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New Survey: Gun Ownership Lower and More Concentrated

There IS propaganda.
It's a survey done by academics. It's not propaganda.


1) We know it doesn't poll the estimated 45-70 million owners.
Again, no one operates polls that way. No one. Your demand is unreasonable.


2) So they asked people "do you own a gun? How many?" And we don't know who these people are, where they are from, the reason they felt they needed to participate? Their make up?
Studies like this do typically report the demographic makeup of the respondents. With something like this, they will almost certainly try to get a representative sample of the nation as a whole.


3) Not wanting to participate in a survey takes a variety of reasons. But if you aren't willing to reveal personal information to random people...people you don't know...that makes you paranoid?
Yes.


I never tell people I don't know about my guns, my money, my sexual history, who I am related to, etc ad Nauseum (in no particular order). Do you make it a habit?
I participate in surveys.


4) Correct. It wasn't a government survey. My point (and the biggest point I am making) is that they have NO accurate way to determine how many gun owners exist.
Yes, they do. What they do is contact people across the United States, put together a representative sample of the nation as a whole, and ask them.


These "polling samples" don't account for the MILLIONS of owners, the people who inherit firearms
Yes, it does


who are gifted firearms
Yes, it does


people who purchase them from friends
Yes, it does


and the fact that they don't even track the purchasing of firearms.
It's a survey. They are basically asking people "do you own a gun? If so, how many? Does someone else in your home own a gun?" So yes, they do account for the variety of ways people wind up owning guns.


And then you consider gun stores that have gun out of business?
Irrelevant


Trades to pawn shops?
Also irrelevant


The survey is a joke because it can't factor all that in.
The survey is fine. The problem is that you don't like its results.


This isn't me just being pro gun. This is me staring that the art of survey taking is pretty much a joke now.
Except it isn't. Polls are not perfect, but they are getting better, as we figure out ways to improve response rates.

We should also note that in the absence of polls, you basically have absolutely no data to prove otherwise. E.g. if you happen to live in a rural county in Texas, chances are that most of your neighbors own multiple guns, and it's perfectly normal. Inferring that "gun ownership must be high" is deeply flawed, because you don't have access to a representative sample, and can easily ignore how gun ownership rates are very low in cities like Boston or San Francisco.

I.e. if you toss out all surveys, then you basically have nothing to go on, no way to make any claims, no way to counter it. Sounds like a Pyrrhic victory to me.
 
The distribution of firearms among private citizens in the U.S. may be an interesting statistic, but it's irrelevant to the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. If all the firearms involved were in the hands of only a thousand people, all the remaining tens of millions who now had none would have just the same right to acquire their own whenever they chose to.
 
The distribution of firearms among private citizens in the U.S. may be an interesting statistic, but it's irrelevant to the right of Americans to keep and bear arms.
I didn't say it was.

I'm simply pointing out survey data about current gun owners and trends.
 
Maybe you forgot (more likely ignored) this post

Visbeck never responds to my posts. I think I destroyed some of his nonsense early in his career here and I have yet to see a response since that initial destruction.
 
The distribution of firearms among private citizens in the U.S. may be an interesting statistic, but it's irrelevant to the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. If all the firearms involved were in the hands of only a thousand people, all the remaining tens of millions who now had none would have just the same right to acquire their own whenever they chose to.


there are far more gun owners than gays, and far more gun owners than blacks, and far more gun owners than women aborting pregnancies and yet I suspect almost all the gun banners won't dismiss the rights of gays, blacks and women seeking abortions based on the numbers of those groups
 
It's a survey done by academics. It's not propaganda.



Again, no one operates polls that way. No one. Your demand is unreasonable.

You conveniently cut out the bit where I stated how important it was to accurately gauge how many firearms owners there are in the United States. You can't determine a trend without that information.

So. How did they account for the variety of ways someone can buy or sell a firearm? Thus making them a "super gun owner" in that 3% or just an average owner? This isn't a concrete number. It is going up and down constantly. And it could be by millions. So AGAIN...they can't account for a trend because they can't account for how many owners there are, and what a normal amount of guns per person is, etc, ad Nauseum, and so on.

Studies like this do typically report the demographic makeup of the respondents. With something like this, they will almost certainly try to get a representative sample of the nation as a whole.



Yes.



I participate in surveys.

Well bully for you. I do not. I'm a gun owner. Are you? If you are...great. Bully for you again. Many people decide not to participate in surveys. Again. Not wanting to give personal information to strangers is normal. Wanting to volunteer it is kind of dumb.

Yes, they do. What they do is contact people across the United States, put together a representative sample of the nation as a whole, and ask them.



Yes, it does



Yes, it does



Yes, it does



It's a survey. They are basically asking people "do you own a gun? If so, how many? Does someone else in your home own a gun?" So yes, they do account for the variety of ways people wind up owning guns

No. They don't. They don't account for it because they aren't counting the number of guns that are constantly on motion. The fact that they can't even remotely gain an accurate depiction of the millions of owners. So let me ask you: how many people did they poll?.



