Generally, an increase of gun sales will come from a decrease of public trust in the government. Either people distrust the government itself, or far more likely, people don’t trust the government to protect them from other Americans. In either case, it’s sort of an aspect of the “Americans losing faith in their leadership and institutions” trend going on right now
…or sport shooting at ranges has gone viral due to some influencer trends
Its fear the police can't (or won't) be there in time to defend them. It's entirely reasonable.
On the other hand, you better hope they are practicing at those shooting ranges. They are less than worthless for defense, if you are not familiar with how to use them.
In rural areas, it's normal to just go in the woods and shoot. I grew up with guns, practiced quite frequently, and have never been to an actual range.
For sure, but most of the population is now urban including large numbers of new gun owners.
The nearest place to the Bay Area for example, where you can shoot on public land legally is neither easy to find, nor anywhere near where most people live.
Only because there aren’t many gun shops. Buying guns in california is not hard. If you have adequate ID and know the most basic elements of gun safety, you can just walk into a gun shop and buy one. You can’t take it home for 10 days, but that’s a different matter.
I would bet that 90% of the California population is within one hour of a gun store. Handguns and rifles are legal and easy to buy if you don't have a criminal record.
> [...] or far more likely, people don’t trust the government to protect them from other Americans.
This is the entire reason several of my liberal friends have bought a gun or two recently, and started practicing at the range. Unlike right-wingers (I gather, anyway), their nightmare scenario (or wet-dream, depending on how generous we're being) isn't needing to shoot at government agents, but at right-wing militia nutters trying to bring their own brand of authoritarianism—for which authoritarianism-supporting purpose private arms are, so far as their political uses go, more suited than for resisting an authoritarian government with firm backing from its military, but as long as the authoritarian movement's active violent arm is restricted to deniable private militias, private arms might suffice for effective resistance.
You could, like, go speak to them and find out what their actual opinions are, rather than pointlessly speculating about what their opinions are. I'm sure you would be able to catch one in the wild nursing a cold beer at any good American pub.
Also you need to take a breath - quite literally - that last paragraph is almost entirely one sentence.
> right-wing militia nutters trying to bring their own brand of authoritarianism
If this is referring to a certain January 6th incident, for the most part the uproar was caused by a belief that democracy wasn't respected.
Don't get me wrong, people who want authoritarianism are out there, they just probably look different from the ideas people have in their heads.
If we're completely honest, many people in Urban areas purchased guns around the same time the mostly peaceful BLM protests coincided with random arson events and shootings. Everybody seems to support it right up until the point people are on their streets with pitch forks, at which point it gets real.
> You could, like, go speak to them and find out what their actual opinions are, rather than pointlessly speculating about what their opinions are. I'm sure you would be able to catch one in the wild nursing a cold beer at any good American pub.
I come from good country bumpkin very-small-farmer and country-bum stock (as in, I'm the first generation from one side, and the second gen on the other, to not be wholly in those categories) and love the hell out of getting beers in the worst-looking country bars I can find, entirely for the company, so I was being a bit coy about my level of knowledge. Plus, not my entire social circle is left-wingers.
> If this is referring to a certain January 6th incident, for the most part the uproar was caused by a belief that democracy wasn't respected.
Of course it was for what they thought were good reasons. No-one on the front lines of the bad sort of revolution thinks their cause is bad, their information wrong, or that the likely outcome of their actions will be that things get worse, unless they're nihilistic paid mercenaries. Leaders are another matter, of course.
> If we're completely honest, many people in Urban areas purchased guns around the same time the mostly peaceful BLM protests coincided with random arson events and shootings. Everybody seems to support it right up until the point people are on their streets with pitch forks, at which point it gets real.
Yeah, that's probably true too, just reporting the explicit reason folks in my circle are buying them. The right-wingers I know already had guns—lots and lots and lots of them. That aside from hunters of all political persuasions who, obviously, already owned guns and/or bows. The ones getting guns in the last ~2 years haven't been buying them to shoot animals.
[EDIT] Further, I'm not necessarily claiming that my liberal friends buying guns in case social cohesion breaks down, accelerationist "let's do an actual race war" people succeed, or right-wing authoritarians become a real everyday threat, are rational in doing so. But that is why they're buying guns. If anything, I think the right-wingers I know have slowed down their gun purchases, because it's harder to justify buying your tenth firearm when prices are elevated.
