Gun Culture - 1994 vs 2014

GEM said:

There is scholarly and economic analyses that show that there are two gun cultures in the USA. One is the older outdoorsy hunting, classic target shooting crew and the other is a self-defense culture which also can have a strong urban and suburban constituency.

Of course there is some overlap, but the SD culture is where the growth is. The interest in AK, AR pattern guns is driven by SD culture as compared to hunting long arm desires.

The growth in gun sales reflects handguns for SD and the EBRs for home defense and disaster situations. That's the take I get from the scholary criminological work and the shooting industry analyses.

It would be hard to take away SD/HD guns now. I saw a picture of a guy sitting in front of his house in Long Beach, NY (where I had family) with a pump gun. This is NY and in the NY Times. No one seemed freaked out by it. So despite some pols of the usual type, SD and HD gun culture is growing. 55% of GOP and 40% of Democratic households own guns. Hard to undo that.

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Academic cite? I'm very interested in reading this.

In 1994 I owned a high cap pre ban Taurus (Beretta knockoff) a Mossberg 500 and a 79 Golden 39A.

Due to those times the collection has evolved.....

In 1994 I had an MAK90, SKS and shotgun. CT put in it's own AWB in 93 and the MAK was sold off. We still have the ban here, no ak47s, no uzis, no tech-9s, no flash hiders or bayonet lugs on ar15s. I now have a much expanded collection.

Back in ‘94 was a young guy wandering the aisles of the Great Western Gun Show in Los Angeles. I had big eyes and empty pockets. I thought that the NRA callers were crazy, like ranting homeless or something. Was I wrong. Those guys were spot on.

As mentioned above, it served to radicalize lots of us. My interests have always been with the old bolt guns, but today I am an eager letter writer whenever any anti-gun legislation comes up. I don’t care if they are trying to ban fully automatic flame throwers. I’m squarely opposed to any new laws. Being in California, I write lots of letters.

It was also a time when many middle-Americans came to realize how they were vilified by the supposed elite. Ordinary citizens were looked upon as toothless bumpkins and psychopaths. The ’94 bans and the related politics made apparent to many that there are two Americas. I’m in the other one.
Mauserguy

I was 35 then. In my view, we have a very different electorate, media and political climate than we did in 1994. Restrictions on firearm and component ownership seem not simply possible now but probable, IMO. SCOTUS is my primary concern, along with the rest of the federal judiciary.

Select 1994 Gun memories:
The Glock 26/27 had not been released yet.
Wal-Mart sold Black Talon ammo ~ up to / just prior to that time.
S&W revolvers did not have a useless (to me) internal lock.
My state did not yet have concealed carry.

Ok... we know that there were essentially two cultures in the years around 1994... the hunting and outdoor group and the self defense/shooter group. The concealed weapon permit system (shall issue) was growing state to state.

This was also a time of a lot of chaos in the industry caused by law suits against firearm manufacturers.

SKS's were selling for $80-$100 at gun shows. AK clones were selling for a little more...

Now.... tell me about how the AWB happened in the first place. Bill Clinton was president. What caused the NRA to negotiate with the anti-gunners and accept a 10-round magazine limit? Why were the military styled rifles considered so "evil"?

PAINT ME A PICTURE OF THE TIME WHEN THE BAN WAS ENACTED.

Ammo was cheap,dirt cheap during the Clinton era,unlike now.I bought most of my stash ammo during the 90s.I still have 7.62x39 cases(1K) with 69.99 on them!! Reloading components were a lot cheaper too.A lot of price gouging and profiteering going on.Most folks wanted AKs as the ammo and mags were cheaper.I could buy chi-com AK drums 75/100 for $20 after the initial panic buying subsided and the profiteering caused people to stop buying and the prices dropped,there wasn't a shortage of product.
Post ban rule beater guns came in like the MAK-90 that actually became cheaper than their pre-ban cousins,millions were sold.

The FBI stat listed above is pretty funny because millions of AK variants and SKS were sold during this time period and it took Winchester/USRAC 100 years to sell 3 million Model 94s.There are WAY MORE than 4 million so called assault weapons in the USA.

