In case anyone is actually interested in US gun ownership trends in the data — instead of just posting your prior-affirming vibe take — there is a lot of data.¹𝄒²
Results
Overall, 11% of respondents reported purchasing a gun since 1/1/20, 35% for the first time. Among recent purchasers, larger proportions of Democrat, Black, Asian, and Hispanic respondents were new gun owners than Republican or white respondents. Compared to prior owners, odds were 4.5-times higher that new gun owners’ recent purchase was motivated by racial violence and 3.2-times higher for political violence.
I don't see much difference with this than when gun buying spikes after publicized mass shootings[0].
Gun sales also spike when new gun control laws are proposed. People are afraid (however unfounded) that their right to protect themselves and their family will be taken away. It use to be one of the biggest issues to scare people into voting republican (at least in Texas), the boogyman threat that "they" are coming for your guns and taking your right to protect yourself always came up just before important elections.
When the government's tagline as "cruelty is the point" and people find themselves on the wrong side of that it's gonna scare a few of them, and scared people buy guns -- "identity" and sides stop mattering.
True. And I agree in a clickbait sort of way; it could have been better if they focused more on the overall fear part that drives gun sale spikes(regardless of who). I find understanding why the "who" are buying guns at greater rates to be an important point to understand gun buying spikes/trends. And if the who gets people new to the subject to read about it then okay, but it should not be overlooked that scared people of all kinds buy guns, and then maybe we can move to looking at why we accept our political apparatus scaring people (of all kinds) in the first place.
Ratio of gun ownership per party has shifted maybe from 40:1 to 39.99:1. While this is real, by the numbers it's inconsequential and of no note. But it is a vibe shift. Both inconsequential. But: this is worth noting.
And it's just cursed as frell that the left has seen such a shift that they abandon governance, abandon the state, feel the Dont Step On Me militarizing insanitude viruses that has afflicted & demented so much of America for hundreds of years.
One of the circulated highly-discussed topics of the day on BlueSky was The South. There was a lot of dragging & disdain, and some occasional 'I can't believe we're being so hostile here' outcries, but largely just bitter anger that US history has faced such a strong adversary against equanimity, such a tilted wild force built so purely around negative hateful biases that has resorted to such violence & force again and again. That violent clutching to illegitemacy has ridden so rough-shod over America for so very deep long, has once again gotten such an enormous violent clutch-hold over the land.
But with regards to this article: the tables aren't tipping IMO. Nothing's changing, violence wise. The violence insurrectionist tendencies are still 100% on one side. None of the people who were wetting their pants / podcasting ad infinitum about Jade Helm (a hypothetical violent government takeover of states) have said a peep about the radically unprecedented incursion of military forces into peaceful "what so happens to be"-liberal American cities. I empathize strongly with those who see whats happening, the horrific vile acts & the enjoyment of despicability/deplorability, who decide to arm up. But this story is about exceptions that prove the rule. This story is a tell: a tell about how brutal and mean and nasty much of America is, and how 0.02% of the good decent respectful folk have decided that, for their basic most primitive safety, they have to go buy guns. Most such calls for arms have never been in any real sense out of defense, IMO.
The longer story, what the viewpoint should really be looking at, is how radical and extremist so much of America has been for so long. How much they defy (have defied for getting near two centuries) even the most basic constitutional calls for respect & peace are, and how armed they've made themselves to resist the state/become an vigilante force of fear/terror/oppression. This minor anomaly is an indicator that the corrupt pro-violence mafia-state has just gotten way way too uppity & dangerous. But in truth, very few of even these people have any hope of resisting this bitter violence-happy mafia-state if these hooligans keep escalating.
Perhaps it’s just my location in the country but virtually everyone I know is armed regardless of political leaning in my area and it’s been that way for at least the four decades I have lived here. You just assume it and it’s no big deal.
Of course here left and right tend to socialize together here and no one seems to hung up on if someone disagrees politically. For instance, I’ve been to a neighbors house and drank shitty Trump branded wine while playing Eucre with Trump casino playing cards. Had a respectful discussion about politics and while no one changed any minds, we had a great time nonetheless.