[EDIT EDIT] Also, the reasons for "blue tribe" buying guns in blue-tribe areas may differ significantly from why they buy them in red-tribe areas, like where I am. Not a clue about that.
> [..] so I was being a bit coy about my level of knowledge. Plus, not my entire social circle is left-wingers.
Sure, I was being a little sarcastic. The point was just that "the other side" are humans too and we should just go speak to them if we want to know their minds.
> Of course it was for what they thought were good reasons. No-one on the front lines of the bad sort of revolution thinks their cause is bad [..]
As long as there is reason behind their actions, it means they can be reasoned with. I think it's when we start assuming that people are unreasonable that dangerous things happen.
On a different note, I have zero idea why you got downvoted for just sharing a related experience to the news article.
> On a different note, I have zero idea why you got downvoted for just sharing a related experience to the news article.
Meh, just fake Internet points anyway. I think some people take relating something as supporting or promoting it (this is a sub-category of the problem of needing to explain oneself to the point of absurdity to avoid being misunderstood on Web forums) and others might just not think my adding that anecdote improved the conversation.
Ammo is very expensive right now. Anytime there's something even resembling a deal it gets snatched up. Prices are 3x-6x pre-COVID. And with people continuing to horde or target practice, it's been hard for the supply chain to catch up.
For guns I think people are just buying stuff to buy stuff (i..e buying more guns than they currently have just for fun). I have seen more gun owners in the black and hispanic community (anecdotal) as well.
So, COVID-19 leading to supply chain interruptions, stimulus money, and a general fear of "SHTF" makes sense that there would be a lot more sales IMO.
Would love to see additional data and analysis though.
The grain of salt to add is that rates are dependent on reporting, just like rates of a disease are dependent on diagnosis.
In my part of the US, the rate of “burglar bars” on windows have slowly gone down and I see no uptick. This leads me to give credence the “crime down” hypothesis based on people’s behavior at scale.
On the other hand I see more preparation for civil disaster and disorder. Firearms may be more part of that story than a reflection of people’s thoughts about the potential for victimization during a “normal” day.
I’ll add that crime data is created by police. And a lot of them report a crime whether or not it led to a conviction. So somebody can get charged with a crime, be not guilty, and they’ll still be added to the statistics.
A rising awareness of the risks posed by house fires might also suppress the rate of burglar bar installations. If there were a fire in my house, I wouldn't want bars blocking my egress.
There’s a generation of adults who grew up with a gradual decreasing of crime rates throughout their lifetime. A regression to where we were 20 years ago is cause for some alarm.
They're not over estimating the amount of new crime. They're estimating the amount of unpunished crime which is why a "spike" or a "wave" whatever that even really means, is having a disproportionate response in gun sales.
Follow up survey with the people buying guns? Whatever survey determined people buy guns because crime is increasing, call them back in a year and ask how often they used their gun.
The only people that do this is the NRA. The government put a sanction on that kind of research in govt agencies because they didn't want to give ammunition (ick) to the NRA funded by the taxpayer.
fwiw, the supply chain seems to be recovering at least for ammo. ammo prices are down about 50% since the peak around Feb. anecdotally, you'd have to pay 90c/round for decent brass case 9mm, now you can get it for <40c/round.
The "ammo shortage" has been unrelenting since just before Obama got elected. There's people making a living finding and reselling closet caches of ammo from estate sales and such, they've been doing this for several years now.
Some calibers are going to wind up having antique value, because these folks are so good at scouring the land.
> now you have a gun it seems safer to turn to violence
That's not how it works. I'm guessing you don't own any firearms and haven't had much exposure to them. Violence is never safe and the only people "turning to violence" after acquiring one are criminals or those soon to be one.
This certainly is how it works for the UK knife violence problem; people start carrying knives to defend themselves from other people with knives, but it results in fights escalating.
(Note that this is still considerably less lethal than any major US city!)
Yeah; my home city (Austin, Texas), has 3x the murder rate of London. Although, you’re 100 times more likely to die in a car crash in London than be murdered in Austin. So… y’know, murder is bad, but it seems like you should stay off the road?
Yes. As I understand it, knives are just inherently unsuitable for use as a defensive weapon - they don't stop someone from stabbing you, they're not even usable as a threat to get the other person to de-escalate because if you're close enough to use it I'm pretty sure the other person can draw and stab you before you have a chance to react. The only use of a knife is to stab the other person first, before they have a chance to, before you know if they even would or if they're even armed, and they're deadly enough that untrained teenagers can easily kill with them without intending to. This only ever results in things escalating for obvious reasons. Note that the UK has police armed with guns, but not police armed with knives.
