FWIW / just to add some dimension:
I then come across this from almost a decade ago:
…which is not what I would have expected. (Yes, there are a small number of avid firearm collectors and preppers for SHTF, but…)
A little more searching turned up a 2021 National Firearm Survey, which doesn’t include the Guardian graphic from 2015, but it does include this:
Thinking about this some more… is there a reason to expect that the rate of gun ownership in the US, and the number of firearms owned per owner should or shouldn’t change?
We went from about 50/50 rural/urban in 1900 to about 20/80 today in a fairly straight line over time, so maybe ~35/65 in 1960.
Earlier discussions suggested a gun is more of a need than a want when you live in the country, so I think we would see some decline in ownership rates as the population was shifted to the cities, and it has, but maybe not as much as that trend would suggest.
I wonder if there is some relationship between some of these mass shooting events and the proliferation of guns above and beyond the needs based ownership (~urban gun ownership rates). You see ownership rates level off in the 80s even though we continued to urbanize…and mass shootings began their trend upward.
I wonder whether the rate of mass shootings vs population has really been rising.
I could imagine the lethality of mass shootings to have increased, as civilian firearm technology has evolved.
If one were building a predictive model on the subject, it’d be tempting to consider whether the availability/popularity of more-realistic first-person shooter video games also has predictive value.
Maybe. I think it is fair to assume those games provide a fair bit of tactical training that could increase severity.
The drop in the early 2000s is interesting. Politically, there was a fair bit of unity in the country after 9/11 that carried all the way to the election in 2004 and helped W win a second term. We have seen evidence of political motivations in at least some of the shootings, and we know that we are more divided now than we have been in a long time.
Politically motivated with a proliferation of guns and a plenty of video games that help someone visualize their murders without the emotional feedback that might come in reality.
Not as much as one might think. There is a reason why the military will actually practice tactical maneuvers “live” rather than through simulations. More specifically, muscle memory is a very powerful enabler (or detractor) for performing when under pressure.
But ITA with this; and I think this is an important contributor to the increase in mass shootings we are seeing.
Maybe “tactical mindset” was a better term to use…but there is some translation from these simulators into reactions during real life situations. Different game genre, but I think I have played enough racing simulator games that the idea of steering into a skid or getting a sliding car back under control feels reasonably natural even though the controls are completely different.
Thanks for the clarification on the concept you intended to convey. I agree that those games are far more likely to give someone that delusional idea that they can be “tactical” in their execution.
And this would also tie into the other psychological idea of separating the emotional impact to taking a life “in theory” vs. “in practice”.
I think it depends on what they are hoping to achieve - they probably can’t one-man it through an entire swat team, but they might be able to gain access and get further into a school un-noticed.
Don’t need tactical skills for this unfortunately.
If folks like buying guns, and those guns don’t break, then the number should approach infinity.
Well, some do get
What happens to the ones confiscated by law enforcement after confiscation?
I’d assume that in the long run most end up back in circulation. Either the cops return the gun to the owner / agent thereof or sell it at auction eventually, right?
I believe in the US, seized guns are generally destroyed after confirmation that they are illegal/used in a crime, obviously preservation of evidence and such being a concern.
Some states may allow them to be sold, I’m not certain. However - serial numbers filed off, a sawed-off shotgun, a pipe gun, an automatic AK-47, destroyed.
That is assuming the police follow through, but I’d assume the prevalence of police stealing illegal guns is much lower than police stealing marijuana and cash and similar.
Don’t I remember something about the CIA sending confiscated guns to Central America…or am I confusing fact and fiction again?
Oh, I would assume the CIA operates under significantly different rules than local or state law enforcement. The police might kill citizens but they’re not assassinating a head of state.
I have a memory that several years ago there was a minor scandal when it was uncovered that weapons that had been confiscated by local law enforcement in the US were turning up in Central America, with allegations that it was a CIA project.
However, I am not certain that that’s a real memory, and my Google-fu is not quickly turning up anything other than cartels making purchases at US gun stores, or Iran Contra. Every so often, I binge on reading spy/covert operations fiction…
There was also the Obama-era operation “Fast and Furious” debacle. Might have used new guns though.
I’d have zero surprise to learn that local law enforcement handed guns up to the feds to be sold by the CIA. It feels well within the purview of what the CIA might do, and I’m sure the locals would comply if they were commanded through certain channels.
I’d also have zero surprise if the CIA has minimized the visibility of such a program on the internet. I don’t think that’s particularly tinfoil hat. I’m sure it’s out there but not just at the search of “CIA programs we’re not supposed to know about confiscated guns police”.
I think what I’m thinking of is either some of the allegations that were made around Fast and Furious going public, or fiction that came out around then.
Of course, with the CIA’s past interest in Central America…
