{An Article on the making a Big mess out of the misuse of firearms in the USA today}
Americans own an estimated 265m guns, more than one gun for every American adult, according to the most definitive portrait of US gun ownership in two decades.
But the new survey estimates that 133m of these guns are concentrated in the hands of just 3% of American adults – a group of super-owners who have amassed an average of 17 guns each.
The unpublished Harvard/Northeastern survey result summary, obtained exclusively by the Guardian and the Trace, estimates that America’s gun stock has increased by 70m guns since 1994. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who own guns decreased slightly from 25% to 22%.
The new survey, conducted in 2015 by public health researchers from Harvard and Northeastern universities, also found that the proportion of female gun owners is increasing as fewer men own guns. These women were more likely to own a gun for self-defense than men, and more likely to own a handgun only.
Women’s focus on self-defense is part of a broader trend. Even as the US has grown dramatically safer and gun violence rates have plummeted, handguns have become a greater proportion of the country’s civilian gun stock, suggesting that self-defense is an increasingly important factor in gun ownership.
“The desire to own a gun for protection – there’s a disconnect between that and the decreasing rates of lethal violence in this country. It isn’t a response to actuarial reality,” said Matthew Miller, a Northeastern University and Harvard School of Public Health professor and one of the authors of the study.
{Why is it necessary to have some special reason to own a gun? - Many in our family have owned firearms all of our lives for the past over 100 years - not out of fear}
The data suggests that American gun ownership is driven by an “increasing fearfulness”, said Dr Deborah Azrael, a Harvard School of Public Health firearms researcher and the lead author of the study.
{Data suggests gun ownership is driven by "Increasing Fearfulness" - but what exactly is that?}
“If we hope to reduce firearm suicide, if we hope to reduce the other potential dangers of guns, my gut is, we have to speak to that fear,” she said.
{The key words here are " IF we Hope to Reduce "}
The new survey also found a much higher estimate of annual gun thefts: 400,000 guns stolen per year, compared with 230,000 a year in a recent estimate from the National Crime Victimization Survey.
{note it is an estimate}
Phil Cook, a Duke University firearms researcher and one of the authors of a prominent 1994 study of American gun ownership, praised the new research as “a very high-quality survey”.
Unlike the more frequent gun ownership polls from Pew or the General Social Survey, “it goes beyond asking whether there’s a firearm in their household and asks how many firearms are in the household”, he said. “Without knowing the answer to the second question, it’s not possible to get a estimate of the total stock of firearms in the US.”
He noted, however, that “their estimate of the national total is lower than some would expect. It’s been commonplace to say there are 300m guns in circulation.”
{The statement that "It's been commonplace to say " is false - because since the data shows that 3% of the population owned a majority of the guns - so they are not in circulation!}
The new survey’s results do line up with the broader trends of some previous surveys:
even as gun sales hit records highs under Barack Obama’s administration, the total proportion of Americans who say they own guns has fallen slightly, leaving more guns in fewer hands.
{If Obama had not made it a Federal case or point to try and confiscate the guns of law abiding citizens there would not have been any record highs!}
While there are an estimated 55 million American gun owners, most own an average of just three firearms, and nearly half own just one or two, according to the survey results.
Then there are America’s gun-owners who have larger amounts – an estimated 7.7 million Americans who own between more than eight guns.
This kind of concentrated ownership isn’t unique to guns, firearms researchers noted. Marketing experts suggest that the most devoted 20% consumers will typically account for 80% of a product’s sales. {same for many other sporting items}
{Half of guns are concentrated in just three percent of Americans' hands} Half of guns are concentrated in just three percent of Americans’ hands Azrael, the lead author of the study, said there was no research on “whether owning a large number of guns is a greater risk factor than owning a few guns”.
{The Half of the guns - statement was repeated twice?}
“We know almost nothing about that,” she said.
Some gun owners responded to the study’s findings with trepidation. Bryce Towsley, a Vermont-based gun writer and the author of Prepper Guns, a firearms guide for survivalists, said he worried about how the survey would be used politically.
“They’re going to say, ‘Okay, there’s a small minority of people who have all the guns – we’re going to go after them.’”
{From most of the political attacks coming down from the Prez and the Liberal Mass Media}
But Azrael’s immediate reaction to the survey results, she said, was not to focus on the gun owners with dozens of weapons, but on the nearly 50% of gun owners who had just one or two. “To change their behavior with respect to guns, and the ways in which they store them, or their decision-making – we could have a really big impact on suicide,” she said.
Roughly 20,000 of America’s more than 30,000 annual gun deaths are suicides.