It's also the case that it's a hell of a lot easier to find something around you that's a better weapon than a knife, than it is with a gun (basically impossible, unless the thing you find is also a gun), which enhances its tendency to be a "first strike, or else don't even show it" weapon, rather than one useful for deterrence without violence.
> Note that the UK has police armed with guns, but not police armed with knives.
Yup. The set of qualities that make knives desirable weapons for criminals don't make them good weapons generally. The cops have very different restrictions (fewer restrictions, that is) and goals. A truncheon plus some strong mace are probably much, much better for their purposes than a knife would be.
> Violence is never safe and the only people "turning to violence" after acquiring one are criminals or those soon to be one.
I wouldn't say it was always "turning to violence", but there are a lot of people out there that probably 'should' not have a firearm given things like poor impulse control, lack of knowledge/acknowledgement of dangerous they inherently are, or just carelessness:
Once someone owns a gun, or a household has a gun with-in it, there are all sorts of disasters that can now occur that were not possible without one being present.
> Once someone owns a gun, or a household has a gun with-in it, there are all sorts of disasters that can now occur that were not possible without one being present.
Amen. The 'upsides' of owning a gun don't outweigh the horrible potential consequences for myself and others around me. I'm really glad that guns are not as prominent in my country compared to the US.
> The 'upsides' of owning a gun don't outweigh the horrible potential consequences for myself and others around me.
Of course other people make different value judgements as to the risks.
If I was in the US I'd be less concerned about general firearm ownership, and people basically being about to have whatever they want in their own homes, versus all the concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws, both of which impact public safety more. And it seems toward the negative (AFAICT).
> I'm really glad that guns are not as prominent in my country compared to the US.
As someone in Canada, the day-to-day firearms stuff isn't as prevalent, but we're tied for 7th in per capita ownership:
With a lower rate that Austria, Switzerland, Finland, and France. IMHO this is because (a) we have mandatory licensing/training, which works as a filter to reduce the cowboy types, (b) relatively lower rates of poverty which helps with reduce crime (most shooting seem to be gang-related), and (c) decent social programs which helps the less fortunate. Many calamities are also probably reduced through safe storage laws.
I don't think there's a need to even "ban" firearms or specific firearm types if these are implemented.
There's no one silver bullet that will solve gun-related problems, but there are a few policies that have been shown to work fairly well. It's 'just' a matter society choosing to implement them.
I guess additionally “gun ownership” is a crude metric. Is it fair to assume that more firearms in Canada are hunting weapons? These are less suited to violence than hand guns, SMGs etc.
UKs gun ownership per capita is something like 30% of US’, but these are predominantly shotguns, and a few single-shot rifles. Legal ownership of pistols of any kind is essentially impossible (yes even sport 0.22 ones).
Hunting rifles and shotguns are not registered, but (many) semi-automatic rifles (e.g., AR-15) would have to be registered—as do handguns—so some ratio of licensees-to-'restricted'-class firearms can be estimated.
These restricted-class items can only be used at a licensed range, and so are generally used for fun/target shooting as well as sporting activities (IPSC, IDPA, three-gun).
Of course that is not how it works, hence the word 'seems'. But that doesn't mean suddenly all gun owners are educated gun owners with realistic expectations, experience and training.
It would be interesting if a spike in sales also came with a spike in training, range usage or gun safe sales.
> I'm guessing you don't own any firearms and haven't had much exposure to them.
>It would be interesting if a spike in sales also came with a spike in training, range usage or gun safe sales.
Anecdotally, I'd say yes.
The three ranges in closest proximity to me have hour long waits for lanes on weekends. Everywhere, dealers are consistently sold out of "beginner" type firearms: ruger mark iv's, 10/22s, sr22s, etc. It is a similar story with magazines for these types of firearms, and I doubt demand for these is being driven by existing gun owners (who likely already have them).
I also happened to order a new safe recently, and every dealer in my metro area had zero inventory on hand. The best you can get is an order allocation, or buying one of the safes they already have on order with an expected delivery of 1-3mo. Part of this is certainly supply chain disruption, but I heard the same story over and over again that demand was through the roof.
Number 3 doesn’t make sense; since one has a gun it’s safer to be violent?
I think the rationale is if the violence (real or perceived) comes into your own neighborhood/apartment/etc, that you’ll be able to defend yourself. Much better than helplessness.
