(no subject)

[conuly]

Historical rates of enslavement predict modern rates of American gun ownership

Unsurprising. Neither is this one:

Anti-Black racism linked to lower support for some gun rights

There has GOT to be a way we can use that to our advantage. Maybe more African-Americans need to... suck it up and join the NRA? That can't end badly, can it? (There's some sarcasm here. I'm sure it can, in fact, end badly.)

Comments

[elisi]

Read the first article, and this is just such a grim way of tallying up gun owners:

Because there is no national record of gun ownership, the study uses a widely accepted proxy—the proportion of suicides in a county that involved a firearm

:(

[elainegrey]

I did find this examination of the proxy: Kim, Jessica Jumee, and Kenneth C. Wilbur. “Proxies for Legal Firearm Prevalence.” Quantitative Marketing and Economics, May 24, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11129-022-09251-8.


Still, sometimes you have to use the data you have.

[kengr]

I'd be interested in seeing how the figures work if they just look for *black* gun ownership. Because sure as hell, black gun ownership in the South correlated strongly with safety.

Just look at all the tales of the KKK being run off be blacks with shotguns...

[dorchadas]

I thought of that too--there's a great book called This Nonviolent Stuff′ll Get You Killed about it.

[wpadmirer]

I'm certainly not surprised.

[silveradept]

I'm not surprised about this, but given how much intellectual flexibility I've seen on supposedly hard-line conservatives over the last few years, I can't really see a way of playing off of someone's anti-Blackness to get them to support gun reforms. They'd find a way to make it only apply to Black people and neighborhoods.