Gun nuts and sloppy rhetoric

There’s a blog post that’s been going around Facebook that cites a bunch of studies in order to come to the conclusion that

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.

I’m not claiming that the article is entirely wrong, nor that every claim it makes is invalidated by the “notallgunowners” objection (although I’ll make that objection below). But it really is a deeply problematic article.

Some of the studies aren’t very good (really? 20 men?), but some seem to me perfectly valid. Except for one thing—the tendency in social science research to conclude X group does Y because the studies show that 60-70% of X group does Y. That kind of conclusion assumes that the 30-40% are outliers who can be ignored, as opposed to their being a different kind of person, who should be separated out because they show that there is a significantly different causal relationship (this is one of my objections to a lot of the research on persuasion).

So, for instance, the SSQ study (linked above) that looks really good to me doesn’t show a perfect correlation between voting Republican and gun ownership (let alone gun culture). It shows that a lot of people who own guns don’t vote GOP.

That’s interesting. It seems to me that a really good study (and article) would pose the question: why don’t they?

Another of the studies linked is also really good, and it shows how symbolic racism is coded into much pro-gun rhetoric. But even that study doesn’t support the argument of the SciAm blo post. The conclusion of the study is “that racial prejudice influences white opinion regarding gun regulation in the contemporary United States” (emphasis added, 271). And they persuasively conclude:

We believe that racial prejudice colors all aspects of the debate regarding gun policy, including crime and its representations, and the role of government in society. Reshaping the gun regulation debate requires a deeper understanding of the relationships among racial prejudice, partisan politics, and the foundational but unconscious emotional role that guns play for a significant portion of the white population in America. (272)

So, racism colors the gun debate, and the study is persuasive on that point, but it doesn’t show that concern about gun control necessarily correlates to being racist. Not all gun owners, in other words. And, while that “not all” move can be irritating, sometimes it’s valid.

One of my pet peeves is when a study clearly says, “Many people in X category do Y,” and people attack the argument as though it said, “All people in X category do Y.” But, really, I think the SciAm article did move from most to all.

And here I should engage in full disclosure. Because of Texas common property laws, I’m a gun owner (I own quite a few, actually.) My father owned guns, and I’ve shot them from time to time. My son and husband shoot with some frequency, and my husband has spent a fair amount of time hunting. (Full disclosure on full disclosure: my father also hunted, but he was pretty bad at it.)

But there are reasonable arguments for gun ownership. And all of the research shows that there are different kind of gun owners. (I found that article because it was a suggested article from a study the SciAm article cited, but not mentioned in the blog post). Just as the research on persuasion shows that people react to different kinds of arguments differently–which is never represented in pop articles about “no one is persuaded by evidence” or “no one can think straight when mortality is mentioned”– so the research being cited for showing that gun owners are toothless racist rednecks who buy guns to manage the precarity of their masculinity ignores that a lot of gun owners aren’t like that at all. And here’s why that matters. For far too long, I have been really irritated by the large amount of lefty rhetoric that engages in us v. them binaries, often blazingly in opposition to actual research. We are supposed to be the people committed to evidence, to inclusion, to nuance. What the research cited in the SciAm article actually shows is that a lot of gun owners vote Dem (or can be persuaded to do so). Rural gun owners are different from urban ones.

And, really, it’s once I was spending a lot of time in a rural area that I realized why rural people carry guns. If you’ve got an active cattle ranch, you’ve got rattlesnakes and feral hogs. I don’t carry a gun when I wander around the ranch, mainly because I’m a bad shot, and I don’t take the dogs with me when I hike, but I get it. I’m not sure anyone needs an assault rifle (except to resolve the precarity of toxic masculinity), but there are lots of things people have that they don’t need. I’ve several times seen people shoot some pretty powerful guns, that weren’t even remotely necessary, and their attitude was that it was really fun.

Here’s the analogy I think fits. Think about car ownership. There are people who are opposed to governmental controls about gas consumption of vehicles because they want a Humvee, and they want that vehicle because they fantasize about end-of-world scenarios in which they’re Mad Max. There are people who are outraged about possibly not being able to buy Humvees because they have precarious masculinity, and owning a Humvee makes their tiny hands seem bigger. There are people who might need a Humvee because they have a shooting ranch, and that’s what people want to ride in, and there are people who might actually need something pretty close to a Humvee for their needs. And there are people who love cars, including ’69 Camaros, Humvees, Pintos, and Vegas. As someone who sometimes drove a Jaguar XKE and a Mustang Mach 1, I understand that impulse. I’m sure it’s fun to drive a Humvee. I’m sure it’s fun to shoot an AK-47.

Here’s the important point: the last three sorts of gun nuts (they actually need guns, they recognize that their desire to own certain guns is the collectors’ impulse, they think it’s fun to shoot) are open to reasonable restrictions about gun ownership.  

So, articles like the SciAm one are rhetorically unwise. It’s a sloppy article, in that there is an argument that would involve useful distinctions—one that would, simultaneously, point out how irrational one position is, while building bridges with reasonable people. We can and should be better in our rhetoric.

I sincerely believe that our current gun policies are irrational, and that we need ones that are more rational. And rational public policies take into consideration the needs and pleasures that citizens have, such as collecting guns in the same spirit in which one might collect first editions, cars, or dogs (all of which can be regulated). And having various guns for various purposes (perhaps even enjoyment) can be fully rational. But, just as we don’t let everyone drive any vehicle they want, we shouldn’t let everyone use any weapon they want. That’s just sensible. And the SciAm article doesn’t help us have that sensible argument.