What is the american charm with guns and mass murders? Why does americans want guns, what er they protecting them against. If it is the government that seems unlikely. So whats going on?
A meaningful factor is racial resentment.
https://psmag.com/social-justice/study-links-white-racism-opposition-gun-control-69381
As America becomes more and more multi racial, multi cultural, full of Latino immigrants, etc some white people get more and more uncomfortable and use guns to feel safe from a world they see as unsafe and that is leaving them behind.
Many gun owners are ok with more gun control. But I doubt we’d do what places like south Korea did to resolve their gun issues. Even in blue states we don’t have that level of restriction.
Also crime is more serious here than in many other developed nations. A lot of people own guns to feel safe against crime.
There is a growing pro gun trend among the left from what I’ve seen though. As the right becomes more authoritarian and people feel the police can’t be trusted to protect them, people on the left want guns to stay safe from the right.
There is no American “charm” for mass murder. Try again.
Moderator Action
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
Generally speaking, a substantial majority of American gun owners, when polled, cite self-defense, not against “the government”, but against violent criminals.
From 2005 from Gallup, the top things gun owners used their guns for were “crime protection (67%), target shooting (66%), and hunting (58%)”. (Obviously a person can own a single gun for multiple reasons; “target shooting” may be a fun hobby, but it may also overlap with “crime protection”–a gun isn’t much protection if you have no idea how to use it–and the same gun used to hunt with can be used in an emergency to protect your home.)
Again from Gallup, in 2013, in response to the question “There are many reasons why some people choose to own guns and others do not. What are some of the reasons why you own a gun?” “Personal safety/protection” was the answer given by 60% of respondents, followed by “Hunting” at 36%. None of the responses match “May need to overthrow the government some day”; only 5% gave “Second Amendment right” as a response.
In August 2019, Gallup reports that “Personal safety/protection” had gone up to 63%–“Hunting” had also gone up, to 40%, although I’m not sure if either of those changes is actually significant–while “Second Amendment right” remained steady at 5%. Also from 2019 (October) Pew Research reports that 67% of gun owners cited “protection” as “a major reason why they own a firearm”. That article from Pew does also cite results from 2017 that 74% of gun owners believe the right to own guns “is essential to their own sense of freedom”. But that doesn’t get into why gun ownership “is essential to their own sense of freedom”; it might be “May need to overthrow the government some day” but it might also be “May need to protect myself and my family from violent criminals same day”–a kind of “freedom from victimization”.
Bottom line, for most of this century at least, American gun owners have pretty consistently said that they mostly (by up to a two-thirds majority) own guns for personal self-defense.
There were not constant mass murders in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s the way there are today. Guns were still widely available in those decades and in some cases there were fewer restrictions on them (I’ve read about people ordering guns by mail-order catalog with no background check whatsoever, in previous decades.) The plague of shooting sprees is a more recent phenomenon. There was more street crime in previous decades, but I don’t think that’s what you mean by “mass murder.” Something has changed in society to increase the frequency of spree shootings, is the only conclusion that I can draw.
Are there counts (in a recent year) available for:
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For civilians who own a firearm strictly for self-defense - how many accidental shootings killing (or injuring) someone unintentionally? One 2014 source says 2,549 children died and 13,576 children were injured accidentally in a recent year.
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For civilians who own a firearm strictly for self-defense - how many crimes were successfully stopped? How many stopped involving the death (or injury) of the intended victim(s)? Did any involve the death (or injury) of innocent people?
I don’t think anyone is going to be able to distinguish between firearms owned “strictly for self-defense”; and firearms owned for hunting, collecting, or other recreational purposes.
From the CDC National Vital Statistics Reports, Deaths: Final Data for 2017 there were 486 deaths from accidental discharge of firearms in that year. That includes 62 children killed who were 14 years old or younger. The next age cohort, 15-24, includes both children and also adults (albeit young adults); the total number of deaths from firearms accidents in that group was 117.
For accidental injuries from firearms, I don’t think the data is all that good. From FiveThirtyEight (Nate Silver’s website) we have the article “The CDC Is Publishing Unreliable Data On Gun Injuries. People Are Using It Anyway”; not only are FiveThirtyEight not a pro-gun source (or an anti-gun source, necessarily) but they quote David Hemenway (definitely not a pro-gun guy) as saying “No one should trust the CDC’s nonfatal firearm injury point estimates”. For what it’s worth, the CDC reported “more than 116,000” nonfatal firearms injuries in 2016; that, of course, isn’t just “accidents” but also deliberate assaults (crimes). That’s also all ages, not just children or teenagers.
Data on crimes stopped by civilians with guns is even worse. For “defensive gun uses” you can easily find estimates ranging from as low as 60,000+ a year, or as high as over 1 million a year. Clearly, the great majority of defensive gun uses don’t result in anyone being killed; for 2018 the FBI reported 353 total justifiable homicides by private citizens, of which 298 used firearms of all kinds.
Trying to break out “death (or injury) of innocent people” resulting from defensive gun uses by private citizens is also going to be tough to impossible. Those are probably going to be lumped in with “accidental deaths”–which as noted are very low, for deaths, and “no good data” for injuries–or possibly included in the statistics for crimes (if the “defensive” gun user was sufficiently negligent in his or her use).
Well, what do we know about what sorts of guns were widely owned in previous decades?
From 1994 to 2004, we had a ban on sales of assault weapons in effect. And whatever criticism one may aim at the way the law defined assault weapons, it seems to have kept a lid on the number of weapons of mass slaughter available to civilians during that time: the plague of AR-15s has largely happened since 2004. AFAICT, there weren’t a whole lot of such weapons in circulation before the ban. And battles over gun control in the 1970s and 1980s largely centered on handguns - Saturday Night Specials and the like. Memory’s fuzzy at this point, but IIRC, that was a time when long guns were generally hunting rifles that few of even the most passionate gun control advocates had any issue with.
