More Americans than ever before are armed and ready to defend themselves and their families from threats.
The proof lies in a new study published in the journal Injury Prevention that found that 80 percent of gun owners were motivated to purchase a firearm for personal protection.
That’s a huge bump up from decades earlier.
“No single study has tracked the reasons for gun ownership over time, making comparisons inexact, but similar studies have found that about 26% of Americans reported owning a gun for protection in 1999,” according to CNN.
Dr. David Yamane, a professor of sociology at Wake Forest University, believes the uptick is because of cultural unrest like that witnessed in the 1960s and then later during the COVID pandemic.
“It was a time of profound social unrest and social uncertainty, lots of political movements, cultural change, foreign threats, people listening to crazy music, you know, ‘sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll,’ political assassination, riots or protest movements in some cities,” he said.
“If you think about the year of 2020, it really had some of those characteristics. There was Covid, which rolls immediately into the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, which rolls immediately then into an insane presidential election that rolls immediately into the [riot] at the Capitol,” he added.
Yamane and CNN are both concerned, however, that “the uncertainty of the times” has “fanned the flames of a defensive gun culture,” as reported by CNN.
“Since at least the 1980s, the gun industry has also promoted the idea of using guns for personal protection and advocated for the passage of so-called ‘stand your ground’ laws, which permit the use of deadly force if a person is defending themselves,” CNN fretted.
The network then pointed to dubious research claiming that those who own guns or live with gun owners are less safe than the unarmed.
This survey coincides with the release of the latest Pew Research Center poll showing that four in ten American adults live in a household with a gun — a number that remains unchanged since 2021.
There are some serious demographic differences between gun owners.
Whereas 45 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents own a gun, only 20 percent of their Democrat counterparts also own one. Likewise, whereas 40 percent of men own a gun, only 25 percent of women own one.
Similarly, 47 percent of rural Americans own one versus 30 percent of suburban Americans and 20 percent of urban Americans. And finally, 38 percent of white Americans own a gun, compared to 24 percent of blacks, 20 percent of Hispanics, and 10 percent of Asians.
As with the Injury Prevention survey, this poll also found that most gun owners were motivated by a desire for personal protection.
“Personal protection tops the list of reasons gun owners give for having a firearm,” Pew noted. “About seven in ten gun owners (72%) say protection is a major reason they own a gun. Considerably smaller shares say that a major reason they own a gun is for hunting (32%), for sport shooting (30%), as part of a gun collection (15%), or for their job (7%).”
Interestingly, the poll also found that both Democrats and Republicans support a number of restrictive gun policies.
“Majorities of U.S. adults in both partisan coalitions somewhat or strongly favor two policies that would restrict gun access: preventing those with mental illnesses from purchasing guns (88% of Republicans and 89% of Democrats support this) and increasing the minimum age for buying guns to 21 years old (69% of Republicans, 90% of Democrats),” according to Pew.
“Majorities in both parties also oppose allowing people to carry concealed firearms without a permit (60% of Republicans and 91% of Democrats oppose this),” Pew noted.
Conversely, whereas 85 percent of Democrats support banning so-called “assault weapons” and high-capacity ammunition magazines, a majority of Republicans oppose both ideas.
All this comes after New Hampshire recently expanded its gun rights laws.
“Granite Staters will soon be permitted to keep loaded guns in their cars at work due to a law proposed by State Rep. Daniel Popovici-Muller, a Windham Republican,” according to Valley News.
“It mandates that all companies that receive government funding — including subsidies, grants, and any other money — cannot prohibit employees from keeping a firearm in their car when parked on company property, as long as the car is locked and the gun is kept out of sight,” the paper reported Monday.
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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