Is being a gun owner the new minority?

[WLE]

Is being a gun owner a new minority

I taught my two little girls when they were 8 and twelve years old to shoot and respect firearms. We would plink and shoot targets with a 22 fun stuff for kids. I always suppervised and emphasize never never never point a fire arm at any body at any time unless your life is threaten and you intend to shoot. I beleive if kids were taught from very young to respect firearms, that really does carries with them for the rest of their life. I think that every kid should shoot or deer or rabbit and skin it. I beleive this developes respect for firearms, something that our current administation is setting up the ground work for a much tighter gun control and eventially to completly disarm the citizen.
Liberalism is a mental disorder, period. It is a cancer spreading vigorously within this greatest country in the world. I truely beleive eduction and not indoctrination will turn the country around. I also beleive gun ownership is the only entity standing between capitolism and socialism. "To each according to there needs from those according to their ability. " I am second generation German but I am an American first. I do not hyphenate German/American althought I am proud of my heritage. My father was in the Hitler Youth and it was not what people think it was. They were taught skills, trades and respect. Hitler was a dictator and was not a nice man, destroyed lives outrages dispicable acts. I often wounder, at least we knew what Hitler's agenda was, our current adminastion is like a cancer it is spreading all over, and it is terminal, what is worst?.


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[harrygunner]

Percentage of gun owners by state:

Wyoming 59.70
Alaska 57.80
Montana 57.70
South Dakota 56.60
West Virginia 55.40
Mississippi 55.30
Idaho 55.30
Arkansas 55.30
Alabama 51.70
North Dakota 50.70


Sorry, I copied this info from Internet and resorted it without saving its source. But, ten states have more than 50% of its residents owning guns.

If I rediscover its source, I post it.

 

[freewheeling]

Now where I'm going with this is when I tell someone (I live in a blue state like NJ mind you) that I'm a gun owner and a shooter the first thing I'm met with is an odd look or a comment or some mild to not so mild response. The few times I've mentioned the fact that I'm a gun owner to someone who's a L.E.O. they look at me like I'm a criminal. I almost feel like people are friendly with me until they know this aspect (more properly a passion) of my life, after which I'm almost perceived as a threat. Once given the chance though there's not one person I've spoken to, face to face, that hasn't at least comfortable with me owning a gun. If gun owners were a race, this would be racism at its finest. Does ayone else feel like this or have a similar point of view?

I lived in NJ for awhile, and carried most of the time. I never mentioned it to anyone, and was strictly illegal. While I was there some group of thugs attempted to mug a fellow on the street in Trenton and he pulled a weapon from his pocket and shot a few of them dead. He was never charged. You can own weapons in NJ, but are severely resticted in carrying, even to a range. I just ignored the law, because it was a dangerous scary neighborhood. Carrying did make me look a little fat though. I just chalked it up to the beer.

 

[freewheeling]

Here's a link to Gun Ownership by State NJ was a little over 12%. Western and southern states were high. The highest state was Wyoming, with almost 60%.

 

[Birdmang]

^I don't think that poll gives a good answer at all, but it is interesting.

 

[RP88]

it's really hard to consider gun ownership a minority considering that 80-90 million people in this country own guns. That equates to roughly half of the population that is old enough and/or eligible to even own a gun, if I recall correctly (I saw the age demographics somewhere but can't find it)

 

[jmr40]

Since the election millions of people who never considered a gun have purchased one. Remember trying to find anything on the shelves for the last few months. There are more people applying for carry permits than at any time in history. Those numbers in the polls are not showing up yet, and many gun owners choose not to admit they own guns so I believe that the numbers are a lot higher than the polls indicate.

 

[22-rimfire]

3.8% in District of Columbia. Sounds like a utopia.

 

[christcorp]

That poll is also quite misleading. INDIVIDUALS were asked that question. Therefor, they extrapolated their percentage based on the population. However; if you look at "Households" (i.e. I've bought every gun in our HOUSE, yet my wife, daughter, and son also shoot them regularly); the number of household that own guns is actually much higher. Wyoming for instance is between 80-85% that have firearms.

Also; many states like Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, etc... are not EAGERLY letting people know if they have guns or not. Perfectly legal. No permits required. Open carry is done all the time. But when a pollster asks such questions, we simply walk away. So; I would say that ALL the numbers in their polls are on the low side for many reasons.

 

[LRaccuracy]

Estimate of gun owners...

