Americans’ Love Affair With The Gun
In Michael’s post on Guns, the comments that follow are on a predictable line. ‘Americans love guns’, ‘it is a question of freedom and inalienable right’, ‘an average American does not depend on the State alone for his, and his family’s, security’, ‘the simple ego boost from firing guns suits the American’s over inflated sense of self’, etc.
Maybe one should look at the cold statistics provided in the The Indpendent article: “There’s no question that the gun culture – stemming back to the frontier spirit of the 19th century and justified, at least by gun-ownership advocates, by the Second Amendment of the (American) Constitution – plays a major role in perpetuating the high numbers of violent deaths.
“In the US, there are roughly 17,000 murders a year, of which about 15,000 are committed with firearms. By contrast, Britain, Australia and Canada combined see fewer than 350 gun-related murders each year.
“And it’s not just about murder. The non-gun-related suicide rate in the US is consistent with the rest of the developed world. Factor in firearms, and the rate is suddenly twice as high as the rest of the developed world.
“Children are affected particularly hard. An American youth is murdered with a firearm every four and a half hours on average. And an American youth commits suicide with a firearm every eight hours.
“It’s worth remembering that many of the most spectacular mass murders of recent years were really suicides, with the perpetrators choosing to take a few other people with them while they were at it. Gun-control advocates argue they manage to carry out their murderous fantasies only because firearms give them the means to do so.”
Now let me go back to the Time magazine story written eight years ago: “Almost exactly 30 years ago this week, TIME ran a cover story, ‘The Gun in America,’ with a memorable image by the Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein that defined the whole notion of in-your-face. That story appeared at a moment when the conduct of national affairs had collapsed into something armed and dangerous.
“It was 1968, just days after the murder of Robert Kennedy, and before him of Martin Luther King Jr., when the exit wound was becoming a standard problem in American politics. Though the bloodshed of those years emerged out of many causes, one of them was surely the long-standing American romance with guns–the mystique and abundance of firearms, and the ease with which they moved from one hand to another until they fell into the wrong ones.
“But that sequence of killings also produced a briefly effective national revulsion against gun violence. Before the year was out, Congress would pass the Gun Control Act of 1968, a milestone law that banned most interstate sales, licensed most gun dealers and barred felons, minors and the mentally ill from owning guns.
“Now TIME returns again to the issue, prompted in part by the string of school shootings that began last year in Pearl, Miss. Gunfire has increasingly intruded into the possibilities of childhood, and the militant wing of adolescence has brought the possibility home.
“Recent statistics suggest that 1 in 12 high schoolers is threatened or injured with a weapon each year. And while juvenile crime as a whole is down–down even more dramatically than the already precipitous drop in adult crime–the number of youths murdered by firearms went up 153% from 1985 to 1995.
“…There are still nearly as many firearms in the U.S. as people–more than 235 million by some estimates. At a time when crime rates are dropping, gun crime is dropping too. But gun murders in the U.S. are still far more common than they were 30 years ago, and more common than they are in any other Western industrial nation. We’ve plateaued in no-man’s-land.”
I can understand the love for guns. For centuries the Rajput, a caste group I belong to, ruling clans/kings have worshipped guns and arms. They were Hindu warrier class and ruled different parts of India before the Islamic/Mughal rulers captured power in India in the 16th century.
However, the beginning of the end of the Rajput rule started in the 12th century with the defeat of Hindu Rajput ruler Prithviraj Chauhan at the hands of Muslim ruler Afghan Muhammad of Ghor.
Even today guns, swords and arms are worshipped in Rajput families on certain religious occasions. Being the eldest son in the family, I am the proud owner of a gun which is a family heirloom. Until three decades back the guns were used for hunting wild animals. Now guns are used purely for sports activities.
I can understand the feelings/emotional attachment of those who own guns. But I also feel that an owner of the gun must have certain family/clan/society traditions/values to uphold. A tremendous self-discipline and training is required by those who possess guns…otherwise the gun becomes a mere tool to commit violence.
31 Responses to “Americans’ Love Affair With The Gun”
I would think the majority of those 15,000 gun murders are gang related. They’re going to get weapons one way or another.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/teens.htm
Shows that something like 70% of murders between 18 and 34 are gang related. It’s this cultural blip that makes us look more like Colombia in gun homicides that, say, Canada.
