Partial psychology behind gun ownership (NOT a gun control thread!)

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is not a thread on gun control, whether gun control is worth debating, or on the feasibility/viability/advisability of owning any type of gun.

To be clear where I stand: I am a lifelong gun owner/enthusiast who has probably owned 100+ guns in my life. I currently own 13 rimfire and center fire weapons, spanning pistols, revolvers, rifles, and shotguns of every action type (except single-shot, curiously). They are ALL for target shooting, though some of them could be used for self-defense. I do not own an AR-15 or anything like it (the M-16, M-4); nor do I currently own a Glock or any 9mm handgun. I do also own two air rifles and four pellet pistols.
This is IMHO, so just about everything here is just reflective of my own knowledge and experience on this subject. I am not interested in nit-picking every detail about firearms with self-appointed experts.

This thread turned into a discussion about changes made to cars that don’t seem to be guided by consumer preferences or desires, and it got me thinking about guns as products.
As products, guns seem to have resisted planned obsolescence a lot better than other classes of manufactured things. How many manufactured products of any type that were being made in 1873 can still be bought and used in their original form? Well, something that looks and functions exactly like the Colt Peacemaker can, and it’s not even the oldest example.
It occurred to me that this has to be part of the appeal of firearms. This is certainly true of myself; something I get from owning them is both an explicit and implied connection to the past. I’m generalizing greatly (there are many gun designs no longer made) but this point has greater and more subtle implications. Perhaps you’re thinking, what ABOUT the AR-15 and the Glock? Aren’t they terribly modern, yet account for huge swaths of the gun market?
Well, no. The Glock is the newer design, and it dates to the 1970s, not “new” by any definition. And it’s connection to the past is such that it uses the same type of mechanism used in theColt 1911 military handgun. This has a barrel that locks to the slide and moves, then slides down in the frame to unlock. This system was invented by John Browning, well before World War I. You could hand a Glock to John Browning (were he still alive) and he’d immediately recognize it as a development of his original idea.
In a like manner, the AR-15 has been modified and updated in many ways, but its fundamental nature remains unchanged. You could hand an M-4 manufactured last year to a soldier trained on the original M-16s in 1963, and he could figure out how to strip it pretty easily, and vice-versa.
There are other examples. One more: Smith&Wesson came out with the huge .500 Smith&Wesson cartridge a few years ago, but they chamber it in a gun that uses a basic mechanism little changed from guns they sold in 1900.

Could this be said about anything else we can go out and buy? Take the Colt 1911. Not only can you still buy the original, but many, many newer designs work in exactly the same way as this gun. Compare a car made in 1911 to ones made now: they both have wheels, seats, and internal combustion engines; virtually nothing else is the same.

I guess if I had to sum up a bigger point, it is that I think one of the reasons guns remain as popular as ever is because for a certain segment of the population they represent a rebellion against the changes that time has brought to American society. Guns are a physical reminder that SOME things don’t, haven’t, and probably won’t change much.
I wonder: does the fact that the majority of people I run into at the range consist of men older than 50 have anything to do with this?

2

For things of reasonably comparable mechanical complexity I’d nominate the loom.

3

I doubt it. First of all I encounter innumerable young people at my shooting range including many minorities and I’ve never seen anyone side-eye the black dude with an AR-15 over his shoulder, the members just banter with each other like anyone else, so I’m not seeing a generation gap at all. Also, if there’s any psychology behind gun ownership that’s actually relevant to the discussion, it’s the issue of feeling like an individual person should have the right to project deadly force in self-defense instead of delegating that power solely to government or police. (And it’s not like most shooting range people are anti-cop either, I see plenty of respect for the police there.) But I also don’t begrudge young back guys for feeling like they need to defend themselves, in this day and age.

4

I think that may be it for a VERY small percentage of gun owners.

Having been somewhat of a shooting sports enthusiast on and off over the years as well as having been a pretty keen reader of a lot of the literature on both sides of the issue, gun owners fall into a few basic categories that I’ve noticed:

[ol]
[li]Victims of crime who were shaken enough by it to want a definite means of self-defense for the future. Rape victims, armed robbery victims, etc…[/li][li]People who live in rural areas who tend to use their guns for both pest control, hunting and general recreation.[/li][li]Shooting sports enthusiasts - people who like target shooting, skeet/trap/sporting clays, or who just like shooting at targets in an informal way.[/li][li]People who don’t trust the government (type A): Those who don’t trust the cops to actually respond and protect them and theirs. Also, they believe that in the case of some kind of disaster, armed citizens will be the first line of civil order before the authorities get their act together.[/li][li]People who don’t trust the government (Type B): These are the more wing-nutty types who literally don’t trust the government at all- they feel that by being armed citizens, they’re the final bulwark against tyranny. These are the clowns you see with “Molon Labe” plastered all over everyhting, etc… [/li][li]People who like collecting guns. They like the mechanical mechanisms and the history behind the weapons, as well as the way they look, etc… These folks fall into 2 main categories- the historical weapons collectors and the general collectors. The historical ones tend to have C&R licenses and get older weapons, while the general collectors tend toward more modern ones.[/li][li] Finally we have the inheritors. These are people who end up with their grandfather’s shotgun or pistol or whatever. [/li][/ol]

Of course these categories overlap- most people I know personally fall into categories 2, 3, 6 and 7 in varying degrees, with a tiny handful of people who also fall into categories 4 and 5 to some degree.

