandy Hook has the most passionate trurhers and false flaggers when compared to every other mass shooting. Sandy hook was so psychologically damaging to the nation that it simply sent a lot of people, both right and left wing over the edge. The idea someone, for no relevant reason could simply walk into a school and shoot a bunch of babies was just too much to handle.

Order must be restored - to the rightoid, that means more guns and increased security. To the leftoid, that means less guns and more regulation. The chances of either side coming together to do anything meaningful is exactly 0%, because netiehr has an argument based on what the facts say, but emotion.