Great propaganda to bad most of this has been debunked many times before. Yes suicides with firearms are higher, but according to WHO in 2000 the world rate was 14.5 per 100,000. The US had 30,622 suicides in 2001 which put us well below average. Funny that you mention Australia with there suicide rate being higher than the US.
You pasted a mention of 17,000 murders in the US and 15,000 with firearms compared to Britain, Australia and Canada combined with 350 with firearms. Anyone notice that they don’t show overall murders?
There is no doubt that the US has a higher murder rate but to put the blame on guns alone is absurd. If guns are the reason then why has the US murder rate been falling while the gun repressing UK and Aus been rising?
You can understand why people like guns but post a bunch of drivel that you cut and pasted without doing any real checking on and is obviously ignoring facts to serve a bias.
Take it easy, Eric. If you consider the details provided by the Time magazine and The Independent as “drivel”, then whose statements should one consider as unbiased and as THE TRUTH?
In a good discussion/argument one should provide “one’s truth’ as one perceives, and allow other commentators to compare different TRUTHS provided by different sources.
And pray what is real checking? I am no Bob Woodward!!!
I guess I should of said any checking. I draw a distinction between truth and opinion. I also don’t like when reporters use press releases as research. The idea that someone who doesn’t like guns can lie and/or distort the facts and you consider it “different TRUTHS provided by different sources” is pretty telling. Check my facts and theirs and be objective.
WTF! The facts should be the facts no matter what you perceive and opinion isn’t “Truth” it’s opinion. If you think I’m wrong say it and why. I sure did.
And if you don’t want to do anything original or any research then why would you be blogging at all?
Off -but interesting- topic:
“And if you don’t want to do anything original or any research then why would you be blogging at all?”
I wonder why people blog. I guess some do it as an outlet to share thoughts, reasearch, and ideas, but my general impression has been most do advocacy blogging. One stakes a position and attempts to combine rhetoric with available information to sway people. BullMoose (who’s one of my favorites) is a good example of this, although he seems to have contacts and sources from his previous days.
Some also just like to write, and many of those are good at that, and worth reading simply for the quality of their prose.
Finally, a few just seem to enjoy their own voices, but I would think all bloggers who avoid burnout need to have a little of that.
Bellisaurius, I cannot answer this question for others, but the reason for me to start blogging was that I was always thinking about politics as a result started reading blog, but found that none of the blogs truly worded my opinions completely. Some bloggers I agreed with for over 70%, others for just 30%, again others 10%, andsoforth.
Then I started thinking that I wanted to represent my own voice, instead of depending on someone else to word my opinion and to debate that person when I disagreed.
So, I don’t know about others, but for me it was the idea that I had something to say that was not being said as I would say it by any other blogger, andsoforth.
Also: I think that most bloggers, including myself, simpy are political junkies. When one reads a lot about politics, when one is actively involved in one way or another, if one thinks about politics a lot, one cannot help but feel the need to express oneself.
great, but would you cut and paste from another website and tell someone “why should I check the facts?” when called on the contents? Ok, you might post it but once the facts were questioned wouldn’t you check?
First, guns are a tool the people use to kill with.
Second, how many “gun owners” in the last week/year/ etc. did not kill anyone?
If the laws on the books were enforced, there would be less killing of people by firearms.
The way this country is headed, you might be glad that millions of American’s own firearms. Hitler removed peoples rights to own guns, and then took total control of Germany.
Start excuting these killers who use firearms to commit murder. OJ used a knife. When are you going to complain about knives?
What I don’t get is this obsesion about being “safe”. In Europe almost no one owns guns, and guess what? We’re safer. The argument that if you illegalize guns then only criminals will have them is intersting, why not take it further? Certain assualt weapons, certain ammunition are forbidden, why not legalize them? After all, if you illegalize armour piercing bullets, only the bad guys will have them.
