8 years ago
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Nearly 9% of Americans are angry, impulsive - and have a gun, study says
The new research also indicates that the 310 million firearms estimated to be in private hands in the United States are disproportionately owned by people who are prone to angry, impulsive behavior and have a potentially dangerous habit of keeping their guns close at hand. That's because people owning six or more guns were more likely to fall into both of these categories than people who owned a single gun.
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http://www.latimes.com
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Guns, Impulsive Angry Behavior, and Mental Disorders: Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R)
Analyses from the National Comorbidity Study Replication provide the first nationally representative estimates of the co-occurrence of impulsive angry behavior and possessing or carrying a gun among adults with and without certain mental disorders and demographic characteristics.
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Well this looks like an appropriate place to talk about what happened yesterday. In the afternoon, I drive vets and the elderly to doctors appointments or anywhere really. I'm sitting at Publix waiting for someone to grocery shop right now. Yesterday, I took a little old lady to the doctor, and then we stopped at the pharmacy. I did my own shopping for a few minutes, and when I came out there was a man parked right by the door playing a harmonica.
I thought, "that's odd," but you see a lot of odd in Florida. I stopped to light a cigarette. He put his harmonica in his truck and shut the door.
He started motioning at me saying, "hey, hey," until he knew he had my attention. I thought he was going to ask for a cigarette or some oddly specific amount of change since that's happened very time I've been to that Walgreens.
"In this day and age, you can't leave home without Sam's Colt," he said as he came toward me and pulled a pistol from his pocket. I made a noncommittal, half-hearted laugh and got myself around the corner to put a brick wall between me and the nut job with a 9mm. The lady I was driving was sitting there sneaking a cigarette of her own, and she started to ask me what he was saying about a colt.
I told her, "He just flashed a gun, so we should probably leave." I got her in the van and pulled up to the exit where I could see his plates to give to 911. But he came back out and got in his truck before I made the call.
Had she not been with me, I would have handled that situation differently, and I'm reasonably certain it would have ended with him or me getting shot. I was massively relieved to see him come back out so quickly. I'm not saying I would have wrestled him to the ground, but he would have come out to find me standing behind his truck talking to 911.
See, thats why I make a rule to not acknowledge strangers beckoning for my attention. I know how bad my luck is and I dont want to push it.
That doesn't always work. At that same Walgreens with that same lady on a different day, I had a guy walk all the way across the parking lot, yelling at me the whole time because he wanted a cigarette...and 75 cents for a beer. I gave him the cigarette, and he told me all about how he'd been kicked out of every store within 5 miles.
Judging by the amount of angry, impulsive human beings I've met and seen on the Internet, that sounds like an extremely low rate.
Well the article says that 9% of Americans are angry, impulsive, AND own a gun so the number that are simply angry and impulsive (sans gun) is probably a lot higher.
So if there's something like 35-45% gun ownership in America (according to different websites/polls you can believe) that means there is 20-25% of gun owners that are angry and impulsive. That probably more strongly derives that 20-25% of Americans are angry and impulsive? I guess that number sounds about right, it's the impulsiveness that is the key here.
In other news, impulsive, angry people have access to sharp objects, motorized vehicles, rocks, fists (and other body parts), drugs, carbon monoxide, high buildings and bridges, kayak paddles...
But curiously, none of them are quite as efficient at wounding or killing people.
Guns are no where near as efficient at wounding and/or killing people than humans. All objects are inanimate and useless till a human is behind it.
Guns are a force multiplier, and there is no more effective force multiplier as freely available to regular citizens as guns. The point of Gun control is not to strip guns away from responsible owners but to minimize the availability of them to unsuitable owners. But we can't do that until we're able to examine the problems that come with guns.
I'd be curious how many are just angry and impulsive. Just one look at my Facebook feed and some comment strings it seems like people get angry over anything fast.
I think this is an unfortunate side effect of the click-baiting nature of the modern internet. You're much more likely to get pageviews if you incite an emotional response, so the media try to frame even the most mundane affairs in a way that will elicit a visceral response. This makes a lot of people behave like they have chips on their shoulders.
I know this sounds crazy, but my first thought was "only 9%?"... I've seen so many angry frustrated people in the past weeks that I refuse to believe there is any other type of people. So... 9% of Americans own guns?
32% in 2010
9% of Americans overlap between the group of people who have anger issues and the group that own at least one gun.
Yeah... I was saying that I'll just assume all people are angry. So... that leaves 9% to be the people who own a gun.
There's a difference between people who have trouble controlling their anger or impulsive behavior and people who simply get angry or impulsive. Chronic impulse issues is a separate category altogether.
You disagree with me and you feel like the number isn't so small. I got it.
It occurred to me after the fact that you might be attempting humor, but thanks to Poe's Law I can't tell.
Still, the US population is presently over 320 million which makes 9% of that approximately 28.8 million. That's 28.8 million people who own guns and have a problem with impulsive displays of anger. So no, I don't consider that a small number.
This is why I roll my eyes at the "Good guy with a gun" argument. With the exception of hunters, normal and rational people do not go out and buy a device that can kill someone instantly and keep it in an easy to reach location. More importantly they wouldn't go outside in public with the damn thing on them at all times!
It's no surprise that the people that are more likely to buy a weapon exude angry and violent behavior.
Crazy, you would think the US was a war-zone with all these guns and angry, impulsive people running around!
On a more serious note, this "study" is bullshit. They included justified homocides in their numbers for Christ's sake, that includes people justifiably killed by police officers.
It's a good sign though, the actual numbers don't support gun control so now gun control advocates are going for the angle of "gun owners are crazies just waiting to kill someone over nothing!" Keep grasping kiddies!
So 9% of Americans fulfill the combination of being angry, impulsive, and having a gun. Nine percent doesn't sound like much, but within a population of 320 million, that's 28.8 million walking time-bombs all around us, with a steady trickle of them going off every day, injuring or killing themselves and/or those around them. I'm as numb to it as anyone else most of the time, but every once in a while there's this moment of clarity were it seems outright bizarre, as does the way in which it is practically written in stone in a constitutional and cultural sense that This Is The Way It Must Be. Nothing is forever, but when and how will it change?