Irrelevant



Also irrelevant

How can they account for a trend if they can't count how many stores aren't keeping records any longer? Or places where people sell their guns when they don't want them?

Oh? They ask the people? No. They don't. They ask a tiny percentage and expect it to be representative of an overwhelming majority.


The survey is fine. The problem is that you don't like its results.

I don't care about the results. The survey was conducted on a topic that they couldn't fully grasp.

Except it isn't. Polls are not perfect, but they are getting better, as we figure out ways to improve response rates.

We should also note that in the absence of polls, you basically have absolutely no data to prove otherwise. E.g. if you happen to live in a rural county in Texas, chances are that most of your neighbors own multiple guns, and it's perfectly normal. Inferring that "gun ownership must be high" is deeply flawed, because you don't have access to a representative sample, and can easily ignore how gun ownership rates are very low in cities like Boston or San Francisco.

I.e. if you toss out all surveys, then you basically have nothing to go on, no way to make any claims, no way to counter it. Sounds like a Pyrrhic victory to me.

Can you tell me how they contacted people? Did they call landlines? Did they text people? Email them? How did they reach the people? This sounds like a giant overgeneralization and perhaps falling into potential for estimated errors.

And as you admitted already: this isn't accounting for people who aren't self reporting. How many of those are there? Don't you think they represent a large enough quantity to impact that number?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
We should have a survey to find out information about surf board ownership. Why? Because we having surveys into ownership of other inanimate objects, so why not?

When surfboard deaths exceed auto fatalities like gun deaths have maybe we will do a survey of them.
 
The unpublished Harvard/Northeastern survey result summary, obtained exclusively by the Guardian and the Trace,
.


Hmmm


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
When surfboard deaths exceed auto fatalities like gun deaths have maybe we will do a survey of them.

Interesting dissimilar comparisons and since you brought it up, I believe auto fatalities far out number "gun deaths". Are you ready to restrict autos?
 
When surfboard deaths exceed auto fatalities like gun deaths have maybe we will do a survey of them.

Interesting. And why would gun deaths be grounds to survey who has guns? Do you believe most gun owners are criminals?
 
The distribution of firearms among private citizens in the U.S. may be an interesting statistic, but it's irrelevant to the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. If all the firearms involved were in the hands of only a thousand people, all the remaining tens of millions who now had none would have just the same right to acquire their own whenever they chose to.

That is not an accurate description for those living in many states because of state gun (and gun feature) bans with grandfather clauses. Dad may legally keep his model XXX but his child may no longer be able to buy a model XXX in that state now.
 
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Interesting dissimilar comparisons and since you brought it up, I believe auto fatalities far out number "gun deaths". Are you ready to restrict autos?

of course not, he doesn't perceive most car owners being conservatives or that the AAA lobbies for GOP candidates
 
Interesting. And why would gun deaths be grounds to survey who has guns? Do you believe most gun owners are criminals?

many gun banners see punishing gun owners as justice. Not for owning guns, but for voting for Pro gun candidates who usually oppose Democrats, Liberals, Progressives. and for supporting the NRA which mainly supports candidates who are not progressives, liberals, democrats etc
 
Interesting dissimilar comparisons and since you brought it up, I believe auto fatalities far out number "gun deaths". Are you ready to restrict autos?

Sadly gun deaths exceeded auto fatalities in 14 States in 2011 and while automobile deaths are trending down, gun deaths are increasing yearly. Our nations economy runs on automobile travel, what benefits do we get from guns for nearly as many fatalities?

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A report out on Tuesday from the Violence Policy Center confirms yet again the lunacy of America’s loose gun policies.

The report contains the striking finding that gun deaths exceeded motor vehicle deaths in 14 states and the District of Columbia in 2011, the latest year for which the relevant data are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from 12 states in 2010 and 9 states in 2009.

The 2011 states are Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Washington State, as well as the District of Columbia.

In Alaska, for example, there were 126 gun deaths and 87 motor vehicle deaths. The numbers in Ohio were 1,227 gun deaths and 1,178 motor vehicle deaths.

Nationwide, the number of motor vehicle deaths still exceeded gun deaths: 35,543 to 32,351. But consider that in 2009 the spread was much larger – 42,624 motor vehicles deaths nationwide and 28,874 gun deaths.

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/gun-deaths-versus-car-deaths/
 
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That is not an accurate description for those living in many states because of state gun (and gun feature) bans with grandfather clauses. Dad may legally keep his model XXX but his child may no longer be able to buy a model XXX in that state now.

The Supreme Court just hasn't decided enough Second Amendment cases yet to have drawn the boundaries of the right to keep and bear very clearly. I suspect that (at least with a Court that is anything like the one we have now) a lot of state gun laws are in danger of being held unconstitutional. Limits on magazine capacity seem especially vulnerable to me. If a pistol which fits most people's hands can hold, say, sixteen 9 mm. cartridges within its grip area, that is its natural capacity. Limiting that capacity to nine or ten seems arbitrary to me. It goes against the sense of Heller, which is that the right to keep and bear applies to firearms in common use--i.e. ones many people find useful and that there is nothing very unusual about.
 
