Lost in the furor of multiple breaking scandals in Washington, D.C. (Benghazi, IRS and USDOJ) is a new federal crime report which completely debunks the “War on Guns” being waged by U.S. President Barack Obama and his left leaning allies.
Published last week, the report reveals a broad decline in firearm-related homicides from 1993 to 2011 – the last year for which data is available.
“There were 11,101 firearm homicides in 2011, down by 39 (percent) from a high of 18,253 in 1993,” the report notes.
Down even more substantially were non-fatal firearm crimes, which plummeted “from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 victimizations in 2011.”
A separate report issued by the Pew Research Center reinforced these findings.
“The firearm homicide rate was 49 percent lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew,” the Pew report revealed. “The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75 percent lower in 2011 than in 1993.”
Of course the Pew report included a telling statistic as it relates to the public opinion war that’s being waged against gun ownership.
“Most Americans are unaware that gun crime is lower today than it was two decades ago,” the report found. “Today 56 percent of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12 percent think it is lower.”
Thank you, pandering politicians and left-leaning mainstream media …
Here’s the thing: Even if crime states were through the roof and expanded gun ownership were a facilitator of that trend as opposed to a deterrent, it wouldn’t matter – there is still but one law of the land related to gun ownership.
But that’s not how it works. As it turns out, the right to bear arms is more than just a fundamental liberty and essential check against tyranny, it is also a key driver of lower crime rates.
USDOJ: FIREARM VIOLENCE, 1993-2011 (.pdf)
***
66 comments
Yeah, the gubmnet is totally trying to take your guns away. With absolutely no attempts to do so. But keep on keepin’ on that crazy train, bro. Maybe you’ll get off some day.
I guess in your world, an attempt doesn’t count until they have your guns locked away or destroyed, already. Useful idiots were bleating a while back that 0bama hadn’t tried to pass any gun laws….yet. Others and myself countered that just because he hadn’t, doesn’t in any way mean that he will not. He did attempt to and is still trying.
Meanwhile, while he wishes to ban numerous guns, require background checks on private transactions (which should be just that, private), ratify UN small arms treaties and the like, I guess in your world, we should just sit down, watch, and let it all happen, before we speak out about it.
He still hasn’t done much of anything other than support a few measures, some of which we have had in the past. The right made up all kinds of bullshit that he was going to do, serial numbers on bullets, an ammo tax, gun registration, confiscation via civilian task forces… There was a shitload of hype behind Obama being some brutal dictator who was going to do horrible things when in reality he did nothing out of the ordinary for a Democrat. He literally did fuck-all when he had majorities in both chambers, that says a lot.
Obama gets too much shit for that stuff, yes he supported an assault weapons ban, but that was pretty much the worst of it. No one is taking our guns, just paranoid gun nuts taking all the ammo trying to stock up for whatever tin foil hat revolution is on the horizon.
Sounds like you need a few rounds of fun and relaxation:
Shooter’s Choice
944 Sunset Boulevard
(803) 791-5498
Go,get ’em,Tiger…
“ratify UN small arms treaties and the like”
When you type lines like this, is there a tinfoil hat on your head?
11,101…not bad at all.
11,101…not bad at all.
A lot of bad news coincided w/ the democrats’ big loss in SC-1…when Clyburn told them they had already won it…
Liberalism is a false doctrine that eventually collapses on itself. That is happeneing…for the sake of freedom, and our country, we MUST make sure we damage Obama and the left ALL we can…while the gettin’ is good…and beleive me…it’s GOOD right now…
If you are an American, go for the Jugular…and encourage your GOP Congressman to keep his/her boot on the neck, like Obama wants to do to US Busniesses…Republicans in the House are doigna GREAT job smacking Obama down….
First, there are fewer individuals/households that own guns. The people who have guns have more, but the notion that there’s an expansion of gun ownership is demonstrably false.
Second, to say that said expansion of gun ownership, which is false, is the reason gun related murders are down is a hell of a stretch and based on what? Nothing. You’re talking out of your ass.
Third, you’re suggesting what here? That this is just the right number of deaths? Cool. Problem solved.
Lastly, there’s no “war on guns.” They tried to expand background checks to cover a loophole. It’s supported by 91 percent of Americans. But by all means, continue to throw in with the cranks and the paranoid fringe. It’s a winning strategy.
Nancy, is that you?
As further proof that Gallup is once again an outlier, here’s what Pew found:
Why Own a Gun? Protection Is Now Top Reason
Perspectives of Gun Owners, Non-Owners
SECTION 3: GUN OWNERSHIP TRENDS AND DEMOGRAPHICS
There is no definitive data source from the government or elsewhere on how many Americans own guns or how gun ownership rates have changed over time. Also, public opinion surveys provide conflicting results: Some show a decline in the number of households with guns, but another does not.
