Work picked up and things have been busy around the house, so I have been reticent in following up with anything. It's my fault, I still have not instilled habits that avert the more detrimental consequences of my natural laziness.
Anyway, to the topic at hand, there are ways to tell r-strategists and K-strategists apart, but it does require being able to grasp a bit of subtlety and be able to look at things for what they really are and not just taken at face value.
To catch any up who don't know the terms, in the material world for sexually reproducing creatures, there are two reproductive strategies that are viable, and the selection of one over the other is not done intentionally, but is often driven by the environment which a creature exists in.
The major variable that drives the selection is resource availability.
When resources are abundant, the skills and behavior requirements of individuals in order to meet basic survival needs is very low. Think like cows, rabbits, and horses. Each of these creatures, aside from their size and weight, doesn't really change all that much from birth till death. They don't really "mature", there isn't a lot of parental involvement to teach or guide, because it's really not that hard to find grass and eat it.
When resources are scarce, the skills and behavior requirements of individuals in order to meet basic survival needs is very high. Think like wolves, whales, and for the most part humans. Each of these creatures has significant changes in their behaviors over the course of their lives, and that is due to the demands of their environment, supplanted by the teaching and investment of the parents into ensuring their offspring can survive on its own.
The collection of behaviors then is rather dramatically different between the two strategies, and a lot more has been said by smarter folks who are better educated on the particulars, but for the sake of this post, that's a sufficient contrast to work with.
The r-strategist is the one who thrives under resource abundance. The "r" relates to reproduction rate of a species, as that is what drives their survival more than individual skill or competence. Rabbits are simple and stupid creatures, at least with respect to practical concerns, but that does not mean they are simple in social matters. Because, to the extent a social structure even exists, there are no significant environmental pressures, what shapes discourse is arbitrary and abstract. Appearance and perception matter more than reality, because the reality is that nothing really matters. Life and death are a matter of probability and chance, and effort on part of the individual doesn't change that significantly, so to spend time on that anyway would be a waste.
Consume and reproduce and maximize your own ability to do both while trying to hinder someone else from doing the same. You can't directly block access to resources that your rivals may desire, so you have to distract and manipulate them into not desiring them in the first place. Before my twitter account was banned, I had referred to this as the public/private hypocrisy, where a stated value in public was meant to fool others into behaving in a way which maximized the exclusive and private access to the resource discussed in the public declaration.
Rich people flying private jets to an event where they decry wasteful carbon emissions is a quick example of this.
Another is the fire and brimstone pastor who speaks passionately against homosexuality who then leaves his wife to marry his secret boyfriend.
In neither case is the commentary concerned with whether the claims are actually good or not, they may be correct, but that is entirely coincidental as the primary purpose of the message is to distract and dissuade in the public sphere what an individual pursues in private.
Rich people enjoy the luxurious lifestyle, but don't want to deal with people competing over resources that support their lifestyle, so they'll denigrate the fruits of their labor and try to convince people that despite them not giving it up, a life of luxury is not really all that desirable after all.
Or the pastor trying to prevent competition for the affections of his boyfriend if those who were more attractive or younger were to enter the "dating field" and compete with him over the finite resource of his lover's affection.
In each case, the topic at hand is at best tangentially related to truth, and the reason an individual even brings it up is because of trying to eliminate competition, but also to increase their status.
Among the rich, those who denounce riches are viewed as saintly and self-sacrificing, and since others want to feel the same, they're more likely to associate and laud the same principles, not because they're actually good or the people believe in them, but because of the benefit in social status.
Same with the pastor, who seeks to gain or retain a position of power and authority in a church, to be viewed as one who has truth and knowledge, not because those things are necessarily good or true or valuable to the pastor, but because at least appearing to have those things bestows upon them honor and respect they'd otherwise have to work a lot harder to obtain for themselves.
The reason for all this preamble is that, despite not being directly competitive, r-strategists are still competing. It's just not direct and confrontational, but passive-aggressive and manipulative.
If an r-strategist is reduced to always avoiding conflict, then the definition fails to explain things like "mating displays", where males compete to better entertain and dazzle females to convince them of their reproductive fitness. K-strategists simply don't have time for that, males are providers and achievers and the females instead are the ones which compete for the attention and affection of the dominant male who is provisioning for them.
So, with guns, how does one spot an r-strategist?
Well, they aren't just pacifists. They aren't going to shy away from violent tools of destruction because they're violent tools of destruction, but because of how guns play into the social fabric they are a part of. If an r-strategist is in a social circle where guns are viewed positively, then the r-strategist is going to be the guy with the most guns, the most knowledge of guns. At the range, these are the guys where the only thing bigger than their groups is their mouth, despite having the most expensive and new equipment.
They are also the guys who reject guns as evil incarnate, but again that's not because of what guns actually are or do, but because of what saying those types of things in a public sphere does for their social circle and for their private consumption. There's a reason why many of the most vocal anti-gun advocates in Hollywood or in Congress neglect to mention the fact that they live under armed guard.
And since the plebs that disagree with them offer no social status to benefit them, nor hinder the presence of their armed guards, the r-strategist feels safe in ignoring the impotent accusations hurled their way.
It's not about the thing, what it really is, but what it means with respect to resource consumption and social status.
Guns are thus abstracted from what they really are and treated based on abstract terms, where logic and rationality become a non-sequitur.
Guns are simply a means to an end, and to the extent that this aligns with what guns really are and can do is, again, entirely coincidental. If something else would better fit the bill, then they'd use that instead.
So how do you spot the r-strategist in any of these cases?
Unintentional exaggeration.
The pro-gun guy who thinks the bolt rifle from a past century is easily as accurate as a modern budget hunting rifle.
The anti-gun guy who thinks that 5.56 NATO is more lethal than .30-06 because of "clip size".
The pro-gun guy who thinks that just shooting a particular brand will make them a more accurate shooter.
The anti-gun guy who thinks that the arrangement of grip and stock, or the reduction of sound and flash, makes a rifle more deadly.
In each case, whether for or against, because the knowledge base was not driven by necessity or practical experience, the individual will always end up exaggerating. The individual doesn't understand the practical limits or implications because their interest and experience never involved finding or dealing with those limitations, because those are completely unrelated to the ability to simply making claims.
God finds homosexuality an abomination, but no more than gluttony, and few "fire and brimstone" preachers are condemning obesity with the same fervor they do homosexuality. These pastors unintentionally exaggerate God's wrath on one sin, but not on another, because they don't really understand God's wrath at all. God's wrath is a tool to dissuade rivals from competing over resources, and a means by which they attain or sustain social status.
In this same fashion, guns are just a tool to dissuade rivals from competing over resources, and a means by which they attain or sustain social status, whether superficially, publicly, they are pro- or anti-gun. What someone says, the topics one is involved in, aren't enough by themselves to make any sort of determination.
There are r-strategists in every social circle that exists, on every topic that exists, and hopefully now you've got a bit of a sense on how to identify one with respect to the topic of guns. Unless you are an r-strategist, in which case you'll want to tell someone how dumb this post was in fixating on irrelevant details that you'll just happen to use in outing rivals in your social circle to achieve a higher status.
Knowledge is a two-edged sword, and when it comes to survival nobody is happy with second place.
Thankfully a time when practical knowledge and experience will once again take the forefront. We're not there yet, but be readying yourself, learning, practicing, struggling, preparing for the challenging times that are ahead.
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