Category: Gun Fearing Wussies

Research suggests it’s largely because they’re anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market and beset by racial fears

Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.

So, who is buying all these guns—and why?

The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.

These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HARD WORK?

When Northland College sociologist Angela Stroud studied applications for licenses to carry concealed firearms in Texas, which exploded after President Obama was elected, she found applicants were overwhelmingly dominated by white men. In interviews, they told her that they wanted to protect themselves and the people they love.

“When men became fathers or got married, they started to feel very vulnerable, like they couldn’t protect families,” she says. “For them, owning a weapon is part of what it means to be a good husband and a good father.” That meaning is “rooted in fear and vulnerability—very motivating emotions.”

But Stroud also discovered another motivation: racial anxiety. “A lot of people talked about how important Obama was to get a concealed-carry license: ‘He’s for free health care, he’s for welfare.’ They were asking, ‘Whatever happened to hard work?’” Obama’s presidency, they feared, would empower minorities to threaten their property and families.

The insight Stroud gained from her interviews is backed up by many, many studies. A 2013 paper by a team of United Kingdom researchers found that a one-point jump in the scale they used to measure racism increased the odds of owning a gun by 50 percent. A 2016 study from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that racial resentment among whites fueled opposition to gun control. This drives political affiliations: A 2017 study in the Social Studies Quarterly found that gun owners had become 50 percent more likely to vote Republican since 1972—and that gun culture had become strongly associated with explicit racism.

For many conservative men, the gun feels like a force for order in a chaotic world, suggests a study published in December of last year. In a series of three experiments, Steven Shepherd and Aaron C. Kay asked hundreds of liberals and conservatives to imagine holding a handgun—and found that conservatives felt less risk and greater personal control than liberal counterparts.

This wasn’t about familiarity with real-world guns—gun ownership and experience did not affect results. Instead, conservative attachment to guns was based entirely on ideology and emotions.

WHO WANTS TO BE A HERO?

That’s an insight echoed by another study published last year. Baylor University sociologists Paul Froese and F. Carson Mencken created a “gun empowerment scale” designed to measure how a nationally representative sample of almost 600 owners felt about their weapons. Their study found that people at the highest level of their scale—the ones who felt most emotionally and morally attached to their guns—were 78 percent white and 65 percent male.

“We found that white men who have experienced economic setbacks or worry about their economic futures are the group of owners most attached to their guns,” says Froese. “Those with high attachment felt that having a gun made them a better and more respected member of their communities.”

That wasn’t true for women and non-whites. In other words, they may have suffered setbacks—but women and people of color weren’t turning to guns to make themselves feel better. “This suggests that these owners have other sources of meaning and coping when facing hard times,” notes Froese—often, religion. Indeed, Froese and Mencken found that religious faith seemed to put the brakes on white men’s attachment to guns.

For these economically insecure, irreligious white men, “the gun is a ubiquitous symbol of power and independence, two things white males are worried about,” says Froese. “Guns, therefore, provide a way to regain their masculinity, which they perceive has been eroded by increasing economic impotency.”

Both Froese and Stroud found pervasive anti-government sentiments among their study participants. “This is interesting because these men tend to see themselves as devoted patriots, but make a distinction between the federal government and the ‘nation,’ says Froese. “On that point, I expect that many in this group see the ‘nation’ as being white.”

Investing guns with this kind of moral and emotional meaning has many consequences, the researchers say. “Put simply, owners who are more attached to their guns are most likely to believe that guns are a solution to our social ills,” says Froese. “For them, more ‘good’ people with guns would drastically reduce violence and increase civility. Again, it reflects a hero narrative, which many white men long to feel a part of.”

Stroud’s work echoes this conclusion. “They tell themselves all kinds of stories about criminals and criminal victimization,” she says. “But the story isn’t just about criminals. It’s about the good guy—and that’s how they see themselves: ‘I work hard, I take care of my family, and there are people who aren’t like that.’ When we tell stories about the Other, we’re really telling stories about ourselves.”

