A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes to immediate living environments, Americans’ views on gun control may be less divided than the polarized national debate suggests.
The research was conducted against a backdrop of increasing gun violence and polarization on gun policy in the United States. The United States has over 350 million civilian firearms and gun-related incidents, including accidents and mass shootings, have become a leading cause of death in the country. Despite political divides, the new study aimed to explore whether there’s common ground among Americans in their immediate living environments, focusing on neighborhood preferences related to gun ownership and storage.
The hilarious part of this is that statistically, many Americans have AR-15s and other rifles sitting somewhere within a few hundred yards of them. There are countless millions of them.
This would be like polling people about their fears surrounding theoretical concealed weapons when, statistically, they just got home from the grocery store or gas station and there were probably 10 people there carrying guns without incident, and they just didn’t know about it.
I may be unaware of the rats living in a small nest inside of a drainspout near me, but that still doesn’t mean rats are “okay” or “harmless”. So this isn’t quite a gotcha about their normality.
The aversion to AR-15 owners was stronger than the aversion to owners of other types of firearms (pistols). When given a choice, the probability that a respondent would prefer to live near someone who owned an AR-15 plummeted by over 20 percentage points, indicating a strong societal preference against this type of gun ownership.
Which, as usual, goes a long way towards illustrating how effective propaganda and manipulation of people’s opinions can be. Not just on this specific topic either, but in this case I guess that’s what we’re talking about. Despite its scientific dressings, what this study is exploring isn’t actually any mechanical factor, it is measuring people’s perceptions which are not guaranteed to be reflected by reality. (And again, this is true of many other topics as well…)
The AR-15 platform does the same damn thing and shoots the same damn bullet in the same damn way as numerous other firearms, and yet just the name itself has a bad rap from being incessantly repeated in the news and social media.
Here’s this old chestnut. It’s still true.
Why’s the one on top “scarier?”
Tl;dr: Own, store, and handle your gun responsibly. Don’t be a paranoid loon. Don’t believe in whatever boogeyman Fox News is pushing this week. Don’t hyperventilate about fictional distinctions.
Partly because the AR-15 is lighter than the Mini 14, is easier to reload, and is generally designed to meet the modern needs of armies killin’ humans better. Then there’s the incessant marketing, the huge number of manufacturers at multiple price points (the Mini 14 being a Ruger exclusive), the aftermarket of optics and tacticool accessories, and the general cultural impact. How many Mini 14s have actually been involved in mass shootings and gun-nerd intimidation exercises? It’s almost like the least stable assholes are interested in a “badass” gun.
But okay, fine. There’s a not-insignificant amount of truth to the graphic. By all means, the gun nerds should put it everywhere and inform the previously ignorant public. I don’t think the result will be to convince people the AR-15 is actually useful, just that the Mini-14 is equally unnecessary as a civilian tool or hunting rifle, and they shouldn’t assume a wooden-stock rifle is inherently less dangerous than a plastic one.
And, for the record, I am tediously, annoyingly aware of current second-amendment jurisprudence and the lack of sufficient political will to change the constitution, and while I don’t think the former is well considered, the situation is what it is. It just sucks. It leaves America unique among stable democracies in having gun violence anywhere near the top of the list of causes of death.
By all means, the gun nerds should put it everywhere and inform the previously ignorant public.
The problem is how rude so many of them are about it.
Instead of “there is no such thing as an ‘assault rifle’ and here’s how that myth got started,” it’s “define assault rifle.” It’s this weird assumption that everyone knows as much about guns as they do and it really doesn’t help them. I get that it can be a knee-jerk reaction to people who have issues with guns (as is assuming anyone who has issues with guns wants a blanket ban on them), but it really does not help.
Not to go off on a tangent, but it’s “assault weapon” that’s the boogeyman term, meant to confuse the uninformed with assault rifles. Assault rifles are select fire, full auto and burst fire capable rifles. Assault weapons are semi-automatic rifles that have the same or similar cosmetics as assault rifles.
The trick is a person latches onto the adjective, not the noun, and a rifle is a kind of weapon, so it makes it seem like assault rifles fit under assault weapons, when I’m fact it’s the opposite.
It’s a distinction without much of a difference, though. Apart from auto and burst fire, a modern AR-15 does everything an M4A1 does. The Marines’ M4 and M16A4 models don’t even go past burst.
If semi-auto rifles are going to be legal at all, they should have a small integral magazine that’s non-trivial to modify. The sheer efficiency of these rifles makes them really good for assaulting humans, because that’s what they were designed for.
The brass took away the giggle switch from the crayon eaters to save on their ammo bill. There’s a reason “marining” is a verb, after all.
But every gun is designed to kill people, all the way back to the musket. And your suggestion of an integral magazine doesn’t do much, even if you could somehow round up all the ARs with detachable mags and “fix” them. The M1 Garand and it’s stripper clips are a historic example, and the modern ejection port mag loaders the neutered California ARs have to use make it trivial to reload.
You want to tackle this issue? Safe storage laws, building a culture around free, government-provided training and safety, and harsher punishments for NDs are a place to start. That’s not even getting into the quagmire that is our terrible healthcare system, and law enforcement that on average can’t do their jobs and act on tips that would stop many of the recent big mass shootings.
This is why I use the AR-10, it’s much safer, it’s 5 AR’s fewer than the AR-15
So a good bit cheaper, too, then?
I just came here to say I don’t understand this because while these guns are by and large used in mass shootings, handgunss cause far more death.
Handguns are less accurate, and are used far less for hunting or other sport (at least compared to rifles), partially due to their sheer inaccuracy. They are way more likely to be used in a murder, and people are way less likely to take the time to lock them up properly because they want them “at hand.”
I’m way more likely to be shot by some dumbfuck with a handgun than be caught up in a mass shooting.
Unpopular opinion: ban handguns
Canadians have a lot of guns, for hunting and for fun. Most of them are long, though, because handguns are heavily regulated and a bit of a hassle so pretty much just a firing range thing. We don’t have a lot of gun deaths compared to the USA, and it’s not just culture. It’s the handguns.