I've been to places like that! And my microcosm of personal friends is certainly like that (sans political merchandise). Unfortunately, the opposite case is a much stronger tone-setter and cautionary prompt. E.g. to use a metaphor, a person considering home security is looking at how often break-ins happen - not how often break-ins don't happen.
I’m really curious about the amount of screen time and news/social media consumption of these groups. I assume it’s a couple standard deviations above what’s healthy.
I know a bunch of trans gun owners. They're pretty standard gun geeks, and a few of them do shooting competitions.
I've asked them how they got into shooting sports, and a lot times, they tell me some pretty scary stories of real-life encounters with bigots. Some have also encountered armed right-wing protestors outside of a bar that held a late evening drag event.
So at least among the people I've met out in the real world, it was fairly common to be motivated by specific real-life events. The numbers might be different for gun owners who don't go to the range regularly.
The whole topic reminds me of Deviant Ollam's talk "Lawyer. Passport. Locksmith. Gun." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ihrGNGesfI) He spends a fair amount of time talking about getting his queer and trans friends interested in guns. I suspect this has been the trend for a few years, at least.
He includes a quote that is rather salient: "If you do not have the means of violence, you aren't peaceful; you're harmless."
Why would you explicitly assume something that confirms your bias? Why not just say that you suspect a trend?
Individual anecdote, but I bought a pistol for defense in the US because of the (two way) threats I constantly read and hear in my real life, and I do not consume any social media. No Twitter, no Facebook. I don't read news outside HN, my local paper, and the occasional CS Monitor story. I rarely sit around scrolling TikTok/YouTube/etc on my phone, and when I do, it thankfully just shows me engineering/trades stuff (BigClive type stuff, plumbers, etc). Admittedly, I have visited 4chan occasionally since it was established.
My opinion is: It's fallacious to imply that the hatred and violence of Americans against Americans is negligible, and could only be considered a real problem through the lens of dishonest media. Yes, consuming garbage media will amplify that fear, but the fear is absolutely, obviously based on real, actual attitudes and words in the US.
In my social circle (mostly Asian tech employees in the PNW) there were many first-time gun purchases immediately after the social unrest in 2020. Hysterical social media posts about "the riots are going to come to the suburbs" factored into it. The fears ended up being completely overblown.
Now there are different groups of people who are predicting violence and feeling the need to do something about it. Too early to tell whether the fears are overblown this time around as well.
In any case, I hope all first-time gun owners properly train with them and secure their guns at home. I wouldn't be surprised if the main outcome of both of these clusters of gun buying is not actual defense against the feared threats, but that guns get stolen and used for crimes.
Unlikely (almost all the "rooftop koreans" had national service training in Korea) and unreported (that I could find)
In the end, Chang said not a single person was shot and killed by the Korean shop owners — just warning shots to chase away potential looters and arsonists.
I am a staunchly pro gun-control leftist and I own a gun. Are you trying to imply that gun control means "nobody can have guns", or something similarly incompatible with gun ownership?
I'm basically the opposite of you (leftist, opposed to gun control as it's been implemented in our country). I am frustrated by model and feature bans and magazine capacity bans. I am frustrated by the new push to ban self-manufactured firearms, something that has always been legal in the US but now that 3d printing has made it more attainable it's a target for bans.
It would be one thing if these laws were studied and shown to reduce gun crime. But I'm not seeing data, I'm seeing "guns are bad" vibes from Democrats while there are armed Nazi goon squads kidnapping people off the streets.
I find it odd the amount of families kidnapping their own family members lately, as that's typically the only time demands aren't made by kidnappers.
Don't think that would make them a Nazi though. Not to say there aren't any, but in modern times they're located in Ukraine. Azov Batallion has videos posted where they have whole stadiums filled with them doing their chant? which is disturbing.
The Nazis in Azov have largely been killed and replaced with new troops. The Nazis in America are running rampant snatching civilians off the streets. Critical difference.
This makes sense. If one of your political platforms is to weaken and reduce the police force, then buying a gun is a very logical and practical thing to do.