{WOW this is a complete line of putting the suicide problem on the gun owners}
“I don’t know anybody who thinks or talks seriously about confiscating guns,” she said. “From a public health perspective – you don’t seize cigarettes.” But, she said, “you do try to make good science available. You do try to help people think about the risks and benefits of the behavior they choose to undertake.”
{“I don’t know anybody who thinks or talks seriously about confiscating guns,” - guess she must never have seen BO's rants or calls for gun confiscation?}
{WOW this is a complete line of putting the problem on the gun owners}
More female gun owners;
Since 1994, America’s estimated total number of gun owners has grown by 10 million.
But growth in gun ownership does not seem to be keeping up with overall growth in the US population, according to the new survey. Since a previous in-depth national phone survey in 1994, the percentage of Americans who say they own guns has fallen slightly, from 25% to 22%.
The drop was driven by a dramatic decrease among men. The 1994 survey found that 42% of American men described themselves as gun owners, compared with only 32% of American men in the new study.
{Well when the Press and Major Fed Gov't leaders push the " Guns are bad theory - of course people will either shut down or deny any association}
The percentage of women who say they own guns has increased slightly from 9% in a 1994 survey to 12% today, but researchers said the increase was not meaningful.
Since the 1980s, female gun ownership has fluctuated between 9% and 14% in annual surveys.
Women tend to be more supportive of gun control laws than men, and gun control advocates have focused on women, particularly mothers, as a key voting bloc to push forward what they call a “gun sense” agenda. Earlier this year, Everytown for Gun Safety, the country’s largest gun control group, launched a new campaign focused on educating single women about the need for new gun laws.
But the new survey provides support for the National Rifle Association’s assertion that the total number of female gun owners has grown in recent years, with more women owning guns. The findings also show that the gender gap in gun ownership is closing, with American women making up a larger proportion of gun owners as male gun ownership declines.
The number of women who enroll each year in the NRA’s basic pistol course almost doubled from 2011 to 2014, from about 25,000 a year to nearly 46,000 a year, according to NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen.
Demographics:
Overall, the survey found, a higher % of gun owners tended to be veterans, white, male, conservative, and live in rural areas. Thirty per cent of conservatives said they were gun owners, compared with 19% of moderates and only 14% of liberals. The strongest predictor of gun ownership was military service. 44% of veterans said they owned a firearm.
Clear racial disparities in overall gun ownership remained, with 25% of white and multi-racial Americans saying they personally owned a gun, compared with 16% of Hispanics and 14% of African Americans.
{Why all the Racial - Ethnic comparisons?}
But there was essentially no disparity in gun ownership based on income level for Americans who make between $25,000 and more than $100,000 a year. Americans who made less than $25,000 a year were less likely to own guns.
{Of course those who do not earn enough would most likely not buy a gun - but many inter- city slums do find ways to obtain guns.}
The survey found that Americans who only owned handguns were much more diverse than gun owners who owned a mix of handguns and long guns, or those who only owned rifles and shotguns. Those in the “handguns only” group were more likely to be female, non-white, and live in a urban area, and less likely to have grown up in a house with a gun.
Roughly 44% of black gun owners and 37% of Hispanic gun owners said they only owned handguns, compared with 21% of non-Hispanic whites.
{what is this non-Hispanic white thing a racial statement?}
Cook, the Duke firearms researcher, said the demographic data on handgun-only owners was one of the most interesting findings of the study. But he said it was “kind of worrying” that women who had no previous experience with guns were buying handguns for self-defense, and that he was concerned “that may put them at greater risk” for gun accidents or thefts.
{Really - what about drugs, abortion, prostitution, and other criminal actives?}
The demographics of America’s 7.7 million gun some-owners were less diverse than gun owners overall, with super-owners more likely to be male, less likely to be black or Hispanic, and more likely to own a gun for protection, researchers said. This subset of gun enthusiasts – about 14% of all gun owners – have a collective of at least 17 firearms revealed a wide range of reasons for accumulating so many guns.
Some owners are dedicated collectors with special rooms to display their assortment of historic firearms. Others are firearms instructors, gunsmiths, or competitive shooters, who need a variety of firearms in the course of work or sport shooting competition. Then some gun owners have a survivalist streak, and believe in storing up weapons, as well as food and water, in case of a disaster scenario. Many simply picked up a handgun here, a shotgun or hunting rifle here and there over many years, and thus end up with several.
“Why do you need more than one pair of shoes?” said Philip van Cleave, the president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group that views itself as being to the political right of the NRA.
“The truth is, you don’t, but do you want more than one pair of shoes?
If you are going hiking, would want to use more that one pair.”
“ Like going to the beach with shirt off and shorts - you would most like have saddles to wear - compared to putting on a sport coat when going out to dinner,”. So most likely I’m probably going to use a different gun for target shooting vs a rifle for hunting; he said.