If I have a family, and never owned a firearm, and now you see the state of affairs (again, in reality more at risk vs perceived more at risk is beside the point - user still takes action on their perception), I would feel compelled to defend my home and family. Regardless where one stands politically, we did have violence of some form break out in many cities in the US.
So buying a firearm and some ammo seems to me a reasonable step.
And yes, I agree in part on the self-fulfilling prophecy. People buy ammo, shortages occur despite supply chain getting better, prices go up, people buy more.
> I think the rationale is if the violence (real or perceived) comes into your own neighborhood/apartment/etc, that you’ll be able to defend yourself. Much better than helplessness.
If the violence/danger is only perceived/imaginary and not real, then someone going out to "deal with it" will create calamities where otherwise nothing bad would happen without the firearm being present (and that person feeling 'empowered' or some such).
Perhaps I should add, the assumption being that the firearm would be brandished/used in the event the person came into their home, and there was an immediate threat. The user would adhere to basic firearm safety and use it lawfully.
I meant perceived as in, things seem worse than they are, versus someone thinking “hey QAnon said my neighbors are false flags, let’s go” (hyperbolic, but you get the point)
I understand the confusion though without the assumption laid out.
The idea is that you have 'remote violence' you can assert without getting in harm's way. That is of course not how reality works, but because someone might think that they now possess this capability using it might seem more attractive.
There is of course the idea that if you don't have it, you are 'helpless' as you might put it. That is just a precursor to an arms race. You can always retreat, delegate to a specialist (if there are any, i.e. a capable policing system) etc.
The issue with 'I might get violenced upon!' is that even if that happens, you having your own source of violence only means that the next incident requires more violence from the attacker's side, and more returning violence from the 'defender'. This is an endless loop that just ends in MAD (as posted below). The only thing it can do is escalate. Someone who already made to choice to attack/invade/break-the-rules is not going to be 'deterred' by someone owning a source of violence. They will just bring their own.
A while ago I read an article about a family man with a hidden 'gun room' in his house, which was 'for protection'. Turns out you can't actually carry 20 assault rifles in your two hands at once. Perhaps one might think this is for redundancy. But if you are in a situation where you need redundant firearms, those are unlikely to be the deciding factor, and investing in a car so you can simply drive away might have been the better choice. But it seems people would rather try to get some illegal RPG 'for protection' instead.
But by the home owner not having a firearm, or self defense weapon, doesn’t prevent the violent encounter.
A criminal who plans to intrude will still intrude. One case you have a chance to defend yourself or family, the other you’re left to “retreat” (which I think, perhaps controversially, if it’s your property you shouldn’t be obligated to retreat it if someone is criminally trying to enter). That also assumes you can retreat.
In a vacuum sure the arms race would escalate, but this assumes infinite resources. If I get a pistol, then the lower “bar of entry” becomes a pistol for the intruder.
If I get a heavier weapon, such as a shotgun, the intruder is gonna have a harder time (even if slightly) buying or finding the more costly (resource wise) weapon.
what I think is more likely to happen, is unless you have an organized gang, solo criminals will just go for easier crimes. They won’t risk entering a neighborhood that is armed.
Because then the cost to enter the house, and come out safe/successful, drastically increases once the home owner has capable self defenses.
An RPG is not illegal with the right tax stamp! It's a destructive device, so the tax is by the round. However it is legal.
Now whether you agree with the legitimacy around said regulatory framework, and the severe magnification of sentences for what amounts to glorified tax evasion, and it being a poll tax (a tax which renders a Constitutionally guaranteed right conditional), and in light of the 2nd Amendment, that is a completely different story.
Again. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I try to avoid this now, because the regulations are as fickle as the night is long, and I despise having to stay tuned to figure out if some swath or another of the population is in threat of getting turned into felons overnight because someone in the Executive branch got into a tizzy. Nobody else seems to lose sleep over that sort of thing, but I do.
I guess they should have applied the "You can always retreat, delegate to a specialist...etc"
You may argue about whether chicago police department is "capable" - they certainly have very strict gun laws which don't seems to be preventing this gun violence. But if they are not capable, "retreating" doesn't seem to be helping these people. Or are they doing it wrong?
The trouble with a raw list of stats is that there's no context; why are all these shootings happening? They don't all or even mostly seem to be armed robbery.
Step (3) is shaky, but a major contributing factor to suicides is household gun ownership. As far as I'm aware the theory is that the ability to go through with it the moment you're sufficiently motivated rather than having to plan a few minutes prevents a lot of people from talking themselves down.