The General Social Survey (GSS), conducted roughly every two years by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, with principal funding from the National Science Foundation, provides a widely-used look at the rate of gun ownership over time. The GSS data show a substantial decline in the shares of both households and individuals with guns. When the GSS first asked about gun ownership in 1973, 49% reported having a gun or revolver in their home or garage. In 2012, 34% said they had a gun in their home or garage. When the survey first asked about personal gun ownership in 1980, 29% said a gun in their home personally belonged to them. This stands at 22% in the 2012 GSS survey.
The Pew Research Center has tracked gun ownership since 1993, and our surveys largely confirm the General Social Survey trend. In our December 1993 survey, 45% reported having a gun in their household; in early 1994, the GSS found 44% saying they had a gun in their home. A January 2013 Pew Research Center survey found 33% saying they had a gun, rifle or pistol in their home, as did 34% in the 2012 wave of the General Social Survey.
The Gallup Organization has been tracking gun ownership in their surveys over this time period as well, but their trend suggests no consistent decline. A Gallup survey in May 1972 found 43% reporting having a gun in their home. The percentage subsequently fluctuated a great deal, reaching a high of 51% in 1993 and a low of 34% in 1999 – but the percentage saying they had a gun in their home last year was the same as it was 40 years earlier (43%).
First – you’re on crack. Self reported gun ownership is at a 15 year high
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150353/self-reported-gun-ownership-highest-1993.aspx
Your second assertion is defeated by it’s reference to your first false premise.
And third, there is ample evidence that in communities where gun ownership is prevalent, violent crime is reduced. Kennesaw, Georgia experienced a 50% reduction in crime from 1982-2005 after passing a law mandating gun ownership. Several studies have attempted to refute the relationship of the gun law to the reduction in crime but none have been able to explain the drop in any other reasonable way.
Finally, there’s no “war on guns” or any news agencies who disagree in any way with the White House, or groups who oppose the growing impact of big brother on personal liberty – oh, wait:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/kmov-anchor-the-irs-is-targeting-me-163945.html
http://news.yahoo.com/top-irs-official-didnt-reveal-tea-party-targeting-000016562.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/scandal-plagued-washington-lawmaker-struggles-keep-track-issues-175311063.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/obama-loses-battle-gun-control-war-article-1.1319835
While my other post is waiting to be moderated by fits, you can read what the most recent polling says, Bubba. It’s damn miracle you people can’t use google.
“Gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions.
The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.
The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times.
In 2012, the share of American households with guns was 34 percent, according to survey results released on Thursday. Researchers said the difference compared with 2010, when the rate was 32 percent, was not statistically significant.
The findings contrast with the impression left by a flurry of news reports about people rushing to buy guns and clearing shop shelves of assault rifles after the massacre last year at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
“There are all these claims that gun ownership is going through the roof,” said Daniel Webster, the director of theJohns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “But I suspect the increase in gun sales has been limited mostly to current gun owners. The most reputable surveys show a decline over time in the share of households with guns.”
That decline, which has been studied by researchers for years but is relatively unknown among the general public, suggests that even as the conversation on guns remains contentious, a broad shift away from gun ownership is under way in a growing number of American homes. It also raises questions about the future politics of gun control. Will efforts to regulate guns eventually meet with less resistance if they are increasingly concentrated in fewer hands — or more resistance?
Detailed data on gun ownership is scarce. Though some states reported household gun ownership rates in the 1990s, it was not until the early 2000s that questions on the presence of guns at home were asked on a broad federal public health survey of several hundred thousand people, making it possible to see the rates in all states.
But by the mid-2000s, the federal government stopped asking the questions, leaving researchers to rely on much smaller surveys, like the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC, a research center at the University of Chicago.
Measuring the level of gun ownership can be a vexing problem, with various recent national polls reporting rates between 35 percent and 52 percent. Responses can vary because the survey designs and the wording of questions differ.
But researchers say the survey done by the center at the University of Chicago is crucial because it has consistently tracked gun ownership since 1973, asking if respondents “happen to have in your home (or garage) any guns or revolvers.”
The center’s 2012 survey, conducted mostly in person but also by phone, involved interviews with about 2,000 people from March to September and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Gallup, which asks a similar question but has a different survey design, shows a higher ownership rate and a more moderate decrease. No national survey tracks the number of guns within households.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said he was skeptical that there had been a decline in household ownership. He pointed to reports of increased gun sales, to long waits for gun safety training classes and to the growing number of background checks, which have surged since the late 1990s, as evidence that ownership is rising.