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Visbeck never responds to my posts. I think I destroyed some of his nonsense early in his career here and I have yet to see a response since that initial destruction.

When asked why some prominent leftist had declined to appear on his Firing Line debate program, I remember William Buckley smiled and quipped that baloney naturally avoids the meat grinder.
 
Its cute that they use gun registries (which dont exist in most states) and census 'surveys' to determine who owns firearms. And for the record...THIS is precisely why there should never be a national gun registry.

You do not even want a local gun registry and unfortunately many CCW States are just that. People don't seem to realise that application for anything is a gun registry including that background check.
 
Visbeck never responds to my posts. I think I destroyed some of his nonsense early in his career here and I have yet to see a response since that initial destruction.

I get the same from Flogger and some others. As soon as you destroy their beliefs and they cannot answer without admitting error they avoid. It would seem that cognitive dissonance allows them to ignore such things as having absolutely no impact on their belief.
 
The Supreme Court just hasn't decided enough Second Amendment cases yet to have drawn the boundaries of the right to keep and bear very clearly. I suspect that (at least with a Court that is anything like the one we have now) a lot of state gun laws are in danger of being held unconstitutional. Limits on magazine capacity seem especially vulnerable to me. If a pistol which fits most people's hands can hold, say, sixteen 9 mm. cartridges within its grip area, that is its natural capacity. Limiting that capacity to nine or ten seems arbitrary to me. It goes against the sense of Heller, which is that the right to keep and bear applies to firearms in common use--i.e. ones many people find useful and that there is nothing very unusual about.

Heller was a 5/4 split decision, the most narrow of margins, not the slam dunk that you wish it was. If the Heller case were to come before this SCOTUS then the lower court ruling (Heller loses) would stand with a SCOTUS 4/4 split decision. If Hillary (or Obama) is able to add one more "2A reasonable restriction =/= 2A infringement" SCOTUS justice then such state/local laws (magazine capacity limits, costly may issue carry permits and AWBs) are sure to become the law of (a good portion of) the land for at least 20 years.
 
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Probably because surfboard violence is not a signifigant issue in this country, at least not that I know of.

:lamo

Maybe they should poll the sharks.
 
Heller was a 5/4 split decision, the most narrow of margins, not the slam dunk that you wish it was. If the Heller case were to come before this SCOTUS then the lower court ruling (Heller loses) would stand with a SCOTUS 4/4 split decision. If Hillary (or Obama) is able to add one more "2A reasonable restriction =/= 2A infringement" SCOTUS justice then such state/local laws (magazine capacity limits, costly may issue carry permits and AWBs) are sure to become the law of (a good portion of) the land for at least 20 years.

I'm very much aware that Heller may not last. When you read carefully what Justice Stevens said in his dissenting opinion, you realize that if one more justice had signed onto it, the individual right to keep and bear arms would be so limited as hardly to exist. But the Court also knows it has to rely on both the Executive Branch and the states to enforce its decisions. If a number of states refused to comply with one of those decisions, no President could do much about it.
 
A perfectly good and credible OP about gun owners and the OP just gets trolled.
 
You do not even want a local gun registry and unfortunately many CCW States are just that. People don't seem to realise that application for anything is a gun registry including that background check.
I realize the government is using every means of data gathering at their disposal. The CCW registry is a registry of people with a CCW (as is every gun purchased from a store)...but not the number or type of firearms and it is certainly not a complete list. As far as the government knows and under the law, I have traded or sold every firearm I have ever owned.
 
Heller was a 5/4 split decision, the most narrow of margins, not the slam dunk that you wish it was. If the Heller case were to come before this SCOTUS then the lower court ruling (Heller loses) would stand with a SCOTUS 4/4 split decision. If Hillary (or Obama) is able to add one more "2A reasonable restriction =/= 2A infringement" SCOTUS justice then such state/local laws (magazine capacity limits, costly may issue carry permits and AWBs) are sure to become the law of (a good portion of) the land for at least 20 years.
I think gun owners dependence on Heller is a fatal flaw. The 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with self defense firearms and everything to do with any and all weapons an infantryman might be reasonably expected to employ in defense of the country.
 
I'm very much aware that Heller may not last. When you read carefully what Justice Stevens said in his dissenting opinion, you realize that if one more justice had signed onto it, the individual right to keep and bear arms would be so limited as hardly to exist. But the Court also knows it has to rely on both the Executive Branch and the states to enforce its decisions. If a number of states refused to comply with one of those decisions, no President could do much about it.

We see that clearly with sanctuary cities and legalized marijuana - the DOJ ignores federal laws that, if enforced, would hurt their state/local party in charge. The reverse is also true, the NRA dares not challenge a restrictive state gun law when the SCOTUS would likely uphold it. The point is that visiting or traveling through a different state should not change your individual constitutional rights. If the BoR is not standard nationwide then it is useless.
 
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