That's like saying crime is much less common amongst people who aren't in jail.
If people follow the rules, and also try to be civil in general, and just enjoy guns, you get a combination of foresight, expectation and planning.
Usually, when something goes wrong (be it 'being the baddies' or just accidentally have your children shoot themselves because you keep a loaded firearm in your nightstand) I'd expect it to be unplanned, unexpected and a lack of thinking. And therein lies the problem: we cannot assume everyone has the same skillset, same mental capacity and the same outlook.
Hobby shooter here. In my experience, this article is behind the curve. For quite a while I could either get no target rounds, or limit 1 box per visit at the range. Granted, this is for 9mm, not rifle. The same goes for online. You would have to keep a tab open refreshing the page regularly, and grab it when stock showed up. Now there's plenty.
The common American brands are still scarce, but a number of eastern European companies cranked up production, and you can get, for example, some really decent Serbian rounds pretty easily now.
Is the restriction on making bullets for sale the same as making guns? Seems like a very lucrative business. Don't bullets also "expire" after a certain period of time?
>Is the restriction on making bullets for sale the same as making guns?
For domestic production, it's basically just a different ATF permit. The reason why there's so many shortages is because the cost of setting up a new production line is a huge upfront cost, and if the demand for ammo goes down (which it historically has after spikes) then that will have been a wasted investment. It's actually the same problem happening right now with graphics cards.
>Don't bullets also "expire" after a certain period of time?
Only on a timescale of decades, and even then it's more a matter of reliability because of corrosion and the like. Most WWII surplus ammo should still fire perfectly fine.
So I suppose the question then is how hard is it to acquire the black powder and primer? I know when I was a teenager in the 90s, in rural Ohio, it was very easy for my friends and I to get our hands on the stuff. Is that still the case today?
There are effectively no primers for sale right now for common calibers, and that’s been the case since ~February of 2020.
Oh, and it’s not “black powder”, but “smokeless powder”. There are tons of varieties, and most are only suitable for one or two applications. Pistol powder is different from rifle powder, for example.
Black powder was replaced over 100 years ago and guns using it are not regulated, not even considered proper firearms. Pistol or rifle powder (they are different because they burn different) are easy to purchase legally in small quantities.
Reloading ammo at home can be dangerous when fired if it’s not done properly (even small errors can cause a bullet to not fire fully/properly).
Usually it’s not a big deal if the person using the firearm knows what to look out for.
But with factory made ammo the chances of even a slight misfire vs reloading are drastically lower.
I would only buy reloaded ammo from someone I personally trusted or if I did it myself (not that I know how, but I’d trust me learning it over someone trying to make some money on the margin between factory and reloaded ammo)
Pro-tip, don't buy exotic ammunition that was never actually sold to the general public from dodgy guys on the internet. That youtuber who nearly blew his face off recently with his 50cal wasn't the victim of expired ammunition; his ammunition was almost certainly counterfeit and "handloaded" with the wrong powder or far too much powder.
In old ammunition, the primary concerns are the corrosive residue the ammunition will leave behind, rounds that won't go off at all, or rounds with a delayed reaction ("hangfire".) Hangfires can be dangerous if they go unnoticed, but aren't spontaneous "gun explodes in your face" events. You're also fairly likely to experience hangfires and rounds that simply don't work when shooting new production cheap 22lr; rimfire is notoriously unreliable and when rimfire ammunition is made cheap, you'll encounter 'duds' often enough. If you're at a gun range just trying to have fun, this is generally little more than an annoyance.
Centerfire ammunition is more reliable in general. With ancient centerfire ammunition, you have to wonder whether the ammunition was ever any good in the first place. A century ago, there were plenty of companies/countries making really shitty rifle ammunition that you might still find for sale today. That ammunition was never good at the time, and age hasn't made it any better. But some companies/countries were also making perfectly good ammunition a century ago, and that ammunition is generally just as reliable today as it ever was. But it will leave behind hydrophilic corrosive salts in your gun, so maybe think twice before shooting lots of it then neglecting to clean your gun.
I'm really surprised to find this article pointing out that this spike "began during the COVID-19 pandemic" but then Ctrl-F for "Trump" and "elections" come up empty and there seems to be no further discussion of the matter. They could have just as well run with "began in the middle of a heated electoral cycle with an incumbent who clearly has little regard for the political culture or unity of the nation."