“I’m sure there are a lot of people who would love to make the case that there are fewer gun owners in this country, but the stories we’ve been hearing and the data we’ve been seeing simply don’t support that,” he said.
Tom W. Smith, the director of the General Social Survey, which is financed by the National Science Foundation, said he was confident in the trend. It lines up, he said, with two evolving patterns in American life: the decline of hunting and a sharp drop in violent crime, which has made the argument for self-protection much less urgent.
According to an analysis of the survey, only a quarter of men in 2012 said they hunted, compared with about 40 percent when the question was asked in 1977.
Mr. Smith acknowledged the rise in background checks, but said it was impossible to tell how many were for new gun owners. The checks are reported as one total that includes, for example, people buying their second or third gun, as well as those renewing concealed carry permits.
“If there was a national registry that recorded all firearm purchases, we’d have a full picture,” he said. “But there’s not, so we’ve got to put together pieces.”
The survey does not ask about the legality of guns in the home. Illegal guns are a factor in some areas but represent a very small fraction of ownership in the country, said Aaron Karp, an expert on gun policy at the Small Arms Survey in Geneva and at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. He said estimates of the total number of guns in the United States ranged from 280 million to 320 million.
The geographic patterns were some of the most surprising in the General Social Survey, researchers said. Gun ownership in both the South and the mountain region, which includes states like Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming, dropped to less than 40 percent of households this decade, down from 65 percent in the 1970s. The Northeast, where the household ownership rate is lowest, changed the least, at 22 percent this decade, compared with 29 percent in the 1970s.
Age groups presented another twist. While household ownership of guns among elderly Americans remained virtually unchanged from the 1970s to this decade at about 43 percent, ownership among young Americans plummeted. Household gun ownership among Americans under the age of 30 fell to 23 percent.”
Also try explaining how states with the most permissive gun laws have the highest murder rates. And the region (South) with the most lenient gun laws have the highest murder rates and the one with the most restrictive (Northeast) has the lowest.
Nice try, Bubba. Go take another long toke off that Fox News pipe.
I gave you the link that proves your premise wrong, i assumed you could figure out how to click on it instead of posting an entire article that summarizessseveral polls in a manner that suits the author.
Oh boy that’s funny. Of course, it’s a conspiracy to parse the polls in a way that “suits the author.” Forget the methodology, you don’t bother to look at the poll or the aggregate of the polling on the subject. Nope. You immediately dismiss the polling as political. Instead you cite Gallup, the people that brought us daily tracking polling that had Mitt Romney wiping the floor with Obama. How’d that work out? Gallup’s polling is so flawed they’ve decided to go back to formula:
“After misreading the 2012 presidential election and facing criticism in the aftermath, Gallup polling has undertaken an internal review and will announce the findings next month.
“We are in the process of finishing a full review of all methodological issues relating to our 2012 election polling. The process is being led by a blue-ribbon group of outside experts. We will be reporting our findings at an event on June 4 at our offices in Washington,” Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport told POLITICO’s Mike Allen.”
Man, you guys are a hoot. Maybe you can get them to restart “unskewed polls.”
I’m not analyzing the polls – I’m simply telling you that gun ownership is higher not lower – that’s what the numbers said in 2011.
And yet the the people who have been monitoring this trend the longest say the opposite. And so do the people at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. But hey, you got a poll from Gallup in 2011. Any other information isn’t pertinent as it doesn’t conform with what you already believe to be true.
And again, hang your hat on Gallup. They’re doing exceptional work these days. How’s President Romney doing?
*snort*
Gun ownership doesn’t necessarily reflect a change in the number of gun deaths by crime. Gun deaths by negligence are affected by the number of negligent morons who go out and buy guns without taking the responsibility that comes with owning one. Reactionary legislation to restrict rights of responsible, law-abiding citizens punishes the people who are not part of the problem the most.
No one is saying that there is an “acceptable number” of gun deaths, no more than people are saying there’s an “acceptable number” of cancer victims in a given year. That doesn’t change the statistics. The statistics show a drop in these kinds of deaths, we merely don’t notice it because of the rash of crazies shooting up various places in a pretty narrow time period, which is the only reason gun control is being proposed in the first place. Previous to these tragic events, the only murmurs were conspiracy theories and the bill that Obama signed allowing concealed carry in national parks.
There isn’t a “war on guns,” but there is a lot of talk about regulations that are not necessary and won’t feasibly lower the risks of violent shootouts by crazed individuals, nor lower the death tolls of those shootouts.
