Tony Grist
NOTE: I recently unpacked my hodgepodge of notebooks about gun culture to begin thinking about writing another book in 2025. Seeing John McPhee’s Tabula Rasa in a local bookstore inspired me to empty those notebooks here. Be advised: These are truly notes and not composed ideas.
From April 3, 2021
Americans are politically divided by the issue of guns [Joslyn]. But as with other “culture wars,” the fighting is often undertaken by elites, while the muddled masses watch from the sidelines, often with disbelief or revulsion at the true believers screaming past each other.
Many stuck in the middle are what I call the “gun curious.” I meet them all the time when I talk about guns. They come from all parts of my social network: ER doctors, IT people, HR consultants, non-profit leaders, professors, students.
March continued a familiar pattern in the great gun debates in the United States. Mass public shootings were followed by calls for bans on “assault rifles” and, at the same time, an astounding number of Americans bought guns.
Although we frequently think of gun ownership as being either/or, only about 1/3 of Americans cannot imagine ever owning a firearm. An equal proportion of Americans who do not own guns might consider owning them in the future. I call these the “gun curious.” Many of them – we don’t yet know how many – satisfied their curiosity by buying a firearm during the Great Gun Buying Spree of 2020, which has continued through the first three months of 2021.
This includes untold numbers of AR-pattern rifles. There’s clearly more to these rifles than meets the eye.
[NOTE: I continue these thoughts in Chapter 4 of Gun Curious, “Living with AR-15s.”]
Read the full article here
