Gun Haters are Becoming Gun Owners

Legitimately armed protestors at the Michigan State Capitol, April 15, 2020

Gun Haters are Becoming Gun Owners

“It’s no long the economy, stupid!” It’s America’s post-industrial culture war!

A recent NY Times polls tells us that American democracy is under severe threat… but approximately half the nation also believes that our democracy no longer works as a viable political system. Further, Republicans own more than double the number of firearms owned by Democrats. Guns are the number one killer of American children and teens, but the American guns-are-more-important-than-our-kids culture of violence, supported by a litany of distorted Supreme Court, suggests that guns (including assault weapons) are locked into permanence in our society. Token gun control legislation rarely slides by Supreme Court rejection standards. So, knowing that the “opposition” is well armed, many of that cohort are prepared to use their weapons in support of white Christian nationalism, guess who’s buying guns?! Liberals too?

That culture war thang is the driving force. The great divide? Non-college educated males in search of a new definition of masculinity, Christianity, geography and gender vs Breadwinning/ politically strong women, a knowledge-based economy and our educated minority. The are more women in college and many professional fields than men! Physical strength as a job metric is a vestige of an earlier era; even wars are fought with machines as easily run by women as by men. Notice that race was not the main factor! Young male suicides are up with the notion of “worthlessness” at the core. We know that guns are a male thang… not a priority among women or the educated. See a pattern yet? Bottom line, knowing that we cherish guns more than ever, America is arming itself on steroids.

Part of this fractionalization comes from the normalization of hate-speech and carrying guns in spaces unheard of just a few years ago, unpermitted concealed carry, stand your ground laws proliferating… or as Jennifer Carlson, founding director of the Center for the Study of Guns in Society at Arizona State University and a 2022 MacArthur fellow, puts in the October 27th Los Angeles Times: “There’s a new reason your neighbors bought a weapon — gun culture 3.0… Americans on the left and the right are starting to arm themselves against perceived threats of political violence…

“The rumors and conspiracy theories in Hurricane Helene’s wake came armed and dangerous: Government relief was a green light for property confiscation; funds had immediately run dry; the storm itself had been engineered by the government for the benefit of Kamala Harris’ campaign. Meterologists suffered death threats. In North Carolina, FEMA workers stopped knocking on doors out of fear that militia members were after them. In Tennessee, a church-group volunteer stood between federal helpers and angry open-carry gun-toting locals. And at least one arrest, of a man armed with a rifle and a handgun, took place in North Carolina.

“The paranoia in hurricane country, with its undercurrent of violence, is just the latest sign of a new wrinkle in American gun ownership, something scholars have started describing as gun culture 3.0. The 1.0 version is firearm ownership based on hunting, often animated by a mythologized Western frontier. Gun culture 2.0 is self-defense-oriented, motivated by overwhelming concerns about violent crime that emerged in the 1960s. For years, gun-owning Americans have told pollsters that the No. 1 reason they own guns is to protect themselves in dangerous situations.

“But that broad motivation conceals a shift in what many — though not all — gun owners feel they now need protection against. Borrowing from the militia movement, which identifies government tyranny as a key reason for firearms ownership, Gun culture 3.0 is all about perceived political threats unleashed by those no longer invested in normal guardrails — whether rogue government agents or rogue private individuals…

“[A] study published this summer in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that new gun owners are much more likely to be motivated by political concerns with regard to protective force than other issues: They want protection during rallies and demonstrations, and they are especially worried about violence from people who don’t share their political beliefs. Black gun owners — long-standing or new — in particular worried about police violence… These data points suggest that Americans across the spectrum are turning to firearms as a tool of last resort to regain — as ‘bad feminist’ and new gun owner Roxane Gay recently put it — ‘ways to not feel out of control.’ And our divisive and distrustful politics are driving them there.

“Some think political violence resolves itself, that it is its ‘own worst enemy,’ because the backlash it causes renews people’s commitment to civility, and a fundamental, despite-our-differences unity. But waiting for political violence to shock Americans back from the brink can’t be the only way to stem the division and fear behind gun culture 3.0.

“In Tennessee when armed antagonists approached aid workers in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the woman who stepped between them listened. ‘People just need to be heard,’ she told a reporter, ‘I said, ‘I hear you.’ ’ But she also pointed out what they could see for themselves: storm victims being helped, not exploited… We can depolarize everyday life, calling out divisive behavior and labeling disinformation for what it is, even among our political allies, and working — no matter how hard it might be — to approach those on the ‘other side’ with curiosity. Maybe even compassion… Neither gun ownership nor gun limits will address the underlying fear and polarization that feeds gun culture 3.0. We have to address our withered capacity to live with one another.” We live in a country where so many can picture shooting someone with opposing views without a twitch of guilt… by dehumanizing them first. For further background see my October 6th The Legitimized MAGA Politics of Violence blog.

I’m Peter Dekom, and that hating people for their beliefs, justifying killing or silencing them, has become a new normal should trouble us all.