{"id":77760,"date":"2022-02-21T04:38:50","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T10:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=77760"},"modified":"2022-02-21T04:38:50","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T10:38:50","slug":"77760","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=77760","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

New firearm owners shaking up gun culture and American politics<\/a><\/p>\n

HARRISBURG \u2014 Richard Reisinger, of New Bloomfield in Perry County, leaned in as David Walker of Savage Guns, a Massachusetts-based firearm company, showed him how to work a new innovation that allows the owner to adjust a gun for right- or left-handed users.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have grandchildren; some of them are left-handed, some are right-handed, so now if you purchase a gun, all you have to do is place this on the handle and it accommodates either, so you buy one gun and multiple kids can shoot it,\u201d Mr. Reisinger said, admiring the practicality of the design.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Reisinger \u2014 who was visiting the Savage booth at the Great American Outdoor Show at the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex recently \u2014 said he comes from a long line of hunters, a tradition he now enjoys with his grandchildren.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do a lot of whitetail hunting at the moment \u2014 but with grandchildren, I\u2019ll take them out to hunt pretty much anything that they\u2019re interested in. I love coming to the outdoors show because I get to see, and touch, and feel a lot of different firearms that I might be interested in down the road,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Mr. Reisinger \u2014 like dozens of other people interviewed that day \u2014 said gun ownership is about a lot of things: \u201cPutting food on the table and providing for my family, self-protection and the motor and dexterity skills it sharpens when you go target practicing. You meet more and more new gun owners all of the time; most of them said they bought their first gun for those exact same reasons … they found all of it personally empowering.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a truth that conflicts with our culture\u2019s misconceptions about who \u201cthe American gun owner\u201d really is and what his or her motivations are for enjoying firearms. If you turn on the national news or log onto social media, you\u2019re likely to find lawful gun owners portrayed as cultish, backwoods white males who have a gluttonous appetite for violence.<\/p>\n

Gun owners see themselves quite differently \u2014 and their demographics and motivations don\u2019t fit neatly into the stereotypes.<\/p>\n

Despite the millions spent in digital advertisements by gun control advocates like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the appeal of gun ownership is only increasing. Of all the firearms sold last year, 30% \u2014 5.4 million purchases \u2014 went to new gun owners, according to a retailer survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.<\/p>\n

A new interest in self-sufficiency, caused by collapses in our supply chain, has also led to an explosion in applications for hunting licenses.<\/p>\n

According to Stateline, a Pew Trust initiative, many states across the country saw a dramatic rise in both men and women taking a hunter safety class for the first time \u2014 with states like Michigan seeing a 67% hike in new hunting license buyers in 2021 compared with 2019, including a 15% increase in female hunters.<\/p>\n

People who would never have considered owning a gun were now curious about hunting to provide for their families \u2014 and about target practice to learn how to defend themselves and their homes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This expansion of gun culture is also reflected in the demographics of the new gun owner: The same survey showed a 58% increase in firearm purchases by Black people and 49% by Latinos, compared to 2019.<\/p>\n

Further, one-third of people buying their first firearm in 2021 were women.<\/p>\n

Those changes were evident in the cavernous halls of the outdoor show, which at times was filled shoulder-to-shoulder with a melting pot of all races, ages and genders. Vehicles in the parking lot sported license plates from as far as Maine, Mississippi and Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Disneyland is the happiest place on earth for kids, this might be the happiest place on earth for adults,\u201d said Corina Novo of Warsaw, Ind., who was at a booth showcasing the Single Action Shooting Society, the governing body of the sport of cowboy action shooting.<\/p>\n

Ms. Novo said that stereotypes of gun owners often come from people who have never shot a gun or known anyone who does: \u201cWhen you lack curiosity about why someone would enjoy anything that is different from what your experiences are, no matter what the issue may be, it is easy to demonize it; I have seen attitudes change dramatically once a person learns to properly use a gun and understand all of the advantages that skill gives them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biggest stereotype Ms. Novo dismisses is that educated, successful women shy away from gun ownership. \u201cA lot of women are very surprised the first time that they handle a firearm and go out to the range \u2014 whether with their family, their husband or some friends \u2014 how well they actually do. There is also something to be said about the empowerment it gives a woman, not only because going to the range sharpens your motor skills, but also that you are developing the skills to protect yourself and your family and to also provide for them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a confidence that transfers in different parts of your life,\u201d she said, as four women walked up to her booth with questions about the sport she\u2019s advocating.<\/p>\n

Political attitudes about guns seem to be following cultural ones. A December Quinnipiac poll found 47% of registered voters supported calls for more gun control, with 48% opposed. That marked the lowest level of support for gun control in six years of Quinnipiac\u2019s annual polling.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Gallup\u2019s November poll found that support for stricter laws covering the sale of firearms had dropped to 52% \u2014 a huge 12-point decline since 2019.<\/p>\n

Mr. Reisinger doesn\u2019t say where his politics lie. It\u2019d be easy to assume from his Perry County address and passion for guns that he\u2019s a Republican, but assumptions are how distant pundits and analysts get elections wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am an independent voter,\u201d he said, \u201cliterally registered independent, and I always make sure that I vote every election I can \u2014 and do the research ahead of time. Again, I try to vote based on what makes the most sense for me, my family and my community.\u201d<\/p>\n

New gun owners don\u2019t just live in the rural patches of the country \u2014 they are found in cities, suburbs and exurbs all across the nation, and they are less likely than ever to be old white men. And they will certainly have an impact on our elections and our culture \u2014 but precisely what impact will likely depend on how they feel treated. Ignoring them, dismissing them or boxing them into stereotypes won\u2019t help and won\u2019t make them go away.<\/p>\n

And they might continue to rearrange American political coalitions, which will continue to be misread by activists and pundits, despite all of the evidence and data to guide them otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New firearm owners shaking up gun culture and American politics HARRISBURG \u2014 Richard Reisinger, of New Bloomfield in Perry County, leaned in as David Walker of Savage Guns, a Massachusetts-based firearm company, showed him how to work a new innovation that allows the owner to adjust a gun for right- or left-handed users. \u201cI have … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77761,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77760\/revisions\/77761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}