The “gun show loophole” was not going to be closed in an acceptable manner. There is no legal way for a NORP to ring up NICS and have a background check done on a potential buyer, they have to pay someone who is licensed to do it for them. Closing this “loophole” pretty much guarantees you have to pay around $100 just to try and sell your firearm to an individual, and if the background check comes back bad, have fun spending more money. The “loophole” is an exception to allow people who are not in the business of selling firearms to be able to sell the ones they own directly to another individual without cumbersome requirements that the individual themselves has no access to.
There were also other concerns regarding merely lending your gun to a family member or friend becoming potentially illegal in regards to the bill, concerns which were ultimately resolved in a later draft of the legislation, but it gives a good illustration that the bill wasn’t necessarily completely thought out. If there were a system that a normal citizen could utilize to perform these checks, was just as quick in response time, and was just as accurate, it would be more acceptable to expect a private seller to perform a background check.
“Reactionary legislation to restrict rights of responsible, law-abiding citizens”
You’re saying that expanding background checks equals “Reactionary legislation to restrict rights of responsible, law-abiding citizens”?
Gotcha. Guess what looks like an entirely common-sense and widely popular effort is reactionary. The tyranny of five minutes of paperwork.
‘Men Who Love Guns Too Much’.A must-read for the smirking monkey face;-)
Never had a gun.Don’t need or want one.There’s plenty of food at the grocery store.
Okay here’s a newer poll. in 2011 self reported gun ownership is at he highest point since 1995. The real number is estimated to be 10+ points higher since many are reluctant to answer the question at all. Note the down turn in 2012 – the rash of shootings nationwide made gun ownership politically unpopular again – yet we are experiencing record sales nationwide. Permit classes are booked for months and you assert that gun ownership is going down?!?
Man, that Gallup poll is your hobgoblin. And then you throw in lines like “real number is estimated to be 10+ points higher since many are reluctant to answer the question at all” with absolutely no empirical evidence to substantiate it.
So let’s give your argument a look after watching you post the same things over and over again: One poll from a pollster that had to bring in outside consultants to fix their methodology after they’ve failed consistently in recent elections. Check. Totally ignoring all polls and evidence that undermine your argument. Check. A bunch of unsubstantiated caveats that are thrown out with certainty but no statistical evidence. Check. And some nonsense about “political correctness” that is so inane I can’t believe I’m commenting on it. Check. An earlier argument that gun ownership is the causation of lower murder rates but only one anecdote about Kennesaw, GA as evidence of said causation. Check. Then ignore the fact that states/regions with the highest murder rates have the most permissive gun laws, including conceal carry. Check.
Go back to bed.
You’re on crack – in 2005, the highest gun murders per capita was 35.4/100.000 in Washington DC where private gun ownership was very nearly outlawed unless you were a member of the political elite.
Chicago had more than 500 murders with guns in 2012 and this year is on pace to break that number. Chicago is still one of the most gun restrictive cities in the US. On the other hand Houston’s rate is 2/3rds of Chicago’s even though there are far more lawful gun owners who carry daily and an even more abundant drug/gang problem.
Since you’re big on cutting and pasting whole articles, I thought I’d give you part of one:
“…But those statements, supposedly based on the latest data from the (mostly biannual) General Social Survey from the National Opinion Research Center, are misleading. The above chart posted below) shows what percentage of a sample of Americans, asked if there was a gun in their household, said “yes.” The proportion of households with guns has fallen from a high of over 50% in the 1970s, but since 1998, it has held steady, fluctuating between 37% and 32%. The figure for 2012 was 34%.
The number of respondents to the question ranges from less than 1,000 to around 2,000, meaning that the margin of error is roughly 2% to 3% in either direction. In other words, the data for the past 15 years show no statistically significant variation. “It’s been essentially flat” over that period, Tom Smith, director of the GSS, told Quartz. A close statistical analysis of the data, he says, might not show a perfectly constant level of ownership, “but substantively you can conclude there’s been minimal further decline.”
Note the difference in the answer – in 2011, 47% of homes reported owning guns – for the period 1995 to 2011, the highest period was 2011 at 47% – do you think the guns in the self reported numbers magically disappeared in 1993? No, it became politically incorrect to own guns so people simply said they didn’t.
Yeah, ownership is down – let’s look at what the gun sales numbers show. This chart is the background checks by year for the last 12 years. I’m sure that some of these are going to current firearms owners but there’s no way the real number of gun owners is in decline. Over a million guns were sold in March of 2012 alone. You think Big T has them all?
First, there are fewer individuals/households that own guns. The people who have guns have more, but the notion that there’s an expansion of gun ownership is demonstrably false.
Second, to say that said expansion of gun ownership, which is false, is the reason gun related murders are down is a hell of a stretch and based on what? Nothing. You’re talking out of your ass.
