Glockenspiel

America is increasingly redefining itself, and literally digging its polarized heels into these value systems with fierce allegiance, into either an urban or rural cast. And rural values represent an agricultural undertone, man versus nature in a direct struggle, a simplicity of growing food, hunting and living off the land. It is a deeply embedded culture of self-sufficiency, stemming from a time where rural isolation made folks dependent on their direct connection with God and nature, perhaps with a little help from often distant neighbors. Collective solutions to problems are simply not the path, although farmers have been willing to accept farm subsidies as a part of life in a new global marketplace. Getting together to solve problems in scattered rural communities is just plain too hard. They cherish their independence, privacy and resent taxes, government and government intrusion.

With a tradition of isolation and self-dependence, the ability to deal with threats and the distance of official assistance inherent in farm living, the need to have a gun, perhaps a panoply of weapons, is nothing more than basic self-sufficiency. For those who have this value system embedded in their soul, even after moving (perhaps generations ago) into a suburban environment, it is still a definition of who they are and what they cherish. These are the core values that define the Republican Party today.

When people seek collective solutions, aggregations of people jammed together in crowded spaces where interdependence defines their existence, those with fierce rural values rail in defiance and look down on seemingly Godless and valueless hordes unable to take care of themselves. Life and nature are to be respected. Concrete and glass defy nature. The very complex interdependence, tolerance for diversity and regulatory requirements of having so many people jammed into crowded cities – often of varied religious and ethnic backgrounds – is simply repugnant to those with these traditional values, but without such interdependence, tolerance and regulation, cities simply could not exist. Interdependence, tolerance and regulation, thus, are the core values that define the Democratic Party today.

See an easy compromise between these two value systems? Neither do I. Although rural values have had inherent protection simply by the way we elect officials, the handwriting is on the wall. But for now, rural trumps urban: “Vermont’s 625,000 residents have two United States senators, and so do New York’s 19 million. That means that a Vermonter has 30 times the voting power in the Senate of a New Yorker just over the state line — the biggest inequality between two adjacent states. The nation’s largest gap, between Wyoming and California, is more than double that…

“To be sure, some scholars and members of Congress view the small-state advantage as a vital part of the constitutional structure and say the growth of that advantage is no cause for worry. Others say it is an authentic but insoluble problem…  What is certain is that the power of the smaller states is large and growing. Political scientists call it a striking exception to the democratic principle of ‘one person, one vote.’ Indeed, they say, the Senate may be the least democratic legislative chamber in any developed nation…

“The threat of the filibuster in the Senate, which has become far more common than in past decades, plays a role, too. Research by two political scientists, Lauren C. Bell and L. Marvin Overby, has found that small-state senators, often in leadership positions, have amplified their power by using the filibuster more often than their large-state counterparts… Beyond influencing government spending, these shifts generally benefit conservative causes and hurt liberal ones. When small states block or shape legislation backed by senators representing a majority of Americans, most of the senators on the winning side tend to be Republicans, because Republicans disproportionately live in small states and Democrats, especially African-Americans and Latinos, are more likely to live in large states like California, New York, Florida and Illinois.” New York Times, March 11^th.

These cherished structures, the political districts the define our electoral system so carefully constructed to favor rural voters, are about to be overwhelmed in a tectonic demographic shift that seems to threaten the checks and balances that once prevented urban dwellers from dictating national policy. The fierce resistance to confirming the massive pile of federal judges, nominated but not confirmed, the gasps and wiggles of a Supreme Court with a majority standing tall against urban values and the filibuster-loving do-nothing Congress are all symptoms of this change.

Gerrymandered districts – the prerogative of the party in power around census time – also serve to preserve values that are about to be slammed by America’s new “majority of minorities.” How would you feel if the very basis of your assumption about your place in America is about to be blown to smithereens? We’ve seen these battles before: the Civil War, segregation, temperance movements, Roe vs Wade, to name a few. Will this struggle finally rip this nation into shreds?

Gun ownership seems to be an indicator of this value split. So how do we explain the rising numbers of guns in America, the massively increasing gun sales? The FBI estimates that Americans own over 200 million firearms; others think the number is more like 270 million (e.g., gunpolicy.org). If such weapons were evenly dispersed among the population, this would suggest that the vast majority of Americans own guns. But they don’t.

“The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions…  The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.

“The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times…. In 2012, the share of American households with guns was 34 percent, according to survey results released on Thursday. Researchers said the difference compared with 2010, when the rate was 32 percent, was not statistically significant.” New York Times, March 9^th. But with increasing gun sales up and increasing demand for gun training, what’s going on? One thing we know, it’s not about hunting. Folks who own guns have them mostly for self-protection. “According to an analysis of the survey, only a quarter of men in 2012 said they hunted, compared with about 40 percent when the question was asked in 1977.” NY Times.

The answers are obvious. Households with guns simply have more of them. Statistics show that guns are actually less prevalent in cities, and as rural communities accounted for 27% of the population in the 1970s, today they account for a mere 17%. But even in states with large rural populations, there is a movement into the urban communities there as well. “The geographic patterns were some of the most surprising in the General Social Survey, researchers said. Gun ownership in both the South and the mountain region, which includes states like Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming, dropped to less than 40 percent of households this decade, down from 65 percent in the 1970s. The Northeast, where the household ownership rate is lowest, changed the least, at 22 percent this decade, compared with 29 percent in the 1970s.

“Age groups presented another twist. While household ownership of guns among elderly Americans remained virtually unchanged from the 1970s to this decade at about 43 percent, ownership among young Americans plummeted. Household gun ownership among Americans under the age of 30 fell to 23 percent this decade from 47 percent in the 1970s. The survey showed a similar decline for Americans ages 30 to 44.” NY Times.

But if you want to analyze gun ownership among those who profess rural (Republican) vs. urban (Democrat) values, the numbers begin to make more sense. “As for politics, the survey showed a steep drop in household gun ownership among Democrats and independents, and a very slight decline among Republicans. But the new data suggest a reversal among Republicans, with 51 percent since 2008 saying they have a gun in their home, up from 47 percent in surveys taken from 2000 through 2006. This leaves the Republican rate a bit below where it was in the 1970s, while ownership for Democrats is nearly half of what it was in that decade.” NY Times.

People with military backgrounds are more comfortable with guns, but despite the recent wars, compared with the post-WWII/Korean War era, a smaller percentage of the population has that experience. Women typically have fewer weapons than men, so the increase in households run by women is also a contributing factor. But the statistics are on the side of the polarized values… and what a well-armed and increasingly marginalized rural-values community is willing to do about the huge changes they face.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while we can learn a great deal from numbers, the bigger questions about what to do about it loom larger.