Why do People Want Guns so Much?

Gun Watch ^ | 14 July, 2016 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

Those who demand a disarmed population claim that it is the easy availability of guns that causes people to do bad things with guns.

The core assumption is that guns have no useful function.  The people who wish to disarm the population constantly say that guns are only made and used for one thing - to kill people.  It is implied is that no person actually wants to kill people, and they would not, if there were no guns.

From that follows the idea that people do not really want guns.  If only some barriers were put in place to make it a little harder for them to get guns, people will give them up, and the number of killings would go down.

That is a naive and simplistic view of reality.

It is easy to see how people who have no experience with guns, and no experience with violence, could believe these naive notions.  They have never used a gun in defense of themselves or others; their narrow view of the world is constrained to believing that everyone else is just like them.  We hear the echo of this in a popular song:

 "People are the same all over the world"

Fortunately or not, the song flies in the face of reality and experience.  Everyone is not the same all over the world.  In fact, everyone is not the same across even most cities in the United States.  Many people have pivotal experiences in their lives that make the demand for guns strong, determined, and inflexible.

People who have experienced violence up close and personal have strong desires for firearms.

People who have had military or police training understand that personal power and safety grows out of the barrel of a gun.

People who live in rural areas have many cultural experiences that reinforce the utility of firearms. 

All of these people have something in common.  They are outside of the cultural set of President Obama and those who desire a disarmed population.

Their desires are not soft and squishy desires easily met by a DVD or a new pair of shoes.  Most people in the United States equate firearms with personal safety.  Making firearms a little harder to acquire with more regulations will not deter people who equate them with safety.  It will make them suspicious of the motives of people who wish to disarm them.

A recent study in Chicago reinforced that fact.  It is very difficult for people to obtain firearms in Chicago.  There are no gun stores.  Buying a gun in Chicago carries a risk of arrest and imprisonment. That does not stop people from illegally acquiring firearms. Phillip Cook has studied the availability of guns in Chicago.  He found that firearms were difficult to obtain. From the study JCrimLC 2015 Guns in Chicago.pdf:

In our 2007 article Underground Gun Markets, we found evidence that guns are surprisingly difficult to obtain in the underground gun market in Chicago.20 This evidence includes substantial price markups for guns on the street relative to the purchase price in legal transactions, substantial legal or physical risk and delays for criminals in their attempts to get a gun, and the existence of a system of retail brokers who charge a fee to facilitate exchanges between gun buyers and sellers.21 Yet despite the difficulty for most people in getting guns on the streets, roughly four in five homicides in Chicago are committed with guns.22

President Obama is exactly wrong when he says:

"We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than to get his hands on a computer"

Second Amendment supporters have been correct when they say that Chicago has high levels of homicide with guns in spite of stringent infringements on Second Amendment rights.
Phillip Cook doesn't draw the obvious conclusion that people who strongly desire guns will go to considerable lengths to obtain them.  He thinks strict gun controls on places outside of Chicago (where the crime rate is much lower) could reduce the number of guns that get to Chicago.  It seems unlikely.

Chicago is a text book case of inflexible demand.  Brazil is another.  In spite of extremely strict gun controls and no Second Amendment,  the murder rate, including with guns, is one of the highest in the world.  One of the favorite guns in the Brazilian underworld is the homemade submachine gun.  The demand for guns is so strong that when factory made guns are unavailable, a supply is generated by individuals and small shops. 

People who desire a disarmed population point to Europe.  They fail to note that homicide levels did not drop when strong gun controls were imposed.  They stayed the same.  Guns do not cause crime.  Guns do not cause death. Guns are used to commit crimes or to kill.  They are also used to prevent crimes and to save lives.  People who see their utility will not give them up.  Historicaly, it has not happened.

In the much touted case of Australia, with an incredibly law abiding population, only 20% of banned guns were turned in.  Now, 20 years later, the number of legal guns and gun owners is as high as it was before the ban was put in place. Now, there is a significant black market in illegal guns and homemade guns.

To understand this inflexibility of demand, anti-gunners would have to step outside their comfort zone.  A few do, every day.  The number of people who actively support the Second Amendment has been growing for decades.

That is why Second Amendment rights are slowly being restored, and why pushes for more infringements are defeated again and again.


©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch

[hockea]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

[rockrr]

Those who demand a disarmed population claim that it is the easy availability of guns that causes people to do bad things with guns.

There is a fundamental difference in cognitive abilities between leftists and normal people. Leftists believe the worst of people, especially themselves. They do not trust their own self-control. It's easy to see because they are the most willful people on the planet.

Normal people are cognizant of impulse control, exercise reflection (thinking about actions, reactions and consequences) and practice delayed gratification.

It's no wonder leftists want to ban guns - as irrationally frightened as they are of everything around them (including themselves) firearms represent the epitome of responsibility - a concept that leftists never learned and are utterly incapable of possessing.

[TalBlack]

A disarmed populace lives at the mercy of criminals and politicians. Praise the Lord and pass the ammo.

