Not just the South, and Texas, with lots of guns

[VMI77]

http://firearm-dealers.gearsuite.com/st ... tm_term=dt

A questionable method of determining which state has "the most guns," but interesting nonetheless.

Many people assume that this controversy is just limited to southern states, where carrying a gun in public seems to be more commonplace than in other parts of the country (Candice Bergen’s character in Miss Congeniality sums it up perfectly ). And yes, Texas does lead the country in firearm permits overall (based on its entire population). But when FindTheBest looked at the breakdown of federal firearm licenses per 100,000 people on our firearm dealers topic , we found that it’s not the southern states that are manufacturing and selling the most guns, but somewhere completely overlooked. Based on data provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, here are the 15 states with the highest number of firearm licenses (per 100,000 people).

Wyoming is #1 in this analysis, but Maine and Vermont are also in the top 15. I suspect it's largely a function of population....the less populous the more licenses per 100,000.

[ELB]

It might have been an interesting set of stats, but the writer clearly has no capacity to write on either statistics, or gun laws, or even basic logic (but she does manage to inject some anti-gun "facts" along the way. That was painful to read.

The title loudly proclaims "States with the most Federal Firearms Licenses (Hint: not Texas)" (which is an absolute number), but then in the text states "Texas does lead the country in firearm permits overall ...".

Then you find out she is actually writing about number off FFLs per 100,000, which is a rate, not an absolute number...but then uses these rates to declare "we found that it’s not the southern states that are manufacturing and selling the most guns...". The absolute number or rate of FFLs would have only an indirect relationship with the number of guns manufactured or sold. Holy smokes. And then she butchers what the nullification laws do, confuses the issue of background checks and records of the mentally ill. Also links to little factoids from antigun organizations, but nothing from, oh, I dunno, NRA or NSSF or even an actual FFL...

Just an unsubtle anti-gun hack piece...I wouldn't trust her to even get the rate calculations correct.

[JALLEN]

67.3% of statistics are misleading and the rest of them flat wrong.

I think the only reason statistics are used is to fill pages of articles by ignoramuses with a axe to grind.

[ELB]

By the way VMI, I'm not hatin' on you for bringing up the article, it would be an interesting piece of statistics. It just annoys me that such a shabby piece of "journalism" is allowed to exist. Even apart from it's little anti-2A digs, it is such a poor piece of writing.

[ELB]

67.3% of statistics are misleading and the rest of them flat wrong.

I think the only reason statistics are used is to fill pages of articles by ignoramuses with a axe to grind.

It's probably just dashed off as "click bait" to get people to see all the advertisements. The content wasn't important, only the page views.

Warning! Thread Hijack!

I grew up in a lightly populated county in Indiana with a very small town as the county seat and hub of most things. It had a once-weekly newspaper. Small, but usually interesting to locals, loved the "Sheriff's Log" (my Dad used to draw cartoons to adorn the annual "Best of the Sheriff''s Log" feature: stuff like "Woman called to say she there is a raccoon and a naked man in her house. Wants deputy to come remove raccoon.") The reporters and staff were all locals, but they could spell and write and construct sentences and stuff.

Anyway, when I went into the Air Force, my mom paid for a subscription for me so I could keep track of doin's at home. I kept it going throughout my career until the late 90s. At that point the guy who owned and edited the paper, a guy a couple classes ahead of me in high school and married to one of my classmates, sold the paper and moved on. Some of the staff moved on as well.

The new editor was younger, and hired some new reporters...and the quality of the writing went right in the toilet. It became so painful to read that I finally skipped renewing my subscription because it made me angry instead of homesick.

I think this, and the article linked above, generally track with the deterioration in education over all. Sad and maddening. [/Hijack]

[RoyGBiv]

I didn't read the article.... but... I'm betting that the author thinks "Federal Firearms Licenses" means licenses issued to individuals to own guns, and has no idea what an FFL is or does.

[dlh]

Gotta love numerators and denominators...It is what you put ON those numerators and denominators that causes all sorts of problems.

dlh

[baldeagle]

I haven't read the article (and I won't), but I found myself wondering howcum I never got when of them federal firearm licenses when I own several firearms.

Just one more reason why it's a waste of time to read most stuff - ignorant people produce ignorant articles.

[VMI77]

By the way VMI, I'm not hatin' on you for bringing up the article, it would be an interesting piece of statistics. It just annoys me that such a shabby piece of "journalism" is allowed to exist. Even apart from it's little anti-2A digs, it is such a poor piece of writing.

Oh, I agree that it's shabby "journalism," but then 99% of what passes for "journalism" is shabby, or worse. There were also some anti-gun jabs in the two introductory paragraphs. My signature line pretty much says what I think about "journalists."

[VMI77]

I haven't read the article (and I won't), but I found myself wondering howcum I never got when of them federal firearm licenses when I own several firearms.

Just one more reason why it's a waste of time to read most stuff - ignorant people produce ignorant articles.

I wouldn't have myself except that the first time I hit the link I got a list of the 15 referenced states rather than having to click through. In spite of the ignorance on display by the author I didn't seem to me he/she was conflating FFL's to individual ownership. I interpreted the reference to be an attempt to link the number of people owning guns to be greater in proportion to the number of people licensed to sell them. I there are more FFL's per 100,000 because there are more sellers in less concentrated more sparsely populated states with smaller populations.

[Rex B]

On a similar topic, this article compares firearm ownership by state with other countries. For example, Texas has about as many guns as Germany. Of course, ours are in private hands, while I suspect the majority of those in Germany are owned by government agencies and military.

http://www.movoto.com/blog/opinions/gun-ownership-map/



It's interesting that all these other countries have so many small arms. I haven't delved into the survey itself, but I bet this includes military armories.

http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/publicat ... -2007.html

[ELB]

Small Arms Survey is not what you would call a 2A friendly organization. They bill themselves as a fair, impartial source of information on guns and policies, as long as you understand that seeing firearms ownership as a threat and control as a solution is fair and impartial...

[Rex B]

Oh I figured that. If it's not USA-based, it's likely non-2A Friendly. But I figured their numbers were probably in the ballpark, even if the presentation might be skewed to their world-view