NYTimes Takes a Surprisingly Fair Look at New Gun Owners

Any time I see that the New York Times has a new enterprise story on guns and gun owners, I instinctively cringe. The paper’s hostility towards the right to keep and bear arms usually extends beyond the reach of the editorial page and into its “straight” news coverage, with no shortage of snark and condescension towards the tens of millions of Americans who’ve embraced their Second Amendment rights. 

So I was downright shocked to see that the Times‘ deep dive into the lives of several new gun owners doesn’t portray them as heartless monsters, mindless tools of the gun lobby, or petrified and paranoid conspiracy theorists. Instead, they’re presented as normal people who made the rational decision to purchase a firearm for personal protection. 

In hours of conversations with New York Times journalists, these five Americans shared deeply individual reasons for their leaps into gun ownership. But there were also common threads: new fears about political violence and hate crimes, and a diminished trust in law enforcement.

Most said they had been surprised by how much they enjoyed learning to shoot, and improving their skills. 

While a majority of gun owners are white, conservative, male and from rural areas, some surveys have detected an uptick in those who are not. One by Harvard researchers found that among people who purchased their first gun between 2019 and 2021, 20 percent were Black, 20 percent were Hispanic and approximately half were women.

Behind the data, the stories of individual Americans who have bought guns in the past five years offer clues about how the country is changing — as the definitions of liberal and conservative evolve, and angst about our divisions runs high.

Now, it’s worth pointing out that of the five gun owners profiled by the NYTimes, four of them are liberal/progressive, and the fifth is a former liberal who moved to the right in the wake of the mask mandates and lockdowns that were imposed during the COVID pandemic. Maybe these are the “right kind” of gun owners for the liberal press outlet, but I’ve been at this long enough to remember when the Times would have pilloried even left-leaning Americans for picking up a gun, which makes this newfound respect for at least some gun owners fairly surprising. Even John Alvarado, the lone conservative interviewed by the Times is treated fairly in the piece. 

Mr. Alvarado, 30, a service technician and political conservative in southern Maine, said he started buying guns in part because he perceived a threat to stable society, and to his own family, from shifting social norms and practices.

“Morality is all over the place,” he said, “and because my viewpoints are more traditional it puts a target on my back.”

Mr. Alvarado, who is Black and Latino, said he became a staunch conservative during the pandemic, after years as a liberal voter. As he watched mask and vaccine mandates multiply in 2020, and neighbors turning against those who did not comply, Mr. Alvarado lost faith in the government and reconsidered his own politics.

He started attending a conservative Baptist church with his wife and reading the Bible. (His pastor faced public condemnation for defying pandemic health policies.) Mr. Alvarado, who first purchased a gun in 2020, soon began to see arming himself as a way to defend his beliefs and his family’s desire to live as they wished. He now owns six guns and serves on the security team at his church, patrolling the building during worship services.

The most biased part of the Times report comes when the paper’s reporters try to tie the fears of liberal gun owners to the election of Donald Trump and the shift to the right in our nation’s politics. While that’s undoubtably the case for some progressive gun owners, in many cases it simply boils down to the desire to be able to protect themselves from harm of any kind.

For Ms. [Victoria] Alston, a 30-year-old Black woman who works in banking in Little Rock, Ark., the desire to own a gun arose after her separation. And her race made her feel particularly vulnerable, she said: “Black women are the least protected and the least respected.” 

In 2022, she was rattled by an overnight theft on her rural property. Ms. Alston bought a Canik 9-millimeter pistol and signed up for training at a gun range managed by another Black woman.

Her intent, like that of other women at the range, was not to “look cute,” she said. “We don’t want to always have to look for a man to protect us.”

Perhaps the most surprising part of the Times feature is the acknowledgement of the positive benefits that these new gun owners have received. 

Ms. Kolanowski and the other new owners said they had expected to feel more confident and self-reliant after buying guns. Less expected, they said, were the new friends they made, and the uplifting sense of having bridged a societal divide.

Several described a profound enjoyment of a pastime they never dreamed would be so satisfying.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this story spurs some readers of the New York Times to buy a gun, or at least try to. Given the utterly insane gun control laws in New York, a lot of them are going to be in for a big shock when they realize how many barriers the state has erected between them and their ability to keep and carry a gun. Maybe the Times can make that the next 2A topic they delve into, though I’m not holding my breath. It’s one thing to treat a handful of gun owners sympathetically, but I’m guessing that criticizing the draconian gun control regime in the Empire State is still a bridge too far for the Old Grey Lady.