Scientific American continues on its activist leftward path, diluting its scientific brand by transmitting biased anti-gun propaganda under the cover of academic sociology.
The latest entry was posted Wednesday and has become a popular post: “Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns? -- Research suggests it's largely because they're anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market and beset by racial fears.”
If that headline wasn’t a giveaway, writer Jeremy Adam Smith's bio left little hope for an objective take: “....author or co-editor of four books, including The Compassionate Instinct and Are We Born Racist?”
After pointing out that “Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled....” Smith asked “So, who is buying all these guns -- and why?”
His answer, boiled down: Dumb racists.
....The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male -- but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.
These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated....
Assumptions of racism were made:
But Stroud also discovered another motivation: racial anxiety. “A lot of people talked about how important Obama was to get a concealed-carry license: ‘He’s for free health care, he’s for welfare.’ They were asking, ‘Whatever happened to hard work?’” Obama’s presidency, they feared, would empower minorities to threaten their property and families.
Smith forwarded the same lazy gun-as-potency metaphor that has served as a smug liberal pop psychology nugget for decades:
For these economically insecure, irreligious white men, “the gun is a ubiquitous symbol of power and independence, two things white males are worried about,” says Froese. “Guns, therefore, provide a way to regain their masculinity, which they perceive has been eroded by increasing economic impotency.”
Again, Scientific American skipped actual evidence and illogically assumed a racial explanation:
Both Froese and Stroud found pervasive anti-government sentiments among their study participants. “This is interesting because these men tend to see themselves as devoted patriots, but make a distinction between the federal government and the ‘nation,’ says Froese. “On that point, I expect that many in this group see the ‘nation’ as being white.”
Even worse than the accusations is the condescension. White men need “restrictive gun laws” for their own protection.
Unfortunately, the people most likely to be killed by the guns of white men aren’t the “bad guys,” presumably criminals or terrorists. It’s themselves -- and their families.... As a new study published this month in JAMA Internal Medicine once again shows us, restrictive gun laws don’t prevent white men from defending themselves and their families. Instead, those laws stop them from shooting themselves and each other.
These arguments generally, misleadingly lump in suicides as gun deaths (though one doesn't need a gun for that) and misses the deterrence aspect of guns – the sound of a shtogun being "racked" can serve as a deterrent to a crime without being fired, though such instances may not show up in statistics.