As a total outsider I'd have guessed that the (in retrospect justified) anticipation of large-scale civil unrest would be driving this...
>As a total outsider I'd have guessed that the (in retrospect justified) anticipation of large-scale civil unrest would be driving this...
There's some of that for sure but every presidential election year there's a spike due to people worrying about the possibility of more restrictive gun control laws.
The combination of the anticipation of unrest (as you mentioned), the pandemic (which generated a fear of long-term shortages of essential items, which in turn made people worry about looting and the collapse of the government), and politicians talking about new gun control laws has created a more lasting spike.
People may signal one thing in social media or at an office watercooler but their private purchases signal what they're truly feeing. I suspect that people are buying guns because they feel that civil unrest is likely and they are observing the spike in violence in cities where police have been defunded or otherwise ordered or coerced to stop arresting criminals.
I don't think it's the traditional conservative gun owner stocking up on guns right now. These people already have lots of guns and guns are very expensive these days. Anecdotally, I've observed a lot of first-time gun owners buying them.
I think there was a justified increase in concern over disruption of the critical supply chain that allows modern life to function.
If there are widespread toilet paper shortages, people have alternatives. If there are widespread food shortages, I’d want to have the ability to protect my home and family.
I think March through May of 2020 got a lot of people to consider buying a gun who had never seriously considered it before.
its because the police are defunded and violent criminals are running havok in our towns. So people have to defend themselves because they can't afford private security like the politicans that vote to defund. Property rights laws aren't being enforced in major cities.
I've been going to gun shows in the Midwest since the early 90s. There is always a change in general sentiment seen at them that oscillates between "I don't dial 911" to "I outsource my violence to the worship-worthy police." The former happens when a democratic is in office and the latter happens when a republican is in office.
It's the same vendors selling different bumper stickers and using different sales tactics based on how the political winds are blowing. The media and politicians do the same thing, so we get this article and your hyperbolic comment.
It's a combination of things imo. It's what you said, some people were anticipating social unrest from the BLM protests and 1/6 events, the runaway inflation, and the worsening state of the world due to rise of authoritarian governments and global warming impacts.
If you can draw a causal link from 1/6 to this, then your local gun shop was a very well kept secret. Most places were rationing ammo since well before the national elections.
There also tends to be an increase in gun sales with the election of a democrat to the presidency. Happened with Obama and is happening now with Biden (building on the things you listed). Even if the reaction isn't 100% founded on anything real, as democrats tend to want to control gun sales more than republicans.
The BLM movement and allied politicians and district attorneys have hamstrung the police, resulting in more violent crime. If you don't trust the police to protect you and your home, you may buy a gun to protect yourself.
The cited Associated Press article says, "As the pandemic raced across the country in early 2020, the resulting lockdown orders and cutbacks on police response sowed safety fears, creating an “overwhelming demand” for both guns and ammo, Oliva said."
>The data also showed that 39 percent of U.S. households now own guns, an increase from 32 percent in 2016.
I'd like to know the methodology that leads to that conclusion. Unless they are making some seriously handwavey assumptions in the absence of a 1:1 binding of individual/household to gun purchase which is technically illegal for the Government to maintain.
(Though not really because it's likely a third-party that is doing the aggregation that the government would never think of peeping a look at I'm sure.)
Although, I'd still like to know how "required FBI background check", which I bet all are tracked and cross-referencable with the requestor, thereby giving a synthetic key to "gun purchase" does not translate to database of potential gun owners.
Really wish these types of thoughts would stop occurring to me, I only have so much room for research projects in my head. >_<
Locally, I live in a very diverse area, and the typical customer has skewed much less 'good-old-boy' in the last two years.
The 'good-old-boys' are generally very happy with this and love to see new people of all backgrounds take the first steps toward citizen ownership of firearms. While there may be other disagreements on a political level, those barriers seem to be forgotten when people of good will help each-other out.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled at the spike. The part that bugs me is that The more I look at Federal regulation as written, and the types of conclusions people are capable of apparently reaching from collected datasets, I'm not entirely convinced that there isn't actually some on the down-low malicious compliance tracking being enabled via outsourcing, even if you lose track of things after the first purchase.
I don't like messy ineffectual laws on the books.
Which is why I try not to dig too much. The more you know, the more it grates. A LexisNexus subscription is involved somewhere, I'm sure.
That reaction is completely alien to me. There's probably more to it than "More people who aren't me have lethal weapons... fantastic!" but on a surface level, it's hard to relate to.
