Over 1.2 million people participated in the March for Our Lives events across the US on the weekend around March 24, 2018, the month anniversary of the event that inspired this movement, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. This turnout stresses the urgency of addressing violence in America. What has changed recently or not so recently that has created this eruption of emotion and political activism on gun control? In abstraction, the problem of restricting gun ownership is a philosophical debate between hunters or self-defense enthusiasts, and pacifists or those who feel uncomfortable or threatened by the idea of gun possession. Politicians simplify the matter as one that assures Republicans the vote in some rural areas, where apparently the right to own guns outweighs other issues at the polls. The statistical analysis below shows some surprising realities that point to some otherwise unexpected potential solutions.
Polls have shown that the percentage of the population that’s armed has been dropping, from 49% had a gun/revolver in 1973 to 34% in 2012. Only 29% of those surveyed actually owned (versus their spouse or another household member) the gun in 1980 versus just 22% in 2012 (General Social Survey). If these numbers were the whole story, it is very likely America would have outlawed gun-ownership by now, as 22% of a population is below the rate needed to keep any amendment alive.
Older, white men who are married with children, have little education, while living in rural areas of the Midwest and South are most likely to own guns (Pew Research Center). While women own fewer guns, they use guns to defend themselves against sexual abuse around 200,000 times annually. The top-most reasons for gun ownership has shifted from hunting (55%) to protection (42%) for men between 1999 and 2013. If guns are intended primarily for protection, one of their intended buyers are the victims of mass shootings who might respond to the threat of future aggression by arming themselves. In a way, Americans at large have been threatened into gun ownership for protection by news of these highly publicized mass shootings.
Only 51-4% of Americans believe that stricter gun control laws (such as bans on assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips) would reduce accidental or homicidal shootings. This statistic shows that this topic is emotionally rather than logically charged. How can anybody logically argue that a ban on assault-style, high-capacity weapons that are most frequently used in mass shootings would not reduce shootings? Well, to play the Devil’s Advocate, if all teachers had assault, high-capacity automatic weapons in their desks, they might be able to engage in a shootout with an assailant thereby preventing some deaths. But, one can also imagine that all school children would be able to break into these desks and access these killer weapons in this scenario, and suddenly they’d have access to mass-murder whereas before they had none.
From Texas
The Right to Keep and Bear Arms
by Anna Faktorovich, Ph.D