As for the argument of having the option to rise up in revolution, it’s a pretty thoughtbut unrealistic. If the populace rose up and the armed forces came out against them (not automatic, they could side with the people, they should, in fact) the population wouldn’t stand much of a chance. No matter how big your gun and how many times you’ve gone hunting with daddy, you might as well throw rocks palestinian style than shoot at a Leopard tank. Sure, if 298 million armed untrained Americans rose against 2 million trained, armed to the teeth soldiers, they’d probably win, assuming the armed forces didn’t bomb us outright, but we all know that isn’t happening.
No matter how big your gun and how many times you’ve gone hunting with daddy, you might as well throw rocks palestinian style than shoot at a Leopard tank.
I’ve got several thousand Iraqi insurgents, several Sunni and Shi’a militias, and Hezbollah that prove this point wrong. Yes, they have access to better weapons than the average American citizen, but it wouldn’t take us mere citizens long to learn the same lessons of insurgent tactics that the Iraqis have learned.
Thankfully, there’s a huge difference between using the army in a foreign country and using the army against citizens of your own country. And most soldiers I know would refuse to carry out such orders if given. So I’m not too worried about having to fight my own military any time soon.
Lynx,
I’ve been through a lot of these arguments, and one of main conclusions I’ve come to is: the US is not Europe. Bill Bryson, an American travel writer with a superb nose for statistics, who spent 17 years in the UK and returned to the US to do a travel book, has a whole chapter in his book The Lost Continent on how terrifying easy it is to commit murder in the US, especially in the western states with very low population density. There are still a lot of places in the US where you’re pretty much responsible for your own security. My aunt reared 5 kids on a ranch in Texas that was 20 miles from the next house, let alone a town with a sherriff. Her husband was a salesman who spent most of his time on the road. She was one of the most practical, wise, and competent people I ever knew, and she slept with a revolver under her pillow and a shotgun under the bed. Bad things happen in rural Texas, they always have.
I’ve also known women in New York City who had men break right through their front door. They escaped out the window, but what if they couldn’t? It’s an old joke: Call for a pizza and a cop, see who gets there first.
As far as “the people rising up in revolution”, it’s not as nuts as you portray it. Sure, if a bunch of farmers go up against the 101st Airborne on an open battlefield, they’ll be slaughtered. But think of Vietnam, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Iraq, the Boer War. Abolishment because of imperfection isn’t a great argument.
One event that helped the NRA a great deal in the US was the LA riots following the Rodney King verdict. Through large parts of the city, people were on their own. There are a LOT of stories of store owners and homeowners who kept their property from being burned out by defending them with firearms. One man stayed in his store for over 24 hours until being forcibly evacuted by the National Guard, who told him they would protect his property. He got home and watched his store burn on TV. He was pretty bitter about it.
Also, by way of solutions, trying to do away with anything in the US by making it illegal is a waste of time. We’ve made drugs illegal, and look at the gang wars in US cities, all over the drug trade. Prostitution, liquor, pornography all thrived while illegal. All you do here by making something illegal, when there’s a strong market for it, is fund criminals. One of the Columbine killers had a gun that was illegal in the US, and had never been legal to own in the US. When an upper middle class kid in Colorado can get his hands on a firearm that has never been legal, it’s a pretty good signal of the effectiveness of prevention by law enforcement.
I can’t comment on Europe, I’m not familiar enough with the societies. What are the reasons these issues aren’t the same problem there?
BA says:
Nice opinion, but the comparison holds water about as Abrahmoff’s Red Dawn movie could be called a training movie for a US insurgency.
In Red Dawn the teens stockup with small arms from a parents gun store. In Iraq, the insurgents are armed with small arms, RPG’s and explosives from arms caches that the Iraqis had free access after our invasion. The alSadr militia is a trained parmiltary group, the teenagers from RD were fictisious charachters, with no realist chance to stop an invading army. Tienamen Square may have succeeded if we didn’t finance China through Wal-Mart.
The consequences of gun bans if judged by the British example:
1) Violent and property crime, besides murder, rises substantially.
2) Law enforcement of that crime deteriorates.
3) The right to self-defense becomes “debatable.”
4) Other less lethal weapons become subject to increasing controls.
5) Gun crime doesn’t even necessarily diminish in the long run.
Good job Tommy, I’m a fan of Reason, no personal attacks this time. Your argument has a somewhat unbalanced citation. To all others, please include the same. If a Far-Left Liburl used Michael Moore, as an unbiased citation, you would piss your pants.
