With a pandemic, nationwide protests, record-breaking weather events and political upheaval, it’s no wonder the past 12 months saw record gun sales across the nation. In 2020, the FBI conducted nearly 40 million background checks for gun purchases, an increase of 40% from 2019.
In the same year, Jennifer Carlson, a University of Arizona associate professor of sociology, earned a National Science Foundation grant to document the surge in American gun purchases. This resulted in her latest book, “Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement and the Politics of Race.”
Ahead of a weekly webinar series with gun experts, UA highlighted some of Carlson’s research and work.
“Gun sellers’ reports about why people were buying guns related to uncertainty. The fact that people were going to the grocery store and there was no toilet paper, that places were shut down, people were getting laid off – there is this sense of uncertainty and chaos,” Carlson told the university. “The striking aspect of 2020, though, is that this becomes a moment when guns become appealing to a much broader sector of the population who either thought about getting a gun but never took that step, or were adamantly opposed to guns and gun ownership.”
Carlson spoke with gun sellers who reported seeing more gun purchases from first-time gun owners, including women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ community.
“With this shift to first-time gun buyers, I think the question is: Does owning a gun make you part of gun culture?” Carlson said. “You may buy a gun in the context of acute insecurity when you find that for the first time in your life you can’t go to the store and buy toilet paper, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve invested in the broader political project that’s represented by pro-gun politics. So I think that’s a question that’s still waiting to be unraveled.”
The next webinar takes place at 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 23, and will cover gun culture and gun violence during coronavirus. The final webinar will be 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 30, and will cover guns and democracy.
This article appears in Mar 11-17, 2021.
Let’s be honest can we? Nationwide protests were really riots. We saw destruction of property, injury and death to many and total lawlessness by mobs in black clothing. Personal protection has been forced upon citizens as spineless politicians bow to the calls to defund the police. Ask Portland how that’s working out.
Did anybody notice that we had four vaccines before we got a case of toilet paper? And you wonder why people feel uncertainty.
God help us!
Back in 1993 when Arizona began to allow concealed carry of weapons with a permit, it was inconceivable that eventually 49 states would allowed such a thing.
But, as more states allowed concealed carry it was found that the experiment worked. Murder and rape in states that allowed concealed carry dropped relative to states that did not allowed concealed carry. And, not by just a little bit, by 5 and 8%.
Evidently, it affects the thinking and decision-making of a rapist to wonder whether that woman he has eyed as a target may have 38 caliber canon in that purse.
Evidently, it affects the decision-making of the home-invader to wonder whether he will face an AR15 capable of delivering 45 rounds of fire in less than a minute and tearing him to shreds.
I chose not to have any guns in my home but, I respect and support gun culture because it helps keep me safe by discouraging elements of society that might be tempted to deliver violence upon us.
As the number of guns in the U.S. has increased from 30 million in 1992 to about 330 million today, the number of violent crimes has plunged from 1.9 million to 1.4 million despite a 26% increase in our population.
In our area, we had a situation where three armed robbers walked into a jewelry store and one of the customers pulled out a gun and started firing. One of the robbers collapsed in the street outside of the store from blood loss and pain.
When those robbers went to prison, everyone in the prison heard that story.
Armed robberies are really rare these days as a result.