The fact guns are lethal is a feature, not a bug. Gun owners recognize how evil mankind can be. They are often students of history--all the dictators over the course of time who themselves used the power of government enforced by those happy to subjugate others. Much of the youth today have never lived in an actual warzone or seen dictators rise to power and actually subjugate people. These youths want to believe that everyone is inherently good and to be trusted; this perspective is incredibly naive as a cursory examination of history will tell us.
Yes, there are those who would use your physical vulnerability against you to control you, subjugate you, and even kill you. If and when that happens, you will realize your error. Many people are trying to prevent that future from happening in the first place by being armed to fight back.
Students of history? Private arms are sometimes among the tools that help dictators and other authoritarian governments come to power. I'm not aware of them as a major factor in preventing the same, with any kind of regularity (actually, I'd be interested in examples of that—at best, I'm aware of them as a probably-not-necessary secondary factor, way after things like foreign intervention or acquiring the support of a significant fraction of the military, either of which comes with its own risks, of course). I'd be surprised if increasing the rate of private arms ownerships is, per se, an improvement for a state's likelihood to become run by a dictator or other authoritarian government.
Opposing private arms ownerships doesn't necessarily equate to aiding (even accidentally) some hypothetical, future authoritarian state. It's very much not clear to me that the two are strongly connected at all, nor, if they are, that the causality runs the way proponents of the 2nd amendment as a check on authoritarian or otherwise unaccountable government assume it does.
>More people who aren't me have lethal weapons... fantastic!"
Nope. That's about the gist of it. I hate power asymmetry. Just like I hate info asymmetry, education asymmetry, etc...
More people armed and looking out for themselves means more people coming to terms with how unfriendly the world can be when we can't take things on trust.
Looking at and contemplating a firearm, and that you may need to use it someday, making the decision to end someone else's life to save your own is one of those experiences that more than anything else in my life taught me the value of the society I was raised in, people I could trust, and the fragility of the entire thing.
You never know what you have until it isn't there, and a firearm, amongst other utility, is a stark reminder of our duty as individuals to protect, maintain, and propagate our own version of civilization. This means we have to file off the edges of ourselves and our desires for the State we live in, and accept that there are some things we shouldn't ask anyone or anything else to do for us.
I've looked into the anthropology texts, and seen the differences in pain, suffering, corruption, and abuse of power that occur based on whether a civilization structures itself around a Guardian caste, or disseminates responsibility for self preservation amongst the group as a whole. Long story short: privileged Guardian classes lead to cyclic strife as the lessons and corruptions created by the power asymmetry create a need for a reset.
I don't pretend to know all the answers, but I know weapon ownership and the contemplation of a whole new dimension of responsibility made me a better person. I can only hope it does the same for others.
Sam Harris summarized a fairly pragmatic view of the necessity of firearms which might explain to you why more ownership by citizens can be viewed as a positive (2013): https://samharris.org/the-riddle-of-the-gun/
> I'd like to know the methodology that leads to that conclusion. Unless they are making some seriously handwavey assumptions in the absence of a 1:1 binding of individual/household to gun purchase which is technically illegal for the Government to maintain.
Likely just a survey.
I thought the number sounded high as well until I remember that most people in my family are technically gun owners because they inherited their parents' or grandparents' firearms. In our case, our great-grandparents settled and farmed land and needed firearms. They have now been passed down as essentially the only artifacts of our lineage's settlement in this country.
They've all been stored in gun safes, which is probably why they've persisted as some of the most well-preserved family heirlooms.
Some of these guns haven't been fired for 50 or maybe even 100 years, but technically they make people "gun owners" per these surveys.
Personally I think we could use more gun control, but if I'm being completely honest I would actually be quite upset if these family heirlooms became illegal or onerous to keep due to government regulation.
<Although, I'd still like to know how "required FBI background check", which I bet all are tracked and cross-referencable with the requestor, thereby giving a synthetic key to "gun purchase" does not translate to database of potential gun owners.>
There are lots of legal ways to obtain a gun legally without a background check. Many states don't require a background check between private parties. More responsible folks will ask for a voter ID (to confirm residence) and or a concealed carry permit (to confirm that person may own a firearm/not a felon), but it's not a legal requirement. Same rules may apply at a gun show. Lots and lots of guns are sold this way.
My first firearm was advertised online by a private party on a local forum, I met them in a parking lot, and paid in cash. I'd like to think I'm a responsible person, but I can certainly see how that system could wildly be abused.
