With the pandemic, gun sales soared to their highest since January 2013, following Barack Obama’s reelection and the Sandy Hook shooting. Between 2019 and 2021, 7.5 million people became first-time firearm owners, and 5.4 million of those had until then lived in homes without guns.
But to understand how our extended trauma has changed gun ownership, remember that our injuries go back beyond the pandemic. In 2015, aka the last good year, just 8 percent of new gun owners were Black; 75 percent were white and 65 percent men. With Trump’s election, the demographic that had been eager to purchase guns under Obama—white people and men—slowed their roll, a time gun sellers called the “Trump Slump” (a phrase I want to use all the time now). Black people and women became new gun owners in higher proportion. Pre- and post-pandemic, the proportions remained roughly the same: about half women, and only 55 percent white.
Then the Floyd protests kicked off a reckoning. Then Joe Biden won. White men (as you’d expect) saw these as new reasons to arm themselves. And nonwhite, non-male people? They didn’t see any reason to be less threatened than they were before. …
The stories we tell ourselves about what protects us—whiteness, ableism, gender binaries, heteronormativity, and class—are only stories, enormously powerful stories that do offer partial protection as they inflict harm on others. These categories don’t keep people safe; they exist so that some can think of themselves as more safe than other people. These stories create the illusion of security via separation. Privilege may keep you from certain kinds of risks, but it won’t make you resilient. Only community can.
Inviting grace for the people who have done terrible things is another change to the narrative. It might be the most revolutionary one.
Maladaptive trauma responses are difficult to undo because they feel as if they work, sort of. A gun won’t make you more safe, but it might make you feel more safe. Drinking and drugs don’t make you less lonely, but you don’t care as much about it.
— Ana Marie Cox in We Are Not Just Polarized. We Are Traumatized.