Third, you’re suggesting what here? That this is just the right number of deaths? Cool. Problem solved.
Lastly, there’s no “war on guns.” They tried to expand background checks to cover a loophole. It’s supported by 91 percent of Americans. But by all means, continue to throw in with the cranks and the paranoid fringe. It’s a winning strategy.
Nancy, is that you?
As further proof that Gallup is once again an outlier, here’s what Pew found:
Why Own a Gun? Protection Is Now Top Reason
Perspectives of Gun Owners, Non-Owners
SECTION 3: GUN OWNERSHIP TRENDS AND DEMOGRAPHICS
There is no definitive data source from the government or elsewhere on how many Americans own guns or how gun ownership rates have changed over time. Also, public opinion surveys provide conflicting results: Some show a decline in the number of households with guns, but another does not.
The General Social Survey (GSS), conducted roughly every two years by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, with principal funding from the National Science Foundation, provides a widely-used look at the rate of gun ownership over time. The GSS data show a substantial decline in the shares of both households and individuals with guns. When the GSS first asked about gun ownership in 1973, 49% reported having a gun or revolver in their home or garage. In 2012, 34% said they had a gun in their home or garage. When the survey first asked about personal gun ownership in 1980, 29% said a gun in their home personally belonged to them. This stands at 22% in the 2012 GSS survey.
The Pew Research Center has tracked gun ownership since 1993, and our surveys largely confirm the General Social Survey trend. In our December 1993 survey, 45% reported having a gun in their household; in early 1994, the GSS found 44% saying they had a gun in their home. A January 2013 Pew Research Center survey found 33% saying they had a gun, rifle or pistol in their home, as did 34% in the 2012 wave of the General Social Survey.
The Gallup Organization has been tracking gun ownership in their surveys over this time period as well, but their trend suggests no consistent decline. A Gallup survey in May 1972 found 43% reporting having a gun in their home. The percentage subsequently fluctuated a great deal, reaching a high of 51% in 1993 and a low of 34% in 1999 – but the percentage saying they had a gun in their home last year was the same as it was 40 years earlier (43%).
First – you’re on crack. Self reported gun ownership is at a 15 year high. (The real number is generally considered to be much higher)
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150353/self-reported-gun-ownership-highest-1993.aspx
Your second assertion is defeated by it’s reference to your first false premise.
And third, there is ample evidence that in communities where lawful gun ownership is prevalent, violent crime is reduced. Kennesaw, Georgia experienced a 50% reduction in crime from 1982-2005 after passing a law mandating gun ownership. Several studies have attempted to refute the relationship of the gun law to the reduction in crime but none have been able to explain the drop in any other reasonable way.
Finally, there’s no “war on guns” or any news agencies who disagree in any way with the White House, or groups who oppose the growing impact of big brother on personal liberty – oh, wait:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2013/05/kmov-anchor-the-irs-is-targeting-me-163945.html
http://news.yahoo.com/top-irs-official-didnt-reveal-tea-party-targeting-000016562.html
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/scandal-plagued-washington-lawmaker-struggles-keep-track-issues-175311063.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/obama-loses-battle-gun-control-war-article-1.1319835
While my other post is waiting to be moderated by fits, you can read what the most recent polling says, Bubba. It’s damn miracle you people can’t use google.
“Gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions.
The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.
The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times.
In 2012, the share of American households with guns was 34 percent, according to survey results released on Thursday. Researchers said the difference compared with 2010, when the rate was 32 percent, was not statistically significant.
The findings contrast with the impression left by a flurry of news reports about people rushing to buy guns and clearing shop shelves of assault rifles after the massacre last year at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
“There are all these claims that gun ownership is going through the roof,” said Daniel Webster, the director of theJohns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “But I suspect the increase in gun sales has been limited mostly to current gun owners. The most reputable surveys show a decline over time in the share of households with guns.”
That decline, which has been studied by researchers for years but is relatively unknown among the general public, suggests that even as the conversation on guns remains contentious, a broad shift away from gun ownership is under way in a growing number of American homes. It also raises questions about the future politics of gun control. Will efforts to regulate guns eventually meet with less resistance if they are increasingly concentrated in fewer hands — or more resistance?
Detailed data on gun ownership is scarce. Though some states reported household gun ownership rates in the 1990s, it was not until the early 2000s that questions on the presence of guns at home were asked on a broad federal public health survey of several hundred thousand people, making it possible to see the rates in all states.
But by the mid-2000s, the federal government stopped asking the questions, leaving researchers to rely on much smaller surveys, like the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC, a research center at the University of Chicago.
