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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsdefacto7
(13,485 posts)I would have thought it the other way around.
Downtown Hound
(12,618 posts)And that's because of record gun sales in recent years, mostly due to right wing paranoia that Obama was going to order the jack booted thugs to come and seize everybody's guns any minute now. But the truth is, guns are being more and more concentrated in the hands of fewer owners, and those owners today don't own a few hunting rifles or shotguns or whatever like in olden times, they own whole arsenals. It's common gun humper propaganda to state that we have had record gun ownership and yet less gun homicides in recent decades, proving that guns aren't the problem.
What they are not telling you is that we have way less households today that have a gun in them. And if you go back in history and look at the rates of gun violence, it started going down in the 90's. And if you look at the chart above, you can see that the number of households bearing arms went down a full 10% from 1990 to 2012. And what happened during those years? Gun homicides plummeted.
The bottom line is that the gunners are completely full of shit. The evidence is overwhelming that guns not only fail to keep us safe, but that the less armed the population is, the less violence we have. The sad part is that even though that seems logical on the surface, and even though the evidence irrefutably backs it up, you will never get a single one of them to admit it or believe it.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)I seem to have taken too much for granted and not kept my nose in the statistics.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)The statistic has been out for a while that sonething like 25% of Americans own something like 80% of the guns in the country. There are more people than don't own a gun at all and never have.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)I haven't until now seen the stats. One gets the feeling that gun ownership is on the rise but the stats overtide the impression.
dalton99a
(81,091 posts)This Is the Craziest Stat About Gun Ownership In America
Meet the firearm super owners.
Bryan Schatz Sep. 19, 2016 9:26 PM
In a series of interviews, researchers at Harvard University and Northeastern University found that super owners are made up of firearms instructors, gunsmiths, collectors, competitive shooters, and preppers. Some have separate rooms in their homes to display their collections; others hoard them alongside water, food, and other survival gear in case disaster strikes. Collectively, they own approximately 130 million of the countrys estimated 265 million guns. (Other estimates put the total closer to 350 million.)
As surprising as that may sound, concentrated ownership is common for most products. The Guardian points out that, according to market experts, the most dedicated 20 percent of consumers typically buy up 80 percent of any given product. The surveys lead author, Deborah Azrael of the Harvard School of Public Health, says that theres no research stating whether owning a large number of guns is a greater risk factor than owning a few guns.
The new data also sheds more light on the shrinking proportion of Americans who own guns, which dropped from 25 percent in 1994 to 22 percent in 2015, when the survey was conducted. A recent Mother Jones investigation into the nations 10 biggest gunmakers noted similar findings: While gun ownership is on the decline, gun owners are stockpiling weapons in record numbers, keeping aloft the nearly $8 billion firearms industry.
thucythucy
(7,986 posts)and more a fetish.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,790 posts)ThoughtCriminal
(14,011 posts)When I've asked why so many guns? The answer I get seems to be consistent along the lines of imagining situations where one particular gun might not be the right one. Apparently, zombies require a different range of weapons from say a combined North Korean/Cuban invasion or a person who claims to be a UPS driver but looks Mexican.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)If I came after the gun hoarders, I would just take a B1, drop a huge-assed bomb on them and their guns, call it a day. And send congratulations and cookies to them if I find out that they survived.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,790 posts)MineralMan
(146,192 posts)political power can prevent gun control laws. That's why they are so actively funding gun rights candidates.
With any luck, the NRA's time is about to run out.
Takket
(21,425 posts)if less households are owning guns they need to sell more guns to the households that do own them. So they keep creating the boogeymen (blacks/muslims/democrats) and the byproduct is eventually that paranoia boils over into violence (Dylan Roof, Charlottesville, etc).
Odoreida
(1,549 posts)Get ready to hear this a lot.
"Civilian disarmament" instead of "gun control".