Very interesting, especially when you consider the source.
When I started blogging, the numbers given were about a third of all households owning guns, a significant number and yet treated as a miniscule minority. But ours was and still is a war of attrition which led and still leads to results.
And a friend in Facebook made an interesting comment :
I wonder if actual ownership numbers are rising or folks are just more willing to admit it.
We have known that the reported number is low anyway.
I mean we see record nics check numbers time after time but that can be for a few reasons
I am old school and I figure there are a boatload lot of gun owners who are the same way when it comes to answer polls about guns: “Guns? What Guns? I know nothing. have none.” I may be ready to admit I may have some old flintlock relic left by grandpappy in the cellar, but I still do not trust anybody, especially the old media when they ask me anything. I believe that the numbers reflect a mix of my generation finally admitting gun ownership and a great number of new and younger owners who came about without being stigmatized and threatened about being a gun owner.
Maybe I should answer any future polls with: ” How many guns? More that the Government want me to have and less than I want to have.”
I have been partially polled by phone once. There are VERY few questions I will answer — I’ve hung up on several other calls. When it came to guns I simply didn’t respond. Dead air. “Well, thank you sir for your participation.” Dead air. Wonder what they recorded as my response.
My thoughts ran on similar lines when I heard about the survey.
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If we posit that people are more likely to claim they don’t own a gun (or live with a gun owner) when in fact they do, versus the opposite, then that percentage is a floor, not a ceiling.
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Also consider that the generations who think nothing of putting their entire lives online for public scrutiny are increasingly part of the poll base. I think it’s not so much stigma as having no sense of privacy or boundaries. But then I’m an OFWGWAG.
No one I know currently, or have known over many years, ever tells the truth about firearms ownership. Never! So yes, the actual truth about American Gun Ownership is far, far, greater than anyone will ever be able to know………until it is time to be made known.
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It’s on a “Need to Know” basis and right now, I’ve determined you don’t need to know. But if an answer is required to comply, “No, I don’t own a gun!”
As I like to put it, “I don’t have ‘a’ gun” (as in one singular).
… and over the phone it’s a lot easier to make that response with a straight face… 🙂
So…
It is no longer just a handful of folks buying all the guns?
(As if anyone actually believed that crap? Seriously MSM? There are 20 Million NICS checks a month since 2008 and you wanted the nation to believe less people were buying guns???)
The pollsters could ask ‘have you ever had a tragic boating accident?’
Damn it! Don’t force me to answer that! LOL
Welp…. As per this awesome blog- as of August this year since December 2012 there have been 330,660,xxx NICS checks…..do the math… that almost the entire US population… so ya, not many are telling polls the truth. Its a good thing.