As someone who occasionally hunts, but mostly does target shooting, I can guarantee you that calls for gun bans move firearms way faster than any video game.
Edit: just do some googling how gun culture has made an example out of Beto.
tacticool marketing is prominent, but low effort -low reward. There’s tons of meme gun marketing; most people on forums and in real life chide that garbage.
There’s one main problem here, IMO, and none of the others can be solved without tackling it. We (edit: American here, sorry, didn’t mean to be exclusionary) live in a society where an object as potentially dangerous as a semi-automatic rifle is a cool thing to own and use, and pose in photos with. Is there another thing in our culture like that? A thing that is designed and built to kill human beings, glorified as the coolest thing ever in action movies macho bullshit propaganda? Our relationship with guns is fucked, and nothing will change for the better (again, IMO) unless we fix that first.
I can’t help noticing that violent video games did not make the list.
Isn’t this a repost? I am 90% sure this was posted last year. Still, I do appreciate the rational analysis of the main vectors of gun violence and agree with that analysis. Solving these issues require different, targeted actions.
I’d disagree. There was a shift in interest in them starting in the 90s and 2000s. There are several factors for this, but in the 80s and 90s the attitude among average people was “what do you need THAT for?” and is now “What do you mean you don’t own an AR?”
And while I replied to you as sort of a springboard, the rest of this isn’t a direct reply, but an outline of the cultural shift I’ve seen.
They were not very modular or cheap when they started to gain popularity. The factors I saw that increased that popularity was:
The Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 Highly ironic, I know. They took a gun the average user had little interest in and made it extremely desirable. Nothing makes an American want something more than being told they couldn’t have it. And adding to the irony, the AWB didn’t actually ban ARs, they just banned certain features. So one could go out and buy a new AR-15 at your local FFL, no problem.
Loss of hunters. With rural America withering, and access to areas to hunt restricted or more limited, owning firearms as a means to enjoy hunting became less of a reason.
Rise of the plinkers and sport shooters. Part of the shift of the user base was less hunters and more people who enjoyed shooting as a sport or recreation. I know some hunters who might buy one box of 20 rounds or rifle ammo a year. And after sighting in before hunting, do some target practice, and harvest their deer, they still have a handful left over.
Conversely the people enjoying shooting at a range shooting steel targets or traditional paper ones tend to shoot a lot more per outing. Semi-automatics became more popular because more shooting per outing. As the popularity rose, so did the sports around them for people to test their mettle against other users on timed courses.
Development of the flat top M-4. When the military wanted something that was more compact for infantry in the field, and something that would allow more optics options, they had the flat top M-4 developed. Before this, all rifles had the carry handle and sights as part of the upper assembly. This was replaced by a flat top with a Picatinny rail that allowed one to bolt on the carry handle or add an optic to it.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and popular culture. Just like how a WWII vet might have later picked up a M1 Garand or an M1911 to participate in shooting sports after the war, or just to go shooting with, many former military returning from these wars did the same thing. They started with what they were familiar with.
I also believe their exposure in all of the media surrounding the war, plus their use in popular culture (movies, games, etc) added to the popularity.
Well known manufactures like Ruger (who did make the “tamer” Mini-14), Remington, Winchester, etc didn’t make AR-15s at this time. It was still a niche industry and none of the bigger makers felt that such a move was going to be profitable at the time. But from what I saw, the popularity initially was among passionate users, and it was only after the user base became so large that the bigger companies jumped on board. (For example. IIRC, the company that owns Remington bought out Bushmaster, and then in a years time Remington made an AR marketed to hunters.)
Meanwhile, there is shit like this (and similar incidents on an almost daily basis.)
Any myths about self-defense and “guns make us safer” conveniently ignore the likelihood of unintentional gun violence.
And there’s a good reason for that.
As has been repeatedly demonstrated in countries that share many of our social problems but lack easy access to guns.
No scare mongering about gun seizure and bans well in excess of anything that’s legitimately on the table sell a lot of guns. Just as example we saw more spikes in gun sales (and price gouging on ammo) under Obama than we have under Trump. Despite there being a much higher profile push for increased regulation (and much more chance of it passing) in the past couple of years.
This is part and parcel of fire arms marketing. With the NRA pushing these ideas on behalf of manufacturers and acting as the major industry lobby. And its been revealed in a couple scandals over the last decade that the industry applies direct pressure to firearms press to ensure that remains the narrative. With outdoor and firearms journalists who come out in favor of even the mildest gun control measures being fired and black listed. And publications that don’t hold the they’re taking away your guns line losing ad sales.
That in no way makes you informed on the subject. In fact in my experience it tends to mean you’ve been exposed to a lot more misinformation.
And for the record I also shoot. And own a gun.
Swing by any of the gun related reddits, non gun specific places where guns are discusses (the user base on gun specific forums tends to be older), alt right spaces, video game discussion boards. Hell even body builder forums.
And wanting, having, needing, getting video game guns is a serious runner. With a serious presence of first time buyers asking where, and what to guy to get a specific gun. Or what to add to it to match a game version.
