Are White, Racist Men Stockpiling Guns?
BY Herschel Smith
6 years, 8 months ago
Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.
So, who is buying all these guns—and why?
The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.
These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.
Ooo … a “definitive study!” That makes it sound oh so scientific and all. Seriously, do these pinheads think people are going to be honest with them or anyone else on whether they have guns and how many they have? Really?
And did they think to ascribe this alleged result to the notion that the second amendment is there for amelioration of tyranny rather than wanting to be John Wayne? God, these people must live in a movie.
Funny, this. I would have thought Scientific American would focus on STEM, like calculus, trajectory, failure modes and effects, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and Monte Carlo analysis. Does anyone at Scientific American still know how to do calculus? Can anyone there solve an integral equation?
Nope, they want to cite definitive studies done at … [ahem] … Harvard. They want to study white men, or maybe white male privilege, or maybe male patriarchy, or male confusion, or something.
My how things have devolved with time. I’m not a Darwinist and don’t believe in macro-evolution, but if I was, I’d be hard pressed to explain things like this.
On March 14, 2018 at 10:54 pm, StillSworn said:
Scientific American ??? Don’t know if this propaganda or if someone
can really be this stupid. This is so far from reality it borders on insane.
Best confiscate THEIR guns.
On March 14, 2018 at 11:44 pm, George said:
“Nope, they want to cite definitive studies done at … [ahem] … Harvard.”
Marxism had actually long ago made its way through our institutions of education (indoctrination) starting with Columbia U. back in the 1930’s. The “long march” through the institutions of our culture is complete. The results are apparent; with “teachers” prodding students to march in protest against the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution.
And what a fine education they must be receiving; a local FFL holder and gun shop owner told me that his younger customers haven’t been taught cursive writing as part of their education. He informs me that they scribble their “mark” on the 4473 when they take possession of their newly purchased firearms.
On March 15, 2018 at 4:19 am, DAN III said:
The “racist” card gets pulled again ! So what ?
I’m a “racist”. She’s a “racist”. Everyone’s a “racist”. Hell, the ad hominem is so over used as to be meaningless. When a communist calls you a “racist” consider it a badge of honor.
On March 15, 2018 at 4:40 am, Roger J said:
“You’re asking about what? Guns? I don’t have any guns!” Click. Does it not occur to reviewers and science writers to ask some questions about poll methodology and reliability?
Any “researcher” who believes they are getting honest answers on questions such as guns owned, income, racial prejudices, etc. is a candidate for the purchase of beachfront property in Winnemucca. And sorry, the best algorithms available will be unable to correct the bias.
Re: George’s comment. Years ago, I knew a Columbia grad who attended in the 1930s. He was very open about his attachment to communism, and acknowledged that it was in his college years when he picked those ideas up. Apparently, Columbia was a “communist factory” in those years and probably still is. I believe it is the home of “mattress girl”, who made post-coital accusations against a male student which were never, and could not be, proved.
On March 15, 2018 at 8:42 am, Angus Mcthag said:
I’m a racist!
He’s a racist!
She’s a racist!
Wouldn’t you like to a racist too?
Be a racist, drink Marxist kool-aid.
Wait… that’s not the words to that song.
On March 15, 2018 at 8:43 am, Fred said:
This article is lying. The fastest growing segments of CCW seekers are women and minorities. The fastest growing segment of gun buyers in 2016 was black and white women and first time young men and women and all ages and both sexes of blacks but especially women.
These trends of course, don’t include young black men who don’t fill out fascist, NRA approved, ATF forms. The closer you are to the threat the better your core understanding of the right of self defense. Millionaire ivory tower activists like LaPierre have less of an understanding of a fundamental need for weapons than Darnell living in the projects. Ask any young black man if we should be allowed to have guns and he’ll look at you like you’re a retard. Ask any rich white man and he’ll sound like a retard. Oh my, I went there.
(While our ability to be clever with our hands and minds when not forced into agricultural serfdom is amazing as evidenced by the explosion of cool stuff and quality of life, this doesn’t disprove that we are on a dying planet. I’m ok with the use of the word devolve only because it’s more easily understood by folks than to say ‘dying world’. There is a group that is using their minds in a hive like fashion in an attempt to get men to mars, and simultaneously a man with a solid 8th grade education a few decades ago is equivalent in ability to a 2 year junior college deal now. In the short term it’s a mixed bag and hard to decipher. Life spans are 90 percent shorter that they used to be, there are less life forms, not more, than there used to be and more life forms go extinct each year than new ones that are discovered. In the longer term, yes, the planet is ‘devolving’.)
On March 15, 2018 at 8:52 am, H said:
That might be their focus, haven’t read the rag in decades, but back when I started in the late 1970s the first article in each magazine was explicitly political, and of course wrong. It was particularly entertaining to watch a group of “scientists” against strategic defense steadily reduce their claimed list of things “beyond the foreseeable state of the art” as their errors were pointed out. Petr Beckmann made a credible claim you could roughly predict what they’d feature in these articles by what a Communist Czechoslovakian science policy journal had focused on six months earlier.