ETA: These are my recollections of how things were between a quarter and a half century ago. I don’t claim they’re precise, and welcome correction on any point.
I both agree and disagree. I agree that prior to 1994, AFAIK, so called “assault weapons” really were not that popular. They were considered cheap, lower grade rifles that were useless toys for turning money into noise. But once they were banned, then like everything else you are told you cannot have, you just had to have one. Guns that were previously around $100 were now $700 or $800. And when the ban was lifted, people kept buying them because every year since then there has been noise about making them illegal again.
After every mass shooting, sales of assault type weapons go through the roof because you better get them while you can and before the new ban comes!
But I don’t see how that had any appreciable effect on mass shootings. From 1968-1993 you could walk into any gun store, verify that you were not a prohibited person, and walk out with the gun, no background check or verification of what you put on the form at all. Prior to 1968, there were generally no prohibited persons. You could have just done a 10 year stint for a serious felony and walk into a store and buy a gun. Prior to 1934 you could buy fully automatic weapons out of the Sears catalog.
So for a person intent on committing a mass shooting, the ease of getting a weapon wouldn’t seem to be any burden at all even though statistically fewer people owned them.
Aside from utilitarian purposes like hunting and sport shooting, the Right buys guys to protect them from…basically anything they are afraid of. And it ranges. On one side of the spectrum, it’s just mundane home defense stuff. A pistol or shotgun to defend against a home intruder or potential attacker. Particularly if you live someplace relatively isolated where police have a long response time.
But at the other extreme end, you have paranoid conspiracists who want to maintain an arsenal to defend against pretty much anything you can think of - criminals, terrorists, drugged out drifters, overly Liberal political agendas, the coming race war, the collapse of civilization as we know it. Those are the people who you see out there carrying AR-15s and wearing T-party themed balaclavas. For the most part, it’s mainly posturing. They don’t expect to get into a shootout with local SWAT teams and fight off an FBI / ATF tasks force. They are banking on law enforcement thinks it’s not worth it to create a mass media shit storm enforcing some minor zoning law or whatever.
But yeah, more generally conservatives see guns as a means to defend themselves and not have to rely on the competency and good nature of government for protection.
A testament to the effectiveness of right-wing media. Certainly hasn’t been much noise that I’ve heard during that time that suggested there was much chance of an assault weapons ban.
When even after the Newtown massacre, even a set of pretty trivial gun control measures couldn’t get through Congress, most of us pro-gun-control folks threw in the towel. But apparently we continued to be an effective bogeyman on Fox News, talk radio, etc.
This is absolute horseshit.
The 1994 ban did not prohibit the sale nor possession of firearms manufactured prior to the ban. And there were tens of millions of them available as well as tens of millions of high capacity magazines. It would have taken nearly a century for the supply of pre-ban “assault weap:rolleyes:ns” and magazines to get sold out.
Manufactures tweaked features like bayonet lugs or the flash suppressor and bada bing, a post ban assault rifle that could accept a pre-ban high cap magazine. But hardly nobody bought a post ban model as pre-ban models were easily available for just a little more money.
That ban did not in any way, shape, or form prevent anyone from legally getting their hands on a so called assault weapon.
I have some old issues of Soldier of Fortune from the early 80s that I bought in a vintage magazine lot on eBay. They’re full of ads for all kinds of semi-automatic versions of military rifles with large magazines and all the other features that would be classified as “assault weapons” - they were definitely available back then and they might not have been sold at your local gun shop but they did have a strong following. There weren’t constant mass shootings with these weapons in the 80s. Not even by the type of people who read Soldier of Fortune.
No good counts, sorry. Sure when the citizen shoots a perp, there is a statistic, but not when he uses it to scare off a intruder or attacker. I used to have to carry a gun for self defense, and used it twice, once to save a woman from being assaulted. In neither case was the police notified.
One of the most commonly cited estimates of defensive gun uses, published in 1995 by criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, concluded there are between 2.2 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually.
I want to point out that altho that was a good study, the numbers are pretty soft. Definitions are fuzzy. They number could be as low as 1/10th that, say 200k.
Still, that is well beyond accidents caused by owning a gun.
Republicans that own or live in a house that has a gun, 56%
Independents, 48%
Democrats, 25%
A quarter of the democratic party and nearly half of independents own or live in a house with a gun.
Well, back in the 20’s and 30’s you could buy a tommy gun or BAR by mail.
Several war surplus semi-automatic guns were cheap and easy to buy in the 1950- 1970’s, such as the Garand and M1 carbine. You can get a 30 round magazine for the M1.
I blame the media for the upsurge in mass shootings.
Not to mention that anyone with just a shotgun and a bunch of buckshot could seriously fuck up a crowd of people, and you certainly don’t have to jump through many hoops to acquire that.
This and the NRA has become increasingly radicalized, pushing a false narrative that stokes white fears.
That is a Op/Ed.
To be fair to the NRA, it wasnt until recently that the left has been screaming about Gun control, even passing measures in three cities that effectively banned all guns. (Overturned by courts)
Responsible gun owners now face the spectre of their valuable tool being taken away, with no recompense.
Several Dem candidates pushed for door to door gun confiscation.
Most of the new war on guns is based upon the Media and the way they push mass shootings. Oddly, few of the restrictions would prevent mass shootings- in fact, none would, outside of a outright ban and door to door warrantless searches.
Mind you, certainly some restrictions could reduce violent crime by a bit.