Americans own an estimated 265m guns, more than one gun for every American adult, according to the most definitive portrait of US gun ownership in two decades.
But the new survey estimates that 133m of these guns are concentrated in the hands of just 3% of American adults – a group of super-owners who have amassed an average of 17 guns each.
The unpublished Harvard/Northeastern survey result summary, obtained exclusively by the Guardian and the Trace, estimates that America’s gun stock has increased by 70m guns since 1994. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who own guns decreased slightly from 25% to 22%.
The new survey, conducted in 2015 by public health researchers from Harvard and Northeastern universities, also found that the proportion of female gun owners is increasing as fewer men own guns. These women were more likely to own a gun for self-defense than men, and more likely to own a handgun only.
Women’s focus on self-defense is part of a broader trend. Even as the US has grown dramatically safer and gun violence rates have plummeted, handguns have become a greater proportion of the country’s civilian gun stock, suggesting that self-defense is an increasingly important factor in gun ownership.
“The desire to own a gun for protection – there’s a disconnect between that and the decreasing rates of lethal violence in this country. It isn’t a response to actuarial reality,” said Matthew Miller, a Northeastern University and Harvard School of Public Health professor and one of the authors of the study.
{Why is it necessary to have some special reason to own a gun? - Many in our family have owned firearms all of our lives for the past over 100 years - not out of fear}
The data suggests that American gun ownership is driven by an “increasing fearfulness”, said Dr Deborah Azrael, a Harvard School of Public Health firearms researcher and the lead author of the study.
{Data suggests gun ownership is driven by "Increasing Fearfulness" - but what exactly is that?}
“If we hope to reduce firearm suicide, if we hope to reduce the other potential dangers of guns, my gut is, we have to speak to that fear,” she said.
{The key words here are " IF we Hope to Reduce "}
The new survey also found a much higher estimate of annual gun thefts: 400,000 guns stolen per year, compared with 230,000 a year in a recent estimate from the National Crime Victimization Survey.
{note it is an estimate}
Phil Cook, a Duke University firearms researcher and one of the authors of a prominent 1994 study of American gun ownership, praised the new research as “a very high-quality survey”.
Unlike the more frequent gun ownership polls from Pew or the General Social Survey, “it goes beyond asking whether there’s a firearm in their household and asks how many firearms are in the household”, he said. “Without knowing the answer to the second question, it’s not possible to get a estimate of the total stock of firearms in the US.”
He noted, however, that “their estimate of the national total is lower than some would expect. It’s been commonplace to say there are 300m guns in circulation.”
{The statement that "It's been commonplace to say " is false - because since the data shows that 3% of the population owned a majority of the guns - so they are not in circulation!}
The new survey’s results do line up with the broader trends of some previous surveys:
even as gun sales hit records highs under Barack Obama’s administration, the total proportion of Americans who say they own guns has fallen slightly, leaving more guns in fewer hands.
{If Obama had not made it a Federal case or point to try and confiscate the guns of law abiding citizens there would not have been any record highs!}
While there are an estimated 55 million American gun owners, most own an average of just three firearms, and nearly half own just one or two, according to the survey results.
Then there are America’s gun-owners who have larger amounts – an estimated 7.7 million Americans who own between more than eight guns.
This kind of concentrated ownership isn’t unique to guns, firearms researchers noted. Marketing experts suggest that the most devoted 20% consumers will typically account for 80% of a product’s sales. {same for many other sporting items}
{Half of guns are concentrated in just three percent of Americans' hands} Half of guns are concentrated in just three percent of Americans’ hands Azrael, the lead author of the study, said there was no research on “whether owning a large number of guns is a greater risk factor than owning a few guns”.
{The Half of the guns - statement was repeated twice?}
“We know almost nothing about that,” she said.
Some gun owners responded to the study’s findings with trepidation. Bryce Towsley, a Vermont-based gun writer and the author of Prepper Guns, a firearms guide for survivalists, said he worried about how the survey would be used politically.
“They’re going to say, ‘Okay, there’s a small minority of people who have all the guns – we’re going to go after them.’”
{From most of the political attacks coming down from the Prez and the Liberal Mass Media}
But Azrael’s immediate reaction to the survey results, she said, was not to focus on the gun owners with dozens of weapons, but on the nearly 50% of gun owners who had just one or two. “To change their behavior with respect to guns, and the ways in which they store them, or their decision-making – we could have a really big impact on suicide,” she said.
Roughly 20,000 of America’s more than 30,000 annual gun deaths are suicides.