If i remember my numbers correctly approximately 10% of America's population are gun owners

This sounds like a CNN (Communist Network News) estimate to make it sound like gun owners are a minority. When some conservative estimates are 80 to 100 MILLION Americans own firearms of approximately 300 to 350 million firearms. NO ONE REALLY KNOWS FOR SURE.

As per the last U.S. census there were 225,081,715 people in the US over 18 years of age. Take away all the people that cannot own guns, lets round off that number of people to 200,000,000 that can own guns and vote.

Now the way I see it, approximately 50% of the population of the country that can own a gun, does own a gun.

With that number being ball parked, I would have to say that more than half of every households in the USA has at least one gun.

We are the silent majority and we better get off of our thumbs and start shouting at every elected official to protect our rights.

If we let them take our guns, there will not be enough left of our freedoms in this country to recognize in 20 years. If you are 20 years old now, you have 30 years of being enslaved. First your guns, then everything else is sure to go. Wake up America.

 

[DMK]

Here in rural NC, most people I know have at least one gun in the house. Some hunt, but most of the folks I know own a handgun for defense and/or target shooting. I only know of two or three people personally who have a concealed permit. OTOH, most folks around here talk about concealed carry in a pretty positive light.

I do agree that in more liberal areas gun owners are treated as second class citizens

 

[A-FIXER]

As well here in Nebraska most of residents own firearms here maybe only those that are old enough to have moved in to retirement home only have gotten rid of their firearms...

 

[Deltaboy1984]

It seems to be a sign of the times Hunting is also becoming less popular.

 

[Frank4711]

nope

 

[TexasBill]

The Gallup Organization estimates 3 in 10 Americans own guns. That's 30 percent. That's more than the combined Black and Hispanic populations as a percentage of the whole. While Republicans have the highest rate of ownership, over 30 percent of Democrats are gun owners (BTW: a very high percentage of the new Democrats in the House are pro-gun. You can thank them for persuading Speaker Pelosi to drop the renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban).

I certainly wouldn't want to be considered a minority as they are commonly perceived. Heck, there are more gun owners than Baptists and, last time I looked, they acted like they owned the place. Why should we be any different? After all, we not only have the Constitution on our side, we have the greatest concentration of small arms in the world.

 

[12131]

If gun owners were a race...

Well, they are not, so this is silly.

 

[Demitrios]

Actually this would be known as a discussion. In fact this was even posted in 'General Gun Discussion'. And I was looking for intelligent opinions on the topic at hand, not short one sentence answers that offer nothing to the discussion. The next time you think a thread is silly. . . . . don't be a part of it. Otherwise I'm really pleased at everyones thoughts and answers.

 

[Zoogster]

Hunting is also becoming less popular.

The population is growing rapidly. There is constantly more people, less wilderness, and a limited number of animals. That is going to mean more people competing for fewer animals, which will result in permit prices increasing.
There is a reason hunting is a rich man's sport in most areas of the world that have been settled and well populated.
Americans have had it better because the entire western hemisphere was virtually empty except for the natives, most of whom died off not long after from disease and other factors, only a couple hundred years ago.
So Continents as big as much of the previously known world have been divided among a small number of people. The United States had around 5 million people in 1800.
76 million by 1900.
Over 120 million in the 1930s during the great depression, when the number of people hunting deer for food almost exterminated the deer population in much of the nation. It took many years to come back. ( I find that interesting when you consider how many plan to hunt for food in a major SHTF scenario today with over 300 million and far fewer forests and animals. The game population would be permanently decimated rather quickly.)

Today we have over 300 million people in the US, and not only the raw number of people, but much more of the land itself settled or cleared. Far fewer areas for wildlife to live healthy and migrate. Pockets of forest may allow some to survive, but the long distance migrations that once kept them strong and healthy are far fewer today.
Shopping centers, freeways, homes etc lay between even most pockets reserved for wildlife.

This will only increase as the population grows, the wild unused land decreases, and people still wish to hunt.
You have more people competing over less.
So it may once again become only a rich man's sport in the lifetime of many here. The capitalistic result.
(In Europe for hundreds of years hunting was the sport of the nobility. Even killing one of the Kings creature's (hunting yourself) was often a major crime. In the feudal system the only land not cleared for crops and wealth (the more crops one had the wealthier they were, forests created no wealth) were special forests owned by the elite. That was the only way they could even sustain the animals to even hunt. If mere peasants could hunt too, nothing would be left.)
Or you could see the socialist result of a random draft that selects a small number from the people to enjoy the resource each season regardless of who would be willing to pay more (California has such a system for large game already).
Either way a decreasing percentage of Americans will be able to enjoy the shrinking resource on a regular basis.