Quite the opposite. The increased fear is that there will be bad actors (brownshirts, racists, klansmen, etc) that the police are not making an effort to restrain, or even with whom the police are are allied.
Your average liberal/progressive is still probably less afraid (relative to the median) about random or property crime.
It is more like if you have to worry about masked goons breaking into your house and trying to kidnap you or your family members then maybe you can't trust the government either.
Wait, what? I thought the main leftward argument against the necessity of the second amendment was that we can now trust our government to not overstep its authority and people protecting themselves against tyranny was no longer needed?
That's not my experience at all - every time (possibly literally every single time) I have heard a liberal say that we don't need guns to protect government tyranny, the argument is that you could not protect yourself from the government, not that you would not need to. That seems obvious to me, so I'm a little astonished at what you're saying.
This notion of an all powerful military and the futility of defense against tyranny assumes that every military person (if so ordered) would gladly take up arms against their own citizenry as well as every military weapon system would be utilized against the people.
What makes the 2nd a deterrent against tyranny is the notion that if things degraded to that level, the military would be compromised by the factions as well likely to the same level as the population is. That, in addition to a significant % of your population is also armed, would create the environment that a government could be changed.
Because the government is aware of this fact, it will keep itself in check.
> every military person (if so ordered) would gladly take up arms against their own citizenry as well as every military weapon system would be utilized against the people.
Perhaps you should look up the literal thousands of occasions of that happening, before snarkily dismissing it as absurd.
Doesn’t require “every”, which is an equally ludicrous addition you’ve made solely so you pedantically dismiss any objections.
But I’m sure the students at Kent State, for instance, would’ve been happy to know how much the government feared them. Great comment.
Well you missed the point entirely or have deliberately misrepresented what I said. I described how the 2nd amendment is essentially a “force multiplier” for a fractioned military more than a counter to the military.
You mention Kent State, but that actually illustrates to my point. Yes that happened, but do you have specific evidence that the government specifically ordered the guardsmen to shoot the protesters? Newsflash…there was no such order. What you can argue in this case is that the government created an environment where general emotional chaos could create a bad situation, and did.
Even if you had evidence that this was an ordered massacre by the government—-only 29 out of 77 guardsmen fired their weapons. That means nearly 2/3 disregarded orders (which was my exact point if such an order was to be given).
Despite your suggestion of “thousands of occasions” where ordered military has been asked to take up arms against our citizens, I dare you to list another. You might go back to the civil war, but that technically is a special situation where one country for a time became two, and the combatants of those two did not regard the other are fellow citizens. My guess is that you are will be hard pressed to find many other instance where that has happened in the United States.
> You mention Kent State, but that actually illustrates to my point.
It flatly doesn't. US armed forces fired on citizens. No US military stopped them. The second amendment didn't stop them, or cause them to hesitate. The idea that the second amendment will change anything about the US military's response or choice to follow any orders they're given no matter how reprehensible or obviously evil (My Lai, Abu Ghraib) is laughable fantasy, based on a bunch of people who want to dream about being heroes and pretend that their 9mm handgun means something.
I didn’t, do you find these two phrases functionally different? “military person (if so ordered) would gladly take up arms against their own citizenry” and “ordered military has been asked to take up arms against our citizens”
They look pretty much the same to me.
> Germany, 1930s. Cambodia, 1970s.
So are you attempting to equate genocidal regimes that operated over years where millions were slaughtered to Kent State where 4 people were killed and nine wounded in less than a quarter of a minute?
> US armed forces fired on citizens. No US military stopped them. The second amendment didn't stop them, or cause them to hesitate.
Nowhere did I make the claim that the 2nd amendment would cause every individual military people to stop or hesitate. Actually it was quite the opposite. I said the military would faction in that situation. Also, I was speaking about the government. Individuals are not the government. The Kent State massacre was over in exactly 13 seconds. It both started organically and ended organically and timing also speaks to this being an emotional chaotic event done by individuals and not one that was specifically ordered.