HOW TO SAVE A WHITE MAN’S LIFE

Unfortunately, the people most likely to be killed by the guns of white men aren’t the “bad guys,” presumably criminals or terrorists. It’s themselves—and their families.

White men aren’t just the Americans most likely to own guns; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they’re also the people most likely to put them in their own mouths and pull the trigger, especially when they’re in some kind of economic distress. A white man is three times more likely to shoot himself than a black man—while the chances that a white man will be killed by a black man are extremely slight. Most murders and shoot-outs don’t happen between strangers. They unfold within social networks, among people of the same race.

A gun in the home is far more likely to kill or wound the people who live there than is a burglar or serial killer. Most of the time, according to every single study that’s ever been done about interpersonal gun violence, the dead and wounded know the people who shot them. A gun in the home makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed by her husband. Every week in America, 136 children and teenagers are shot—and more often than not, it’s a sibling, friend, parent, or relative who holds the gun. For every homicide deemed justified by the police, guns are used in 78 suicides. As a new study published this month in JAMA Internal Medicine once again shows us, restrictive gun laws don’t prevent white men from defending themselves and their families. Instead, those laws stop them from shooting themselves and each other.

What are the solutions? That and many other studies suggest that restricting the flow of guns and ammunition would certainly save lives. But no law can address the absence of meaning and purpose that many white men appear to feel, which they might be able to gain through social connection to people who never expected to have the economic security and social power that white men once enjoyed.

“Ridicule of working-class white people is not helpful,” says Angela Stroud. “We need to push the ‘good guys’ to have a deeper connection to other people. We need to reimagine who we are in relation to each other.”

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Jeremy Adam Smith is editor of Greater Good magazine and author or co-editor of four books, including The Compassionate Instinct and Are We Born Racist? Credit: Auey Santos

With the anniversary of January 6th behind us, we’d think all the insurrection rhetoric would be behind us, at least for a time.

Unfortunately, that’s asking way too much.

You’d think that, at some point, the people screaming about it would recognize that if the political demographic most likely to be armed and pay for training out of their own pockets were interested in overthrowing the government, they’d bring more than signs to the party.

But alas, that isn’t entering most people’s brains.

Yet I can’t help but think at least some understand that on some level.

I say this because of a new bill in the House that I was made aware of Thursday evening.

Washington (January 11, 2024) – Following the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08) introduced the Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act, legislation that would create a federal prohibition on paramilitary groups through civil and criminal enforcement. The prohibition would hold individuals liable who directly engage in certain types of conduct, including intimidating state and local officials, interfering with government proceedings, pretending to be law enforcement, and violating people’s constitutional rights, while armed and acting as part of a private paramilitary organization.

…

“Patrolling neighborhoods, impeding law enforcement and storming the U.S. Capitol, private paramilitary groups like the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys are using political violence to intimidate our people and threaten democratic government and the rule of law,” said Congressman Raskin. “Our legislation makes the obvious but essential clarification that these domestic extremists’ paramilitary operations are in no way protected by our Constitution. I’m grateful to Senator Markey for his partnership on this critical effort to protect the rule of law, deter insurrection and defend our democracy.”

A copy of the legislation can be found HERE.A one-page overview of the legislation can be found HERE.

The legislation creates different tiers of criminal penalties based on whether violations result in injury or property damage; provides harsher penalties for repeat offenders; and allows for a probationary sentence for first-time offenders. It also creates civil remedies by authorizing the Department of Justice to seek injunctive relief against paramilitary activity, and by creating a private right of action for individuals harmed by paramilitary activity to seek injunctive relief and/or damages. The legislation contains clear exceptions for activities such as historic reenactments, state-sanctioned trainings, and veterans’ parades.

Among specific points brought up regarding what this bill will restrict was, “training to engage in such behavior.”

