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How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.
- bitmasher9 4mo agoThe whole concept of optimal levels of firearms ownership should have been expanded upon, as this premise is probably new to the audience and a cornerstone of their entire research.
- batch12 4mo agoAgreed, there's not a lot of substance here. I read the article more than once and still don't know if "overarming" means too many individuals own guns or too many guns per individual. I assume the former based on context. Also interesting is that they focus on the US but two out of three groups studied are not in the US.
- jerkstate 4mo agoTheir cohort studies are across three completely different populations. I would be willing to listen to an argument that for some specific population there’s a firearm ownership level above which there are diminishing safety returns, but I find the idea that this same level would hold across wildly different populations absurd
- Ferret7446 4mo agoWell obviously arming babies would not increase safety. I suspect the optimal proportion would be similar to the optimal proportion of the vaccinated to stop disease spread.
- HWR_14 4mo agoI'm willing to bet this is defined by some base levels in their equations as a default utility. So they aren't trying to say what the optimal level for the various uses of guns are, they are using math to prove that people are being driven to purchase more guns than that level, whatever that level is.
- bitmasher9 4mo agoThis is why it’s sometimes hard to take the soft sciences seriously.
- HWR_14 4mo agoI have no idea why you be dismissive of using an unspecified variable as a baseline. People do it in every subject.
- Glyptodon 4mo agoAre people who are armed because they enjoy shooting or hunting supposed to exist in this research model or not?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- RyJones 4mo agoDoes it matter? Control of you life is your basic human right. Firearms are the great equalizer.
- baq 4mo agoThe problem is the baseline you get equalized to.
- cheesefkr 4mo ago[dead]
- alistairSH 4mo agoIsn’t there a massive body of research that indicates gun ownership is less safe on average that non-ownership? Ie the chance of accidental shooting of family/friends is high enough to offset any benefit (on average across the US)?
- lazyasciiart 4mo agoTeen suicide in households with a gun is a very interesting stat to bring up for this. Suicide in general is higher for gun owners, which can be handwaved away as “that’s my right”. But suicide is higher for children of gun owners? That seems like a tough risk to justify.
- Glyptodon 4mo agoThe thing is there's such a breadth of circumstances and behaviors involved that pigeonholing it under one giant banner is questionable. Like the people who leave loaded guns in random drawers around their houses are doing something very different with a different risk profile. Whereas once you get to teens in households that have guns and generally practice some level of safe storage it's a much more complex issue IMO. Because as a society we want teens to become responsible enough to handle things like cars, or power tools, or guns. But we also know that they're not adults yet. And we know that infantilization of teens isn't going to do anyone favors in the long run. So it's probably not as simple as ban cars and ban guns or whatever else.
- sp527 4mo agoAnecdotally, a lot of politically far left people I know have gone quiet on the firearms issue. It seems like the state of the country has 2A suddenly making more sense to a lot of people.
- kg 4mo agoYMMV but out of the people I know, the lefties are less likely to be hardcore pro-gun-control than the people who lean center-liberal, and this has been true for a long time. John Brown Gun Club, etc.
- lazyasciiart 4mo agoNot to anyone who is hoping to avoid catastrophic civil disorder and mass murder (revolution/civil war/government crackdowns, however you want to label it), but I think some people have stopped hoping for that.
- yeetawayhn 4mo ago> Not to anyone who is hoping to avoid catastrophic civil disorder and mass murder They are still hoping, but just being more realistic about firearms.
- alistairSH 4mo agoSure, jack boot thugs killing a fee people in broad daylight with a government sanction tends to do that. But I’d rather we not have the brown shirts in the first place…
- DennisP 4mo agoOf course, and so would those same people.
- Helloworldboy 4mo ago[dead]
- goodpoint 4mo ago
- alistairSH 4mo agoDo they ever state the social optimum level of fun ownership? I can take them at their word they it’s non-zero, but I’d guess it’s orders of magnitude less than the current rate.
- tinfoilhatter 4mo agoI think the optimum level changes based on whether or not citizens are being actively brutalized by an authoritarian government and their police forces en masse. When that happens, the optimum level is a lot and when it's not happening, the optimum level is probably orders of magnitude less. Unfortunately, we can't accurately predict when these things will happen.
- nostrademons 4mo agoI hear this argument repeated a lot, and I think it is legit the reason for the 2nd amendment - but it doesn't make sense with modern technology. That authoritarian government is going to come at you with Bearcats, helicopters, and drones. Firing a gun at them is just going to make you cannon fodder. If you want to actually challenge the authoritarian government, you need MANPADS, RPGs, cruise missiles, and drones of your own - which is probably why MANPADS, RPGs, cruise missiles, and soon drones are heavily regulated, with stiff penalties for just ownership, and guns themselves are free to possess.
- rolph 4mo agowhat you have said, is exactly why the 2A legitimates bearing arms, not only firearms. the origin of the US is about being able to resist unreasonable force, and thats the root of the 2A, being able to resist, due to an uninfringed right to bear arms, to the end of checking the force of a militia having strayed out of its rights.
- nostrademons 4mo agoI'd agree with that on a philosophical level, but no court has actually interpreted the 2A as legitimating the right to build a cruise missile, MANPADS, or nuke. Try it and I suspect you're looking at a very long prison term. Usually people look at me like I'm insane when I suggest that "Well logically, the right to bear arms should include the right to bear nukes, so all this stuff about 'born secret' and classified information is unconstitutional."
- arjie 4mo agoBoy, the game of telephone on the way to HN is really amazing. Paper: We make a stylized model that uses observed social networks in Honduran gangs and varies some parameters to match the US to see and it aligns with some things regarding how we exceed the socially optimal balance (based on the params). PR release: The researchers describe in Science Advances how individual incentives to buy firearms can lead to a phenomenon they call “overarming.” PR title: How Fear and Social Pressure Are ‘Overarming’ the U.S. HN title: Fear and Social Pressure Are ‘Overarming’ the U.S. Come on, guys.
- john_strinlai 4mo ago>PR title: How Fear and Social Pressure Are ‘Overarming’ the U.S. >HN title: Fear and Social Pressure Are ‘Overarming’ the U.S the discrepancy between these two is because HN automatically strips "how" from the beginning of titles.
- lazyasciiart 4mo agoWhich is usually reasonable, because if you are describing “how x happens” you are claiming that x happens. It doesn’t make a real difference here.
- elpocko 4mo agoIt's baffling how almost no one here ever speaks out against it. Everybody just puts up with it even though we all know what a sign of arrogance and incompetence it is to attempt to alter post titles in this clumsy, embarrassingly broken way. Everyone is just silently looking at their feet in second hand embarrassment and doesn't want to speak up. And the funniest thing is: there is an official rule that says not to edit the original titles. Amazingly bizarre.
- krapp 4mo agoPeople have. The mods have made it clear they consider it necessary to maintain the quality of conversation and they have no intention of changing it.
- fasterik 4mo agoIt's worth remembering that the American founders considered an armed population an essential part of a free society capable of standing up against federal overreach. James Madison, Federalist 46: >Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence.
- lazyasciiart 4mo agoIt’s worth noting that these guys also considered women and black people not to be actual people, and made no distinction between nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and a rifle, whenever we get the idea that they had great ideas that we should apply to society today.
- Helloworldboy 4mo ago[dead]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- mold_aid 4mo agoIt's actually not worth remembering that, even in the context of this study.
- kashunstva 4mo agoHowever, the Second Amendment begins with a qualifying clause which many including notable national gun-rights organizations choose to ignore. In any case, I’m not sure that has worked out as well as Madison thought. A sizeable percentage of the armed populace may actually be cheering the feared Federal overreach.
- kashunstva 4mo ago> we find that a socially optimal level of ownership is often greater than zero I suppose one could model this in some way. But as a pacifist, vegan and never owner of firearms, I’m genuinely clueless as to how this could be. Is the social optimality here a function possessing weapons for hunting, which can be a social activity?
- Mezzie 4mo agoMy guess would be hunting and also the possible presence of a firearm in certain situations acting as a deterrent as well as a potential social equalizer. When you're a physically vulnerable person and there are zero firearms in a community (and it's known there are zero), then there's no physical deterrent to attacking you. Of course in theory there are social consequences, but if you're in a society that includes things like alcohol or other substances, teenagers/people with poorly developed senses of long term consequences, or mental illnesses, then the thought 'oh shit, she/he might be strapped' might do more than 'you might go to jail'.
- nathan_compton 4mo agoI don't own a gun, but I live in a very rural area. It might take police 20 minutes to reach us in an emergency, even if we managed to make a call (as we might not in a home invasion, for example). From this point of view I can see the utility of owning a gun, at least in principal. Also, imagine a scenario where a foreign power attempted to occupy a country? There is probably an optimal number of armed citizens to deter that kind of activity. As we have seen in recent years, foreign powers often do want to capture and hold foreign territory. The chance of this is small, but clearly non-zero.
- rayiner 4mo agoWe have a real-life example of the second point playing out in modern times. The relevant observation is that it's important for armed citizens to be able start a conflict in order to put other forces in play. During Bangladesh's war of independence from Pakistan, civilians captured weapons from military depots to fight against the Pakistani Army. Those civilians formed the core of a resistance movement that was then quickly joined by defectors from the Pakistani military and, eventually, India. The civilians could not possibly have won a war against the Pakistani military. But it's doubtful that India would have jumped into the war if there wasn't already an armed resistance movement for India to support. We have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan that it's very difficult even for the world's most powerful military to hold cities and countryside against people armed with handheld automatic weapons.
- lenerdenator 4mo agoIn some ways, it's just the four boxes of liberty at work. The theory goes, there are four routes to "solving" social disputes/obtaining justice in modern societies: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. They are to be used in that order, because the consequences for society and human life get worse with each one. I put "solving" in quotes because you could argue that the last box doesn't really solve anything. Right now, at least, you have a large number of people in American society feeling as if social conflicts/injustices are going unaddressed in meaningful ways. I'll let you fill in the blanks as to what those are, but it's not always people who want the US to be like it was in 1955 who are arming themselves. An increasing number of people who are liberal or otherwise practice left-of-center politics, and people who are of historically-oppressed groups, are also starting to arm themselves. Ultimately, if you start meaningfully solving social conflicts and injustices with the first three boxes, you can avoid the fourth and you'll probably see firearm ownership growth begin to drop. I don't think you'll ever see it meaningfully go away in the US without an effort that few people would consider wise to attempt.
- 0x59 4mo agoI own one gun. If another own guns, that's none of my business. The question, how many guns are "optimal" introduces a surface for regulation that is none of the government's business to be regulating.
- kylehotchkiss 4mo agoI guess you don’t really get to choose how to die but the idea of dying to gun violence sounds really shitty.
- stronglikedan 4mo agopeople with a lot of guns aren't buying them for self defense. you only need one or two for that. any more and it's a hobby just like any other. "Overarming" is a loaded word with no real relevance to US gun culture.
- chasd00 4mo agoRounds fired per gun owner per month would be an interesting statistic. The vast majority of people who buy a gun out of fear go to the range once and then put the gun in the top of the closet never to be seen again. I don't think they contribute anything in the cost/benefit equation to gun ownership for a society.
- delichon 4mo ago> The vast majority of people who buy a gun out of fear go to the range once and then put the gun in the top of the closet never to be seen again. I'm close to that, but I put its potential benefits similar to that of my fire extinguishers, and with no kids around the cost/risk is low. I am happy to be part of the statistics that raise the costs for intruders, and I like being ready to defend my dogs from the local coyotes, wolves and cougars. My guns and fire extinguishers are downstream of the same kind of fear.
- Valodim 4mo agoIt's kind of amazing how many comments even here seem to implicitly or explicitly agree that the "optimal" number is more than zero. Personally, I rather enjoy not having my kids shot at school.
- yeetawayhn 4mo agoIt's kind of amazing how we can find countries with more than zero but still don't have kids shot at school. How peculiar.
- mac3n 4mo ago> "Our hope is that our model can play a role in a thoughtful data-driven conversation about one of the most societally and personally important decisions any person can make,” he says. good luck with that!