Measuring the level of gun ownership can be a vexing problem, with various recent national polls reporting rates between 35 percent and 52 percent. Responses can vary because the survey designs and the wording of questions differ.
But researchers say the survey done by the center at the University of Chicago is crucial because it has consistently tracked gun ownership since 1973, asking if respondents “happen to have in your home (or garage) any guns or revolvers.”
The center’s 2012 survey, conducted mostly in person but also by phone, involved interviews with about 2,000 people from March to September and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Gallup, which asks a similar question but has a different survey design, shows a higher ownership rate and a more moderate decrease. No national survey tracks the number of guns within households.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said he was skeptical that there had been a decline in household ownership. He pointed to reports of increased gun sales, to long waits for gun safety training classes and to the growing number of background checks, which have surged since the late 1990s, as evidence that ownership is rising.
“I’m sure there are a lot of people who would love to make the case that there are fewer gun owners in this country, but the stories we’ve been hearing and the data we’ve been seeing simply don’t support that,” he said.
Tom W. Smith, the director of the General Social Survey, which is financed by the National Science Foundation, said he was confident in the trend. It lines up, he said, with two evolving patterns in American life: the decline of hunting and a sharp drop in violent crime, which has made the argument for self-protection much less urgent.
According to an analysis of the survey, only a quarter of men in 2012 said they hunted, compared with about 40 percent when the question was asked in 1977.
Mr. Smith acknowledged the rise in background checks, but said it was impossible to tell how many were for new gun owners. The checks are reported as one total that includes, for example, people buying their second or third gun, as well as those renewing concealed carry permits.
“If there was a national registry that recorded all firearm purchases, we’d have a full picture,” he said. “But there’s not, so we’ve got to put together pieces.”
The survey does not ask about the legality of guns in the home. Illegal guns are a factor in some areas but represent a very small fraction of ownership in the country, said Aaron Karp, an expert on gun policy at the Small Arms Survey in Geneva and at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. He said estimates of the total number of guns in the United States ranged from 280 million to 320 million.
The geographic patterns were some of the most surprising in the General Social Survey, researchers said. Gun ownership in both the South and the mountain region, which includes states like Montana, New Mexico and Wyoming, dropped to less than 40 percent of households this decade, down from 65 percent in the 1970s. The Northeast, where the household ownership rate is lowest, changed the least, at 22 percent this decade, compared with 29 percent in the 1970s.
Age groups presented another twist. While household ownership of guns among elderly Americans remained virtually unchanged from the 1970s to this decade at about 43 percent, ownership among young Americans plummeted. Household gun ownership among Americans under the age of 30 fell to 23 percent.”
Also try explaining how states with the most permissive gun laws have the highest murder rates. And the region (South) with the most lenient gun laws have the highest murder rates and the one with the most restrictive (Northeast) has the lowest.
Nice try, Bubba. Go take another long toke off that Fox News pipe.
I gave you the link that proves your premise wrong, i assumed you could figure out how to click on it instead of posting an entire article that summarize several polls in a manner that suits the author.
Oh boy that’s funny. Of course, it’s a conspiracy to parse the polls in a way that “suits the author.” Forget the methodology, you don’t bother to look at the poll or the aggregate of the polling on the subject. Nope. You immediately dismiss the polling as political. Instead you cite Gallup, the people that brought us daily tracking polling that had Mitt Romney wiping the floor with Obama. How’d that work out? Gallup’s polling is so flawed they’ve decided to go back to formula:
“After misreading the 2012 presidential election and facing criticism in the aftermath, Gallup polling has undertaken an internal review and will announce the findings next month.
“We are in the process of finishing a full review of all methodological issues relating to our 2012 election polling. The process is being led by a blue-ribbon group of outside experts. We will be reporting our findings at an event on June 4 at our offices in Washington,” Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport told POLITICO’s Mike Allen.”
Man, you guys are a hoot. Maybe you can get them to restart “unskewed polls.”
I’m not analyzing the polls – I’m simply telling you that gun ownership is higher not lower – that’s what the numbers said in 2011.
And yet the the people who have been monitoring this trend the longest say the opposite. And so do the people at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. But hey, you got a poll from Gallup in 2011. Any other information isn’t pertinent as it doesn’t conform with what you already believe to be true.
And again, hang your hat on Gallup. They’re doing exceptional work these days. How’s President Romney doing?
*snort*
Gun ownership doesn’t necessarily reflect a change in the number of gun deaths by crime. Gun deaths by negligence are affected by the number of negligent morons who go out and buy guns without taking the responsibility that comes with owning one. Reactionary legislation to restrict rights of responsible, law-abiding citizens punishes the people who are not part of the problem the most.
