A targeted report about guns, gays, and confirmation bias

Not to pick on the Philadelphia Inquirer, but I will use a recent story to illustrate confirmation bias.

The headline of the story read, “The LGBTQ people buying guns for self-defense,” and the top of the story makes its position clear when it quote a 23-year-old trans woman identified only as A as saying, “Three months before the [presidential] election, that’s when alarm bells started to ring.”

The story quotes a couple of gay people about also buying firearms, suggesting they were motivated by the coming of President Donald J. Trump deux, with one fearing Trump would put gays in concentration camps. That’s paranoia. Trump has never said anything like that about gays. He has said he is willing to hold undocumented people as they await deportation, but not gays. 

The story takes a couple of factual fibers and tries to weave into a sweater of GOP homophobia.

The story by Zoe Greenberg, briefly mentions, among others, the Pink Pistols, a group I wrote about in a 2016 column about gays buying guns, published before an election in which Trump was expected to lose. I interviewed several gay gun owners. None mentioned politics.

I had heard about gays arming up from a firearms instructor, Jeff Bloovman, who describes himself “as gay as the day is long.” Bloovman also teaches other forms of self-defense and regards guns as a last resort.

“I don’t want my students getting into gun fights,” he told me at the time, while checking me out on a shotgun at a firing range.

The Pink Pistols were formed in 2000, back when you-know-who was president.

You forgot? Democrat Bill Clinton.

It is true gays are often targeted by bullies, and worse, which is why the Pink Pistols urges gays to arm themselves for self-defense. If you are looking for a single factor that led to the creation of the Pink Pistols, it was not a who, but a what — the June 2016 mass murder in Pulse, a gay  nightclub.

The Inquirer story connected rising gay gun sales  to fear of Republicans, and that is the confirmation bias. It is finding facts to support your beliefs. But do you know who actually drove gun sales through the roof?

A Democrat.

Barack Obama was humorously referred to as the greatest gun salesman of all time because guns flew off the shelves after he was elected.

Why?

Those who wanted to own guns feared he would somehow ban them. That drove demand.

In the last decade, gun sales have made great strides among those who did not own in the past — racial minorities, and women.

Why?

Fear sparked by a rising crime rate, not  by Republicans.

Because of what it is — anti-gun and anti-Republican — the Inquirer found a smattering of people who would blame who the newspaper wanted to have blamed — Trump and Republicans.

As usual, the truth is more complicated.

A lot of people buy guns, for a lot of reasons. Gallup reports 44% of American households have guns. Over the years, the reason for gun ownership has moved from hunting to self-defense, not hate.

And even liberals are buying them. And that’s a fact.