Just 3% of Americans own almost 50% of the country’s guns, study says

[E.Marquez]

Flawed from the get go...
No differnt then if i wanted to show "Most teens dont do drugs during an avarage high school day" Then i ask them as they are leaving school "did you use an illegal drug during schools hours? Were you under the influence of an illegal drug during school hours" My results will "prove" very few do drugs while at school Or..... will it just point out the ones really high at that time and too stoned to not answer

[crazy2medic]

The numbers on this seem to be way off, by FBI best estimates, using their data, their are over 100 million gun owners in possession of over 300 million firearms!

[gtolbert09]

It wouldn't surprise me if the 3% was fairly accuracte. That is 9.6 million people. It isn't that difficult to imagine each of them owning 13 to 14 guns each. My stepfather before he died owned that many and he wasn't really a gun person. There are probably some people on this board that double the 13-14 number.

As far as them picking 8+ guns. You certainly don't want to pick 3 as the number since that hits just a single pistol, rifle, and shotgun which is fairly common. Even double at 6 is just 2 of each which isn't uncommon. So they picked a number high enough to drop the percentage down, but not a number so high that the percentage of guns owned as a whole is too small. If you picked like 15 guns then you would go to (as purely made up numbers) say 0.5% of the population owns 15% of the guns. Which doesn't have the look they are wanting. So you look at where you get 50% of guns owned and pick that number.

Now I'm curious how they got people to answer the questions. If someone called me asking if I owned guns and how many I would hang up on them. Letter in the mail, it would get thrown away. A person would get ignored, or the door shut in their face if at my apartment.

I would imagine the survey was conducted online as most surveys are nowadays.

[allisji]

Flawed from the get go...
No differnt then if i wanted to show "Most teens dont do drugs during an avarage high school day" Then i ask them as they are leaving school "did you use an illegal drug during schools hours? Were you under the influence of an illegal drug during school hours" My results will "prove" very few do drugs while at school Or..... will it just point out the ones really high at that time and too stoned to not answer

not that I disagree with your hypothesis, but I probably wouldn't have drawn the comparison to drug users.

[vjallen75]

Hey, maybe we can use that to our advantage, and get minority status.

Hopefully it comes with Gun money and a bullet fund??

[Jusme]

Hey, maybe we can use that to our advantage, and get minority status.

Hopefully it comes with Gun money and a bullet fund??

Probably have to fight for our own restrooms with gun shelves.

[vjallen75]

Hopefully it comes with Gun money and a bullet fund??

Probably have to fight for our own restrooms with gun shelves.

[E.Marquez]

Flawed from the get go...
No differnt then if i wanted to show "Most teens dont do drugs during an avarage high school day" Then i ask them as they are leaving school "did you use an illegal drug during schools hours? Were you under the influence of an illegal drug during school hours" My results will "prove" very few do drugs while at school Or..... will it just point out the ones really high at that time and too stoned to not answer

not that I disagree with your hypothesis, but I probably wouldn't have drawn the comparison to drug users.

It is an activity and possession of, that both groups generally distrust the government or persons in authority to know about.

But pick any other like activity and ask the same like question..and you will get the same results.

Go to the local PTA meeting, and ask each person present, "How likley are you to cheat on yoru spouse?" "Presently having an affair" "Likely to have affair" "Would never have an affair" then go to a collage popular hang out and ask the same questions and take that data to "Prove" Adults involved in PTA activities are 99% less likley to have an affair then other collage educated adults.

[rotor]

The figures may be off, it is still an unpublished study. What was interesting to me was the following.

But gun owners who possessed just handguns are more likely than before to be women, the Trace reported. 43 percent of handgun-only owners in the survey said they were female, and those owners were also more likely than typical gun owners to live in cities and identify as people of color.

Implication is that minority women in cities are going to protect themselves. Not a bad idea.

[TreyHouston]

This article confuses me. The FBI knowns exactly how many guns americans own and a per person average as well as sex and race. (I know many guns aren't registered)

They choose not to publish that data for some reason, wonder why? No, really, why?

[Jusme]

This article confuses me. The FBI knowns exactly how many guns americans own and a per person average as well as sex and race. (I know many guns aren't registered)

They choose not to publish that data for some reason, wonder why? No, really, why?

No guns are registered with the FBI. The only thing they may have access to, is background check information through NICS. I have several guns that were were purchased before there was a requirement for a background check, as well as guns purchased since having my LTC that were not subjected to a background check. Where would the FBI obtain data, on firearm ownership, average number owned, and gender/ethnic information?

That is why groups try to conduct these studies, because there is no national registry for guns, and even background checks can be misleading due to the fact that multiple guns can be purchased on a single NICS inquiry. The only concrete data, is that manufacturers have sold x number of guns, over the last x number of years. But there is no data to differentiate between first time buyers, and buyers who already own multiple guns.

[LucasMcCain]

I just have a really hard time believing that the sampling was large enough and representative enough to be worth anything at all. That's not even getting into the fact that most people that own a bunch of guns don't typically advertise that fact to strangers with surveys. I certainly don't. I'm calling bovine excrement, personally.

[ShepherdTX]

It will be interesting to see if the antis try to spin this to claim gun ownership is declining when they are using a terrible indicator.

The better metric is gun permits/CHLs

From 2007 to 2015 the number of permits and CHLS have gone from 4.6 million to 12.8 million according to CPRC research.
Each of those can only be tied to a single person.

http://crimeresearch.org/2015/07/new-st ... f-permits/

[Surgeon]

Maybe the purpose of the "study" is to create the false notion or perception that since there are indeed so few actual gun owners then doing away with the Second A is completely justified because its elimination would effect so few real gun owners. But with liberals and antis is hard to tell what their true motive is. But you can always could on it being the opposite of what they tell you. Or just a flat out lie.

[Charles L. Cotton]

This isn't a study, it's a result-oriented lie. Industry figures indicate the number of American gun owners is probably between 150 and 200 million people.

Chas.