Why are pro/anti-gun parties in the US espousing the reverse position when it comes to weapons for Ukraine? [closed]

Question

Per title. It seems that traditionally, Republicans (support gun ownership in the US) for reasons such as "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun", and they in general believe that the US would be safer if more people carried guns.

But if Republicans believe that, why wouldn't they also support more guns for Ukraine? After all, the only way to stop Russia (the presumed bad guy in the conflict) is more Ukrainians with guns. Even the not-so-often-articulated reason of "more guns = more funding for the gun companies which are funding Republican campaigns" would suggest that Republicans should support more guns for Ukraine, since that means more funding for US gun-makers.

The reverse question applies too: if Democrats think the solution to gun violence is not more guns, then they should oppose sending guns to Ukraine. By the same logic they use to argue that more guns = more violence, they should also conclude that sending more guns in Ukraine = more violence.

I'm wondering why there is a disconnect here. Naively one might think Republicans will be the party that supports more guns for Ukraine, and Democrats the one that's opposed.

Answer 1

This seems to be a rather naive interpretation of the events.

Pro Guns or Against Guns?

Neither Democrats are against guns nor Republicans are for guns. The debate between them is not about existence of weapons, but the ease of access and the level of weaponry an "ordinary Joe" should be allowed to possess. Should everyone have a small nuke in their backyard? A tank in their garage? Or a handgun in every lady's purse? These are very different things.

Democrats are advocating for more gun control. More regulation on who can own guns, what guns they can own, and what they can legally do with them and where.

Republicans are advocating for the opposite - less regulations, less restrictions, everyone should get anything they want (when it comes to guns, of course, marijuana or books is a completely different matter - those are deadly and dangerous). Well, unless it's for black people, if Republicans see black people with guns - they're all for gun control.

Military Alliances

Military in general, and military alliances in particular, have nothing to do with the individual gun ownership and the debates about its expansion in the US.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are advocating to reduce the US military or limit its weaponry. In fact, the US laws are such that even when the Congress fails to fund the government - the military always remains funded.

When it comes to military alliances and aid to foreign countries, there's very little difference between the Democrats and (mainstream/moderate) Republicans. Trump muddied the waters a bit with his resurrection of the "America First" nationalist movement since the World War I era, but enough Americans (still) remember (either through family history, or education) how that ended up the last time. So the political support for sending weapons to allies like Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, etc. is still strong and bi-partisan.

Gun Violence

The debate about gun violence in the US is about the criminal use of guns by civilians, not about military use. When it comes to the governmental use of force (either by local law enforcement authorities or the Federal armed forces), politicians are very rarely advocating against it. Even at the height of the BLM protests very few politicians would voice any concerns about the police brutality and militarization of the domestic law enforcement, and those I did hear voicing it were mostly on the local level.

Answer 2

"More guns = more violence" may be true in a shooting war as well, but Democrats aren't Quakers. They don't reject use of guns in all circumstances. IIRC domestically Democrats favor the 2nd Amendment interpretation of an organized millia (~~ armed force). In 2008, a rather conservative SCOTUS ruled against this interpretation in a 5-4 vote though. This doesn't seem polled that often but e.g. in 2018 there was a poll that claimed to

show surprisingly robust support for Second Amendment repeal (39 percent) among Democrats (by contrast, 8 percent of Republicans would support a full repeal) [...]

Beyond that, the poll showed that a plurality of Americans do not see the Second Amendment as something set in stone. Forty-six percent said they favored modifying the Second Amendment to allow for stricter regulations, compared with 39 percent who were opposed. More than three-quarters of Democrats said they supported modifying the Second Amendment, as did more than one-quarter of Republicans.

And Russia also favors "more guns" in that [military] sense, incl. training teenagers early on (ibid). That may or may not translate into encouraging more private gun ownership in Russia, I haven't exactly looked into that matter. And let's not single out Russia here. With the war scare in Europe, a number of countries to the West of it are somewhat following in its footsteps in that (training) regard, with volunteer militias etc. And elsewhere China doesn't encourage much private gun ownership that I've heard of, but is building a lot of missiles, expanding their war fleet etc. So, generically speaking of "guns" can obscure such distinctions.

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As for the Republican side, as it's been noted in the some comments, supporting the right to arms (of anybody) doesn't equal sending them guns "for free". There's a wing in the Republican party (Trump included) that's somewhat isolationist, or at least thinks NATO [and by extension other European] countries should pay [more] for their own defense. That more or less overlaps with the wing of the party that just doesn't consider the war in Ukraine important for the US, say, like it was important to send arms to the USSR during WW2. (It's kind of amazing how cheap war materiel was per unit back then, by the way, even translating to 2022 dollars; for the "equivalent to $143 billion in 2022 [dollars]" the US sent tens of thousand of tanks and aircraft, and hundreds of thousands of trucks/jeeps to the USSR.) Wikipedia writes that the USSR ultimately paid for like 25% of these; the rest of the debt was written off. In another article, Wikipedia also notes that back then:

Opposition to the Lend-Lease bill was strongest among isolationist Republicans in Congress, who feared the measure would be "the longest single step this nation has yet taken toward direct involvement in the war abroad". When the House of Representatives finally took a roll call vote on February 8, 1941, the 260 to 165 vote was largely along party lines. Democrats voted 238 to 25 in favor and Republicans 24 in favor and 135 against.

But it also notes that opposition pretty much evaporated after Pearl Harbor.