America's gun culture - fading slowly?

[Stupid]

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/ ... dChannel=0

By Bernd Debusmann

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Is America, land of shooting massacres in schools and public places, slowly falling out of love with guns?

The answer is yes, and it runs counter to popular perceptions of the United States as a country where most citizens are armed to the teeth and believe it is every American's inalienable right to buy an AK 47-style assault rifle with the minimum of bureaucratic paperwork.

But in fact, gun ownership in the United States has been declining steadily over more than three decades, relegating gun owners to minority status.

At the same time, support for stricter gun controls has been growing steadily and those in favor make up a majority.

This is a little-reported phenomenon but the trend is shown clearly by statistics compiled by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center (NORC), which has been tracking gun ownership and attitudes on firearms since 1972, the longest-running survey on the subject in the United States.

The number of households with guns dropped from a high of 54 percent in 1977 to 34.5 percent in 2006, according to NORC, and the percentage of Americans who reported personally owning a gun has shrunk to just under 22 percent.

So, by the rules of democratic play, one might assume that the majority would have major influence on legislation. But that's not how it works, thanks to the enormous influence of the gun lobby.

The long-term decline monitored by the Chicago survey has buoyed proponents of tighter gun controls. "America's gun culture is fading," says Josh Sugarmann, who heads the Washington-based Violence Policy Center.

According to Sugarmann, those keeping the culture alive and those most vocal in resisting tighter regulations are white, middle-aged men whose enthusiasm for firearms, hunting and shooting is not shared by younger Americans.

Yet, at the moment it's difficult to imagine the U.S. without its gun culture.

But then, who could have imagined France with a ban on smoking in public places, Germany with speed limits on almost half its autobahns, or a black man as a serious contender in this year's presidential elections in the United States?

To what extent gun ownership will continue to shrink depends, at least in part, on a decision by the U.S. Supreme court expected this summer. The court will rule on one of the most acrimonious disputes in the United States: do Americans have the constitutional right to own and bear arms?

GUN RAMPAGES PART OF LIFE

At the heart of the long-running debate, argued with more passion than almost any other, is the meaning of the U.S. constitution's second amendment.

Written 219 years ago, it says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

A string of lower court rulings over several decades held that the amendment meant to guarantee the collective right of state militias, not individual citizens. Such rulings have had limited impact: gun regulations vary from state to state and in most, weapons are easy to buy and legal to keep.

There are a few exceptions: handguns are illegal in Chicago and in Washington, where a court ruled in December that its total ban violated the constitution. That is the case the Supreme Court will take up this year.

No matter how it rules, the court's decision is unlikely to make much immediate difference to the mass shootings by unhinged citizens that have become part of American life.

Gun rampages happen with such numbing regularity -- on average one every three weeks in 2007 -- that they barely make news unless the death toll climbs into double digits, as happened at the Virginia Tech university. There, a student with mental problems killed 32 of his peers and himself.

President George W. Bush this week signed into law a bill meant to prevent people with a record of mental disease from buying weapons.

Virginia Tech was the worst school shooting in U.S. history and rekindled the debate over the easy availability of guns in America. There are more private firearms in the United States than anywhere else in the world -- at least 200 million.

While that arsenal has been growing every year, the proportion of U.S. households where guns are held has been shrinking. In other words: Fewer people have more guns.

One estimate, by the National Police Foundation, says that 10 percent of the country's adults own roughly three quarters of all firearms.

PREVENTION, NOT CURE

That is the hard core, which counts on the gun lobby, chief of all the National Rifle Association (NRA), to throttle attempts to impose restrictions on the sale of firearms.

The NRA, a group that claims some 3 million members, calls itself "America's foremost defender of Second Amendment rights" and backs candidates for political office on their stand on one issue -- gun ownership -- regardless of party affiliation.

Politicians tend to pander to the NRA, some more shamelessly than others. One of the Republican candidates for the 2008 presidential race, Mitt Romney, went so far as to falsely claim that he was a lifelong hunter and had received an official NRA endorsement in 2002.

Small wonder, then, that the debates following every shooting massacre tend to focus not on the easy availability of guns but on preventive security measures.

Metal detectors at the entrances of shopping malls, for example. Or bullet-proof backpacks. They were developed in the wake of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, where two teenagers killed 12 students and teachers and then themselves.

The Columbine-inspired backpacks went on sale in August and have sold briskly. "Sales picked up considerably in the Christmas period," said Mike Pelonzi, one of the two men -- both fathers -- who designed and market them. "Our market is expanding."