As for this ludicrous claim, I did a back of the envelope calculation some time ago and came up with an $100,000 average value of the armories they claimed we were stockpiling.
On March 15, 2018 at 8:57 am, Jack said:
As usual, yet another Scientific American writer flunked ‘reading science journal articles 101’ and ‘summarizing science journal articles for the public 102’.
None of the conclusions drawn by the writer are present in the article. Quite the contrary, he unsurprisingly gets the basic facts wrong.
Yes, 25% of the survey population that owned guns are white. AND 25% where multiracial. 16% Hispanic, 14% black. Given that whites made up 70% of the survey population, one can correctly conclude that white gun ownership is low compared to non-white.
No where in the study does it say that males own more guns than females, let alone a 2:1 ratio.
While the Scientific American SJW propagandist writes “These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families…”, the article actually states “Across demographic characteristics, female gun owners were more likely than their male
counterparts to report owning any gun for protection”
I could go on, but you get the drift…
On March 15, 2018 at 9:34 am, Pat Hines said:
One should know right away that the whole essay is bogus when they publish a conclusion that gun owners are mostly whites of low education, are fearful, and on and on. The notion that “I own guns because I’m unemployed” is too silly for words.
It’s likely that the author or authors are members of the (((tribe))) that funds and operates the gun confiscation lobby (GCL) and all institutional members of the GCL. The words and phrases used and slang are dead giveaways.
On March 15, 2018 at 9:52 am, Bill said:
“Scientific American” bullshit. Insecure, white, male, non-christian, uneducated, racist…wow. Surely they left something out.
On March 15, 2018 at 9:54 am, Herschel Smith said:
@Pat,
Everyone who doesn’t believe in the second amendment as amelioration for tyranny is part of the gun confiscation lobby, and included the likes of Lenin, Stalin, the Turkish Muslims, Pol Pot and Idi Amin. In America it includes soccer moms too.
On March 15, 2018 at 9:55 am, June J said:
I ran out of give a damn’s what Havard people think a long time ago. Communists and communist sympathizers love the Ivy League.
On March 15, 2018 at 10:08 am, rumcrook said:
Such horseshit. The conclusion boilerplate is always the same, millions upon millions more firearms have flowed into private hands over the last 8 years but its the same small group of old white guys buying them. Sure,
Of course, i personally know a couple first time gun owners that are black and young,
I go to the range and it is filled with younger ppl,
One group that comes and shoots together is almost dozen strong, are vietnamese in thier 20’s like a date outing guys and girl friends or wives, they shoot and trainntogether as a group.
I loaned a cz75 to a latino guy who was a first time owner who had bought a revolver, so i let him try my cz so he could feel the difference between the two platforms.
These egghead marxists are churning out disinformation, and i would saycit will disadvantage them the same way the rigged poles ended up disadvantaging the dems in the 2016 election.
They started believing thier own bullshit.
On March 15, 2018 at 2:37 pm, SGT.BAG said:
Only the less educated fail to stockpile.
On March 15, 2018 at 3:01 pm, Bill Robbins said:
I started reading SciAm when I was 16 and subscribed for nearly 40 years. I terminated my subscription as SciAm a few years ago the once-respectable publication had become a hollow, politicized shell of its former self. The problem started in the 90s and accelerated once the Brits acquired the publication.
On March 15, 2018 at 4:33 pm, scott s. said:
Scientific American has always had a left-ist cant. “Science” is a much better resource (though like all science-based organizations AAAS is heavily into the climate science gravy train). This single Harvard School of Public Health (same category as Johns Hopkins SPH true-believers) survey is interesting, but in no way definitive. A criticism I have is the apparent assumption that the results are representative of the entire US. Gun laws vary so much across the states that you can’t use response from one state’s residents for another state’s. In my state (Hawaii) answering some of the survey questions wrong would mean copping to a felony.
On March 15, 2018 at 5:44 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
The powers-that-be of the deep-state are accusing ordinary, law-abiding, decent Americans of stock-piling guns and ammunition?
As usual, the leftists project their worst anxieties and fears upon others. During the eight years of Barack Obama, the government stockpiled billions – yes folks, you read that right, “billions” with a “b” – of rounds of small arms ammunition, primary 5.56×45 NATO for AR15/M4-type rifles and carbines and 9mm and 40S&W for the caliber of semiautomatic handguns most-often seen in the hands of fed.gov employees.
It wasn’t only ammunition, either, but stocking up on small arms, surplus military equipment including IR/NVGs suitable for night operations, armored personnel carriers, drones, body armor, and assorted other military-grade hardware. Gee, it sure looks like they’re expecting something significant to happen! Wonder what that could be?
That’s not all. It wasn’t just the usual suspects stocking up on firearms, ammo and gear – such as the military, FBI, CIA and other agencies whose personnel may need to use such in the performance of their duties….. it was also agencies such as the DOE, EPA, FDA, IRS and others whose mandates have nothing whatsoever to do with the exercise of force.
