Largest Gun Study Ever: More Guns, More Murder

[1-Old-Man]

30. I think there is an important distinction to be made here between the number of guns and ...

Sorry, there wasn't enough room in the title line to say it all. The thing I didn't see accounted for was the increase in population density over that time period. I say that because it seems to me that the question isn't really how many guns are out there in the public domain as it is how many people are armed out there in the public domain.

Two weeks ago I saw in the local paper that there was going to be an estate auction at such and such a place and time. It was the estate of a fellow I knew to say hello to and chat with now and then. He died a year or so ago. The Auction listing had all of his farm equipment, which I knew of, but it also included 145 guns that Teddy owned. I had no idea he had all those guns. Teddy's house is inside the limits of the closest town. Its a small place, no traffic signals, a hardware store, a pizza place, two convenience stores, and that's it; I think the population is just a little under 500 souls. On a per-capita basis if no one else in town owned a gun Teddy's stash alone would suggest that one third of the town was armed (500 people divided by 145 guns) when in fact only one person owned them all and in fact it would be a very rare day when that one guy was carrying more than one gun. So while it might look like a heavily armed town it might very well be that in truth only 1 person out of 500 was carrying.

Now I know that is a great good stretch of a story but I just did it that way to make the point. Its not necessarily the raw number of guns that might matter so much as how many of them were actually out there. Of course there is also the point that if the number of guns doubles but the population tripled that the firearm density would lessen.