In a paradigm-setting 2012 ad in Maxim magazine, Bushmaster — which manufactured the rifle used in the racist massacre in Buffalo, New York, in May — declared, “Consider your man card reissued.”
In 2016, the trade association commissioned its first “consumer segmentation” study that developed profiles of potential gun buyers with labels like “Unarmed Aaron” and “Weaponless Wendy,” who presumably could succumb to the right sales pitch.
In November, 2021, just hours after a jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse of two shooting deaths during anti-racism protests in 2020, a Florida gun dealer created an image of him brandishing an assault rifle, with the slogan: “BE A MAN AMONG MEN.”
At the National Rifle Association convention in Houston last month, a Missouri-based gun maker, Black Rain Ordnance, featured a line of “BRO” semi-automatics punning on the company’s acronym: AR-15-style guns with names like BRO-Tyrant and BRO-Predator. Dozens of other vendors had similar messages.
At the same convention, a man raffled off a golden AK-47 at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston, May 29, 2022.
(Mike McIntire, Glenn Thrush and Eric Lipton. “Gun Sellers' Message to Americans: Man Up.” The New York Times. June 18, 2022.)
BLACK RAIN ORDNANCE BRO-AMERICA
The recurrence of mass shootings like Uvalde has provided reliable opportunities for the gun industry and its allies. Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School a decade ago, gun sales have almost always risen sharply in the aftermath of major shootings, as buyers snap up firearms they worry will disappear from stores.
“Drawing attention to the concern that firearm sales could be further restricted will have a great impact on anxious buyers,” a firearms industry study from 2017 advised.
At the same time, guns rights groups have pushed an aggressive legislative and court agenda. For instance, it soon will be legal to carry a hidden firearm without a permit in half the United States.
The newest study, produced last year, is closely held and not circulated outside the industry, but a copy was obtained by The New York Times. It found that typical gun owners were white men in their 40s earning about $75,000 a year with a preference for handguns. “Less than half consider themselves to be very knowledgeable about firearms,” the study found, though they felt the need to have one.
A common theme in consumer sentiment is anxiety. The 2021 study contained two new categories of buyers: “Prepared for the Worst” and “Urban Defender.” Urban Defenders worry about crime, “do not trust others around them” and are most susceptible to the argument that tighter laws could threaten their ability to purchase a gun.
(Mike McIntire, Glenn Thrush and Eric Lipton. “Gun Sellers' Message to Americans: Man Up.” The New York Times. June 18, 2022.)
Anxiety Sells
Industry data shows that in 1990, an estimated 74,000 military-style rifles were manufactured for domestic sale in the U.S. That figure began to climb after expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004 and reached 2.3 million in 2013, the year after Sandy Hook, when AR-style guns accounted for about one-quarter of all sales revenue, according to the Firearms Retailer Survey, an annual report by the industry trade association.
“Young Guns” – Testosterone And Gun Violence
Statistics confirm that firearms are very attractive to middle-aged Whites but they are also apparently irresistible to impressionable young men. For example, the two young men accused of carrying out the massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde followed a familiar path: They legally bought semiautomatic rifles right after turning 18, posted images intended to display their strength and menace – and then turned those weapons on innocent people.
As investigators and researchers determine how the tragedies unfolded, the age of the accused has emerged as a key factor in understanding how two teenagers became driven to acquire such deadly firepower and how it led them to mass shootings.
They fit in a critical age range – roughly 15 to 25 – that law enforcement officials, researchers and policy experts consider a hazardous crossroads for young men, a period when they are in the throes of developmental changes and societal pressures that can turn them toward violence in general, and, in the rarest cases, mass shootings.
(Glenn Thrush and Matt Richtel. “A Disturbing New Pattern in Mass Shootings: Young Assailants.” The New York Times. June 02, 2022.)
Glenn Thrush and Matt Richtel report that six of the nine deadliest mass shootings in the United States since 2018 were by people who were 21 or younger, representing a shift for mass casualty shootings, which before 2000 were most often initiated by men in their mid-20s, 30s and 40s.
“We see two clusters when it comes to mass shooters, people in their 40s who commit workplace type shootings, and a very big cluster of young people – 18, 19, 20, 21 – who seem to get caught up in the social contagion of killing,” said Jillian Peterson, a criminal justice professor who helped found the Violence Project, which maintains a comprehensive national database of mass shootings.
(Jillian Peterson PhD & James Densley PhD. Violence Project: How To Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic. https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database/. 2021.)
Of course, there is not a single reason for young gun violence. But, many of the causes of these shootings cited most often by law enforcement officials and academics seem intuitive – online bullying, the increasingly aggressive marketing of guns to boys, lax state gun laws and federal statutes that make it legal to buy a semiautomatic 'long gun' at 18.
One study tested whether interacting with a gun increased testosterone levels and later aggressive behavior. It found that young males who interacted with guns showed significantly greater increases in testosterone. Moreover, increases in testosterone partially mediated the effects of interacting with the gun on aggressive behavior.
Frank T. McAndrew, Knox College psychology professor, said almost all of the young killers he has researched were motivated by a need to prove themselves.
“These are young guys who feel like losers, and they have an overwhelming drive to show everybody they are not on the bottom,” he said. “In the case of the Buffalo shooter, it was about trying to impress this community of racists he had cultivated online. In the case of the kid in Uvalde, it was about going back to the place where you felt disrespected and acting out violently.”
(Klinesmith J, Kasser T, McAndrew FT. Guns, testosterone, and aggression: an experimental test of a mediational hypothesis. Psychol Sci. 2006 Jul;17(7):568-71.)