Rudi, Red Dawn isn’t my point (although I’m not surprised the comparison was drawn). My point is that an insurgency may start off as “kids with small arms” from the local gun store, but it will very quickly become a “trained paramilitary” group through raw experience and contact with “the enemy.” The Iraqi militias weren’t always trained paramilitary groups, they’ve become so over years of fighting with Sunnis and American soldiers. The same would be true if the US government turned on the people and the people rose up.
Remember the British experience with Northern Ireland – they figured they needed roughly 1 soldier for every 20 Catholics in order to pacify the population. Let’s see, if we round to 300 million, that’s roughly 15 million soldiers. Looking at it another way, in Northern Ireland, the British deployed 30,000 soldiers to cover an area of about 5500 square miles. The area of the 48 contiguous states is roughly 3 million square miles. Using the same ratio give us roughly 17 million troops. Based off this number, there’s no way that the US military could pacify the entire country, especially when you consider that people are concentrated into urban areas (which, as Baghdad shows, are tough to pacify if the residents don’t want you there), are WAY spread out (meaning you’ll need MORE soldiers than the 17 million), or are located in rough terrain that improves the odds of an insurgency.
But, again, I point out that I can’t think of any soldiers I’ve met who would attack US citizens on US soil (as opposed to in Afghanistan or Iraq). I’m sure they exist, but I’ve never met them, and I believe them to be a very, very small minority.
No government can survive without the tacit approval of the people it rules, and no amount of military power has ever changed this.
“In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.” Man I wonder what the rates would be if we legalized drugs and most of that violence went away.
Also, I’m surprised no one has brought up Switzerland and Israel as examples of two countries with very high gun ownership and low crime. There are many social factors about those countries that surely help, but I think one of the biggest reasons is that they have compulsory military service so basically the entire population has advanced training. Do people think if we had that here (even if most of the people just went through basic training and never saw combat) it would help?
BA Nice straw man on this one. Because of size, population and geographical isolation the US has never been invaded in Modern times. Nobody, the USSR or Islamo-Stooges will invade or occupy the US.
BA says:
Applying this to the Rummy Iraq model, I guess we need over 1,250,000 troops in Iraq. By this mode, with Baghdad’s population of over 5,000,000 we need 250,000 troops in Baghdada alone.
Yeah, and ideally they wanted 1 million troops in Iraq while Shinseki said 500,000 minimum (when only half the country was in disarray) so they are using the same ratios.
“If we can blame guns for killing people, that means I can blame misspelled words on my pencil” – Larry the Cable Guy
…and I’ll be damned if they try to take away my locked up in a safe glock 17 (I’m looking at a colt m1911-a1 soon also yay!)…but anyway, given where I live…it’s prudent to be strapped up.
Mikkel – I couldn’t avoid burning down the strawman with those same Shinseki numbers. Imagine if Bush was serious at the beginning of the Iraq war and re-institutued a draft or toned down his “Cowboy rhetoric” and had 500,000 troops in a real Coalition. He might have brought REAL Democracy to Iraq and started a Republican dynasty that would last for decades. LuckilyUnfortutantly his incompetence may pave the way for the Democrats…..
Rudi, I can see how you would consider my comparison between the British experience in Norther Ireland and your claim that the US population would be unable to resist the military a straw man. Allow me to clarify.
The US military is insufficient to pacify the United States population should the population rise up against the goverment OR should the population choose to resist a “military takeover.” The popular resistance (ie insurgency) against the “military takeover” would be large enough to require a much larger military than the US presently has in order to effectively pacify the resisting groups. This is true regardless of the tactics or weapons of the insurgents because the tactics and weapons will automatically evolve to meet the threat of the enemy (the groups that adapt effectively would survive and grow while the groups that don’t adapt would be killed). This has happened in Iraq, it happened in Vietnam, and there’s no reason to think that a military takeover of the US would be any different.
OK My mistake, but the Moonbats still believe that W wants to make himself King. I guess the al-HughHewitt Brigade won’t suffice to install him as Iman of USA.
Where the article says.
is completely incorrect.
