Why Gun-Rights Backers Win While Other Conservative Causes Lose

[UTUSN]

27. & the answers are: *CLOAKING* gunnuttery in "populism," "empowerment," & "non-racial" - plus,

I like these statistics:

So this piece is from David FRUM?!1********QUOTE*****

.... Even more impressive, this string of victories was scored as gun ownership in America tumbled. Only about one-third of American households now own a gun, compared to about one-half in 1973. Much of this decline can be traced to the fading of hunting as an American pastime. Only about 6 percent of Americans hunt even once in a year. That’s just slightly more than the number who attended a ballet performance: 3.9 percent.

Yet a smaller group of gun owners manages to exercise more political power. As gun ownership has dwindled, the remaining cohort has coalesced into a compact and self-conscious minority, for whom guns represent an ideology even more than a sport or hobby.

Republicans are nearly twice as likely to own a gun as Democrats are.

White Americans are twice as likely to own a gun as nonwhite Americans.

Among Americans under age 30, only about one in five owns a gun. Among Americans over age 50, one in three owns a gun.

Nearly half of men own a gun; only 13 percent of women do.

Southerners are 50 percent more likely to own a gun than Easterners, the South being the most gun-owning region and the East being the least.

Add it all up, and the core gun constituency looks a lot like the Tea Party on the firing range: Two-thirds of American households own no guns at all. The vast majority of households that own a gun own only one. Opposing them, a small minority—about 6 percent of American households—have amassed 65 percent of the nation’s privately owned firearms. That group is very white, very Southern, and very conservative indeed. ....

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