People are more serious about training nowdays and you are not labeled a survivalist nut case now,you train.Katrina showed the country that the goobermint wasn't always going to be the answer to your well being.

I am too young to remember the circumstances and the repercussions surrounding the 1994 gun ban, but I was hoping I could get some of you to weigh in.

I get the impression that guns which were referred to in the last ban as "assault weapons" (particularly the AR-15) are now FAR more mainstream than they were in 1994. I believe the AR, if all manufacturers and derivatives are combined, has been the top-selling centerfire rifle for the past few years. What was the top selling centerfire rifle in 1994? Were ARs and AKs significantly more rare to see at the range? Was the gun culture more focused on hunting rifles then? Do you think the gun culture overall has grown or contracted in the past 20 years?

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My firearms experience started as the ban began.

First, I saw no point in having a small caliber pistol that could only carry 10 rounds in the magazine. Manufacturers started building guns around the 10 round magazine soon after. The limit also increased the popularity of the 1911. Therefore, I choice was 45 ACP for large guns and I skipped the small gun. I did flirt with a Browning Hi-Power chambered for 40 S&W. It was nice and I should have kept it. The Glock 23 with 10 round magazine was an acceptable compromise, but I preferred guns in 45 ACP.

"Assault" rifles were around and the 10 round limitation was just silly. It made for goofy looking guns, occasionally unreliable magazines, and a whole bunch of weird features. My first "assault" rifle was made by Daewoo. It was an interesting rifle with a thumbhole stock and no muzzle device. It worked well.

It seemed to me at the time that rifles in 7.62x51mm were very popular. The ammunition was cheap and surplus was commonly available. HK's seemed to get the 'nod', as did the M1A/M14. I saw a few AR-15s and AK's around. The SKS was popular, as was the Garand.

The real insult was twofold: ProMag advertised "high capacity" magazines which never worked properly and factory Glock magazines of standard capacity went from $15 to $75 overnight. I dropped $750 on Glock magazines. Those lasted for the rest of the ban. I used 10 round magazines for practice and training and the standard capacity magazines for defense.

As a result of AWB of '94, many, if not all the black rifle manufacturers dropped the term "AR-15" from their gun models. Although the generic term as stuck, the various rifles have model designations that are not "AR-15".

Also, I understand part of the true definition of an assault rifle is that is has selective fire capabilities. Not many currently produced civilian arms have selective fire capabilities.

Of course, that does not mean squat to our elective officials. They tend to define things as they see fit.

AR-15 style rifles may have gotten popular in part because of AWB 94, but I feel it's rise in popularity is that it is a very good, accurate shooting platform that has alot of flexibility to be made into many variations.

I got interested in AR-15 style rifles as a result of getting involved with Service Rifle shooting. I considered the AR-15 marginally accurate and not really worth owning until I saw what the competitors were doing. And a good rille was not very expensive to boot.

I have several heavy, long barrel, "crew served", varmint AR's that in no way could be considered assault rifles except they share the same action as an M4gery. They shoot 1/2 to 2/4 inch MOA groups at 100 yards.

In 1994 AR's were sort of on the fringe. There were a few around but they were not mainstream and practically nobody hunted with one.

Now days they are the most popular rifle in the country.

Also countless millions of high capacity magazines have been sold since then.

weird. I remember the AR-15 and Glock being ubiquitous back in 94, just far fewer boutique manufacturers, and the prices for certain "evil" parts and magazine capacities being labelled as "pre-ban", and costing 5 times as much as a "post-ban" magazine.

The President has kind of put himself in a good guy jacket.

He is going after terrorists (I got Bin Laden, me!) giving out kill orders, different than his first image, yes?

He is going to be tap dancing around the CIA resignation, Benghazi ville, etc, for a while. Not sure his mind is on gun control too much now.

Question, how come anti gunners are all ugly?