Psychologists Joseph Vandello and Jennifer Bosson have coined the term “precarious manhood” to describe a dilemma that only men seem to face. The theory states that, because manhood is elusive and tenuous, it must be proven repeatedly through public action. Playing competitive sports at age 16 is not enough. A man must demonstrate his manhood again and again and again. He may visit a brothel, engage in drunken brawls, ride motorcycles, choose a dangerous occupation, and eventually marry a much younger woman.
In a nutshell, Vandello and Bosson argue that “manhood” – however an individual male’s culture might define it – is a status that must be continually earned. And one’s self-worth is tied to being perceived as a “real man.”
The result of this constant pressure to prove one's manhood is that men, as a group, experience more social anxiety than women do. They also are strongly motivated to compensate—with risky moves or aggressive posturing, for example—when they believe their manhood has been challenged.
(Vandello, J. A., & Bosson, J. K. “Hard won and easily lost: A review and synthesis of theory and research on precarious manhood.” Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 14(2), 101. 2013.)
It’s precarious because it can be easily lost – especially if the man fails to measure up to the relentless challenges that life throws at him, be they tests of physical bravery, or competition with other men for respect and status.
At this time, I would ask the reader to reread the opening to this blog post and reconsider how firearms are currently marketed to aggressive, competitive young males.
Overall, boys and young men account for half of all homicides involving guns, or any other weapon, nationwide, a percentage that has been steadily rising. Exactly 50 percent of all killings in 2020, the last year comprehensive data is available, were committed by assailants under 30, according to the F.B.I.’s uniform crime data tracking system.
Mental Health Epidemic
Glenn Thrush and Matt Richtel cite an important factor in young gun violence …
“The shootings come against a backdrop of a worsening adolescent mental health crisis, one that predated the pandemic but has been intensified by it. Much of the despair among teenagers and young adults has been inwardly directed, with soaring rates of self-harm and suicide. In that sense, the perpetrators of mass shootings represent an extreme minority of young people, but one that nonetheless exemplifies broader trends of loneliness, hopelessness and the darker side of a culture saturated by social media and violent content.”
(Glenn Thrush and Matt Richtel. “A Disturbing New Pattern in Mass Shootings: Young Assailants.” The New York Times. June 02, 2022.)
In the CDC’s first nationally representative survey of high school students to assess teen mental health and well-being during the pandemic, researchers found that more than one-third of high school students suffered from poor mental health in 2021, and 44 percent of them experienced such persistent sadness and hopelessness that they stopped doing their usual activities. One in five teens seriously considered suicide, and almost 1 in 10 tried to kill themselves.
(“Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey (ABES).” https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/abes.htm. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention. 2021.)
For many teens, home wasn’t a refuge when the pandemic forced schools to close. More than half of teens reported emotional abuse at home – including parents who swore at them, insulted them, or put them down. And 11 percent of teens reported physical abuse – being hit, beaten, kicked, or injured by a parent.
“These data echo a cry for help,” said Debra Houry, MD, MPH, the acting principal deputy director of the CDC, in a statement. “The COVID-19 pandemic has created traumatic stressors that have the potential to further erode students’ mental well-being.”
Males: The Suicide and Homicide Connection
In a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis, researchers found striking gender differences in the data. When firearms were accessible, men were nearly four times more likely to commit suicide than when firearms were not accessible, while women were almost three times more likely to be victims of homicide.
“Our analysis shows that having access to firearms is a significant risk factor for men committing suicide and for women being victims of homicide,” said Andrew Anglemyer, PhD, MPH, an expert in study design and data analytics in Clinical Pharmacy and Global Health Sciences at UCSF, who is also a U.S. Army veteran. “Since empirical data suggest that most victims of homicide know their assailants, the higher risk for women strongly indicates domestic violence.”
Firearms play a significant role in both suicide and homicide, accounting for slightly more than half of all suicide deaths and two-thirds of homicide deaths, according to 2009 data from the 16-state National Violent Death Reporting System, which is run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(Andrew Anglemyer, PhD, MPH, Tara Horvath, MA and George Rutherford, MD. “The Accessibility of Firearms and Risk for Suicide and Homicide Victimization Among Household Members.” Annals of Internal Medicine. January 21, 2014.)
Conclusion
Face it: the epidemic of deadly violence and destruction in America has one common denominator – the firearm. With few policy safeguards, mental health professionals and local authorities have been left to spot and stop potential gunmen … with very uneven success.
Who can deny that gun manufacturers seek to increase sales by recklessly marketing deadly weapons to young men in almost universal transitions in their relationships, living situations, lifestyles, education, and occupations. And, many of these youth have little support of supervision at home.
We can blame the lack of good moral values, fatherlessness, and gun-free zones for the horrors of gun violence. But, there is absolutely no way to deny that irresponsible manufacturers hideously employ anxiety to manipulate precarious manhood and fill the hearts and minds of young men with one overwhelming desire – the need for a gun.
Look at the neurobiology of young men … and, for that matter, that of many middle-age guys stuck in a now never-ending testosterone pursuit. A huge mismatch develops between parts of the brain that causes impulsive behavior and emotional sensitivity. Add to this the immensely disorienting societal passage from boy to man, and I think you can see that the introduction of a sexy, virile, phallic symbol is a formula for violent behavior. Young Male Minds + Testosterone + Guns = Increased Danger and Violence
In 2021, firearms killed nearly 45,000 people in the United States, including more than 1,500 minors, according to the organization Gun Violence Archive.
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