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How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

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Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#31

Post by colechristensen »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #16
Glyptodon wrote: post #3

Are people who are armed because they enjoy shooting or hunting supposed to exist in this research model or not?

The non-paranoid sportsman is a shrinking demographic, I fear, mostly due to decades of propaganda within the sportsman culture (magazines, organizations). They still exist within academic and reservationist circles, but the grand majority of gun owners I know in my rural backcountry speak pretty matter-of-factly about racist and anti-social ideas (source: friends, family, and going to bars called things like Rusty’s…

The attempted (failed) fascist takeover of Minneapolis by ICE motivated plenty of new and existing gun owners. It is not reasonable to call that fear paranoia, and it's not about the sport. The fact that it failed doesn't mean that chapter of history is over, just that lessons will be learned and it will be a more difficult situation next time unless there are some really substantial changes we see no evidence of yet.

Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#32

Post by gcheong »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #16
Glyptodon wrote: post #3

Are people who are armed because they enjoy shooting or hunting supposed to exist in this research model or not?

The non-paranoid sportsman is a shrinking demographic, I fear, mostly due to decades of propaganda within the sportsman culture (magazines, organizations). They still exist within academic and reservationist circles, but the grand majority of gun owners I know in my rural backcountry speak pretty matter-of-factly about racist and anti-social ideas (source: friends, family, and going to bars called things like Rusty’s…

I got my hunter's safety card back just before covid. Prior to the actual course starting, our instructors spent a good 15 minutes "encouraging" us to join the NRA because "they're really trying to take our guns, blah blah". This was in "liberal" California. When I had last taken the course as a kid in my home state of Oregon, in a conservative majority town, there was never any kind of propaganda that I can recall of this level.

Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#33

Post by DennisP »

alistairSH wrote: post #21
sp527 wrote: post #8

Anecdotally, a lot of politically far left people I know have gone quiet on the firearms issue. It seems like the state of the country has 2A suddenly making more sense to a lot of people.

Sure, jack boot thugs killing a fee people in broad daylight with a government sanction tends to do that. But I’d rather we not have the brown shirts in the first place…

Of course, and so would those same people.

Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#34

Post by lazyasciiart »

fasterik wrote: post #20

It's worth remembering that the American founders considered an armed population an essential part of a free society capable of standing up against federal overreach. James Madison, Federalist 46: >Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the…

It’s worth noting that these guys also considered women and black people not to be actual people, and made no distinction between nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and a rifle, whenever we get the idea that they had great ideas that we should apply to society today.

Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#35

Post by [deleted] »

fasterik wrote: post #20

It's worth remembering that the American founders considered an armed population an essential part of a free society capable of standing up against federal overreach. James Madison, Federalist 46: >Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the…

[deleted]

Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#36

Post by mold_aid »

fasterik wrote: post #20

It's worth remembering that the American founders considered an armed population an essential part of a free society capable of standing up against federal overreach. James Madison, Federalist 46: >Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the…

It's actually not worth remembering that, even in the context of this study.

Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#37

Post by kashunstva »

fasterik wrote: post #20

It's worth remembering that the American founders considered an armed population an essential part of a free society capable of standing up against federal overreach. James Madison, Federalist 46: >Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the…

However, the Second Amendment begins with a qualifying clause which many including notable national gun-rights organizations choose to ignore. In any case, I’m not sure that has worked out as well as Madison thought. A sizeable percentage of the armed populace may actually be cheering the feared Federal overreach.

Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#38

Post by elpocko »

john_strinlai wrote: post #12
arjie wrote: post #10

Boy, the game of telephone on the way to HN is really amazing. Paper: We make a stylized model that uses observed social networks in Honduran gangs and varies some parameters to match the US to see and it aligns with some things regarding how we exceed the socially optimal balance (based on the params). PR release: The researchers describe in Science Advances how individual incentives to buy firearms can lead to a ph…

> PR title: How Fear and Social Pressure Are ‘Overarming’ the U.S. > HN title: Fear and Social Pressure Are ‘Overarming’ the U.S the discrepancy between these two is because HN automatically strips "how" from the beginning of titles.

It's baffling how almost no one here ever speaks out against it. Everybody just puts up with it even though we all know what a sign of arrogance and incompetence it is to attempt to alter post titles in this clumsy, embarrassingly broken way. Everyone is just silently looking at their feet in second hand embarrassment and doesn't want to speak up. And the funniest thing is: there is an official rule that says not to edit the original titles. Amazingly bizarre.

Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#39

Post by [deleted] »

bob1029 wrote: post #26
alistairSH wrote: post #9

Do they ever state the social optimum level of fun ownership? I can take them at their word they it’s non-zero, but I’d guess it’s orders of magnitude less than the current rate.

In the US, the average gun owner has something like 3-5. An actual enthusiast will have tens or hundreds. It's the people who own exactly one that you need to watch out for the most.

[deleted]

Re: How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

#40

Post by lenerdenator »

In some ways, it's just the four boxes of liberty at work.

The theory goes, there are four routes to "solving" social disputes/obtaining justice in modern societies: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. They are to be used in that order, because the consequences for society and human life get worse with each one. I put "solving" in quotes because you could argue that the last box doesn't really solve anything.

Right now, at least, you have a large number of people in American society feeling as if social conflicts/injustices are going unaddressed in meaningful ways. I'll let you fill in the blanks as to what those are, but it's not always people who want the US to be like it was in 1955 who are arming themselves. An increasing number of people who are liberal or otherwise practice left-of-center politics, and people who are of historically-oppressed groups, are also starting to arm themselves.

Ultimately, if you start meaningfully solving social conflicts and injustices with the first three boxes, you can avoid the fourth and you'll probably see firearm ownership growth begin to drop. I don't think you'll ever see it meaningfully go away in the US without an effort that few people would consider wise to attempt.

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