You can’t seperate this stuff out. And it’s as much about which guns sell as how many are sold. There’s a reason the best selling, most popular guns in the US aren’t competition grade pistols, or specialized hunting rifles.
Yeah there was a shift culturally. Driven by marketing and politics. The 80’s and 90’s also saw the rise of the militia movement, and heavy scare mongering based on the crack epidemic and “urban” crime.
One of the major cultural issues on this front being that the politics and the marketing are joined at the hip.
But the marketing push on this sort of thing (in this sort of way) largely started in the 80’s and early 90’s (this was also the era of totally bad ass semi auto sub machine guns among other things). I know a lot of gun folks who were all about it at the time. The assault weapons ban was a response to their initial proliferation. And while the assault weapons ban was a weird thing, one thing it did was limit the accessorization and marketing of these things compared to what followed. They only truly exploded in popularity after the expiration, but that’s also when they became the big focus of all the stuff i’m talking about.
That might make sense if you don’t consider everything else going on at the time. For one the fall in the popularity in hunting started in the 70’s. At the same time as the 2nd amendment crew take over of the NRA. With the close ties between the NRA and firearms industry, and the Republican party progressing with the rise in the neoconservative movement in at the start of the 80’s and progressing from there.
The 80’s and 90’s are when you saw the serious shift in the tenor of gun marketing and politics. With crime! and the self defense myth becoming central to the discussion and a fall in advertising of hunting and hunting arms. A big proliferation of self defense and sort of military fan style gun publications. And the shift in even outdoor focused press towards the same approach.
Basically your saying that because you don’t recall these things. That the results of them from the 90’s onwards have to be the result of something else.
The number of firearms in private hands in the country has gone up massively too even as hunting continued to erode. And over the last decade or so hunting is actually growing despite the “restriction” boogie man. With many municipalities states, and even parts of the federal government promoting increased hunting for environmental reasons. And there’s a pretty smooth gradient from the 70’s onward of increasing gun sales, increasing gun ownership, with increased popularity of handguns, “self defense”, and assault style weapons. So it’s not as if there was just a format change here.
All this even as crime rates cratered.
Basically your looking at the end results of all this in the 90’s on, and looking for one thing that caused it in the 90’s. Which just isn’t how the world works.
To a certain extent you’re also conflating enthusiasts with the general population. Jo blo looking for a “night stand gun” is not operating on the same “what do you even need that for” standard as a room full of competative target shooters or avid hunters.
Yes, this is more like a list of “5 other problems made worse by easy access to firearms”.
Just made me laugh with your reference to “ergonomics,” like it’s an office chair or a split keyboard. Why I can shoot and shoot and shoot all day and not suffer any discomfort! But seriously, carpal tunnel is no joke.
Good article, and it touches on many of the overlapping problems that need to be tackled in order to start getting on top of the gun deaths problem in a country like the USA.
It also brings to mind this data visualisation and series of articles featuring former Boinger Maggie K:
Here is the thing though, Gun Control Is as Old as the Old West.
When domesticated primates get agitated, guns make those encounters deadly.
Makes sense to restrict who may carry them and when they are carried.
In terms of the sheer number of deaths, the money we spend on terrorism would be better focused on the threat of husbands.
Yep.
From what I recall as old as the nation, with the first gun control measures instituted just after independence with requirements that militia arms be stored in public armories.
And none of those earlier pushes spurred huge sales booms or convinced people to covet what was being restricted.
Until the political shift that happened in the 70s and 80s and the advent of “they’re gonna take yer guns” scare mongering.
Nah, it’s the “telescoping/collapsing” stock that allows for 6’10” soldiers and 5’1” soldiers to use the same rifle.
Of course, an outside observer sees that as some type of mechanism to make it more concealable. Guys who work in tight spaces or need concealment just carry shorter firearms, PDWs, etc
Placement of controls, grip angle is less awkward than other comparable guns, ability to add forward grips/optics of any multitude of configuration, etc
Outside observers see that as some type of +5 boost in lethality- really boils down to user preferences just like bar ends on bicycles- some people don’t care for them, others go hog wild for them. As if a pistol grip on a rifle as opposed to the slightly different angle you get on a California compliant stock does anything to make it less dangerous. Nebulous decisions made by politicians who don’t understand firearms are pretty common in most countries.
Indeed, he was (is?) not helping.
Oh god. I can’t bare to read /r/gunpolitics That place is toxic waste. Even /r/liberalgunowners feels pretty ridiculous.
I guess I have seen people make comments like “oh I bought a mini-14 because it’s so good in PUBG” but it’s pretty rare.
I won’t disagree that toxic masculinity isn’t everywhere, but you don’t need to participate in it to like shooting.
I’m afraid I am just speaking about law. What is the gun show loophole?
Domestic violence is certainly viewed by lawenforcement with a very bizzare perspective. I don’t understand why battery against someone you live with is any different than against someone you don’t.
