Share of Homes With Guns Shows 4-Decade Decline

Would love to know how the survey was conducted. With the way our Government wants complete control, including knowing who has guns, if I was called and asked if I had any guns I would say hell no.

And please, don't try to insult my intelligence by saying the Government would never know since it was a survey and we all know they didn't keep track of the results based on the telephone number called ..

Quote from adams135 : Would love to know how the survey was conducted. With the way our Government wants complete control, including knowing who has guns, if I was called and asked if I had any guns I would say hell no. And please, don't try to insult my intelligence by saying the Government would never know since it was a survey and we all know they didn't keep track of the results based on the telephone number called ..

" The survey is conducted face-to-face with an in-person interview by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, of a randomly selected sample of adults (18+) who are not institutionalized."

So, how many guns do you own?

Quote from roughnready : Nope. What I said and what you wanted me to say are two different things. You didn't answer *my* question either.

So show me a reference where a pro-gun publication claims that the percent of homes with guns has increased. You said it and a person in the article said it. Please show it.

Quote from bsg75 : Sorry if you found that insulting. It was not meant as a factual claim, merely a subjective characterization. And I certainly don't mean to imply it fits ALL gun owners. The main point is a smaller group. But I'm not sure my characterization is invalid. Do you have proof the majority of gun activists whom I disagree with on here don't dig Alex Jones? Take a poll

You made the allegation, you prove it. If you can't back the allegation please don't pepper your posts with inflammatory rhetoric. It doesn't help your case and certainly doesn't win people to your POV.

Didn't read anyofit. Did they compare it against numbers for Dec/Jan/Feb?

Quote from ZeeDuck : So show me a reference where a pro-gun publication claims that the percent of homes with guns has increased. You said it and a person in the article said it. Please show it.

Again, I didn't say that . Gun groups have been claiming a spike in the popularity of guns. The fact that fewer and fewer households own guns clearly runs counter to this continued line of rhetoric. Therefore, there are fewer households with guns in spite of what gun manufacturers and gun interest groups have been telling us. It's pretty simple.

Quote from roughnready : Again, I didn't say that . Gun groups have been claiming a spike in the popularity of guns. The fact that fewer and fewer households own guns clearly runs counter to this continued line of rhetoric. Therefore, there are fewer households with guns in spite of what gun manufacturers and gun interest groups have been telling us. It's pretty simple.

You said

Quote : That there are fewer households with guns in spite of what gun manufacturers and gun interest groups have been telling us.

Can you show me where the NRA or some other pro-gun organization made the claim in red?

Quote from gunnerusa : Nobody ever did any of that in the last 500 years. Even the famed mountain men, who arguably were the most independent Americans in history, always needed other people: they needed others to make their guns, traps, and equipment, and more importantly, they were part of an international trade system that bought and sold beaver pelts that were only valuable as clothing items in Europe.

Good one man....good one.

Quote from gunnerusa : I believe the word you're looking for is anecdotal.

Anecdotal would apply to the source of the article in the OP. "I called random phone numbers and asked if they kept a gun in the house and the ones that didn't hang up said..."

Empirical is going to Gander Mountain and seeing 100+ people in line at the firearms counter every weekend. The big gun stores and websites being OOS on literally everything at the peak of the panic.Personally knowing people who bought their first gun because they thought it might be thier last chance to do so.

0bama: Greatest gun salesman ever

Quote from BigBananaMess : Anecdotal would apply to the source of the article in the OP. "I called random phone numbers and asked if they kept a gun in the house and the ones that didn't hang up said..." Empirical is going to Gander Mountain and seeing 100+ people in line at the firearms counter every weekend. The big gun stores and websites being OOS on literally everything at the peak of the panic.Personally knowing people who bought their first gun because they thought it might be thier last chance to do so. 0bama: Greatest gun salesman ever

The expression anecdotal evidence refers to evidence from anecdotes. Because of the small sample, there is a larger chance that it may be unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise non-representative samples of typical cases.[1][2] Anecdotal evidence is considered dubious support of a claim; it is accepted only in lieu of more solid evidence. This is true regardless of the veracity of individual claims.[3][4][5]

The term is often used in contrast to scientific evidence, such as evidence-based medicine, which are types of formal accounts. Some anecdotal evidence does not qualify as scientific evidence because its nature prevents it from being investigated using the scientific method. Misuse of anecdotal evidence is an informal fallacy and is sometimes referred to as the "person who" fallacy ("I know a person who..."; "I know of a case where..." etc. Compare with hasty generalization). Anecdotal evidence is not necessarily representative of a "typical" experience; in fact, human cognitive biases such as confirmation bias mean that exceptional or confirmatory anecdotes are much more likely to be remembered. Accurate determination of whether an anecdote is "typical" requires statistical evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

Additionally, the smaller the sample size, and the less generalized it is in the sampling... The less relevant and less accurate the data collected is. Also, when the group sampled has a reasonable reason to be dishonest in their answers, this also makes the data collected unreliable.

So "results" from yet another anti-gun "survey" have, once again, been proven to be wrong. When does the next "survey" come out?

Granted, this isn't 'households', but in the state of Massachusetts we have seen a pretty steady growth in firearm ownership.

I think there are a number of things at work here.
First, I don't doubt that from some all time peak the number of households with a gun has decreased. But what does that tell us?
Is that because the number of people with a hunting rifle or old shotgun has declined (as a percentage)? I suspect, without proof, that the percent of people who engage in hunting has decreased since say 1950.

What about the percent of households who own a gun for defensive reasons (or at least in part defensive)? Has that gone down? No idea.

What about the percent of households that have bought a gun (as opposed to inherited one and simply didn't want to get rid of it)?

Another poster asked about an increase in what is a household? I have no idea if that is a factor but perhaps it is. Another possible factor is as you have more population in metro areas that make gun ownership difficult perhaps that artificially reduces ownership. Certainly laws such as those in NY, Il, and CA would tend to reduce gun ownership as compared to the more liberal laws in less populated states.