Yesterday I received an email from one of the gun-control organizations telling me that the time has come for all of us to support “bold, evidence-based comprehensive policies” to overcome “well-funded information campaigns” which have led a majority of Americans to believe that guns will keep them safe.
Gun-control Nation has been running this narrative about the ‘well-funded’ pro-gun campaigns up the flagpole for almost the last thirty years. At the same time, evidence-based studies on gun violence definitively show that access to a gun increases, not decreases risk.
How do we account for this cognitive dissonance between what the research shows and what a majority of Americans believe? It has to be all that money which Gun-nut Nation spends to define and promote their side of the debate, right?
Unfortunately, there’s only one little problem with this point of view. And the problem lies in the assumption made and supported throughout Gun-control Nation-land, that people make up their minds about issues because one side outspends the other in getting their message across.
And even if this assumption was true, the NRA happens to be broke, and none of the other pro-gun organizations have ever been known for spending money on politics at all. And even if they did, how do you compare what Gun-nut Nation gives in political donations to what Mike Bloomberg forks up alone? You can’t.
According to Gallup, right now somewhere around 40 percent of American homes contain at least one gun, a number that has been dropping but-by-bit over the last twenty years. At the same time, the number of Americans who believe a home is safer with a gun is twice as high as the number who believe that a gun in the home makes you less safe.
I don’t care how much money pro-gun groups like NRA spend on spreading their unique brand of ‘disinformation’ around about guns because little or any of that money is spent to reach Americans who don’t own guns.
If you represent a state like my state – Massachusetts – in Congress, you don’t vote pro-gun. You don’t vote pro-gun because most Massachusetts residents don’t own guns. You vote pro-gun if you come to D.C. from states like Montana or Nebraska because everyone in those states owns a gun.
But the issue of how people make up their minds about guns isn’t just a function of gun ownership. If the Gallup gun polls are at all accurate, there happen to be a lot of Americans who don’t own guns but also believe that having a gun is a better way to protect yourself than not having a gun. Forty percent of American homes contain a gun, but sixty percent of Americans think that a gun keeps you safe. Get it?
I look at these polls and then I receive a well-intentioned email from a gun-control group complaining about the ‘disinformation’ being produced by the other side in the gun debate. My reaction is that there’s something wrong with what my friends in Gun-control Nation either believe or what they want me to believe, or both.
If gun-control advocates and activists are convinced that we need more meaningful and effective gun laws in order to reduce gun violence, then how do you get such laws through Congress when a majority of your fellow Americans don’t happen to share your views on the risks represented by access to guns?
You’re not going to persuade a lot of Americans who believe the ‘disinformation’ coming out of Gun-nut Nation to change their minds because you have done evidence-based research which shows that not owning a gun makes you safer than owning a gun. The only way you can possibly persuade these individuals to change their minds and come over to the gun-control side is to – ready? – try to figure why they believe a gun makes you safe.
Back in the 1980’s two-thirds of gun owners said they owned a gun for hunting or sport, one-third said that the primary reason they owned a gun was to protect themselves and their families from harm. Forty years later, those percentages have reversed. Now for every American who says he owns a gun to go hunting, there are two gun owners who say they want to protect themselves with a gun.
The standard explanation for this shift is usually the idea that hunting is simply an outdoor activity which is no longer why people go out to the outdoors. But I don’t think this is true. Because if it was, how come the people who stopped hunting or never hunted decided they needed a gun for self-defense? Why didn’t they just decide not to buy a personal-defense gun?
For all the talk by Gun-control Nation about the dangers to community safety that exist because so many people own or are buying guns to protect themselves or protect someone else, I have yet to see a single, serious piece of research which even attempts to figure out why almost two-thirds of Americans believe that a gun keeps you safe.
Given how the gun-control community seems to venerate evidence-based research to develop strategies for reducing gun violence, you would think that there would be at least some attempt to do some research that would provide answers to one, very simple question: Why do people like guns?
Not a single researcher has ever asked me to explain why I have 50 or 60 guns lying around.
Oct 07, 2021 @ 14:02:39
And your answer is”I have guns around because——–. Most gun non gun owners believe that guns make you safer because—-???
Oct 07, 2021 @ 17:11:17
Some people collect shoes. Others collect model cars and airplanes. Some collect guns, even if they just like the looks of guns. For example, my stepdad, a life NRA member with some exalted class or other of membership.
Cognitive dissonance? Maybe, but people respond to the crisis at hand, not the hypothetical one. Same with why people buy SUVs even as we are all told that the climate is in crisis. “Yeah, sure, the climate, but the idiots around here speed and run red lights so I want a Sherman tank, not a little electric vehicle.”
I saw the shelves emptied last summer in Santa Fe. Everyone and their dog was buying guns. Why? Loss of confidence in society. Revolving door criminal justice system in New Mexico. Santa Fe Police force with something like two dozen or more vacancies (15-20% of the force, I think) and emergency response times in double digits. On a recent day, Albuquerque experienced a period where the cops had no backups for each other.
As they say, when seconds count, help is many minutes away. I get a Tweet yesterday from an Albuquerque Journal reporter who said a woman had called 911 when her ex was prowling around her house after she got a protective order against him. Cops showed up 7 hours later. No, that’s not a misprint. Hours:
“I’ve lost the thread of this, but for those of you following and retweeting to wake up @ABQPOLICE, thank you. She just texted to say cops are on the way — seven hours after her first 911 call. Something needs to get fixed here. ”
Albuquerque has already broken its record for homicides and had another one in today’s paper. Two guys got into a road rage act and one blew the other away. Couple days ago in Santa Fe a convicted felon went on a shooting and attempted carjacking spree near my house. He shot a liquor store employee and then ran off trying to carjack a car. One lady said she didn’t open her door for the carjacker so the gunman shot her back window and windshield, barely missing her.
And those “researchers” who just look at mass statistics say that guns in the home make one less safe? I’d like to see a more granular study looking at locations and subcultures and how people who own guns get shot. As far as the propaganda? Mike, you and I both know a lot of that stuff is watered down and bowdlerized by the time the press and the GVP get hold of it and it is as dry as a popcorn fart. Meanwhile, anyone reading the news out this way feels less safe with armed felons running the streets and being quickly released on no-bail conditions when arrested. Quite a few folks decide that being safe requires relying on the guy or gal in the mirror rather than being put on hold by the 911 operator. I wish it wasn’t that way, but it is. At least out in these parts. And isn’t Minneapolis voting whether to do away with its traditional police department?
Having a gun for self defense means knowing how to use it, knowing you WILL be capable of shooting someone if you have to, practicing with the thing, and stowing it safely when its not needed. If you can’t live up to all those things, sell the bleeping guns and get a bigger dog.