NYT video on new gun owners. pic.twitter.com/bbqG8lK2H1
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) February 18, 2025
Every once in a while, culture shifts in America prompt America’s newspaper of record to commission one or more of their ink-stained wretches to kit up and venture west of the Hudson in an intrepid quest to document what’s happening in the great in-between and to try to explain it to their readers who live back in the Gotham bubble.
The Times’ latest expedition has to do with guns and the the tens of millions of Americans who have decided to buy one — for the first time — since 2020. While they profile a requisitely diverse group of individuals (this is the Times, after all) who have a range of reasons that brought them to gun ownership, as the authors point out in their multimedia article, The Tipping Point . . .
Above all, new gun owners said, they are motivated by a need to feel prepared for anything, in a world that feels to them less stable.
The last two decades have seen rapid growth in the share of people who cite self-protection as their primary reason for buying firearms; they now comprise more than 70 percent of all gun buyers.
For some, intensified concerns about personal safety have dispelled a lifelong aversion to guns.
What the Times has produced in the video above and the accompanying article is a helpful primer that lays out pretty clearly what those of us in the firearms community have been saying for decades…that guns are for everyone. More than 25 million people have come to that realization over the last four years and it’s not always been an easy move for them to make.
Some have found the evolution to be fraught. Several said they had to work through concerns about mental health and suicide when considering whether to have guns in the house. Suicides have long accounted for a majority of gun deaths in the United States; experts say one reason is the number of firearms. The country is the only one in the world where civilian guns outnumber people.
In January, Americans bought an estimated 1.29 million guns — a decrease from the spike seen during the pandemic, but still higher than the average monthly sales before the pandemic.
Before buying a gun, Mr. Tsien had to negotiate the terms with his wife, Sarah McLean. She felt deeply uneasy about him storing his guns at home, even unloaded, in a locked safe.
“I don’t fully understand it, and I’m a little uncomfortable with it,” Ms. McLean said. “But it’s important to him, and I trust him.”
All in all, the presentation by the Times here is fair. Against type, it’s almost as if the point here was a wanton act of journalism.
Watch the video at the top and read the article. What’s depicted, much to the horror of the media and the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex, do doubt, is the depth and breadth of the reality that an entirely new cohort of Americans are now gun owners. Or as our friend, sociologist David Yamane likes to put it, guns are normal and normal people own guns.
Whatever the motivation that prompted these individuals to take the gun-buying plunge, nothing changes the fact that every one of them has a right to keep and bear arms…and has come to recognize that fact. We need to celebrate that so many have summoned the courage to overcome years of pre-conceived notions, indoctrination, bigotry, prejudice, and outright lies in order to do that.
Along with realities such as 29 permitless carry states, serial court victories, and the gun control industry in disarray, the Times article is just the latest indicator that civilian disarmament advocates are increasingly losing the argument, in governments, the courts, and among the public at large. And that’s a monumental victory that will have positive knock-on effects for generations to come.
If that big guy wants to do right by his family he should eat a vegetable and go for a walk so he doesn’t drop dead in front of his kids at 50.
Apparently from the New York Times article with the title Tipping Point:
“Above all, new gun owners said, they are motivated by a need to feel prepared for anything, in a world that feels to them less stable.”
The world has become less stable.
Many members of the Ruling Class have intentionally created as much instability as possible. They do it for two reasons. First, the Ruling Class intentionally reduces stability knowing that the masses will demand that the Ruling Class increase stability, thereby priming the masses to accept policies/laws which increase the Ruling Class’ power and wealth under the promise of increased stability. Of course the Ruling Class will not actually increase stability since that would reduce the Ruling Class’ power and wealth. Second, many members of the Ruling Class enjoy (in a sadistic sense) reducing stability and thus causing the resultant chaos, fear, pain, and suffering that inevitably befalls the masses.
Once you understand that the Ruling Class achieves gains in multiple areas when society destabilizes, you realize that destabilizing policies/laws are intentional.
I just watched the embedded X video. I was surprised that the New York Times did not suggest/portray all of the new firearm owners as “deplorables” or “garbage”.