No one is saying that there is an “acceptable number” of gun deaths, no more than people are saying there’s an “acceptable number” of cancer victims in a given year. That doesn’t change the statistics. The statistics show a drop in these kinds of deaths, we merely don’t notice it because of the rash of crazies shooting up various places in a pretty narrow time period, which is the only reason gun control is being proposed in the first place. Previous to these tragic events, the only murmurs were conspiracy theories and the bill that Obama signed allowing concealed carry in national parks.
There isn’t a “war on guns,” but there is a lot of talk about regulations that are not necessary and won’t feasibly lower the risks of violent shootouts by crazed individuals, nor lower the death tolls of those shootouts.
The “gun show loophole” was not going to be closed in an acceptable manner. There is no legal way for a NORP to ring up NICS and have a background check done on a potential buyer, they have to pay someone who is licensed to do it for them. Closing this “loophole” pretty much guarantees you have to pay around $100 just to try and sell your firearm to an individual, and if the background check comes back bad, have fun spending more money. The “loophole” is an exception to allow people who are not in the business of selling firearms to be able to sell the ones they own directly to another individual without cumbersome requirements that the individual themselves has no access to.
There were also other concerns regarding merely lending your gun to a family member or friend becoming potentially illegal in regards to the bill, concerns which were ultimately resolved in a later draft of the legislation, but it gives a good illustration that the bill wasn’t necessarily completely thought out. If there were a system that a normal citizen could utilize to perform these checks, was just as quick in response time, and was just as accurate, it would be more acceptable to expect a private seller to perform a background check.
“Reactionary legislation to restrict rights of responsible, law-abiding citizens”
You’re saying that expanding background checks equals “Reactionary legislation to restrict rights of responsible, law-abiding citizens”?
Gotcha. Guess what looks like an entirely common-sense and widely popular effort is reactionary. The tyranny of five minutes of paperwork.
‘Men Who Love Guns Too Much’.A must-read for the smirking monkey face;-)
Never had a gun.Don’t need or want one.There’s plenty of food at the grocery store.
Okay here’s a newer poll. in 2011 self reported gun ownership is at he highest point since 1995. The real number is estimated to be 10+ points higher since many are reluctant to answer the question at all. Note the down turn in 2012 – the rash of shootings nationwide made gun ownership politically unpopular again – yet we are experiencing record sales nationwide and you assert ownership is down?!? Permit classes are booked for months and you assert that gun ownership is going down?!? The poll shows that even in periods of “un-political correctness” self reported gun ownership has averaged about 40% for the last 15 years
Man, that Gallup poll is your hobgoblin. And then you throw in lines like “real number is estimated to be 10+ points higher since many are reluctant to answer the question at all” with absolutely no empirical evidence to substantiate it.
So let’s give your argument a look after watching you post the same things over and over again: One poll from a pollster that had to bring in outside consultants to fix their methodology after they’ve failed consistently in recent elections. Check. Totally ignoring all polls and evidence that undermine your argument. Check. A bunch of unsubstantiated caveats that are thrown out with certainty but no statistical evidence. Check. And some nonsense about “political correctness” that is so inane I can’t believe I’m commenting on it. Check. An earlier argument that gun ownership is the causation of lower murder rates but only one anecdote about Kennesaw, GA as evidence of said causation. Check. Then ignore the fact that states/regions with the highest murder rates have the most permissive gun laws, including conceal carry. Check.
Go back to bed.
You’re on crack – in 2005, the highest gun murders per capita was 35.4/100.000 in Washington DC where private gun ownership was very nearly outlawed unless you were a member of the political elite.
Chicago had more than 500 murders with guns in 2012 and this year is on pace to break that number. Chicago is still one of the most gun restrictive cities in the US. On the other hand Houston’s rate is 2/3rds of Chicago’s even though there are far more lawful gun owners who carry daily and an even more abundant drug/gang problem.
Since you’re big on cutting and pasting whole articles, I thought I’d give you part of one:
“…But those statements, supposedly based on the latest data from the (mostly biannual) General Social Survey from the National Opinion Research Center, are misleading. The above chart posted below) shows what percentage of a sample of Americans, asked if there was a gun in their household, said “yes.” The proportion of households with guns has fallen from a high of over 50% in the 1970s, but since 1998, it has held steady, fluctuating between 37% and 32%. The figure for 2012 was 34%.
The number of respondents to the question ranges from less than 1,000 to around 2,000, meaning that the margin of error is roughly 2% to 3% in either direction. In other words, the data for the past 15 years show no statistically significant variation. “It’s been essentially flat” over that period, Tom Smith, director of the GSS, told Quartz. A close statistical analysis of the data, he says, might not show a perfectly constant level of ownership, “but substantively you can conclude there’s been minimal further decline.”
