Gun ownership on the decline?

It's just PRAVDA, America Edition.

Nothing more, or less.

JMO

All Polls are Skewed, Theirs and Ours!

I'll bet that if they just looked at ownership since 2000, and especially since 2008, they'd find that it is increasing. A lot of the current "buy it before they ban it" right now is coming from first time gun owners. Besides polls being only as good as the questions that are asked, with statistical time series, you can get just about any trend you want if you pick the right beginning and end points. That said, I would expect some overall decline over a generation or two ago just from the increasing urbanization and suburbanization of society.

I also suspect that if the populace was divided up into separate groups along those lines, that ownership trends within the groups would not show a significant decline. If anything, they might show an increase. It is quite possible for there to be an increase in all sub groups, but a decline overall. Example: say group 1 is 60 percent of the total, and 5 percent own guns, while group 2 is 40 percent of the total and 30 percent own guns. The "average" gun ownership would be 15 percent. Then group 1 grows to be 80 percent of which 7 percent own guns, while group 2 declines to 20 percent of which 35 percent own guns. Now the "average" gun ownership has fallen to 12.6 percent.

A wise man once said "If you torture the data long enough it will confess, to crimes it did not commit." Statistics are trustworthy only in the hands of an honest person. If you cannot trust the person citing the statistics, then you cannot trust what they say "the data shows."

It was in 'The Dispatch'...........that kind of summed it up for me. It's been on a downhill run for decades.

I've heard/seen so many differing figures from local and national polls over the past three months that it makes my head spin.
Polls usually just back up what they are designed to show. It's all in the questions asked and who gets asked.

I would also say "no" to a pollster coming up to me on the street and asking if I owned guns.
.

If the number of guns is declining, and the number of people owning guns is declining, then why to we need all the new gun laws? It destroys their argument for more restrictive legislation to "get guns off the street".

FBI NICS background checks
Mostly 4473 firearms transaction forms:
YEAR NICS
1999 9,138,123
2000 8,543,037
2001 8,910,191
2002 8,454,322
2003 8,481,588
2004 8,687,671
2005 8,952,945
2006 10,036,933
2007 11,177,335
2008 12,709,023
2009 14,033,824
2010 14,409,616
2011 16,454,951
2012 19,592,303

Gun purchases are going up because gun ownership is on the decline.

The NAS "Firearms and Violence" review reported there were 65 million private handguns in 1999.
The recent "Guns in America" TV series reported there were 112 million private handguns in 2011.

There are more private handguns because gun ownership is on the decline.

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He,
Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short
a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his
own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all
others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the
same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls
the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the
present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature
alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from
everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was
an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control',
they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.
--George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Click to expand...

NICS background checks are up by millions every year because gun ownership is declining.
The number of private handguns has doubled since 1999 because gun ownership is declining.
Once you master the ability to doublethink it all becomes clear.

'You are a slow learner, Winston,' said O'Brien gently.
'How can I help it?' he blubbered. 'How can I help seeing what is in front
of my eyes? Two and two are four.'·
'Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three.
Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not
easy to become sane.'·

Click to expand...

Any skilled manipulator can skew truth with statistics.

If the total population grows at 1% per year, and only .2% of the population buys a gun during that year, then gun ownership as a percentage of the total population obviously decreases, even if a large portion of those buyers are first-time buyers.

Furthermore, gun ownership is clearly down among people who own multiple guns and have recently sold one or a few, taking advantage of high values driven by high demand: that is, if one can define decreasing gun ownership as, "I used to own 40, and now I have only 38."

But a sold gun usually = a bought gun; somebody owns just about every gun that somebody sold. Too bad that doesn't get counted.

Yep and pigs can fly!

The more demonized and maligned firearm owners are, the less likely they are to admit gun ownership to any pollster.

Believe half of what you hear and none of what you read. I do not for a second think that less folks have guns now than before. I believe that most folks won't tell you the truth about what they do or don't own.
When I moved to where I now live, everyone of my neighboors swore they didn't shoot or have a firearm, as I got to know them, I found out that every one of them had a gun in the house, some had several, shotguns rifles and pistols, never believe what folks say if they don't know you for a while.
I know the homes on both sides of my house and accross the road all have guns, there just came a point where they felt ok talking about it. Since then when there is a gun show, 4 or 5 of us go together.

What guns? All the stores don't have guns and everyone I know lost theirs in boating accidents.

America is gun free. Our lakes are littered with 350 million guns though.

Gun purchases are going up because gun ownership is on the decline.

The NAS "Firearms and Violence" review reported there were 65 million private handguns in 1999.
The recent "Guns in America" TV series reported there were 112 million private handguns in 2011.

There are more private handguns because gun ownership is on the decline.

Click to expand...

I personally wonder if the current insane and desperate push for gun control laws has something to do with people on the anti-gun side of things looking at being on the losing side of a demographic tide. Like they have to strike now before the scales tip so far they won't have any chance to.

Using data to drive research to drive data to continue research. It's a career.

I do like that their explanatory model for why their survey results don't gel with the data like NICS check numbers is that gun owners must be hoarding more and more guns. Must always be nice when your numbers allow you to prove your pre-existing stereotype.

Some time it`s in the best intertest of the anti`s to "fudge" on the "reported " numbers.

Here in MI we used to have at least 750,000 go deer hunting every year.
Much deer country has been turned into neighborhoods with new homes.
Many farmers will not allow hunters on their property---the few have ruined it for the many.
It has become very expensive to go hunting & a lot of folks just don't want to spend the money or can't afford to in Obamas climate.
It dropped below 700,000 last year
BTW--I saw somewhere that over 78,000,000
gun have been purchased since Obama has been president---quite a salesman

The NRA was misquoted last week, you that you can't believe any survey put out by local or state sources,
"Statement from Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA Executive Director, regarding inaccurate NBC story alleging that NRA won't oppose background check bill",
These things are skewed to reflect what they want you to believe. If we have no way to check, they can say anything they want, it's just like "news stories" that I read that were outright lies when I lived in NY, and was privaleged to certain information from sources in the police and higher.

Things definitely aren't going their way on the national level, and in not very many places locally, so the anti-gun fanatics are DESPARATE.

Hence the regular parade of fifth columnists and sock puppets through here and the outright lies in the media.

They're facing straight up DEFIANCE from gun owners and they simply don't know what to do with that. Their current reaction is panic...

Carl N. Brown said:

FBI NICS background checks
Mostly 4473 firearms transaction forms:
YEAR NICS
1999 9,138,123
2000 8,543,037
2001 8,910,191
2002 8,454,322
2003 8,481,588
2004 8,687,671
2005 8,952,945
2006 10,036,933
2007 11,177,335
2008 12,709,023
2009 14,033,824
2010 14,409,616
2011 16,454,951
2012 19,592,303

Gun purchases are going up because gun ownership is on the decline.

Click to expand...

Yes, I'm sure most of those increased calls are Robo calls looking for donations to various charity organizations or perhaps wrong numbers. Don't you think?

Been to a gun store lately?

The HUGE line at the gun show are NOT WAC members. New gun owners.

How many copies of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" or "The Satanic Verses" were bought just to defy the bans?