Look at other Countries with favorable gun laws – and you’ll notice the real difference is the other countries promote a heavy amount of education.
I did a study on this for college years ago. Back then I could find no gun law that by itself reduced the amount of gun-related crimes. Those that did were also attributed to a decent amount of public education about the subject. I would guess that so many Europeans and Canadians dislike weapons due to being taught about what damage they can do in the hands of someone stupid.
A gun by itself cannot kill anyone, A car by itself cannot kill anyone, an arrow by itself cannot kill anyone, a cigarette by itself cannot kill anyone. indisputable facts. In every instance something or some action needs to take place in order for the items to harm or kill.
Look the thing about the people rising up is bullshit. What is and would be effective is the govt knows there is a limit to how far people are willing to be pushed before responding. It’s not the direct effect of armed resistance but the indirect political effect that would hopefully keep the govt from pushing the people to far. As to why not make everything legal? Look I’m a bit of a gun nut. I love guns, enjoy shooting, and all of that. I’m willing to allow my rights to be abridged for good reasons. While it would be fun to have and shoot a machine gun I can see that there is a strong public interest in not having machine guns everywhere (you can still own them just costs a little more). The anti-gun crowd really hasn’t shown any significant improvements in conditions from restricting gun ownership. They may say that’s because they haven’t been allowed to go far enough, but come on. Britains crime rate did not go down. Australia’s crime rate did not go down. Here the laws loosened and concealed carry laws allow many more guns to be legally carried and there was no increase in crime. If you want to take away my rights I want a good reason and there are none being put forth. Just emotional pleas and distortions of facts.
I also find it telling that the only concern seems to be gun related crime. As if it would be a victory that gun related crime was down even if violent crime stayed the same. So obviously it’s not the crime or the deaths that’s the problem at all, just the guns.
Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is.
The arguments break down when one side claims to understand how the opposition thinks or feels. For expel :’the simple ego boost from firing guns suits the American’s over inflated sense of self. ‘That is an easy way to dismiss actual logical arguments which favor the right to bear arms by disparaging the gun owner as simply having an emotional attachment to guns. It ignores the reality that firearms have been used as tools for decades. They also have a valid recreational use.
I love my wife and children, not my guns. On rare occasions I like to take out my 22 caliber Ruger and plink. The large caliber stuff are used on rare occasions to remain proficient. My kids understand and respect the danger of these firearms. Detractors like to ignore this level headed approach to firearms in favor of fear and hysteria.
When handled properly, guns are useful and enjoyable in a number of ways. As I said in the previous post, I have no intention of giving up my right to safely use firearms because some people are not capable of acting responsibly with them.
I just remembered the phrase ‘Son of a Gun’….what does that mean?
So many statistics, so few citations.
Swaraaj – nothing to do with guns as we think of the word. From http://www.phrases.org:
There is dispute amongst etymologists about the origin of this phrase. The two points of view are primarily these:
1. The phrase originated as ‘son of a military man’ (i.e. a gun). The most commonly repeated version in this strand is that the British Navy used to allow women to live on naval ships. Any child born on board who had uncertain paternity would be listed in the ship’s log as ‘son of a gun’. While it is attestable fact that, although the Royal navy had rules against it, they did turn a blind eye to women (wives or prostitutes) joining sailors on voyages, so this version has plausibility on its side.
2. The term is euphemisitic and derived as a conveniently rhyming alternative to ‘son of a bitch/whore’. That term has been part of the language for centuries, certainly long enough for people to some up with a euphemism for it. Shakespeare used something like it in King Lear (1605) – “One that art nothing but the composition of a Knave, Begger, Coward, Pandar, and the Sonne and Heire of a Mungrill Bitch.”
If you would like statistics from unbiased sources, I find that the FBI yearly crime report, along with the CDC violence reportare excellent places to get statistics. Of course, one must remember that statistics may be twisted by anyone, especially if portrayed from a poll. Suffice it to say that in actuality, as other countries eliminate &restrict guns they Do become less safe than we in America are. But that is what happens in Democratic countries where the peoples’ hands are held &their decisions made for them. Thank God I live in a Republic &the Demotic espousal of Democracy &its’s ills can be exposed &confronmted so that we may have greater peace &prosperity.