(You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters com) (Editing by Sean Maguire)

[AEA]

Wonder how much the Brady Bunch paid this Author to write this fantasy?

[gregthehand]

As someone who has a minor in Sociology and had to take a lot of classes on duing surveys and studies I would LOVE to see where and how the school in Chicago compiled it's data.

[OverEasy]

Having experienced the "Assalt Weapons Ban" etc. If a pollster calls me or stops me in the mall or if my Dr. asks me if I own guns, the answer is NO! No guns in our house! Do you think I'm the only one who has caught on? I just think pollsters are getting fewer honest answers to questions these days and don't know it.

However I have noticed that huge numbers of younger people are more interested in geeky couch potato type things these days. Could be because it's not PC to play cowboys & indians, cops & robbers or war anymore. And it's getting hard to find a place to hunt for free.

So, I don't know. Do any high schools still have rifle teams? ........................,OE

[O6nop]

Having experienced the "Assalt Weapons Ban" etc. If a pollster calls me or stops me in the mall or if my Dr. asks me if I own guns, the answer is NO! No guns in our house! Do you think I'm the only one who has caught on? I just think pollsters are getting fewer honest answers to questions these days and don't know it.

I was thinkiing the same thing, with any poll, I'd guess that people are less likely to volunteer personal information or likely to give false or misleading information about themselves. I think poll questions on guns would fall into that category more than anything. How would you answer a pollster who asked who you voted for and what is your annual income? I'm so paranoid, I shred anyting with my name and address on it instead of throwing it directly in the trash.

However I have noticed that huge numbers of younger people are more interested in geeky couch potato type things these days. Could be because it's not PC to play cowboys & indians, cops & robbers or war anymore. And it's getting hard to find a place to hunt for free.

Sure, but kids I come in contact with, even adults are playing shoot 'em up, war games and fantasy battles on their Playstations.
What we need is a video game that teaches responsible gun handling. Put your finger on the trigger without pointing the barrel in the appropriate direction and you lose points. Properly check the chamber, set the safety and holster, add points. It may not be popular with kids, but it could improve techniques for gun use and safety.

[Stupid]

When drawing a gun could get your expelled, I don't think that leave much room for the kids.

[lrb111]

Reuter's the official naysayer of anything American.
sooo, silly

[stevie_d_64]

As amazing as this sounds, I agree that the gun-culture in our future generations is being dilluted and difused significantly...I've been aware of this trend for years...

I am not surprised by this "report"...

[KBCraig]

The fallacy of the report is the premise that there is a homogeneous American "gun culture". There's never been such a thing. There have always been the utilitarians (farmers and subsistence hunters), professionals (military, police and market hunters), sportsmen (target shooters and hunters of all stripes, which covers a huge socioeconomic range), and self defense advocates. And then there's what they really mean when they say "gun culture": the outlaws.

[Moonpie]

As much as I hate to admit it the "gun culture" IS dying a slow death.
Me thinks its largely due to lack of space to shoot.
Many youngsters these days never have the oppurtunity to even HANDLE a firearm much less be able to get out and actually use one.
There are NO free public areas in my entire COUNTY for a kid to go shot even a .22. Everything is private, hence expensive/difficult/impossible to access.
Not many of us have a nice friend with a dairy farm or do we have family who own a hill country ranch.

[seamusTX]

As much as I hate to admit it the "gun culture" IS dying a slow death.

I wouldn't use those morbid terms, but I'm inclined to agree with the sentiment.

I live in a city of 30,000 people. We have a private club, the only place where civilians can shoot on the island. It has about 1,000 members. About 100 a week shoot.

The heads under those baseball caps are mostly gray or bald.

I think firearms ownership by household is higher than that article says, but few people can call themselves shooters. They may hunt once a year, or they may think about going hunting someday, and they might even have ammunition for their piece.

- Jim

[KD5NRH]

A good rebuttal:

http://www.theothersideofkim.com/index. ... gle/11376/

More Lies
Kim du Toit
January 11, 2008
6:27 AM CST

Kiwi Reader Ryan P. sends me this pack of lies (actually a reprint of this AP article):

Is America, land of shooting massacres in schools and public places, slowly falling out of love with guns?

The answer is yes, and it runs counter to popular perceptions of the United States as a country where most citizens are armed to the teeth and believe it is every American’s inalienable right to buy an AK 47-style assault rifle with the minimum of bureaucratic paperwork.

