Profiling

More than one profile, really. Scientific American gives this one:
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.
But there's another profile that these men fit: they're particularly good citizens.
Crime rates involving gun owners with carry licenses have consistently been about 0.02% of all carry permit holders since Florida’s right-to-carry law started in 1988.... People with concealed carry licenses are:

5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public
13.5 times less likely to be arrested for non-violent offenses than the general public
Its as if they respect the rights of others -- in spite of all those alleged crises of meaning and stuff.

12 comments:

Texan99 said...

Seems odd to lump together guys who "stockpile weapons" with everyone who applies for a CCL, then expect to draw helpful conclusions about the group. Maybe it means something if someone goes hogwild storing up enough weapons to outfit a small army; you might find that a meaningful fraction of guys like that have something odd going on in the trust and anxiety department. You might find that about anyone who goes hogwild accumulating almost anything: monomania is always a bit odd. But everyone who wants to concealed-carry? Come on. As you say, all you're likely to get out of that group is a generally law-abiding profile.

Funny to call either activity an "attachment" to guns, too, or start maundering about a crisis in meaning or racial fears that supposedly afflict this group more than any other.

douglas said...

Scientific American? Seems like a pretty bigoted screed to me, and hardly scientific.

J Melcher said...

Tex is, as usual, correct. Owing a carry piece or two is different from "stockpiling". Yet the magazine refers to those the union of sets comprising those who stockpile OR those who apply for a CCW.

That said, I suspect the definition used in a studies of "stockpiling" is as badly constructed as those for similar studies of "binge drinking" or "food deserts" or even "school shootings". While the SciAm collection of studies makes no effort to determine whether all such work uses the same definition, I suspect that researchers who own NO weapons at all are easily overwhelmed by an arsenal of one modern practical carry piece, one modern practical fowling piece, one heirloom or sentimental piece, and of course an AR. So, maybe, a stockpile is "four or more" firearms?

Texan99 said...

Whereas a respectable stockpile would occupy its own room, if not its own building, and could arm at least a posse if not a company.

I've never even aimed a weapon at a living thing, and rarely at a target, but I own, oh, I don't know, several handguns and several shotguns. I don't give them a lot of thought, but I'm quite attached to them in the sense of being seriously unwilling to surrender them. Although they're more my husband's province than mine, I'd still own them with or without him--perhaps I would be even more interested in them if I were alone here.

Grim said...

Anything more than one firearm is typically described as an “arsenal” in the media. Stockpiles are better? Worse? Who knows.

Patrick said...

Your juxtaposition of those two articles put in mind of this Heinlein quote:

"Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort."

Anonymous said...

I have, um, several handguns, and the family has, ah, a number of long-guns. I don't think we have quite enough for an arsenal, and certainly not sufficient for a stockpile. And the closest thing to a "scary black gun with a folding shoulder thing that goes up" is an air-rifle for thinning the local varmint population (four footed and winged kinds).

LittleRed1

David Foster said...

Scientific American was once an interesting & useful publication....now, it is mostly just one more Prog propaganda rag. Sad!

Anonymous said...

I feel inspired to stockpile more guns and more ammo.

My deceased always joked about suffering from a shoe buying demon and now I'm seriously considering that demons counterpart in the gun buying department......

By the way, Anybody like gun porn? Its addicting!!! Feel Tingles!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jig-RvZr1OM

-Mississippi

GraniteDad said...

The conflation of CCW and "stockpilers" seems egregious here. I've been on survivalist forums where someone seems a bit too... stockpiley... and it's completely different from the people I know who carry a handgun for protection.

Ymarsakar said...

Sounds like the profiles the State used to terminate the US citizens at Waco 1 and Waco 2.

The popular American masses never gonna see it coming, no matter how many warnings they get.

Ymarsakar said...

For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns.

Two reasons for that.

1. Religious people tend to rely on faith and institutional church dogma for protection. So many Christians expect that before the Tribulation, they will get a Pre Trib Rapture: ticket out of the hell on Earth. So no need for worry.

2. The minority pov, and the one I hold to, is that given the existence of Divine Weapons authorized by the Divine Counsel to destroy Sodom, as well as various other technologies in the works, it's going to take Divine aid to fight the Final War. Guns are merely one component and not the most dangerous one at that.

Americans are expecting some type of area denial weapon like the EMP bomb. I expect the very metal our civilization is using will undergone what is called cold fusion, or what I call transmutation. The effect will look like this. http://www.healthyprotocols.com/2_North_Bay_Fires.htm