The population of the US according to the US Census Bureau is 321,418,820 (April 2015.) Almost 25% of those are under 18 years of age (about 87.5 million) so that leaves an adult population of almost 234 million. Three percent of that numbers comes about 7 million people who allegedly owns half of an estimated 350,000,000 firearms or about 25 firearms per person, not the 17 they proclaim.
I know there are some seriously engaged gun owners with the capital to own 25 or more firearms, but seven million? Nah. And then comes the interesting question of how did the “researchers” got their data since 45 states do not demand gun owners to register their weapons. How can you make a serious study of gun ownership if you are missing 90% of the data?
Answer: They are making stuff up. Well, they call it approximation or some other statistical mumbo-jumbo. They are not even guessing.
And according to Gallup, Gun ownership at home is at 41%, not the 22% the study boasts.
But why the lie? Because (as I predicted) Gun Control has all but disappeared from the Presidential Race and the Gun Control Groups suddenly have become irrelevant in the presidential process. They need somehow to boost the morale of its members and supporting these “studies” is a way of doing so.
Screw them.
Also, you should look at that drop in the Gallup numbers, from 51% in 1993 down to 38% in 1996. If you do the math, a drop in household that own guns that large would have resulted in something like between 45 and 50 *MILLION* guns just disappearing in those 3 short years. That’s not credible, especially not at a time when manufacturers were selling record numbers of new guns. So what can explain that? Well there were a bunch of things going on politically during that time period, like the Brady Act and Assault Weapons ban that could have made gun owners less willing to report gun ownership to a stranger.
It’s my theory that the number had been in the high 40’s/low 50’s all along, it’s just that the increasing calls for more gun control during the 1990’s, especially during the Clinton administration, made gun owners more wary of saying they own guns.
Agree that gun ownership is underreported in these surveys, and we also see some wild annual fluctuations in self-reported gun ownership from year to year.
But more generally a declining rate of household gun ownership can go along with an increase in the total number of guns if each gun owning household owns more guns. From what I see around me, I see alot of households owning more and more guns.
I concur. I’ve noticed the same thing with other national gun ownership surveys that show pretty much the same thing. The attitude of not disclosing you are a gun owner, while on the way to the range, is pretty common.
The truth is that we don’t know how many guns there are in the US and what percentage of individuals own them. And many don’t care. As someone who is interested to know the answers to these questions, I was interested to see this study teased on The Trace and The Guardian. I was also sorry to see the study teased on The Trace and The Guardian, because that alone will discredit the study in the eyes of many.
Also not helpful is the fact that the CSGV misrepresented the findings of the study in the post you copy here. The study says that 22% of individuals not households own guns. You are correct that the percentage of households owning guns is probably at least 40% and may be as high as 50% – as it has long been.
The issue of the concentration of guns in the hands of a small percentage of people seems unsurprising to me, and so I think your objection is misplaced. The finding that the average gun owning home owns 5 guns seems reasonable to me, as does the fact that a subset of those homes have a s&*$ ton of guns. Remember you posted in May about the divorce auction of the guy who had nearly 300 guns? And there is Jeffrey Alan Lash in Pacific Pallisades who had nearly 1,200? And how many other people do you know who have dozens of guns? It’s not that hard to do as I’ve observed before: https://gunculture2point0.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/how-many-americans-have-arsenals-at-home/
There is probably some growth in the number of people who grew up without guns who are becoming gun owners, but many of these are surely offset by the aging out (i.e., death) of those who were gun owners and did not pass that along to their kids. And so as the total number of guns in the United States grows, they will also be more concentrated in the hands of a subset of all gun owners.
So, much of the actual study seems uncontroversial to me, even if CSGV cannot accurately represent it and the authors reveal their bias in who they gave special access to the findings to.
Absent data, that’s all nothing but speculation. Perhaps reasonable speculation, but speculation nonetheless.
I am fine with reasonable, methodical, intelligent speculation. In many cases, that’s all we have. Come to think of it, the whole law of self defense seminar is based in reasonable speculation.
The poll data is pretty much garbage. Really all we have to go by is anecdotal evidence.
As for my anecdotal evidence? In the last year alone I know 3 households that went from non gun owning to gun owning, and over a dozen adults from gun owning households who graduated to owning “their own”. I have assisted with many of those conversions, and I am just a hobbyist. I have also assisted with 4 new carry permits in a little over a year. If you poll the store owners (or just chat like I do) you will find most mention a larger percentage of their clientele are new owners (those of us already eyeball deep into the hobby typically go the cheaper private transfer route, unless we really want a NiB piece for ourselves). Well more that %50 of people I actually know (not counting acquaintances who I know little about, but counting people like coworkers who I spend a lot of time with) own firearms, but I know for a fact that is not representative since I am selective in the people I hang out with.
Is anecdotal evidence accurate? Probably not. Is it more accurate than poll data on a sensitive and politically charged topic? My money says yes, but I won’t give you very good odds since it is so hard to tell.
They pull those garbage numbers every few years. Each and every time they take the lowest ‘household’ estimates they can find, ignoring multiple adult households, the increases of single adult households, and population variations. Example. Between my and my inlaws’ ‘households’ have numerous firearms and 4 adult firearm owners.
The content of that article reads like something from RealUltimatePower.com.
*realultimatepower.net. I haven’t been there in a while.
Guns? Who owns guns? None of us do. I only have those stickers on my truck because I think they look cool.
Guns? I don’t own any guns. If I owned guns, I would put that on my Doctor’s health screening form, and answer the polls that way. The carry permit is just an additional ID, just like the US Passport. Can’t have too many IDs, can you? NRA? What can you say, I’m a joiner.
No, no, I don’t own any guns.
WOW, I’m part of the 3% ! !
Proud to be a member and to show my member to anyone who don’t wanna own black guns.
well…
if you include all the stripped lowers I have, I’m over the mark.
if you exclude the ones that don’t have uppers yet, i’m under it.
either way, I need to buy some uppers. 😀
Sad to report these studies are being reported as fact by my local news station.
Lemme guess, they also reported that Hillary was fine and she was honest.