[rktman]

Well, you probably had to work a certain number of hours to afford your electronic devices and maybe not the top of the line.(white privilege thing?) Others..................maybe not so much. Want a gun, get a gun. Hate guns, don’t get a gun. Kinda like: hate fossil fuels, get an electric car. Like fossil fuels, get a HEMI! Yeah buddy. Then you can drive to the range and unload some evil armor piercing rounds. WOO HOO! In my neighborhood, pretty much well armed. Cause we can. For now anyway.

[Fresh Wind]

"We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than to get his hands on a computer"

That tweet was even stupider in its original form:

"We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than to get his hands on a computer or even a book"

[alloysteel]

I do not think the confusion between “by” and its homonym “buy” was unintentional on the part of the Current Occupant. There is a subtext there, that the teenager, prohibited by law from acquiring a gun of his own by purchase, may more frequently find a situation where this same teenager, to (go) by a gun, i.e., walk past an adult who is either legally or illegally carrying a gun, or pass by a peace officer, who in most instances, is also carrying a gun.

Or maybe the Current Occupant is a very bad speller.

[Azeem]

Most of those Brazilian submachine guns look like variants of the STEN. Many of the illegal Australian guns are also STENs. The gun grabbers don’t understand that once disruptive technology has been released, in this case by the British or the AK by the Russians, you can’t go back. A couple of STENs and AKs would have stopped that truck/lorry in Nice long before that ISIS terrorist killed 80+ people.

[kearnyirish2]

Another FReeper put it best: People want to take your guns away so they can do things to you they can’t do if you’re armed...

[batterycommander]

“An armed society is a polite society” - Robert A Heinlein

[Alas Babylon!]

BY

That’s the first thing I noticed. Illiterate MFs.

It could be a typo, but whoever actually types comments for a professional twitter account of this scale needs to proof-read it before pressing Enter or Send or whatever mechanism Twitter uses to publish a statement. I mean come on, there is only ONE White House, right? It’s not someone in their mother’s basement who happens to have a white colored house?

[Gaffer]

My guess is he never actually sees the tweet....is told afterwards by the lazy dipshit that took spell check’s pass on either...

[Grampa Dave]

[COBOL2Java]

Also, when seconds count, law enforcement is only minutes away.

Sometimes not. Remember the Korean shopkeepers during the Rodney King riots?

New York Times: RIOT IN LOS ANGLES: Pocket of Tension; A Target of Rioters, Koreatown Is Bitter, Armed and Determined

---

In the absence of police protection, merchant vigilantes turned snipers in Koreatown kept rioters at bay.

Excerpt:

But this morning, amid the empty shelves of the Western Gun Shop, the two men spoke in anger and despair of the failure of the police to protect them, of the collapse of their American dream, and of a sister and sister-in-law who are now hospitalized with gunshot wounds fired from a crowd of looters.

"I want to make it clear that we didn't open fire first," said David Joo, manager of the gun shop. "At that time, four police cars were there. Somebody started to shoot at us. The L.A.P.D. ran away in half a second. I never saw such a fast escape. I was pretty disappointed." 'Please Call Ambulance'

The incident occurred outside Park's Wilshire Jewelry, which is owned by Richard Park, who also owns the gunshop.

More than 200 people had converged on the mall where the jewelry shop is situated, Mr. Park said, and the shots came just as his sister and sister-in-law were trying to flee. His sister was wounded in the leg and his sister-in-law in the kidney and stomach, he said.

"I scream: 'Please call ambulance. Please, somebody hurt. Somebody crying. Please call ambulance. Ambulance,' " Mr. Park recalled. "But when a lot of shots were fired, everybody left.

"I don't know if I am wrong or not. People say I am wrong. What am I going to do? Just sit down and die? I am going to protect my store and my family and myself."

[Gaffer]

Like I said in my other post, I don’t think that Muslim ever does the actual tweets. He may be told “we sent out what you said” but it very likely wasn’t him.

[Tupelo]

why do people want guns?
Start with BLM and work out from there.

[NFHale]

“...Why do People Want Guns so Much?...”

Hmm... that one’s easy.

Because there are Democrats around.

[i_robot73]

More like:

Also, “shall not be infringed”.

Then the numerous cases where police are NOT obligated...

“When seconds count...” is just a logical soundbite to wrap it all up.

[exDemMom]

It is Obama himself sending it and can't understand the difference between "by" and "buy".

Indeed. Isn't the ability to distinguish between homophones a mark of intellect?

BTW, not to nitpick, but the period always goes inside the quote marks, like this: "Period."

;)

[refreshed]

To answer the headline, if not the actual article. Because I like to be able to defend my family. Because they are fun. Because I can.

[Gaffer]

Yes. I get your chastisement about the “period.” My English/grammar teacher was a stickler about it, and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. But I have pretty much stopped that because a lot of things I learned in the 50s and 60s aren’t taught anymore. Also with the Oxford comma.

As for the “mark of intellect” thing, I think it was pure laziness and letting the OS do the checking. Still, I don’t think Obama ever touched the device that tweeted out that crap.