Each state has different laws, you can't do that everywhere. Also there are certain federally restricted items that require a background check (normally through a ffl). Things like short barreled rifles/pistols, silencers/suppressors, full automatic, etc. Different process for manufacture vs purchase, but in theory both are tracked with serial numbers and real ID's.
> "required FBI background check", which I bet all are tracked and cross-referencable with the requestor, thereby giving a synthetic key to "gun purchase" does not translate to database of potential gun owners
> I bet all are tracked and cross-referencable with the requestor
In theory they are not. The individual store is supposed to keep a paper record of the sale and the background check result so that they can be audited, but that is meant to be the only record.
Of course who knows what is being done to illegally capture the data.
A number of US states do not require background checks when it's resident-to-resident (I live in one). It's common to trade a bill of sale between parties but the paperwork stops there, and this paperwork is technically optional.
It sounds like mostly nothing is being done considering how slowly police gun trace requests are performed via a paper database search, but things could have changed since 2016.
>Although, I'd still like to know how "required FBI background check", which I bet all are tracked and cross-referencable with the requestor, thereby giving a synthetic key to "gun purchase" does not translate to database of potential gun owners.
The NICS dataset is really bad for this sort of thing, because it's used for many purposes other than "checking eligibility to purchase gun". For example, Kentucky does a NICS check on every concealed carry permit holder every single month. Other states do the same thing, but perhaps only on a subset of permit holders or less frequently. It's my understanding that some private background check companies also use it as part of their research for job applicants and the like.
This would most likely be based on public opinion surveys.
The 4473s and NICs checks are deliberately hamstrung. The ATF is not allowed to digitize these records, so they have to use paper and microfilm archives.
ring ring "Hello sir, do you own any firea-" click
I would hang up on that call and I don't even own a gun. Surely some people will answer, but wide swaths of the American public, gun owning or otherwise, would refuse to answer these sort of questions on basic principle and/or common sense. If you could get an estimate for what portion of gun owners relative to non-owners would refuse to answer those questions then you might have something for the statisticians to work with, but I don't see how you could estimate even that.
Surveys give you data, but sometimes that data is worth less than dirt.
> How do you not expect a substantial portion of your respondents to either refuse to answer or simply lie when you ask questions like that?
Surveyers do expect it. And any errors are measurable and have been studied:
> Polling potential or existing consumers is often the first step when it comes time for new businesses to enter the market or existing ones to add new products. And in today’s tele-connected world, no longer do researchers have to rely on focus groups, in-depth interviews or direct mail surveys to get the job done. Instead, a host of remotely accessible options exist that enables savvy market researchers the choice of connecting to the market without physically having to mobilize it. One of the oldest and most staid of all the research methods is the ubiquitous phone survey. It’s a no frills, “tried and true” alternative for companies looking for robust information quickly. But it does have its limitations. Take a look at the phone survey’s advantages and disadvantages:
This paper compares the (claimed) reliability of web surveys with the (claimed) reliability of phone surveys. The paper is behind a paywall, but at least in the abstract, it does not appear to directly address the likelihood of people lying when a stranger calls them up and asks questions about a controversial/sensitive topic.
> There's a whole plethora of papers on the reliability (or lack thereof) of various surveying methods, including over the phone.
That may be true, but you don't appear to have cited any of them. Care to try again?
The general point is that surveyors know people aren't always completely honest when asked questions.
Most human beings in general are aware that other humans will lie to them at times when asked questions, so why should surveyors being any different? Whereas people use 'heuristics' to judge another's honesty, surveyors will use quantitate methods.
This paper talks about figuring out how to tell when dishonest people are taking the same survey more than once. Also, it's discussing people who voluntarily take internet surveys repeatedly to attempt to cook the numbers, not people who are involuntarily cold-called at an identifiable telephone number, and wish to avoid answering a sensitive question.
Again, not even close to what you're claiming. That's the third non-relevant citation you've put forward. I think we're done here.
> The general point is that surveyors know people aren't always completely honest when asked questions.
Of course they know that. They just don't talk about it.
And no, there's no "quantitate method" to tell how many people are lying, barring an external verification source independent of the survey.
Tell me the approximate percentage of people who will lie when a stranger calls them up and asks them how many firearms they own, then tell me how much money you'd be willing to bet on that being the correct number.
…or sport shooting at ranges has gone viral due to some influencer trends