The OP’s people would be a small chunk of category 6, I think.

5

I got a BB gun when I was 8.
I got a .22 when I was 12.
I got a shotgun when I was 13.

I currently own a number of firearms and am very much a Liberal. I was an NRA member for nearly 25 years before I got tired of the extremism and quit. No part of my gun ownership has ever been about any psychological need, desire for security, manhood or anything other than the fact that I used to hunt, I used to shoot gophers in our pasture and I enjoy shooting on occasion. (OTOH, I have displayed a gun, but never fired nor even pointed it at anyone, on five occasions for self-defense.)

While I am sure that there are people who own guns for poor reasons (and I’m not overly fond of them), I don’t believe they are a majority of gun owners.

6

Well, I’ll say this much. When the anti-gun folk talk about “the toxic gun culture of America”, I believe they are indeed talking about “people who own guns for poor reasons”, and I believe they are often painting the majority of gun owners with that brush when they do so. Often, not always. But often enough to create unhelpful and counterproductive polarization.

7

The less responsible owners are the most visible, and so do tend to take control over the perception.

8

I think guns have become far more complex since 1911. Tommy guns didn’t even come up until 1918. But to compare them to cars doesn’t work at all. Cars are more complex because we keep adding things they need to do for us. They need to play us music, keep us cool/hot, protect us from wind, or not, etc.

Compare a gun to a motorcycle though and it’s a slightly more parallel development. There are people who want a whole lot more from their bikes, but you can also find a market for a stripped down version that just goes or stops on command.

9

Sure, but is it a consumer product? Can a person just go out and buy one at a store?

10

From a materials science perspective, yes. From a mechanical/engineering perspective, no. I suggest you check out some of the videos from forgottenweapons.com. The guy on that site digs up and takes apart, on camera, very old guns far more complex than the Glock or AR-15. But those guns are always just wood and steel.

11

That pretty much is a car. If you showed Ford a modern car, he wouldn’t wonder what the hell this contraption is. We’ve made improvements for safety and efficiency, but not made any changes that would make them unrecognizable.

Now, hand a Barrett .50 cal to the guy who made your Colt 1911, and see if he finds anything recognizable.

12

Well, he’d probably recognize the concept of an anti-materiel rifle from the Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr, and see a lot of elements he knows (like the box magazine) from M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, among others. Plus, the recoil system the Barrett uses is basically the same as the one in the 1911, right?

13

Pretty sure John Browning, the designer of the M1911 pistol, the M2 50 caliber machine gun, the M1919 machine gun (the standard US machine gun in WWII), the Browning Hi-Power pistol, the BAR, and a whole huge bunch of other civilian weapons and cartridges, would have little trouble figuring out that someone made a rifle that fires HIS 50 cal cartridge, and operates using a recoil operated rotating bolt.

14

The Barrett M82 .50 is recoil operated. This is the same operating system as the Maxim machine gun, designed in the 1880s. Only the details (size, materials) differ. Nothing original there.
As for cars, the point was not that they would be recognizable, the point was understanding how they work. Guns work the same as they always did. Cars? Not with computers and electronics galore they never had until relatively recently. A computer running the engine, a touch screen for the stereo (and: a stereo), digital displays, dual climate controls (and: climate controls) perhaps Bluetooth, cruise control, and hell, push-button ignition with a radio-tagged key fob. You can’t tell me anyone in 1911 would’ve understood any of those things.

15

There just aren’t as many weavers as there are shooters. Supply and demand. They are still being made commercially, but looms take up a lot of space, so most people don’t have more than one or two even if they do a lot of weaving. They are more in the category of “band saw” or “kiln”.

16

I think all these points condense to just three.

  • Fear (all of 1, the vast majority of 4, and all of 5)

  • Curiosity (all of 3, all of 6, most of 7)

  • Utility (hopefully most of 2, plus a tiny minority of 4)

17

Interesting. I would be 20% #2, 20% #3 and 60% #6 general collector.

18

Sure, quite a lot of things. The pencil as we know it, with a wood casing and eraser, is pretty much the same writing tool as it was just before the civil war. A great many household items are the same as they’ve been for a hundred years or more: how much innovation do you suppose there’s been in bedding, plates, bowls, spatulas (invented in the 1520s,) cutlery, desks, tables, chairs, art supplies like paints and pastels & chalk, and so on? There are variations on themes, of course, but you could show any of these things to a person from 1911 and they’d know exactly what they were.

19

Yes, I think you’re correct, and I find the “Founding Fathers could not possibly have foreseen the modern weapons that people have access to nowadays” argument to be rather unconvincing.

They didn’t have repeating rifles back then, except for that extremely powerful Italian air rifle that I’ve read about (is there anything that Italians aren’t badass at designing?). But what they did have, was the concept of massed volleys of fire. They might not have been familiar with the idea of one man being able to unleash a barrage of bullets, but they were familiar with the idea of a whole bunch of men gathered together unleashing a barrage of bullets. It’s not really a huge mental leap from that concept of firearms, to the one we have today. All that’s changed is the force-multipliers, the basic mechanics and outcome are the same.

20

I think what you’ve described is true to some extent, but I think very often it isn’t the guns themselves that are attractive; I think the guns are often, maybe even usually, a sort of proxy for wanting to bring back the past in other ways. Old (white) men trying to turn back society’s clock, or trying to convince themselves and each other that they could turn back that clock, “if only…”.