¹ https://news.gallup.com/poll/653621/gun-ownership-rates-spik...
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.
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.
[0] https://law.stanford.edu/press/gun-sales-us-spike-mass-shoot...
Yikes
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.
More like 5:2.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/653621/gun-ownership-rates-spik...
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 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.
He includes a quote that is rather salient: "If you do not have the means of violence, you aren't peaceful; you're harmless."
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.
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.
Where do you hear the threats then? In real life? Are they quoted in the local news you read?
(Sight nitpick - HN is social media)
Will the factions just politely agree not to talk about it?
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.
Your average liberal/progressive is still probably less afraid (relative to the median) about random or property crime.
But random crime is much more likely to affect you than brownshirts or klansmen, so that seems irrational.
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.
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.