Note the difference in the answer – in 2011, 47% of homes reported owning guns – for the period 1995 to 2011, the highest period was 2011 at 47% – do you think the guns in the self reported numbers magically disappeared in 1993? No, it became politically incorrect to own guns so people simply said they didn’t.
Yeah, ownership is down – let’s look at what the gun sales numbers show. This chart is the background checks by year for the last 12 years. I’m sure that some of these are going to current firearms owners but there’s no way the real number of gun owners is in decline. Over a million guns were sold in March of 2012 alone. You think Big T has them all?
I guess in your world, an attempt doesn’t count until they have your guns locked away or destroyed, already. Useful idiots were bleating a while back that 0bama hadn’t tried to pass any gun laws….yet. Others and myself countered that just because he hadn’t, doesn’t in any way mean that he will not. He did attempt to and is still trying.
Meanwhile, while he wishes to ban numerous guns, require background checks on private transactions (which should be just that, private), ratify UN small arms treaties and the like, I guess in your world, we should just sit down, watch, and let it all happen, before we speak out about it.
He still hasn’t done much of anything other than support a few measures, some of which we have had in the past. The right made up all kinds of bullshit that he was going to do, serial numbers on bullets, an ammo tax, gun registration, confiscation via civilian task forces… There was a shitload of hype behind Obama being some brutal dictator who was going to do horrible things when in reality he did nothing out of the ordinary for a Democrat. He literally did fuck-all when he had majorities in both chambers, that says a lot.
Obama gets too much shit for that stuff, yes he supported an assault weapons ban, but that was pretty much the worst of it. No one is taking our guns, just paranoid gun nuts taking all the ammo trying to stock up for whatever tin foil hat revolution is on the horizon.
Sounds like you need a few rounds of fun and relaxation:
Shooter’s Choice
944 Sunset Boulevard
(803) 791-5498
Go,get ’em,Tiger…
“ratify UN small arms treaties and the like”
When you type lines like this, is there a tinfoil hat on your head?
Included in the statistic are all homicides and as such it is worth mentioning that this includes justifiable homicide by gun. In other words, if a thug kicks in your front door and points a gun at you and you dispatch him with your pistola the homicide stat will tick up.
This report provided courtesy of the National Blunt Object Association.
Included in the statistic are all homicides and as such it is worth mentioning that this includes justifiable homicide by gun. In other words, if a thug kicks in your front door and points a gun at you and you dispatch him with your pistola the homicide stat will tick up.
This report provided courtesy of the National Blunt Object Association.
Facts? Liberals don’t need no stinking fact to advance their agenda. All they need is their boy king and his court jester running around trying to scare the bejesus out of the ill informed.
Oh, you said “liberals.” I thought you were talking about Republicans and GW Bush and Cheney until I re-read.
Glad that Hooked on Phonics is working out for you.
How’s your day going, you filthy liar? Shitty? I thought so.
Facts? Liberals don’t need no stinking fact to advance their agenda. All they need is their boy king and his court jester running around trying to scare the bejesus out of the ill informed.
Oh, you said “liberals.” I thought you were talking about Republicans and GW Bush and Cheney until I re-read.
Glad that Hooked on Phonics is working out for you.
How’s your day going, you filthy liar? Shitty? I thought so.
This article says it all and says it well! This is WHY we don’t trust Obama and anyone else who promotes so-called “sensible” gun legislation.
http://www.guns.com/2013/05/14/evidence-for-confiscation-5-examples-that-show-the-threat-is-real-video/
This article says it all and says it well! This is WHY we don’t trust Obama and anyone else who promotes so-called “sensible” gun legislation.
http://www.guns.com/2013/05/14/evidence-for-confiscation-5-examples-that-show-the-threat-is-real-video/
Obama threw a public tantrum, saying that 90% of Americans support him on more and more gun control–another poll at that time said only 4% thought it was a priority! More lies. When you can’t get your way on the issues, then make stuff up, the Obama way, the Democrat way. And it destroys the false argument that more guns leads to more crime, in fact, it is the complete opposite. Unless of course, you are sending them to Mexico via Operation Fast and Furious. The time to get rid of Holder is now.
Obama threw a public tantrum, saying that 90% of Americans support him on more and more gun control–another poll at that time said only 4% thought it was a priority! More lies. When you can’t get your way on the issues, then make stuff up, the Obama way, the Democrat way. And it destroys the false argument that more guns leads to more crime, in fact, it is the complete opposite. Unless of course, you are sending them to Mexico via Operation Fast and Furious. The time to get rid of Holder is now.