Did you even read his post, he addressed that. Adding the armed citizens to the good side of the military is a significant power factor, if 10 million armed American civilians joins one side of a military internal dispute that will likely tip the scales.
I did. There is no “good side”. My grandma had blue numbers tattooed on her arm to prove it. The idea that armed citizens would universally rebel on the same side is also utterly delusional.
The argument of their hypocracy stands though, doesn't it? If someone argues that people don't need guns because they would be ineffective against their government, it's strange that that person would buy a gun precisely to use against their government, right?
> it's strange that that person would buy a gun precisely to use against their government, right?
IF that was indeed what they said, what they believed, and what they actually did, sure.
You do seem to have fashioned a weak strawman here though.
This thread appears to be about liberals, PoC's, and LGBTQ's buying guns due to a perception of increased threat from Trump supporters, MAGA cos-players, newly empowere Groypers, etc.
Not (that I can read in the article) to use against their government.
So that's a double no to both your artifically posed questions.
It seems like you're unable to follow or understand the thread. Several posts up is this post:
>It is more like if you have to worry about masked goons breaking into your house and trying to kidnap you or your family members then maybe you can't trust the government either.
Referring to agencies such as ICE, I believe. Then the post I replied to said that it's not about trust, it's about effectiveness. Now you're telling me it's not about the government at all, but essentially for general purpose self defense, which still seems hypocritical coming from the gun control crowd. Also I'm not sure what an "artificially posed" question is.
Who said the masked goons were military, or even ICE? Plenty of people running around in masks these days pretending to be ICE since ICE officers themselves won’t identify themselves or provide evidence that they are legit. They could just be thugs taking advantage of a very unprofessional arm of the federal government to justify a no-warrant home invasion.
We all know that guns, if ever used that way, will be citizen on citizen, not citizen vs the military. Both sides will think they are right, one or both sides will start with violence, the other side will be forced to respond in kind. The 2nd amendment has always been about Americans killing each other ever since the Supreme Court nullified the first clause of the amendment (which was meant to establish a Swiss-like militia). All it will take for the military to shoot a few students in cities Trump sent them to under the pretext of “preserving law and order” and the whole country is going to blow up. Heck, this is probably Trump’s plan to avoid the midterms.
You could also look at it from the opposite perspective: the military is now too powerful for private ownership of guns to do much and the downsides of having gun ownership now outweigh the nonexistent benefits
No, this is a weak argument point. We know from experience that urban fighting against small arms is hugely difficult without simply wiping a swath of a population completely out…which our military could do of course, but wouldn’t against a domestic population. We generally wouldn’t even do it against foreign adversaries.
You may certainly make the argument that a sizable guerilla urban force could perform outside their weight class against a federal army. However, it makes no logical sense to assert that most liberals buying guns do so under the theory that they will organize together against their government, nor that they do or should believe that this piece of military wisdom would work out for them.
I.e. it's obviously reasonable to believe that private firearms cannot stand up to the federal government, regardless of whether it is the case under theoretical conditions.
> You could also look at it from the opposite perspective: the military is now too powerful for private ownership of guns to do much and the downsides of having gun ownership now outweigh the nonexistent benefits
Tell that to the Taliban or the Vietnamese. They took on a massively more powerful military, were significantly outgunned, and came out of it in control of their respective countries. If there's anything we can learn from history it's that war is incredibly chaotic and unpredictable, and that anyone making bold and confident predictions is just about guaranteed to have reality prove them wrong.
That is not true at all, on both accounts, and I hate reading this take every time it comes up.
It shows a lack of understanding about the nature and power of insurgencies and a vast overestimation of the military's ability to protect itself should every military base, forward refueling point, and backyard airstrip suddenly become under attack. Hint: They're not really designed for that.
All of the anarchists and socialists and marginalized and oppressed communities are on the left. Their arguments against gun ownership and the second amendment were never based on an implicit trust in government.
Certainly not - their argument was always that it doesn't make sense to argue that we need guns to overthrow the government. Not that the government is broadly trustworthy.
tbh "we can now trust our government to not overstep its authority and people protecting themselves against tyranny was no longer needed" sounds like an intentional misrepresentation of a leftist position than something many actual leftists would believe.
