Gun Ownership Twice as High as Previously Thought?
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The left will be troubled by this and will choose to completely ignore it, which is probably why--despite being published almost two months ago--there hasn't been even a single mention of it that I'm aware of in the mainstream media.Results from a Rutgers University New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center study, released in late June, indicate the number of Americans who own guns could be twice that of the widely accepted figure of roughly 30 percent.... The new report indicates the number is considerably higher and may run all the way up to 60 percent.
The study, titled “Predicting Potential Underreporting of Firearm Ownership in a Nationally Representative Sample,” was published by the Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology journal. The findings endorse a long-held belief in the industry that firearm owners put a higher value on their privacy than non-gun owners, particularly when it comes to questions about gun ownership.
...More urbanites, females and minorities are exercising that right than ever before and, as the study notes, “Our results highlight the potential that several groups, particularly women and individuals living in urban environments, may be prone to falsely denying firearm ownership.”
But it might bode well for 2A issues in the coming elections. And the numbers simply make sense. We saw the reports that the number of first-time gun buyers was growing dramatically during COVID and the 2021 Summer of Love with scores of violent riots replete with looting and burning going on (BTW, have you seen the reports that in gun-free Hawaii the looters came out, armed, to steal what was still of value in the smoking Maui rubble?), yet estimates overall of gun owner numbers didn't shift. And we see consistently high numbers of NICS checks each month and the reports of continuing high sales volumes of firearms. So it certainly tracks that there are more gun owners than ever previously thought...or at least than accepted.
I mean, I certainly don't have a dedicated walk-in vault with 200 guns, so it ain't the average person who already owned a gun in 1999 who can account for where all the guns go. Take reasonable care of it, and a decent firearm will last a lifetime, and millions more are manufactured and sold--and sold not to military or law-enforcement contracts--every year.
The guns are going somewhere. And to the horror of the leftist politicians who might stop to consider it, there's the observation in that last sentence quoted: "More urbanites, females and minorities are exercising [their Second Amendment] right than ever before and, as the study notes, 'Our results highlight the potential that several groups, particularly women and individuals living in urban environments, may be prone to falsely denying firearm ownership.'" Gasp! Urban females and minorities? Not just old white guys in flyover states? That's the democrats' base!