Posted on 11/02/2024 6:50:10 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, Tim Walz and JD Vance all have something in common. All four of them, along with an estimated 42% of American adults, have lived in a home with at least one gun.
Gun ownership in the United States is widespread and cuts across all sorts of cultural divides – including race, class and political ideology. Like all mass experiences in American life, owning a gun can mean very different things to different people.
One thing that American gun owners tend to agree on, no matter their differences, is that guns are for personal protection. In a 2023 Pew survey, 72% of gun owners reported that they owned a firearm at least in part for protection, and 81% of gun owners reported that owning a gun helped them to feel safer. This perspective contrasts to that of gun owners in other developed economies, who generally report that guns are more dangerous than safe and that they own a gun for some other reason.
I’m a psychologist who studies contemporary society. In the lab, my colleagues and I have been investigating this feeling of safety that American gun owners report. We’re trying to get a more complete sense of just what people are using their firearms to protect against. Our research suggests it goes much deeper than physical threats.
By combining social-scientific research on firearms ownership with a raft of interviews we’ve conducted, we’ve developed a theory that gun owners aren’t just protecting against the specific threat of physical violence. Owners are also using a gun to protect their psychological selves. Owning a gun helps them feel more in control of the world around them and more able to live meaningful, purposeful lives that connect to the people and communities they care for.
This sort of protection may be especially appealing to those who think that the normal institutions of society – such as the police or the government – are either unable or unwilling to keep them safe. They feel they need to take protection into their own hands.
This use of a deadly weapon to provide comfort and solace may come at a cost, however, as firearms often bring a heightened sense of vigilance with them. Firearm instructors frequently teach owners to be especially aware of their environment and all the potential dangers and threats within. When gun owners look for danger, they often are more likely to find it.
Gun owners may end up perceiving the world as a more dangerous place, institutions as more uncaring or incompetent, and their own private actions as all the more important for securing their lives and their livelihoods.
What does this cycle of protection and threat look like in everyday life? My colleagues and I recently ran a study to investigate. We’re still undergoing peer review, so our work is not final yet.
We recruited a group of over 150 firearms owners who told us that they regularly carry their guns, along with over 100 demographically matched Americans who have never owned a gun. Over two weeks, our research team texted the participants at two random times each day, asking them to fill out a survey telling us what they were doing and how they were feeling.
To get a sense of how guns change the psychological landscape of their owners, we divided our gun-carrying group into two. When we texted one half of the group, before we asked any other questions, we simply asked whether they had their gun accessible and why they’d made that decision. For the other half of our gun-owning participants, and for our non-gun-owning control group, firearms and firearm carrying never came up.
When subtly reminded of guns in general – regardless of whether their gun was accessible – our participants reported feeling more safe and in control and that their lives were more meaningful. Thanks to our random-assignment procedure, we can be pretty confident that it was thinking about guns, as opposed to any differences in the underlying groups themselves, that caused this particular increase in psychological well-being.
About half of the times that we texted, the gun owners told us that they had a gun accessible at that moment. When a gun was handy, our participants told us that they were feeling more vigilant and anxious, and that their immediate situation was more chaotic. This result didn’t seem to be driven by owners choosing to have guns available when they were putting themselves into objectively more dangerous situations: We found the same pattern when we looked just at moments when our participants were sitting at home, watching television.
Contemporary American gun ownership may have conflicting messages embedded within it. First, a gun is a thing you can use to bolster your fundamental psychological needs to feel safe, to feel in control and to feel like you matter and belong. Second, having a gun focuses your attention on the dangers of the world.
By both fueling a sense of danger and holding out the promise of rescuing you from the fear, messaging around guns may end up locking some owners into a sort of doom loop.
My collaborators and I are currently exploring whether stressing other parts of gun ownership may help owners to move beyond this negative spiral. For instance, while owners often talk about “danger,” they also talk frequently about “responsibility.”
Being a responsible gun owner is central to many owners’ identities. In one study, 97% of owners reported that they were “more responsible than the average gun owner,” and 23% rated themselves as being in the top 1% of responsibility overall. This, of course, is statistically impossible.
To more fully understand the many ways responsible firearm ownership can look, we are in the process of interviewing gun owners from all around the state of Wisconsin, a notably diverse state when it comes to gun ownership. We’re tapping into as many of the ways of owning a gun as we can, talking with protective owners, hunters, sport shooters, collectors, folks in urban areas, folks in rural areas, men, women, young people, old people, liberals, conservatives, and, of course, trying to capture the complex ways that race shapes ownership.
Who do gun owners feel they are responsible for? What kinds of actions do they think responsible owners take?
We hope to learn more about the many different ways that people conceptualize what a gun can do for them. American gun cultures are complex and distinct things. By exploring the worldviews that support firearm ownership, we can better understand what it means to live in the U.S. today.
Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police's, not only are you wrong -- since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so -- but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?
Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself because the police are better qualified to protect you, because they know what they are doing but you're a rank amateur? Put aside that this is equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the piano and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are these special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the rest of us mere mortals?
One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance. Let's not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence.
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To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state's totalitarian reach.
I know my psyche is much more soothed, knowing I have half a dozen firearms that I can end the life of an unfortunate wrong doer.
I’m leaning toward a baseball bat against any cucks or crazy Karens who get in my face over a sticker on my truck after Trump wins and cause me to fear for my life. More rewarding and less chance of jail.
The government hired Tokyo Rose’s grandson to write this garage....
Poor yankee gun owner, he scared, he thinks he need gun to protect himself...It all in his little brain...There no boogieman, no crazy sick people...hahaha...Silly yankee see monster under bed....Be proud American, give up your gun! You have no need for them. Everything happy happy fun fun!
Yep.
But why would this guy be a psychologist if he’s mentally unequipped to figure out the nature of fear?
Only one gun ? Slackers!!!
As someone who once had to get up naked in the middle of the night and confront an intruder with only a baseball bat...
I much prefer a firearm of .45 caliber !!!
Words you never want to hear...Honey, there’s a man in our
kitchen !!!
.
My guns and my ammo, they comfort me.
Guns: You don’t need it till you need it. And when you need it, YOU NEED IT!
Better to have one and not need it, than to NEED ONE and NOT HAVE IT!
“By combining social-scientific research on firearms ownership with a raft of interviews we’ve conducted, we’ve developed a theory that gun owners aren’t just protecting against the specific threat of physical violence. Owners are also using a gun to protect their psychological selves.”
You can make a similar argument about, say, life or car insurance. No specific threat.
I seriously doubt there are any firearms in Willie Brown’s former girlfriend’s house.
I have been around firearms my entire life. It has only been in the past few years have I ever thought about needing a firearm for safety
When you hear more gunfire I. The middle of town than in the woods during deer season, there’s a problem. A major problem
I would not consider the crime, car jackings, murder, gang warfare, blocks from where family members live a perceived psychological threat.
Guns are for both, but the Second Amendment was specifically written to codify that government SHALL NOT INFRINGE on our inalienable right to keep and bear arms.
Well, other than the ones in the possession of her SS contingent...
Although the article is mostly drivel, I might agree with this part. Unfortunately, most gun owners I encounter know little more than which end goes bang.
My father was a cop. Although he was an excellent marksman himself, he once told me to hit the dirt if I ever see a cop pull his gun, because it's likely no telling which direction that bullet is going.
Absolutely. If they are in my house, no bat.
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