Guess all those pre-dawn raids on innocent dairy farmers “guilty” of selling some unpasteurized raw milk to their neighbors are tougher duty than we thought!
Put two-and-two together, folks. Fed.gov is stocking up and – by all indications, preparing for a war or something very much like it. Simultaneously, they are pressing to disarm ordinary Americans. The present occupant of the Oval Office may or may not be an ally of the dirt people, but regardless of his standing, the deep state is still armed to the teeth. Trump is one man; what can he do about it?
Two sides, heavily-armed, with emotions running high. Events being set in motion and taking on a life of their own…. gee, forgive me, but I think I have seen this one before and it doesn’t end well. This isn’t the Great War, but that doesn’t mean the cautionary tale of “The Guns of August” doesn’t apply.
On March 15, 2018 at 8:13 pm, H said:
Georgiaboy61: A lot of those contracts people got excited about were indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ), you have to look at the particulars to see the minimum purchase requirements, and without other sorts of digging you can’t know how many rounds they eventually bought. E.g. in one that I looked at in detail, DHS I think with mostly .40 S&W rounds, the minimums for the rifle round purchases were often only 1,000 (this was a while before 9mm became fashionable again).
On March 15, 2018 at 8:27 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
H, even taking into account the nature and quantity of government contracts for small arms, ammunition and hardware, the amounts procured over the last 8-10 years have been far-in-excess to needs.
And that’s only the purchase orders we know about; what about the ones out of the public eye and off the books?
It is possible to deduce government buys not only by examination of RFPs and purchase orders, but from readily-available figures on sales from the ammunition and arms manufacturers themselves. Considering that much of what the federal government does is off the books anyway, I am much more inclined to trust the open-source data developed by independent and non-aligned third parties than anything published by the feds themselves. Unfortunately, the federal government has a long and sordid history of “cooking the books” when it is in its own interest to do so.
It should also be borne in mind that there is a high probability that the Obama regime procured these weapons and ordnance for them for the specific purpose of funneling them to jihadists, terrorists, criminals and criminal gangs for use on American soil. After all, Obama, Holder, et al. have already run not one but two gun-running operations – Fast and Furious/Operation Gunwalker and the Benghazi operation.
It seems eminently plausible that a regime capable of funneling weapons to terrorists and criminals in other lands in defiance of international law would also be quite capable of doing the same thing here, right on U.S. soil.
Obviously, I hope that this isn’t the case, but based upon the actions of the Obama regime over its eight criminal years in office, nothing can be ruled out. They were and are capable of anything.
In light of the enormous corruption and criminality which have since been exposed at the FBI, CIA and other three-letter agencies, it would also seem prudent to at least suspect them of having been complicit in whatever operations Obama and company carried out.
On March 15, 2018 at 11:49 pm, Pat Hines said:
@Hershel.
Yes, all of the folks you list are part of the Gun Confiscation Lobby (GCL). Some of them fund it, too. That said, the Violence Policy Center, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, ADL, SPLC, and every other institutional member of the GCL are funded, for the most part, and run by the (((tribe))). A simple review of their staff members will prove what I say. That’s how I found out.
What the Turks did isn’t particularly relevant here, while I’d love it if all of today’s Orthodox countries would expel the Turk from the Anatolian peninsula and reclaim their Churches (many are still standing, used as museums), that’s not going to happen in my lifetime.
Back to the US, with Soros (a Rothschild puppet) and Bloomberg money (and many more keeping somewhat lower profiles), the GCL looms large.
On March 16, 2018 at 10:18 am, Herschel Smith said:
@Pat,
For the *FINAL* time. This isn’t a debate. I’m telling you how I’m going to manage my web site – period. It won’t become an outlet for Jew-hate. That’s trashy and I won’t trash up my site. I’ll delete all such future comments.
Not that I’m some big supporter of Jews or the Zionist lobby (good grief, I’m a Calvinist – do you understand Calvinist theology and its implications for the concept of dispensationalism and Jews?).
You’re blaming the snake oil salesman for the fact that weak idiots buy his snake oil. Your views run contrary to Pauline soteriological doctrine.
If everyone stopped watching TV, stopped their massive indebtedness to banks, began having family devotions again, stopped killing babies as if to sacrifice them to Baal, and started worshipping the true and living God (or in other words, if we started practicing a Christian world and life view), none of these problems would exist.
We are under judgment. All of America is under judgment, and hard times are coming. That cannot be stopped. Simply prepare for it. The failures I speak of are the fault of the weak church, the failure to teach doctrine, the failure to speak in the public square, the failure to take uncompromising positions, and the adoption of morally dark practices and popular ideas.
The church is at fault – no, not the institutional church – but “Christians.” This has nothing whatsoever to do with anything else.
To understand more of my positions, study Greg Bahnsen and R. J. Rushdoony.
I don’t apologize for my views one damn little bit.