My Take | How America fetishises the Second Amendment on gun ownership
- Americans have their share of racists and extremists, as do most other people. The real difference is that most of them can legally buy the AR-15 rifle and other deadly weapons while the rest of the world cannot
The headline numbers cannot be starker. About one in three (32 per cent) adult Americans agree that some politicians are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains. And 29 per cent think an increase in immigration is leading to native-born Americans losing economic, political, and cultural influence.
The survey, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago, was carried out after Payton Gendron, 18, killed 10 people, most of them black, at a supermarket in Buffalo this month.
Investigators tracing his online activities have found him frequenting sites about guns, white supremacy and what is called white replacement theory. The theory is often described as conspiratorial, with its advocates believing the white race is being replaced demographically in Europe and America, or across Christian civilisation in general. It has also been described as “white genocide”.
The AP-NORC survey has attracted national attention in the United States precisely because many Americans seem to believe some versions of the theory that reportedly drove Gendron to target his victims.
The two headline numbers cited above, as the survey says, “tap into the core arguments of replacement theory, a decades-old idea, which posits that there is a group of powerful people in this country who are trying to permanently alter the culture and voting strength of native-born Americans by bringing in large groups of immigrants – the study indicates about one in five (17 per cent) adults agree with both of these central tenets”.
The same survey also discloses something else that is interesting. While most US politicians claim immigrants come to America for its freedom and democracy, most Americans in the survey “cite a lack of economic opportunity (93 per cent), poverty (92 per cent) and violent crime (91 per cent) as motivating factors for why immigrants leave their country, while just two-thirds cite the impacts of climate change”.
