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Tendencies

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Last weekend I posted on Facebook a link to a Scientific American article on gun ownership. The web headline read, “Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns? 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.”

I posted in part to see what reaction it generated, and yes, it generated a reaction. “I think this is mostly hogwash. How did I know that there would be a racial component?” “the vast majority of those stockpiling are doing so not for home defense, not because they fear for their jobs, not because of racism. It is because they trust the government less and less.” The tenor from several people seemed to be, that doesn’t represent me or the gun owners I know.

And maybe it doesn’t, which also doesn’t invalidate the point.

Several of the reactions did, however, indicate strong emotions, which tended to support the premises in the article.

One of the most striking elements of the gun debate, on the pro-gun side, is its emotional core. It’s not that there aren’t intellectually-based arguments on that side of the fence – there are. But the kernel of the matter goes back to the old National Rifle Association line, “I’ll give you my gun when you pry (or take) it from my cold, dead hands.” There are plenty of other things people want or would defend, but when do you see such ferocity about a car, or even a house? The Second Amendment isn’t a reason for the fierce attachment (where’s the comparable attachment to the press, which is more specifically referred to in the constitution?) nearly so much as it is rationalization for it. The government distrust argument never, as a rational matter, worked either; tens of millions of people in this country who right now deeply distrust the federal government would not see gun ownership as a solution to the problem.

Something about guns, for some people, strikes home deep, toward the core of a psyche, and the results of an array of studies – the article was about not just one or two, but many – suggest much of the intensity around guns in some quarters has broader causes. It suggests at one point, for example, “For many conservative men, the gun feels like a force for order in a chaotic world” – a way not to become a victim, if only symbolically. It is a way to take charge in a world where so much seems out of control and slipping away.

Does that apply to all gun owners, or even all gun stockpilers? No. Of course not. To suggest that it does (as some of my Facebook readers seemed to) misreads the kind of studies that lead to the article’s conclusions. The research points to tendencies in groups of people, to a larger probability that people in the group will have certain characteristics. It doesn’t mean everyone in the group will. The principle is the same if a doctor advises that because you’re in an older age group, you’re more prone to certain cancers – a statistical fact that you’re somewhat more at risk. Does that mean you will get cancer? Not necessarily. Far from everyone in the at-risk group does.

And so with high-intensity gun owners: Certain characteristics pop up more in than in the broader population, but that doesn’t mean everyone in the group will reflect them.

A certain strong feeling on the subject, though, does seem very widespread. And that suggests that, even if some of the specifics are off, the points made in the Scientific American probably are at least loosely on to something.
 

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