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.
This study design is bad, and they should feel bad. If they’re going to claim that people are afraid of AR-15s, they should compare it apples-to-apples with other rifles, or just ask about rifles generally, like they did with pistols.
Furthermore, any study asking opinion questions for what should be data-driven decisions are misleading at best and harmful at worst. If your concern is safety in communities, you should study actual safety, not feelings. It appears they want to make people feel safe, while not necessarily increasing safety.
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Fair enough for a general survey question. However, the point about how policy decisions shouldn’t be based on opinion/anecdote is still valid (at least in the case of gun control).
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I could understand the argument for factoring people’s feelings into policy in some cases, but let’s take this study as an example.
Handguns are responsible for far more harm than AR-15s, but this study shows people “fear” AR-15s more. A policy that is based on these findings and not empirical data may attempt to reduce gun violence by addressing AR-15 ownership. Thereby not having a major effect on reducing actual gun violence.
A policy focusing on reducing handgun ownership would be much more effective at reducing gun violence, despite people not fearing them as much.
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I think you’re confusing me with other commentors. I haven’t suggested this research in particular is being actively used to support policy decisions. Nor have I suggested this research is advocating for policy.
In my initial comment I simply said policy in general (at least with gun control) shouldn’t be based on people’s feelings/anecdotes.
I think this study asked a very interesting question, and I find the results to be very interesting. I don’t really have any issues with this research by itself.
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How people feel is important to know because it will influence how a change needs to be presented.
In this example: A lot of oeople feel safer owning guns, science show they’re wrong and it actually decreases their safety, in order to be able to change things in a way that people will accept it that perception needs to be changed.
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Yes, people want to feel safe. Emotional health is an important part of quality of life.
And this isn’t a data-driven decision. This is a study on how people feel about an issue. Nobody is making a decision based on this, outside of politicians understanding the best way to speak in public when campaigning. Why are you so upset that someone studies how people feel? Yes, the study could have been more in-depth and asked about different types of rifles, but then someone would complain that they didn’t include X gun or Y rifle, or they would complain that they lumped all rifles together, or complain about the lumping of “assault rifles,” or complain that shotguns aren’t included.
It’s like turning right on red. It has been proven to be safer by tons of data-driven studies. But people fucking hate it when you are used to being able to turn and go about your drive when there is no traffic around.
The study isn’t about community safety or gun stats, they said the goal was to explore opinions. Opinions are therefore the data, the facts, of this domain. Are you seriously suggesting that researchers interested in opinions eschew opinions and use (barely relevant) stats instead? Because people don’t necessarily form opinions on facts. Which is why opinions are their own thing, and evidence is another thing. Two separate domains.
“80% of Americans think there should be more affordable housing in theory. 10% of Americans are willing to live near affordable housing.”
This kind of stuff is worth committing to data.
That’s right, we should be making decisions on what makes people actually safe instead of what feels safe. So all the gun owners who say they need a gun because it makes them feel safe should be ignored because multiple studies have shown that owning a gun actually makes you less safe.
TSA joins the conversation
The TSA can go die in a fire.
Obligatory “no study is done properly since I, the Internet rando, saith it so”
I have to agree. I know my neighbors have a few different assault rifles and it does not bother me at all. When shit goes down I know we got each other backs
What “shit” would have to go down to where you would need to have each others backs? You know your opponents are the ones that don’t even want to own guns… you don’t have to be terrified of us.
Why are you assuming to know who their opponents are? I’m pretty socialist leaning (union steward like, convince my friends to read the Communist Manifeso like) I own a handful of guns. I know my “opponents” are likely armed.
The Socialist Rifle Association is assuming their opponents will be armed.
We saw it during the BLM protests: the police are very willing to injure and kill unarmed protesters, but play very nicely when armed protesters are around. That convinced me.
Given that hunting is a very common pastime in the US, and that hunting rifles are statistically the firearms least likely to be used in a homicide, I think you’d find that information to be a pretty useless outlier, on the level of asking about bow or fencing foil ownership.
A major reason many people buy an AR is because they think they are bad asses and want a bad ass weapon. I would rather have a level headed AR owning neighbor than a wanna-be bad ass neighbor owning ANY kind of weapon.
I own an AR because it’s kinda easy to work on without Royally Fucking it Up.
[citation needed]