I think the politicians in the legislatures know that another AWB or more gun control laws are political suicide, therefore, I doubt we wll see new laws passed. However, what we will see are attempts to tax ammo, regulate ammo due to lead content (EPA), regulate ammo components. If ammo is too expensive, or difficult to acquire the gun is essentially neutered.

I think the true time to worry is when there is a conservative that backs down from the supreme court


Right now, any action would be challenged, and go to the SC

If the court was tilted one vote..... Expect the action then.

Let's not forget that the 94 AWB was not the first shot! In 1994, we were also still smarting from the 1989 import ban of semiauto rifles without a "sporting purpose". This is the law that banned imports of rifles with particular features, like pistol grips and flash hiders (sound familiar?) and led to makers making cosmetic changes to existing rifles so they could be imported, like the MAK-90 ('modified AK -- 1990').

That law was a public kneejerk to a schoolyard shooting out in California.

Academic cite? I'm very interested in reading this.

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Here is some data to get started. It's a few years old and it's a post I put together for a DU thread so not all of it may be relevant, and the numbers may have risen somewhat since I last looked, so use it as a jumping-off point.

We have hard data on the number of Americans who hunt, which is tracked annually, and the Census Bureau releases a report on hunting and fishing every 5 years.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/fhw06-nat.pdf

They show 12.5 million licensed hunters over the age of 16 as having hunted in 2006 (link, p. 4). If you add in the estimated 1.6 million hunters under 16, you get ~14.1 million active hunters in 2006 (p. 4). For the 5-year period between 2001 and 2006, they found that 18.6 million people hunted at least once during that time.

The consensus around the 'net is that the number of gun owning adults in the United States is about 80 million. So you're looking at a little under 1 in 5 gun owners being an active hunter, and little under 1 in 4 having hunted at any time in a 5-year period.

Over half of those own handguns (I have the cite floating around here somewhere, but don't have it at the moment, sorry), although many and perhaps most handgun owners also own long guns. Somewhere around 16 to 20 million of us own "assault weapons" as defined by H.R.1022 et seq, if you look at the ownership totals of all the guns so defined, but since the definition of "assault weapon" is arbitrary, that number can range anywhere from 4 to 40 million depending on whose definition you use.

About 34.4 million people went target shooting in 2009, about 8.9 million of whom were using AR-15 type rifles and other modern-looking carbines, which dominate both competitive and recreational target shooting in the USA.

http://www.nssf.org/newsroom/releases/2010/041910.cfm

As far as gun sales go, in a typical year, 5 to 9 million gun sales are approved by the NICS Federal background check system (which includes new and used guns sold by dealers, but not private sales between individuals in states that don't require those to go through NICS). This is about evenly split between handguns (mostly semiautomatics) and long guns (also mostly semiautomatics). About 8 or 9 billion (yes, with a "b") rounds of ammunition are sold each year as well, the overwhelming majority of which is expended by recreational target shooters, as hunters would generally fire only a few hundred rounds a year. There was a surge in 2008-2009 due to fears about new proposals for an "assault weapon" ban, leading to 12 million NICS approvals in 2008 and about 14 million in 2009, with 14.033 billion rounds of ammunition sold in 2009 as well.

http://www.ammoland.com/2010/01/13/gun-owners-buy-14-million-plus-guns-in-2009

I don't have citations for this handy, but a single model of rifle, the AR-15 platform, accounts for about 1 in 4 centerfire rifles sold annually. AR-15's are manufactured by approximately 30 companies and are currently the top selling centerfire rifle in the United States.

The top selling ammunition caliber in the USA is .22LR, due to its low cost. I don't have sources handy for this either, but the top selling centerfire rifle calibers are AFAIK .223 Remington (AR-15, mini-14), 7.62x39mm (AK, SKS), and .308 Winchester (M1A, FAL, many target and hunting rifles), in that order. I believe the top selling centerfire handgun caliber is consistently 9mm, though I can't find any sources at the moment.