But let’s be honest, what lawmakers claim a bill will do and what the text says can be quite different. I was already uncomfortable with what I was reading, since “patrolling” has a specific meaning in a lot of contexts, but I can also see someone applying it to a pro-gun march with some folks open carrying.

Was that what this bill was trying to address?

So, I took a look and, frankly, I’m not exactly thrilled with what I see.

For one thing, the word “patrolling” is mentioned several times in the press release announcing the bill and is expressly prohibited in the text of the bill, but is never actually defined by the bill. That means the definition of “patrol” is likely to be subjective.

But there’s worse.

For example, from the bill itself:

‘‘§ 2742. Unauthorized private paramilitary activity

‘‘(a) OFFENSE.—It shall be unlawful to knowingly, in a circumstance described in subsection (b), while acting as part of or on behalf of a private paramilitary organization and armed with a firearm, explosive or incendiary de8 vice, or other dangerous weapon—
‘‘(1) publically patrol, drill, or engage in techniques capable of causing bodily injury or death;
‘‘(2) interfere with, interrupt, or attempt to interfere with or interrupt government operations or a government proceeding;
‘‘(3) interfere with or intimidate another person in that person’s exercise of any right under the Constitution of the United States;
‘‘(4) assume the functions of a law enforcement officer, peace officer, or public official, whether or not acting under color of law, and thereby assert authority or purport to assert authority over another person without the consent of that person; or
‘‘(5) train to engage in any activity described in paragraphs (1) through (4).

Now, based on this alone, all sorts of things will fall under this regulation and, theoretically, be prohibited. Arguably, even your kid’s tae kwon do class would be illegal, since that would be training in “techniques capable of causing bodily injury” at a minimum.

Luckily, it’s not quite that stupid. It does require certain other conditions to be met as well. The problem? Those conditions are kind of a low threshold to clear.

Note that the above section clearly states that a circumstance from section (b) must be met, so that seems to say that if any of those apply, we’ve got a problem. I’m not a lawyer, so I may be misreading this, but it seems they’re pretty easy to meet, including crossing state lines, using “instrumentalities of interstate or foreign commerce,” involve a gun or explosive device, uses a so-called-high capacity magazine, or takes place within the United States.

And since the next to last listed uses the word “or” before going on, it makes it pretty clear that only one needs to be met.

The problem here is that just traveling on a road at all could be construed to be using an instrumentality of interstate commerce.

While it’s unlikely to be enforced that way, it sure looks like the fact that you’ll drive to a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class could meet this criteria.

However, a far more likely issue arises when we look beyond that.

For example, if you’ve never been in the path of a natural disaster, you probably don’t realize what it’s like to find your local law enforcement overwhelmed. People can and do decide to take advantage of that and a lot of people join together to protect their neighborhoods. One could say they patrol the neighborhood.

It would seem this bill would prohibit that.

More than that, though, it seems that a lot of firearm training classes could be negatively impacted. After all, are we not learning “techniques capable of causing bodily injury or death” when we attend? I mean, isn’t that the point?

Plus, you’re going to take a road at some point or another, meeting at least one of the circumstances laid out in the bill, as well as using a firearm–again, that’s kind of the point–and probably a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds, which is how the bill defines “high capacity magazine.” Literally any firearm training class seems like it would violate the law.

Any.

Now, again, I’m not a lawyer. It’s possible that there’s some quirk in how this is written that my layman eyes are missing that prevents it from meaning what it sure looks like it means, but I doubt it.

If there’s any good news to be found in this travesty of a bill, it’s that this is in the House, which the GOP controls. What’s on the page right now will likely never come to a vote. The absolute best-case scenario for this bill would be for the committee to gut this thing and rebuild it to not be a complete and total abomination.

Even then, I don’t see this going anywhere. It’s far more likely to get assigned to a committee where it can die a lingering death.

If it doesn’t, the gun training industry is going to need to lawyer up.