But in fact, gun ownership in the United States has been declining steadily over more than three decades, relegating gun owners to minority status.

At the same time, support for stricter gun controls has been growing steadily and those in favour make up a majority. This is a little-reported phenomenon but the trend is shown clearly by statistics compiled by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC), which has been tracking gun ownership and attitudes on firearms since 1972, the longest-running survey on the subject in the United States.

The number of households with guns dropped from a high of 54 per cent in 1977 to 34.5 per cent in 2006, according to NORC, and the percentage of Americans who reported personally owning a gun has shrunk to just under 22 per cent.

So, by the rules of democratic play, one might assume that the majority would have major influence on legislation. But that’s not how it works, thanks to the enormous influence of the gun lobby.

The long-term decline monitored by the Chicago survey has buoyed proponents of tighter gun controls. “America’s gun culture is fading,� says Josh Sugarmann, who heads the Washington-based Violence Policy Center.

According to Sugarmann, those keeping the culture alive and those most vocal in resisting tighter regulations are white, middle-aged men whose enthusiasm for firearms, hunting and shooting is not shared by younger Americans.

Yet, at the moment it’s difficult to imagine the US without its gun culture.

Hmmmm let me take a closer look at those oh-so respectable numbers.

U.S. households in 1980: 80.3 million. (Census)

So if that number of 54% gun-owning households in 1977 is correct, that would mean… there were about 40 million gun-owning households in the U.S. back then?

Approximate number of gun-owning households in 2007: 80 million.

I see that as about a 100% growth in the number of gun-owning households in thirty years.

True, that repesents a decline in the percentage of gun-owning households (54% in 1977; 28% in 2007).

What’s interesting, however, is that gun control legislation passed fairly easily in the late 20th century, and there was a decline in gun-owning households in consequence.

Not that it matters. If 9/11/2001 did nothing else, it woke us up to the fact that it’s folly to be unarmed, and the number of gun-owning households has been growing ever since (and, if I may say so, I’m proud to have been a small participant in causing that growth).

And if the so-called “gun culture� is fading that fast in America, somebody please explain to me how the country went from having only a few states with CCW laws in the mid 1990s, to nearly 40 today?

Or why, if gun control is so all-fired popular, we’ve not heard a single word about strengthening gun control from any of our Presidential hopefuls during this campaign? In fact, the precise opposite has happened, with gun-banners Giuliani and Romney groveling before the NRA to assure us that they’re not going to take away our guns, honest.

Bah.

Of course, the quotes come from the liars at the Violence Policy Center (VPC, a.k.a. Very Pussified Charlatans), so the whole article is suspicious. (Uncle thinks that the whole thing may have been ghost-written by the VPC, as it parrots their propaganda exactly.)

---------------------------------

Update: Reader Paul N. emailed me with a critical correction (a mis-reading of the stats on my part—you’d think I’d never done this stuff before), so I’ve reworked the post somewhat.

[frreed]

Yes a good rebuttal indeed.

For those of us in the vast conspiratorial, deviant gun culture, it is our responsibility to raise up new reprobates. My 15 year old son has been shooting with me since he was 5 or 6. Started with the BB gun, graduated to a .22 single shot, .410 and then a 20 gauge. All of that was done out in the field on dove hunts and other trips to a friends land. About the time he turned 12 we picked up a .22 pistol and he learned to safely shoot that. Now we go to the range regularly and he shoots the .22 a 9mm and a .40 (better shot than I am). He loves to shoot, knows the safety rules, could defend himself as a last resort, and has a very healthy respect for the capabilities of the weapons.

I just got my CHL and a new CCW (Bersa .380CC) and have already told him that I will pay for his course and permit when he turns 21.

I really believe that being proactive in the responsible use of firearms and the benefits, personal and societal, are worth the time and money.

Besides that it just too much fun to go bust some caps.

[LeonCarr]

I feel it is our duty to prove the reports wrong, and do everything we can to introduce people to our sport and way of life. I personally have lost count of how many people I have taken shooting, but about 99% of them enjoyed it. Some of them were big time antis who got to see our side of the story, instead of the Brady Bunch's side.

I think more people are legally carrying than ever before, and more people are refusing to be victims of crime. I think this is a step in the right direction. I think the next big step is for all shooters and hunters to unite and quit fighting amongst themselves. The Brady Bunch will not have a chance.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr