To me, this kind of research is sensationalist nonsense. The answers to a survey like this are less than meaningless, because they completely lack context. You have no idea what the mindset of the...
To me, this kind of research is sensationalist nonsense.
The answers to a survey like this are less than meaningless, because they completely lack context. You have no idea what the mindset of the responders was. What "political goals" are they referencing?
If you asked most Americans whether our entry into WW2 was justified, I think the overwhelming answer would be yes. That was violence in persuit of a political objective.
How many respondents to that survey were thinking about WW2 when they answered that question?
I think if you asked most people "is political violence acceptable?", and then brought up examples referencing the civil war, WW2, the revolutionary war, or any other conflict that's been deemed "just", you could get virtually everyone to agree that yes, sometimes political violence is acceptable, because yes, obviously it is sometimes.
Instead, stories like this seem to be reading into those answers and extrapolating that the respondents were actually talking about overthrowing the US government or shooting random liberals.
I can't help but think that sensationalism isn't exactly an accident either.
Our primary outcome measures concerned political and non-political violence. Violence
was represented by the phrase “force or violence,” defined in the questionnaire as “physical
force strong enough that it could cause pain or injury to a person.” “Force or violence to
advance an important political objective that you support” was used in questions about
respondents’ support for and willingness to engage in political violence.
Respondents were asked about the extent to which they considered political violence to
be justified “in general” and then about justification for its use to advance specified political
objectives; examples include “to return Donald Trump to the presidency this year,” “to preserve
an American way of life based on Western European traditions,” and “to stop police violence”
(see Tables 2 and 3). There were 17 specified objectives. Nine were presented to all
respondents and 8 were paired, with each respondent seeing only 1 item from each pair; each
respondent was presented with 13 of 17 objectives.
Respondents who considered political violence to be at least sometimes justified for at
least 1 of these objectives were asked about their personal willingness to engage in political
violence: by type of violence (to “damage property,” “threaten or intimidate a person,” “injure
a person,” “kill a person”), against members of 9 target populations (examples: “an elected
federal or state government official,” “a police officer,” “a person who does not share your
religion”), and by social context (i.e., engagement alone or as part of a group) (see Tables 4-6).
All respondents were asked about the likelihood of their future use of firearms in
connection with political violence in a situation where they considered such violence justified
10
(e.g., “I will be armed with a gun,” “I will shoot someone with a gun”) (see Table 7).
For a long time I've been telling my friends, particularly the white ones, not to be any more worried about going out in public now, compared to several years ago, simply because of higher gun...
For a long time I've been telling my friends, particularly the white ones, not to be any more worried about going out in public now, compared to several years ago, simply because of higher gun sales. As a firearm owner I know there's not a 1:1 correlation between a firearm and a new owner - lots of owners have more than one firearm. But lately we have seen a lot of new firearm owners in the U.S. and with that ownership there has probably been a change in the demographics of firearm owners, as well as how many people would be considered radicalized.
I've posted about firearm sales and suicide rates before, and I've posted about correlations between violence and religious extremism. These are things that should concern everyone and by identifying these correlations, causes, and the underlying socio-political issues, we can arm ourselves with the knowledge of how to continue to participate in public events instead of withdrawing from them. And we can support the organizations tackling these issues in rational ways. Because even if at an individual level we feel better by withdrawing, it only discourages the more courageous folks from attending peaceful protests (or concerts or parades or school) and only fills those spaces with more of them, which emboldens them and sets further bad precedents.
But it is the kind of thinking highlighted by this survey that should be of concern to anyone who visits public spaces regularly, or works near their state capital and other buildings highlighted during the election/vote-counting process.
If broad legislation is not achieving the results on gun control that people want or feel is necessary, then there are some common-sense things that people could be pushing for at smaller scales that would dramatically impact how safe people feel when going to heavily politicized public spaces. For instance, states could restrict the ability for protesters to carry firearms, or to leave firearms in vehicles while attending a protest. What other very specific legislation would people suggest to better define public spaces as places of free-speech without intimidation?
Until American Police stop unilaterally assaulting and beating citizens, lying about it openly, and then never seeing even minimal consequences compared to what a citizen without a police badge...
Until American Police stop unilaterally assaulting and beating citizens, lying about it openly, and then never seeing even minimal consequences compared to what a citizen without a police badge would receive for the same crimes, I will never be in favor of expanded restrictions on Second Amendment rights. Which doesn't even touch on the rest of the corruption cops enjoy without penalty.
Violence is a crime. So is threatening violence. Two crimes cops are never charged with, incidentally. For a number of high profile examples, reference the George Floyd protests, and take your pick from any of dozens of cities where non-violent protests were assaulted by police formations.
Those crimes should be charged not just against cops, but also against any protestors or counter-protestors who decide to use their Second Amendment rights to "convince" others to not exercise their First Amendment rights. Which, again, were violated by police around the nation with impunity.
So if protestors are threatened by "people with guns", those are crimes. Theoretically the police will deal with that. After all, that's what the anti-gun people assume isn't it? That guns aren't needed since we have cops? Simply notify the cops your peaceful protest is being victimized by criminals.
Anyone who decides that remedy doesn't make them feel safe should probably be on the side of police reform before they attempt to figure out a way to legally disarm the entire nation in contradiction of the Second Amendment.
What's ludicrous is the proposition that somehow the second amendment is a check on the police. Bad faith arguments notwithstanding, the framers never conceived of modern day firearms or how the...
What's ludicrous is the proposition that somehow the second amendment is a check on the police. Bad faith arguments notwithstanding, the framers never conceived of modern day firearms or how the second amendment has been used to justify the proliferation of these death machines. Do you really envision a scenario where you will be in an armed standoff with the police? Or is that simply a fantasy to fuel politically charged anti-establishment beliefs? Armed citizens aren't going to beat the state. Ever hear of Ruby Ridge? Waco? The state has unlimited resources and if it wanted to, it would crush an armed citizen uprising. No amount of gun-toting LARPers is going to win that fight, I'm sorry to tell you.
Let's take a moment to look at the reality of gun proliferation: the 21st century has seen more frequent and more severe mass shootings than any other point in our history. There are many reasons why citizens are slaughtering citizens, but virtually all of them are secondary to the Occam's razor reality that easy access to guns has enabled people who were predisposed to kill with the ability to do so with shocking ease. If you want to talk about stopping violence, let's focus on something tangible and grounded in reality: mass gun ownership has enabled mass violence.
I've encountered your take before and it always disappoints me. But here's what disappoints me the most: you talk about the virtues of the second amendment and arming citizens because the police need to be held accountable. But accountability and justice aren't meted out over dueling guns. In a democratic society we hold ourselves accountable to the law, including in how we dole out punishment. The appropriate punishment for dirty cops isn't death by citizen vigilantes, it's judicial punishment, maybe prison time. So instead of talking about opposing "expanded restrictions" on the Second Amendment, why not focus on expanding better government? Oversight boards, more transparency in policing, independent prosecutors to review legitimate instances of police brutality? Kids are being trained in school how to handle mass shootings because of political cowardice over reasonable restrictions on firearms. If I had to pick between kids never having to worry about getting shot up in school, or "protecting" some asshole protestor's second amendment right to open carry so that he can get into a fight with the riot police, I'm voting against guns every time.
I'm tired of keyboard warriors railing against the police and dancing with armed rebellion online. Grow up.
Not OP, but I think it's important to note that almost every instance of gun control has been targeted and enforced on minorities in the US over the years. Hell, the modern push to control guns...
Not OP, but I think it's important to note that almost every instance of gun control has been targeted and enforced on minorities in the US over the years. Hell, the modern push to control guns was jumpstarted not by school shootings, but by Black Panthers following around police to prevent police murdering other black people.
We only got the 40 hour workweek and overtime protections from violent protests, often devolving into shootouts with police. Shout-out to coal miners. While I hope we do not have to come to that to affect change in our day, I think it is good to remember. I am in favor of gun control, it's ridiculous that our kids have to fear school shooters, or have armored backpacks and classroom drills. But most gun violence is not from AR -15s, it's handguns. Always have been. And concealable handguns also saved a lot of minorities from lynch mobs over the years. It's a messy issue, and we will only solve it through good faith discussion.
I also think your last few sentences are not in good faith. Telling someone to grow up does not treat the discussion as something worth having or learning from.
The founders may not have imagined our modern weapons when they wrote the second amendment, but they did expect farmers to have the same guns as the army. The founders also did not imagine email...
The founders may not have imagined our modern weapons when they wrote the second amendment, but they did expect farmers to have the same guns as the army.
The founders also did not imagine email when they wrote the fourth amendment
Waco was, what, 100 people? And that lasted a week?
If you want to see how effective the government works be at putting down an actual rebellion, consider the wars we have fought against citizens of their own nation who didn't want us there. We were driven out of Vietnam, and Afghanistan. We were born, as a nation, out of a rebellion. The only time we have ever actually won something like that was the civil war, and it was a bloody, horrifying slog.
I do not want to see a rebellion here, but don't pretend like it would be an automatic win for the government.
And it would be a loss for the whole country, no matter who wins.
I think this is focused on a mostly irrelevant threat. The threat isn't some some faceless, obviously tyrannical government like a foreign occupier that all gun owning citizens are united against....
I think this is focused on a mostly irrelevant threat. The threat isn't some some faceless, obviously tyrannical government like a foreign occupier that all gun owning citizens are united against. Instead it's a group of people who have been courting a majority of gun owners for a long time and have an extensive ability to construct narratives these people are susceptible to. All the guns in the world are less than useless in that sort of scenario.
Yeah I hear you. Addressing policing, courts protecting police, and also addressing the perceived services that law enforcement provide are all really important and tie into where and how people...
Yeah I hear you. Addressing policing, courts protecting police, and also addressing the perceived services that law enforcement provide are all really important and tie into where and how people feel comfortable protesting. And policing does need to be addressed in order to preserve civil rights.
That's a battle that's long been fought and unfortunately in the past people chose to legislate away those civil rights as a means of putting additional constraints on the civil rights movement.
To me, this kind of research is sensationalist nonsense.
The answers to a survey like this are less than meaningless, because they completely lack context. You have no idea what the mindset of the responders was. What "political goals" are they referencing?
If you asked most Americans whether our entry into WW2 was justified, I think the overwhelming answer would be yes. That was violence in persuit of a political objective.
How many respondents to that survey were thinking about WW2 when they answered that question?
I think if you asked most people "is political violence acceptable?", and then brought up examples referencing the civil war, WW2, the revolutionary war, or any other conflict that's been deemed "just", you could get virtually everyone to agree that yes, sometimes political violence is acceptable, because yes, obviously it is sometimes.
Instead, stories like this seem to be reading into those answers and extrapolating that the respondents were actually talking about overthrowing the US government or shooting random liberals.
I can't help but think that sensationalism isn't exactly an accident either.
The paper is here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/h7ksv
In their methodology:
Complementing with a link to the survey, response data, and tables, which are in supplemental materials: https://osf.io/snc46
For a long time I've been telling my friends, particularly the white ones, not to be any more worried about going out in public now, compared to several years ago, simply because of higher gun sales. As a firearm owner I know there's not a 1:1 correlation between a firearm and a new owner - lots of owners have more than one firearm. But lately we have seen a lot of new firearm owners in the U.S. and with that ownership there has probably been a change in the demographics of firearm owners, as well as how many people would be considered radicalized.
I've posted about firearm sales and suicide rates before, and I've posted about correlations between violence and religious extremism. These are things that should concern everyone and by identifying these correlations, causes, and the underlying socio-political issues, we can arm ourselves with the knowledge of how to continue to participate in public events instead of withdrawing from them. And we can support the organizations tackling these issues in rational ways. Because even if at an individual level we feel better by withdrawing, it only discourages the more courageous folks from attending peaceful protests (or concerts or parades or school) and only fills those spaces with more of them, which emboldens them and sets further bad precedents.
But it is the kind of thinking highlighted by this survey that should be of concern to anyone who visits public spaces regularly, or works near their state capital and other buildings highlighted during the election/vote-counting process.
If broad legislation is not achieving the results on gun control that people want or feel is necessary, then there are some common-sense things that people could be pushing for at smaller scales that would dramatically impact how safe people feel when going to heavily politicized public spaces. For instance, states could restrict the ability for protesters to carry firearms, or to leave firearms in vehicles while attending a protest. What other very specific legislation would people suggest to better define public spaces as places of free-speech without intimidation?
Until American Police stop unilaterally assaulting and beating citizens, lying about it openly, and then never seeing even minimal consequences compared to what a citizen without a police badge would receive for the same crimes, I will never be in favor of expanded restrictions on Second Amendment rights. Which doesn't even touch on the rest of the corruption cops enjoy without penalty.
Violence is a crime. So is threatening violence. Two crimes cops are never charged with, incidentally. For a number of high profile examples, reference the George Floyd protests, and take your pick from any of dozens of cities where non-violent protests were assaulted by police formations.
Those crimes should be charged not just against cops, but also against any protestors or counter-protestors who decide to use their Second Amendment rights to "convince" others to not exercise their First Amendment rights. Which, again, were violated by police around the nation with impunity.
So if protestors are threatened by "people with guns", those are crimes. Theoretically the police will deal with that. After all, that's what the anti-gun people assume isn't it? That guns aren't needed since we have cops? Simply notify the cops your peaceful protest is being victimized by criminals.
Anyone who decides that remedy doesn't make them feel safe should probably be on the side of police reform before they attempt to figure out a way to legally disarm the entire nation in contradiction of the Second Amendment.
What's ludicrous is the proposition that somehow the second amendment is a check on the police. Bad faith arguments notwithstanding, the framers never conceived of modern day firearms or how the second amendment has been used to justify the proliferation of these death machines. Do you really envision a scenario where you will be in an armed standoff with the police? Or is that simply a fantasy to fuel politically charged anti-establishment beliefs? Armed citizens aren't going to beat the state. Ever hear of Ruby Ridge? Waco? The state has unlimited resources and if it wanted to, it would crush an armed citizen uprising. No amount of gun-toting LARPers is going to win that fight, I'm sorry to tell you.
Let's take a moment to look at the reality of gun proliferation: the 21st century has seen more frequent and more severe mass shootings than any other point in our history. There are many reasons why citizens are slaughtering citizens, but virtually all of them are secondary to the Occam's razor reality that easy access to guns has enabled people who were predisposed to kill with the ability to do so with shocking ease. If you want to talk about stopping violence, let's focus on something tangible and grounded in reality: mass gun ownership has enabled mass violence.
I've encountered your take before and it always disappoints me. But here's what disappoints me the most: you talk about the virtues of the second amendment and arming citizens because the police need to be held accountable. But accountability and justice aren't meted out over dueling guns. In a democratic society we hold ourselves accountable to the law, including in how we dole out punishment. The appropriate punishment for dirty cops isn't death by citizen vigilantes, it's judicial punishment, maybe prison time. So instead of talking about opposing "expanded restrictions" on the Second Amendment, why not focus on expanding better government? Oversight boards, more transparency in policing, independent prosecutors to review legitimate instances of police brutality? Kids are being trained in school how to handle mass shootings because of political cowardice over reasonable restrictions on firearms. If I had to pick between kids never having to worry about getting shot up in school, or "protecting" some asshole protestor's second amendment right to open carry so that he can get into a fight with the riot police, I'm voting against guns every time.
I'm tired of keyboard warriors railing against the police and dancing with armed rebellion online. Grow up.
Not OP, but I think it's important to note that almost every instance of gun control has been targeted and enforced on minorities in the US over the years. Hell, the modern push to control guns was jumpstarted not by school shootings, but by Black Panthers following around police to prevent police murdering other black people.
We only got the 40 hour workweek and overtime protections from violent protests, often devolving into shootouts with police. Shout-out to coal miners. While I hope we do not have to come to that to affect change in our day, I think it is good to remember. I am in favor of gun control, it's ridiculous that our kids have to fear school shooters, or have armored backpacks and classroom drills. But most gun violence is not from AR -15s, it's handguns. Always have been. And concealable handguns also saved a lot of minorities from lynch mobs over the years. It's a messy issue, and we will only solve it through good faith discussion.
I also think your last few sentences are not in good faith. Telling someone to grow up does not treat the discussion as something worth having or learning from.
The founders may not have imagined our modern weapons when they wrote the second amendment, but they did expect farmers to have the same guns as the army.
The founders also did not imagine email when they wrote the fourth amendment
Waco was, what, 100 people? And that lasted a week?
If you want to see how effective the government works be at putting down an actual rebellion, consider the wars we have fought against citizens of their own nation who didn't want us there. We were driven out of Vietnam, and Afghanistan. We were born, as a nation, out of a rebellion. The only time we have ever actually won something like that was the civil war, and it was a bloody, horrifying slog.
I do not want to see a rebellion here, but don't pretend like it would be an automatic win for the government.
And it would be a loss for the whole country, no matter who wins.
I think this is focused on a mostly irrelevant threat. The threat isn't some some faceless, obviously tyrannical government like a foreign occupier that all gun owning citizens are united against. Instead it's a group of people who have been courting a majority of gun owners for a long time and have an extensive ability to construct narratives these people are susceptible to. All the guns in the world are less than useless in that sort of scenario.
That's certainly true. The people claiming eagerness to defend us from the evil government do seem to be ok with the current brand of evil government.
Yeah I hear you. Addressing policing, courts protecting police, and also addressing the perceived services that law enforcement provide are all really important and tie into where and how people feel comfortable protesting. And policing does need to be addressed in order to preserve civil rights.
That's a battle that's long been fought and unfortunately in the past people chose to legislate away those civil rights as a means of putting additional constraints on the civil rights movement.