Montana now has the distinction of having the highest percentage of gun ownership in the country!1 Yahoo!! It’s nice to be number one in something. In one of the articles I read discussing this statistic, the author tried to make the correlation between the lack of mass shootings in Montana and the high percentage of gun ownership. Really?
I think that is quite a stretch. There are quite probably a whole host of other factors as to why Montana is not subject to the mass shootings that seem to happen in many other states. First of all, Montana is the 4th largest state in the union by land area. And in this ‘Big Sky’ country there are just over 1 million people. The population density of Montana is 6.8 people/square mile which ranks it 48th out of 50 states.
There are not a lot of people who live here and they are widely spread out. So, who does live in Montana? Montana is primarily white. It is a very homogeneous population. Eighty-six percent (86%) of the population is white! Six percent (6%) of the population is Native American. [ Those figures were probably reversed about 150 years ago before the white settlers came and slaughtered the Native Americans and stole their land!] Only 3.8% of the population is Hispanic and other non-white minorities make the difference. Only 2.16% of the population is foreign born. The fact is, Montana is as about as homogeneous a population as you will find anywhere in the country.
Many of the mass shootings that have occurred in this country have been driven by racial/ethic hatred of one kind or another. Here in Montana, there just aren’t large populations of people to hate!! That is probably a better explanation of why there are so few mass shootings here rather than the argument that the state is flooded with firearms.
One of the arguments that is often used for the proliferation of guns here and the push by the state legislature to allow concealed carry without a permit is for ‘self-defense.’ My question is, “Who are Montanans supposed to be so afraid of that carrying weapons is required for ‘self-defense’? Other white guys with guns? The argument makes zero sense in this state.
The one statistic that the gun lobby does not like to talk about however is the fact that Montana has one of the highest suicide rates in the nation. I think we currently rank third in the nation but we have been in the top 5 for the last 30 years!3 Over 60% of those suicides are by firearms! I haven’t done the statistical analysis but my guess is there is a stronger correlation between the widespread ownership of firearms and the high suicide rate than there is between the high number of firearms and the lack of mass shootings.
It is a given that a lot of Montanans hunt and that certainly accounts for some percentage of the firearms in the state. However, the whole argument about Montanans needing guns for self-defense is ridiculous. I ask again – from whom do we need to be protected? The gun lobby works very hard to develop this culture of fear so people will buy more guns! The more fear – the more guns they sell. And not just any guns, tons of assault rifles. If you walk into any sporting goods store here, it looks like a National Guard armory – seriously. It’s just business and it has nothing to do with reality. Create fear – sell guns!
The fact is, the only thing most Montanans need to be afraid of is hot-headed, drunk white guys with guns and a state legislature that is hell bent on stripping rights away from its citizens and retaining power at all costs.