{WOW this is a complete line of putting the suicide problem on the gun owners}
“I don’t know anybody who thinks or talks seriously about confiscating guns,” she said. “From a public health perspective – you don’t seize cigarettes.” But, she said, “you do try to make good science available. You do try to help people think about the risks and benefits of the behavior they choose to undertake.”
{“I don’t know anybody who thinks or talks seriously about confiscating guns,” - guess she must never have seen BO's rants or calls for gun confiscation?}
{WOW this is a complete line of putting the problem on the gun owners}
More female gun owners;
Since 1994, America’s estimated total number of gun owners has grown by 10 million.
But growth in gun ownership does not seem to be keeping up with overall growth in the US population, according to the new survey. Since a previous in-depth national phone survey in 1994, the percentage of Americans who say they own guns has fallen slightly, from 25% to 22%.
The drop was driven by a dramatic decrease among men. The 1994 survey found that 42% of American men described themselves as gun owners, compared with only 32% of American men in the new study.
{Well when the Press and Major Fed Gov't leaders push the " Guns are bad theory - of course people will either shut down or deny any association}
The percentage of women who say they own guns has increased slightly from 9% in a 1994 survey to 12% today, but researchers said the increase was not meaningful.
Since the 1980s, female gun ownership has fluctuated between 9% and 14% in annual surveys.
Women tend to be more supportive of gun control laws than men, and gun control advocates have focused on women, particularly mothers, as a key voting bloc to push forward what they call a “gun sense” agenda. Earlier this year, Everytown for Gun Safety, the country’s largest gun control group, launched a new campaign focused on educating single women about the need for new gun laws.
But the new survey provides support for the National Rifle Association’s assertion that the total number of female gun owners has grown in recent years, with more women owning guns. The findings also show that the gender gap in gun ownership is closing, with American women making up a larger proportion of gun owners as male gun ownership declines.
The number of women who enroll each year in the NRA’s basic pistol course almost doubled from 2011 to 2014, from about 25,000 a year to nearly 46,000 a year, according to NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen.
Demographics:
Overall, the survey found, a higher % of gun owners tended to be veterans, white, male, conservative, and live in rural areas. Thirty per cent of conservatives said they were gun owners, compared with 19% of moderates and only 14% of liberals. The strongest predictor of gun ownership was military service. 44% of veterans said they owned a firearm.
Clear racial disparities in overall gun ownership remained, with 25% of white and multi-racial Americans saying they personally owned a gun, compared with 16% of Hispanics and 14% of African Americans.
{Why all the Racial - Ethnic comparisons?}
But there was essentially no disparity in gun ownership based on income level for Americans who make between $25,000 and more than $100,000 a year. Americans who made less than $25,000 a year were less likely to own guns.
{Of course those who do not earn enough would most likely not buy a gun - but many inter- city slums do find ways to obtain guns.}
The survey found that Americans who only owned handguns were much more diverse than gun owners who owned a mix of handguns and long guns, or those who only owned rifles and shotguns. Those in the “handguns only” group were more likely to be female, non-white, and live in a urban area, and less likely to have grown up in a house with a gun.
Roughly 44% of black gun owners and 37% of Hispanic gun owners said they only owned handguns, compared with 21% of non-Hispanic whites.
{what is this non-Hispanic white thing a racial statement?}
Cook, the Duke firearms researcher, said the demographic data on handgun-only owners was one of the most interesting findings of the study. But he said it was “kind of worrying” that women who had no previous experience with guns were buying handguns for self-defense, and that he was concerned “that may put them at greater risk” for gun accidents or thefts.
{Really - what about drugs, abortion, prostitution, and other criminal actives?}
The demographics of America’s 7.7 million gun some-owners were less diverse than gun owners overall, with super-owners more likely to be male, less likely to be black or Hispanic, and more likely to own a gun for protection, researchers said. This subset of gun enthusiasts – about 14% of all gun owners – have a collective of at least 17 firearms revealed a wide range of reasons for accumulating so many guns.
Some owners are dedicated collectors with special rooms to display their assortment of historic firearms. Others are firearms instructors, gunsmiths, or competitive shooters, who need a variety of firearms in the course of work or sport shooting competition. Then some gun owners have a survivalist streak, and believe in storing up weapons, as well as food and water, in case of a disaster scenario. Many simply picked up a handgun here, a shotgun or hunting rifle here and there over many years, and thus end up with several.
“Why do you need more than one pair of shoes?” said Philip van Cleave, the president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group that views itself as being to the political right of the NRA.
“The truth is, you don’t, but do you want more than one pair of shoes?
If you are going hiking, would want to use more that one pair.”
“ Like going to the beach with shirt off and shorts - you would most like have saddles to wear - compared to putting on a sport coat when going out to dinner,”. So most likely I’m probably going to use a different gun for target shooting vs a rifle for hunting; he said.
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