So if you think hunting and the hunting culture will keep the RKBA alive in the future, you would be dead wrong. Fortunately hunting had nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment or our right to Keep and Bear Arms.

 

[spartywrx]

Living in Michigan there are a good number of gun owners around and many people I talk to who don't own aren't offended, they are usually just indifferent but to a greater extent would be interested in learning to shoot and they just haven't got to in their life. There are a small number of people who have opposition to some or all guns (my mom once said "Handguns should be illegal, they aren't used for hunting and just kill people") but they are very few.

I'll second that. In Michigan I've found the only real strong opposition to guns is located in the SE counties and Flint, but there are plenty of gun owners in those areas to counter the antis. Unfortunately our Senators are most anti-2a.

Myself and a couple of like minded students are starting a shooting club at our urban university in Detroit. The administration doesn't like the idea much, but everyone I've talked to wants us to take them out shooting once we get it up and rolling. I think we're a minority because exposure to guns and passing down the tradition of shooting is dying. I pretty much taught myself everything, with a little help from friends. People aren't opposed to guns, they just know only what Katie Couric tells them.

 

[TEDDY]

gun owners

now I have another take.since I have been around life longer than the rest of you I have seen more.the big cities have always been gun shy.because the people relied on the law to protect them.in the country the people relied on themselves.
as to Mass since I lived there for 76 yrs and belonged to a gun club since 1969 I have an idea of the owner ship of fire arms.there were 1,700,000 licensed gun owners in 1998,by 2000 there were 260,000.where did they go????they did not all move they are there but refuse to get licensed.so how do you find the numbers.
and there are to my count 48 known gun clubs.very active with 3/400 members to each.most are pistol clubs.I belong to one.
most of you dont know a thing about the law and how they work in states.
but the main item is there are far more owners than the statistics show.and a lot are anti gun.figure that.

 

[USAFRetired]

Amen Brother!

I grew up in rural Tennessee and there are ALOTT more guns than there are numbers on a little piece of paper or digits in a database somewhere.

 

[Skillet]

who REALLY knows?

i believe that if we are a minority or a majority, it does not really matter, if it came to a national security matter where the air and sea and state guards and military was gone, leaving the country with just a civilian defense, 1 person would be able to defend many. meaning that if the average gun owner owns a certain amount of guns, and this country fell into a state of chaos, with the need of defending oneself from foriegn or domestic threats, the number of "gun owners" would multiply overnight. the dad hands a gun to his kid and shows him how to work it (like on the movie patriot) and the wife and the neighbors are all in defense as almost of a militia type setup, you have got a pretty powerful force. the Japanese did say that in america there is a gun behind every blade of grass and it is very true. and for the amount of gun owners,i think the numbers can be easily rigged, because of location. a poll of gun owners in the fancy parts of new york to base off of the whole country is completely opposite of a poll of the number of gun owners in a small town in texas or whyoming or idaho or alaska. even if the number of guns sold by stores is used as the base of a number, the number is not very accurate because of private sale and alot of other factors involved. it's like trying to find out the number of dog owners in the US. it is almost impossible to find out because of many other factors than just sale involved. i heard a number saying that in the highest months of the obama guns and ammo scare, there was enough guns and ammo sold in two months time to supply indias and chinas military combined. and in three or four months time it was equal to india, china and the US army supplies combined. that's alot of guns. i was talking to a gun shop employee that had a guy who owned no guns before and just had experiance of shooting guns when he was a kid come in and buy an ar-15 and straight up tell him that this is not for hunting or plinking. and that is just one example. so my answer to your question is-who REALLY knows?

 

[2aHawaii]

Here's a link to Gun Ownership by State NJ was a little over 12%. Western and southern states were high. The highest state was Wyoming, with almost 60%.

According to this poll, it looks like Hawaii is the absolute worst state to be in for a gun owner. Ouch.

 

[RM]

Sadly, as this Country becomes more urban/suburban and less rural, and as high profile gun crimes continue to dominate the news, gun ownership will slowly decrease and gun control laws will gradually increase in the coming decades. Yes, we are the new minority. Much like cigarette smokers, but for different reasons. Only one thing can save us: social chaos.

 

[RP88]

if that was said five to six years ago, you'd probably be right. However, the opposite has occurred. Gradually increasing gun rights and more gun owners, and gradually decreasing will to pass more gun control.