In most polls as to the reason for owning a firearm, the reasons are consistently (1) defensive purposes, (2) target shooting, (3) hunting, and (4) collecting, in that order. For example:

http://www.nssf.org/newsroom/releases/2010/033110.cfm
http://www.nssf.org/share/PDF/NSSFHarris-data-participation.pdf (raw data for above)
http://www.gallup.com/poll/20098/gun-ownership-use-america.aspx (absolute numbers for all categories are higher than actual participation, but relative order is the same)

So you know where I'm coming from, I'm a nonhunter who shoots recreationally, competitively when I can (USPSA pistol and carbine), and holds a CHL. I'm somewhat interested in hunting and may actually get around to taking the NC hunter's safety course this year, but it's not high on my priority list.

When you ask about the political climate and how the AWB happened you have to remember there was no youtube, no facebook, no streaming video of happy folks enjoying firearms, etc. Whatever your home environment and local political climate was, well, as SM sez: "How raised, what you do."

People couldn't learn all about firearms from their living room couch back then, so if the people on TV said something about evil assault weapons being banned then it must be true, unless you owned one and knew better. A lot of hunters were okay with the ban because hunting already has magazine restrictions, licensing, etc and they figured nobody was coming for their hunting guns so why worry about those ugly commie guns and their "banana clips" and whatnot.

Now you can change hearts & minds country-wide by having a conversation online and sharing some links to good information. Back then it was a whole different ballgame. The AWB will be a much harder sell these days, but the real danger is SCOTUS appointees changing the court's majority viewpoint to anti-gun and allowing for all sorts of backdoor infringements to stand.

Ar-15 variants are being sold at Wal-Mart here. I really think we have won the messaging war.

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Here's the problem with that, the anti-gun side has just as much love for redefining terms as it does comeing up with made-up terms like "assault clips". So we need to show the sales of ARs and AKs over the past....say 20 years; to prove they are "in common use". Not that that will stop the Brady Campaign from trying to redefine the word common so it fits their agenda. I'm positive they will try to say common doesn't mean common.

Scotus appointments for the win.

I'm also very concerned on the taxation angle. It worked for healthcare, it will be used on firearms. We will see a tax on firearm sales to help with healthcare costs related to firearm deaths/injuries.

We will see a tax on ammunition and an effort to make ammunition sales regulated. We will probably see a new effort to call ammunition a hazmat material.

While I would not put it past any government official to raise taxes on anything, a wide spread tax on an industry will probably backfire. Clinton tried to tax high cost luxury items in the nineties and it darn near put the economy in a tail spin as folks stopped buying them.

Firearms have a wider effect than just the purchase of the firearm or ammunition itself. So if the firearm industry takes a hit, a broader segment of the economy (tourism, hunting, camping sales, travel, etc) will be affected.

That is not to say isolated instances such as Cook County will not happen. Politicians there are wanting to look like they are doing something with their gang war problems.

We still need to support those who work to maintain gun rights and oppose anything against it.

I once attended a talk by and FAA accident investigation official. He commented that one of the frequent questions he was asked was he not tired of all the publicity the press heaps on any aviation accident. His answer was the publicity keeps the aviation industry striving to become ever safer. If the publicity stops, the industry will fall into complacency.

Similar comments can be made about our firearm sport and hobbies. We cannot become complacent on any small infringement of firearms and firearm ownership.

We now have statistics on our side that prove that the AWB had no measurable effect on violent crime and that so called assault rifles were only used in about one and a half percent of all gun crimes since then. Not that facts and reason will have any effect on emotion based liberalism, but facts can sway the vast majority of people in the middle who are generally open to reason.

I hated paying 70 bucks for used Glock 15 round magazines, but I did. The whole Clinton thing was a pain because you ended up paying more for magazines.

AR's are much more popular now and mainstream than in the mid 90's. It would be a lot harder for the fed govt to stop the new manufacture of them.

Gun culture article:

Wyant, B.R., & Taylor, R. B. (2007). Size of household firearm collections: implication for subcultures and gender. Criminology, 45, 519-546. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-9125.2007.00087.x

Oh, to go back to those pre-94 days when few had ARs and most had tacti-cool'd out SKSs!