The political side that that often argues for more government in their political solutions seems to by default to trust the government “to not overstep its authority”?
From my understanding, the issue with the police in the US is that they have to do to much, work as EMT, social services, mental health services, community police (proximity police? basically neighborhood cop), peacekeepers (during protests or organized events), investigating, policing traffic...
So you actually have a big "company" responsible for something you could dispatch to at least 4 other services (i've heard call to divided it in 7 parts, but i can't find where i read that, so let's be reasonable and say 4), and they have too much political power because of it. Divide the budget accordingly, correctly train teh police and "new police", call it "police" too because branding works and to stop people from crying out in fear ("mental health police" might not be the best brand, but other might work), and actually separate departements, and concerns. Separate training material, separate training place, split the union. Also make a department that will take care of orphaned police kids.
"Divide the police" is a way better catchphrase anyway.
This seems dishonest. Surely the liberal position - on average - is the rejection of dangerous police, even if that means rejecting a large number of police officers, until the police force (nationally and/or locally) is once again a trustworthy foundation of democratic civilization? The unfortunate reality is that, when you have a class of people with authority and guns, even if only a small minority of them are dangerous, that immediately ruins the image of the whole thing until they are rooted out. Americans have historically proven that, if there's one thing they won't stand for, it's being oppressed/frightened by those in power.
That might be the liberal position on average, but if you have a social circle that’s lefter than average, as in many metro areas, you’ll occasionally hear a desire for outright abolition of police. Not even a simple local constabulary walking the beat, as there is a meme going around that such law enforcement came out of gangs that hunted down fugitive slaves and is inherently tainted. (Nevermind the existence of such police in countries around the world that never had race-based chattel slavery.) Instead, more investment in social services will supposedly remove the need for them entirely.
But of course, whether that position or the number of people who hold it, has any real influence on gun sales is doubtful and the GP may have been a bait post.
I have never in my life heard or read anyone, of any social standing, political affiliation, education or station of life discuss the abolition of police entirely.
>> I have never in my life heard or read anyone, of any social standing, political affiliation, education or station of life discuss the abolition of police entirely
> I just said I’ve never heard anyone say they want to abolish the police, which sounds absurd to me.
Well, now you've heard it. And you're right, it sounds absurd. I wish it were satire, but there are people in positions of power here in the U.S. who think this is good policy.
> I have never in my life heard or read anyone, of any social standing, political affiliation, education or station of life discuss the abolition of police entirely.
Defund can mean both, many who chanted that clarified that they meant abolish. If you wanted people to not misunderstand then use a better word that is clear, since many who were on the pro "defund the police" meant abolish the police.
I did not choose the slogan, so you'll have to bring up your complaint with someone else :)
Do you have a proposal for an equally short slogan that cannot be misunderstood, especially by the right-wing media machine? I don't believe that such a slogan exists, as pretty much every sentence can be willfully misunderstood.
If someone in power said that they intended to defund this or that government department, most listeners would reasonably infer that the speaker's intention is to get rid of that department. You're accusing people of moving the goalposts when all they're doing is taking the most straightforward, plain language interpretation of the phrase, "defund the police". It was the activists who picked the slogan, not everyone else.
Well, today in fact a town in Wisconsin officially shut down their police department [1]. This area leans Republican, so it’s unlikely that the woke mob did it; probably just couldn’t afford the police anymore. But there you go: people discussed it and then did it.
I have, it’s an originally online meme that has been taken up by some of the people in my life, frankly as a shibboleth for the progressive values they want to be seen as holding. But anecdote aside, a search for "abolish policing slave patrols" will get you plenty of advocacy, e.g. [0] (as well as critique from the opposing end of the ideological spectrum).
No, this doesn't make any sense because the "liberals" have not been recently voted into power in order to achieve their political platforms. The opposite has occurred - they are the powerless ones.
¹ https://news.gallup.com/poll/653621/gun-ownership-rates-spik...
² https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx