norc_logo_color

There have been lots of surveys over the years that have claimed to show that gun ownership in the U.S. is on the decline. We’ve gone over this time and again; Robert took a swipe at the subject in 2012. Jim Barrett debunked the concept in 2013. I gave it a good fisking last year. And yet, the story being pushed by the mainstream media is that overall gun ownership is on the decline. Which is puzzling, given the ever increasing number of concealed carry permits issued, upward trending firearm sales, first time firearms purchasers, and increasing attendance at gun ranges. Nevertheless a new study now purports to perpetuate that narrative, but it can be pretty quickly debunked with the briefest examination . . .

The study in question is a 2014 survey from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. It claims that only 32 percent of Americans own a gun or live with someone who does. There’s just one problem: the study was done in Chicago.

From the Yahoo article:

The General Social Survey is administered by NORC at the University of Chicago, primarily using in-person interviewing. The GSS started in 1972 and completed its 30th round in 2014. The typical sample size was 1,500 prior to 1994, but increased to 2,700-3,000 until 2008, and decreased to 2,000 for the most recent surveys.

The problem with the majority of these surveys is that they don’t represent the actual number of people who own guns — only the percentage of people who will admit to a complete stranger that they own a gun. That’s akin to telling someone that you have a large pile of gold bricks in your house, something that lots of people might not want to disclose. Heck, I don’t even think I would admit to owning a gun during a phone survey.

That problem is magnified when you do in-person interviews, basically stopping someone on the street. That not only narrows the pool for respondents to large metropolitan areas (where there are enough people that you might get someone to actually stop and talk with you) and also will skew your answer depending on the geographic areas selected. In this case, I can’t find any evidence to indicate that NORC even left the greater Chicago area while conducting the survey.

A surveys is a notoriously imprecise way of measuring gun ownership. Why not use more concrete data? Pistol permits in New York, for example, have been steadily rising for two years now, definitive and conclusive proof that gun ownership is on the rise. And that’s a trend that is happening nationwide. A more accurate way to portray these results is “fewer people willing to admit to owning a gun than in previous years,” not that gun ownership is on the decline. But, as always, the mainstream media is too lazy to actually analyze the data that’s spoon fed to them before publishing. That, or they failed high school statistics.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

90 COMMENTS

  1. Haha nice. I saw this “survey” in the MSM the other day and laughed thinking the same exact thing. Are these people really that stupid? Part of me thinks, no – they are devious, extremists peddling propaganda… And then they open their mouths and speak and the other part of me says, Yes – they really are that dumb!

    • I, too, have often wondered if they are lying or stupid, and I think the answer is definitively: yes; they are lying to themselves, and dumb enough to believe it.

    • Problem is, these barely educated amateurs and propagandists feed their misleading bunk to stupid people in the mainstream media and the general public who buy into the rubbish without a second thought.

  2. Where I live, you would have a hard time finding a house that didn’t have one or more firearms in it. However, they would never tell that to a stranger or someone they didn’t know really well.

    • I don’t even admit online (with a traceable name attached) to owning anything other than 22lr, a Mosin Nagant, and a lever gun. If Browning wasn’t still under contract by Winchester when it came out I don’t have pictures of it posted.

      No freaking way I would tell a stranger on the street anything close to that revealing about me nowadays.

  3. A better measure is the share of people who believe a gun is useful for protection. That share is at 56% according to recent Gallup survey. How can only 32% own a gun, when 56% think it’s useful for protection. I fully agree with the writer, I would never ever tell someone on the phone that I own a gun. The caller could be a burglar and/or from the New York Times. Or Bloomberg. Gun registration through the back door. It’s amazing that in this day and age *anybody* would reveal via interview that they have a gun.

  4. Even if (and thats a big if) the survey was 100% accurate, so what?

    Rights are not a popularity contest. Tyranny by the majority was one thing the founders did NOT want.

    Oh, right, I forgot. Statists gonna state.

    • This is something that those idiots just don’t get. Rights are not things to be played like some political based poker game.

      Used to be friends with this left wing Canadian fellow on Facebook. Good guy up until you start talking about politics. Then he’ll immediately go full on pants on head retarded over anything that challenges any left wing talking point. Especially on guns. One of the last ‘discussions’ I had with him before I finally blocked him was this rant of his about how the left is going to eventually convince society that we should all hate guns and we’ll just all collectively ban them. Every single fact based argument about gun violence, personal defense, or even essential rights was completely lost on him and deliberately ignored.

        • Unless you’re one of the very rare sorts who have never purchased a firearm from an FFL, the feds already know you’re a gun owner. They might be a little fuzzy on exactly what you’ve got, but they know you’ve got something.

          So go and indulge your deep and abiding love of all things aquatic, and make sure your friends know about it.

        • I have a CHL and a hunting license issued by the State of Virginia. I kind of the think government assumes I have guns so the only reason for shyness is OPSEC to protect my house from criminals who might take my guns. Besides I am tired of behaving like there is something wrong about being a gun owner. If push comes to shove I will be a “good” citizen and surrender my least favorite guns and say that I legally sold the rest to some sovereign citizen gun nut.

    • You too? Damn shame. I saved the cooler of beer though, it floated.

      With the masses I witnessed at various gun shows in my area at given times over the last 6 years, the first time buyers, those buying “another one”, those stockpiling ammo, the range crowds, the ladies night at local ranges blossoming, the waiting list for training, (say it with me in a fine German accent),
      Ze Minister Of Propaganda Is Pleased)

  7. 32% of whom? As it is, 32% are too young to own firearms, or to respond to a survey….And even assuming they mean 32% of the total population, this is 100 million+ people. After deducting for those too young, that means that half of all adults own guns…Just sayin.’

  8. “Heck, I don’t even think I would admit to owning a gun during participate in a phone survey.”

    Fixed it for you.

    • Your point is non-trivial. There is a really good chance that people who like to own firearms do NOT like to participate in any survey about anything, whether in person or over the phone.

    • I have gotten to where I refuse to participate in surveys. It is rare when the survey is legit. Some are just an entry towards getting you to buy something or donate to a cause. Most have some sort of built in bias meant to obtain a desired result. Our best bet is to render the surveyor’s work worthless by not participating.

    • We never answer a phone survey. That automatically drops us out of stuff like this. A nearby mall has survey people stopping customers. Again, we don’t answer. Just how many gun owners do the same?

  9. The mainstream media is too lazy to actually analyze the data that’s spoon fed to them before publishing. That, or they failed high school statistics.

    Or they think pretending there’s a decline will make people think guns are unpopular and get rid of theirs.

    • This. Heck, the antis could even claim a victory here (an actual one, in their eyes.) “Gun owners so marginalized by society they won’t even admit to owning one.”

      • This of course is one of the reasons that the gun-grabbers want access to the names of people who have carry permits in places like New York and other states with “open records” laws. They want to publicize — “name and shame” is their term — gun owners in the hope that such behavior will discourage many people from getting a gun or a carry permit.

        They claim it’s for “safety” of course — that the public should “have the right to know if they’re living next door to a gun-toting crazy person” — but they never seem to think that “safety” argument should apply to drivers’ licenses. Even though more people are killed and injured by cars than by guns, and that it would be a lot easier to identify a driver without a valid license than a guy carrying a gun without a permit.

  11. Even hard data in Illinois refute this. FOID cards issued have increased 50 percent in six years from 1.2 to 1.8 million people

    • Maybe all those criminals – er, underprivileged yoots – in Chicago turned their lives around and started registering. Their unicorns. Because Rahm. For the children…

  12. “90% of all assault weapons used by criminals in Mexico come from local gun dealers in the US”…the lie told by Obama, Holder, and repeated after debunking, by SecState Hillary Clinton, in a speech to the Mexican legislature, just two weeks prior to ATF gun smuggling op Fast and Furious blew up, with murder of Agent Brian Terry, by one of those guns…

    “90% of all Americans favor background checks” still cited by the press today, as part of a small 1100 participant telephone survey in north east US on a range of leading questions, commissioned by Quinipiac College.

  13. They always push the story that guns are unpopular, in the hopes that this will sway the majority of sheeple to follow the herd and disassociate themselves from guns and gun culture -if all gun owners can be successfully pigeonholed as dwindling, old, racist, white, rednecks from flyover states, then “average” people will find it much easier to accept that restrictive laws should be passed to curtail this group.

  14. ALL the firearms that Obuma has sold were purchased by the existing NRA gun lobby
    and NRA membership has declined upwards by a couple million lobbiests.
    Women think guns are icky and none would own one. for the chiluns.
    Suicides in the US are by gun owned by the “victim” = one less gun owner
    Libtards don’t own guns because you shouldn’t.
    Guns do things like wander off and kill people and then are lost.

  15. Study fails to take into account the increase in divorce rate as extended families change results.

    • The study also fails to take into account that vast numbers of people live outside of Chicago. College-educated idiots.

  16. Should we care if the MSM reports declining gun ownership? Should we prefer that the MSM reports declining gun ownership?

    Let’s see, the Moms are all lathered-up talking about the excessive number of guns “on the streets”; while, at the same time, the MSM reports declining gun ownership. Does that ring true? The MSM is reporting surging sales of guns for the last 6 years; and, reporting declining gun ownership. Ammo sales up? Declining gun ownership.

    I see a growing credibility gap between the MSM and their audience. If anything, we should strive to maintain a straight face when such statistics are mentioned in polite company.

  17. Allow people in NYC, LA, SF, DC, Chicago and other dystopian paradises to have guns and watch what happens.

      • What show? Lol the show is right now with all the robberies and such. Add concealed firearms to the populous and the streets would be astoundingly boring by comparison.

  19. Most homes in Indiana usually have about 3 guns.
    Pump shotgun, usually an 870.
    .22 rifle, which is usually semi auto or lever action.
    .22 pistol or revolver, usually a Ruger.

    • Sure, then you add another shotgun for the misses, a 30-06 for whitetails, another .22 for junior, then you buy a 9mm cause you shot your buddies and loved it, then you inherit a 1911 & an Enfield from your favorite uncle, then it’s an AR-15 (because the market is right for one) and then WHAM! You’re smack dab in the middle of arsenal young man. Is that really what you wanted? Huh? Did ya?

  20. If anything, these surveys are showing that people are less likely to share their firearms status with strangers.

  21. Over six billion people live in the darkness of servitude and out right slavery due to the denial of their right to KABA.

    And the Regressives scheme tirelessly to convince the rest of us to bow down and surrender to their god the state.

    If I hadn’t grown up in the cess pool that is the left coast and the Bay Area, I would not realize how they, being instruments of enslavement, could feel so self righteous, just and good.

  22. My extended family and I own quite a few guns, older and newer. The total is ever increasing, not decreasing. Over the past 30 years or so, we have received a couple of telephone surveys, which including gun ownership questions, and several other gun related questions. It is not my preference to give out any such information to some unknown person, who knows my telephone number and can easily locate me, whether I own guns. So, I did not tell them that I owned guns and will not tell them should they call again in the future. My neighbors are the same way.

  24. Whaddya say we play along with their BS and ask them, “If firearms ownership is in such a decline, why then are you pushing so hard for more gun control? Just ride it out and they (guns) will just go away by themselves.”

  25. No surprises here. These surveys are always conducted with a given end result in mind, and then tailored to come up with the desired result.

  26. if ever asked Ive said NO. And will continue too.
    Those I wish to know do, and to all the others…………………………..let them guess.

  27. Nick, NSS is a national survey. I don’t know where you got your idea that it only polls Chicago residents, but you are wrong.

    Ah well. Another day, another “truth” from TTAG. Carry on.

    • The problem is the sample size is incredibly small. If it is for a national survey, that is even worse. 2000 to 3000 interviews per state would be rather small.

      • BlueBronco – I’m not commenting about potential deficiencies in the survey. I’m sure there are many.

        I’m commenting on TTAG’s inability to get simple, basic facts correct.

        • They say they conduct in-person interviews, yet don’t explain how that works. Where are they conducting their surveys and where are the people from? If they send interviewers to urban centers in each state, they’ll still manage to get an unbalanced view due to the higher restrictions/nuisance laws on guns in most cities.

    • You don’t happen to have the link handy to their data do you? And, on a side note, can I order an XL pizza, pepperoni and chovies please.

  28. The buzz and agitprop by gun control activists and their media enablers, the embedded Journolistas, at places like NYT, Slate, PuffHos, and the paid for clicks echo-chambers on the left, like Vox, Politico, TPM and MediaMatters, is coordinated with a last gasp reach for some kind of “legacy” for Holder, and one fears, another manufactured false narrative giving Obama the excuse to justify yet another unconstitutional Executive Action.

    This bill is one tactic, to be expected, that otherwise might have a chance with “reasonable” people, but no chance with those burned by Hope and Change.

    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/gun-owners-should-support-background-checks-115953.html#.VQDQLYTn-pF

    Call me cynical but when citizens feel like an abused spouse of a drunken, lying, arrogant narcissist, on a national level, because one Party rules all three branches of government, and worse, that abuse is enabled by the fourth estate; the free press, then the lost trust and suspicion for those responsible, including the enablers, persists for years, and remember, that once lost, trust takes decades to regain…

  29. A gun survey conducted by The University of Chicago . . . with a small sample size . . . yet they have issues with peer reviewed work of Dr. Gary Kleck.

  30. There is an ulterior motive here! Most comments do not mention this. What they are going to try to do with this information is correlate the “drop” in gun ownership with the recent fall in gun crimes!!!
    The Washington Times reports, “Since Illinois started granting concealed carry permits this year [2014], the number of robberies that have led to arrests in Chicago has declined 20 percent from last year, according to police department statistics. Reports of burglary and motor vehicle theft are down 20 percent and 26 percent, respectively. In the first quarter, the city’s homicide rate was at a 56-year low.” Because these figures DO NOT fit their narrative, they must try and come up with bogus survey data that they can use to convince the “gun grabbers” that it is the “decrease” in gun ownership that cause the decrease in crime, not the contrary!

  31. Ha, exactly, remember the press only lies about gun related issues. Otherwise it can 100% trusted.

  32. Nick’s ignorance with how the GSS is conducted is simply astonishing. The GSS uses a national sample and the average GSS interview is about 90 minutes long (per the FAQ on the GSS web site). So the idea that they simply stop people in the streets is just made up crap.

    Never mind that he totally missed this on their web site:

    “NORC, known since its founding in 1941 as the National Opinion Research Center, has headquarters on the University of Chicago’s campus, and offices in Chicago’s downtown Loop, Washington, DC, Bethesda, Maryland, and Berkeley, California, as well as a field staff that operates nationwide.”

    You can critique the GSS or other survey efforts that do not do a good job of measuring gun ownership. There are all kinds of legit reasons to do so. For example, gun owners probably have become less likely to answer questions about gun ownership posed by a perfect stranger. This is a perfectly reasonable conclusion and if you look at the Gallup data you can even see declines in the reported rate of gun ownership that correspond to major historical events in gun politics (see: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx) – the declines after the GCA and the Brady Law are particularly striking.

    Anyway, he could have made his point without the lazy, uninformed speculation. And rather than trying to actually find out the truth, he made stuff up. Yeah…way to go.

    • Sure, NORC has offices in such bastions of Conservatism and Republican strongholds as “…University of Chicago’s campus, …Chicago’s downtown Loop, Washington, DC, Bethesda (Montgomery County, a DC Suburb) Maryland, and Berkeley, California, as well as a field staff that operates nationwide” – provided the “field staff” obtain the funding to travel away from the named locations.

      So they stop people in the streets of University of Chicago’s campus; Chicago’s downtown Loop; Washington, DC; Bethesda, Maryland; and Berkeley, California.

      You’re a funny guy.

      • The GSS is conducted using in person interviews done in people’s homes in every state in the US. They do not stop people in the street and they are not limited to a few locations.

    • Darren, Shakey, its a lame troll tactic to cherry pick one weak point and dismiss the entire author, and larger poing of the article posted. Not saying you are trolls, or defending Nick, but to be perfectly fair, he said ‘he couldn’t find any info’. Nor could I, having spent an hour combing thru the NORC website, and various media articles, and the thin 5 page pdf on NORC findings, and could not find same- where were samples actually taken? If you have a link, I’d be interested inthat specific ijfo. This is usually part of the report, or easy to find, and its highly relevant. Go to the Pew Research report discussing same drop, but also noting that its almost entirely due to drop in number of hunters in same time period.
      http://www.people-press.org/2013/03/12/section-3-gun-ownership-trends-and-demographics/

      And Pew shows an easy to read table of geo locations of their own data points, which, not surprising shows bigger ownership in rual vs urban, south vs norteast, and by the way rising ownership by women.
      As well as discuss the steady and much higher ownership self reported by Gallup, over last few years.

      So, clearly something is underneath those NORC stats, thats probably pertinent to Nicks curiousity.

      You might read a discussion here recent funders of the NORCs studies, by Joyce Foundation.

    • Darren, Shakey, its a lame troll tactic to cherry pick one weak point and dismiss the entire author, and larger poing of the article posted. Not saying you are trolls, or defending Nick, but to be perfectly fair, he said ‘he couldn’t find any info’. Nor could I, having spent an hour combing thru the NORC website, and various media articles, and the thin 5 page pdf on NORC findings, and could not find same- where were samples actually taken? If you have a link, I’d be interested inthat specific ijfo. This is usually part of the report, or easy to find, and its highly relevant. Go to the Pew Research report discussing same drop, but also noting that its almost entirely due to drop in number of hunters in same time period.
      http://www.people-press.org/2013/03/12/section-3-gun-ownership-trends-and-demographics/

      And Pew shows an easy to read table of geo locations of their own data points, which, not surprising shows bigger ownership in rual vs urban, south vs norteast, and by the way rising ownership by women.
      As well as discuss the steady and much higher ownership self reported by Gallup, over last few years.

      So, clearly something is underneath those NORC stats, thats probably pertinent to Nicks curiousity.

      You might read a discussion here recent funders of the NORCs studies, by Joyce Foundation.

      http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2013/11/problems-with-using-the-general-social-survey-to-measure-gun-ownership/

      Who said it “Lies, damn lies, and statistics”?
      Interesteing and fairly unbiased report here, from AP, for more insight. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/85c182d0976f44b0a54780b7df8633bb/major-survey-shows-gun-ownership-declining

      • foo dog,

        I don’t have to debate you about what Nick wrote, his words are right there at the top of the page. Nick’s *major conclusion* is GSS is flawed because it only polls people from Chicago. That conclusion is wrong, and pointing that out is not trolling.

        I thought it was odd when I read it, because GSS well-respected and I didn’t think the designers would have a flaw that obvious. It took me all of 5 minutes to see that it is a national survey and they put quite a bit of work into getting a representative sample. That makes Nick both wrong and lazy.

        I just spent another 5 minutes to see if I could figure out their sampling methodology, and here is a summary:
        http://sda.berkeley.edu/GSS/Doc/gssa02.html Also, the entire public data set through 2006 is available via Nestar here: http://www3.norc.org/GSS+Website/Data+Analysis/ and you can download the raw data through 2012 if you want to crunch your own numbers.

  33. That is not only ridiculous, but it’s also a sad and troubling commentary on the state of our society in America here in 2015. Firearms are not a disposable commodity. They generally last forever, far outliving their original owners. People tend to acquire them, and keep them, and also tend to acquire more of them over time.

    The election and subsequent re-election of Obama caused Americans to purchase millions and millions of firearms. During the same period of time, carrying concealed weapons became legal in many states that had previously either prohibited it completely, or at least made permits difficult to obtain. Millions and millions of Americans have been purchasing firearms to make use of their newly issued CCW permits. Hunting, and other shooting sports remain popular, and have perhaps been becoming more popular. Americans are becoming more likely than in the past to feel the need to have firearms to protect them in their homes. Many states have re-enforced or strengthened castle doctrines, and that has caused many people to feel more comfortable with having firearms at home.

    So:
    1. Americans have been acquiring guns at a record pace for a number of years. Many firearms purchases are by first time buyers who did not previously own any guns.
    2. Clearly many, many of those who responded to this survey were not honest about their gun ownership.

    Would I cooperate truthfully with a survey like that? Would you? In both instances, probably not. It’s rather amazing (and sad and scary for America) how many of us have lost all of our firearms and ammo in boating accidents.

  34. Nice try Darren….I live in the paradise of Cook Co. Illinois. I do not take surveys and screen all my phone calls. There is a massive increase in new gun owners where I live. It’s not laziness when it is easily verified. Check out the huge increase in CC and FOID cards. Whatever- I don’t engage trolls…

    • The gun-grabbers keep preaching that “gun ownership rates are down” and will shrilly insist that a couple of surveys (of shaky methodology) prove this.

      Yet point out that Illinois FOID numbers are up by 50%, or that ammunition can’t be kept in stock due to demand, or that gun clubs and ranges have waiting lists to join which did not exists a few years ago… And all you hear from them is “That doesn’t mean anything. Anecdotal!”

      Let them keep whistling past the graveyard.

      Those of us who insist on believing our lying eyes will just have to continue teaching all the new shooters, waiting longer to take our turns at the range, and get used to .22 being scarce and expensive.

  35. [Phone rings]
    Me: Hello
    Them: Hi. I’m conducting a survey…
    Me: [CLICK!]
    Them: Put that one down as a “No.”

  37. “Hello?” What’s that again? Do I own a gun? How kind of you to ask.
    Well, turns out that have this idea for a gun that I can tow behind a deuce and a half that’ll launch any person weighing less than 400 pounds over a thousand yards into the back of a garbage truck. All I need now is a grant from the Science Foundation and a volunteer.”

    • I can think of a couple of folks from Kalifornia that I would gladly help you load into that gun. Then I would make sure the garbage truck was fully loaded!

  38. I am not a conspiracy theory person. I do have one of my graduate degrees in media and this kind of stuff interests me. I hope everyone understands what is really going on here with these studies and stats by the anti-gunners. I imagine a lot of you do get it, but it’s worthwhile to be explicit about it.

    There is a political science and mass communication theory called “The Spiral of Silence” (SoS). It was proposed in the 1970’s by the German-born political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a Nazi-sympathizer and journalist during WWII and later a professor at the U. of Missouri. Her work was so influential that in 1940, Joseph Goebbels tried to recruit her to come back to Germany and work for him.

    SoS theorizes that “individuals have a fear of isolation, which results from the idea that a social group or the society in general might isolate, neglect, or exclude members due to the members’ opinions. This fear of isolation consequently leads to remaining silent instead of voicing opinions. Media is an important factor that relates to both the dominant idea and people’s perception of the dominant idea. The assessment of one’s social environment may not always correlate with reality.” I can see this theory at work in this thread.

    So how SoS this applies here is that if the anti-gunners can convince the majority of the public that gun ownership is becoming something that fewer and fewer people are doing, the “spiral” starts where people become reluctant to talk about gun ownership, which further feeds the idea that it is something most people don’t do, which feeds the tendency not to talk openly about it, and so on. Pretty soon, gun owners get marginalized and politicians start to feel it’s more OK to propose infringements.

    So, it doesn’t matter if the research is flawed and the data is BS, as long as it can’t be too easily dismissed. You can see the result in this thread. Gun owners here are saying they wouldn’t talk about gun ownership to someone doing survey. I respect their motives and their right to do that, but that silence is part of the spiral. The big plan is to marginalize gun owners by eventually making gun ownership something that people no longer discuss openly. Like I said, the Nazis saw something in this theory and they were arguably some of the best propagandists ever.

  39. The “firearms ownership is declining myth”, explaining away massive firearms sales as just an ever shrinking group of owners buying more and more firearms, is just combination wishful thinking and scare tactic on the part of the antis. They really want this to be true, as it would mean they’re winning and that there’d be fewer of us to rebuff them in the future.

    In the meantime, they’re trying to intimidate us into thinking we’re a dying breed, that we’re becoming fewer and fewer in number and more and more marginal in impact. They want us to feel alone, afraid, isolated, and powerless. They fear expanded ownership, especially across ethnic and gender lines, because of the far reaching implications of firearms ownership upon the body politic. There is much, MUCH more to firearms, than just the firearms…..after all.

    Suffice it to say, the antis reveal what they most fear, by way of the means they use to frighten us. Take comfort and confidence from it, my friends. Freedom is stealing a march from the anti-freedom fanatics! And YOU’RE making it happen.

  40. I get that NORC has a liberal political bias. But let’s suppose for a moment that the GSS study data is valid and that 32% of the national population has a firearm in the house (later in the Yahoo article it was claimed that only 22% actually owned a gun.) And even the Yahoo article states that sales of firearms have increased. 32% or even 22% is a HUGE percentage of the population, and as the Yahoo article points out, and other commenters have pointed out, in white, non-big-city-northern-urban areas the percentages are much higher. What if 22% or 32% of the registered voters, to say nothing of the voting age population, voted Libertarian? We would not even be having this discussion because both the Dems and the Reps would be in disarray, the Libertarians would be at least the swing vote, and most of these silly laws would be repealed. Figuring out how to galvanize the 22%, 32%, or whatever the number is to support such efforts as CC reciprocity and to oppose things like ammo bans and magazine limits is more important and valuable than fighting about the exact statistic. And most important is figuring out how to counter the statistic mentioned in the Yahoo article that firearm ownership declines with age (not surprising either in a society where puberty and unemployment have been lengthened to age 30), which gives the anti’s more opportunity to train the uninformed.

  41. Logical fallacy: Hasty generalization. Drawing a conclusion from a small population or region is not a valid statistical technique. And of all the God Forsaken places on planet earth they picked Chicago? lol

    cf: Lying with statistics.

  42. Besides that fact that strangers asking personal questions is off-putting for many, they do not take into account just how polarized any discussion of politics has become. Being spoon fed “progressive” tropes through tv, social media, hollywood, and whatnot, many of the common sense statists react violently to any affront to their worldview. Hell I’d tell them to beat it on the off chance they’d call the cops on some imagined crimes. They haven’t been trying to characterize the AR-15 as a WMD for no reason.

  43. Their survey is complete BS. In my area, the demand for firearms courses for beginning shooters is off the charts. We are talking about new shooters that up until a few years ago thought they would never want to have a firearms, and today, they are very serious about arming up.

    • Who are you going to believe?

      Your observations of reality, right there in front of you, or a neatly-packaged “study” from someone who was paid to produce results?

  44. Sounds to me like they’re affirming the consequent. Essentially, their reasoning is:
    1. If gun ownership were declining, then fewer people in Chicago would say they own guns.
    2. Fewer people in Chicago say they own guns.
    3. Therefore, gun ownership is declining.

    The problem with this sort of reasoning is that it is a thoroughly invalid argument. As Nick pointed out, there are other premises that would also support the same conclusion.

    There is a big difference between evidence supporting a position and evidence merely not contradicting a position.

  45. As a control, they should also ask, “Do you keep valuables, such as jewelry and cash, in your home?” I’d wager they’d also find declining numbers of people willing to admit that to a total stranger.

    • Or, to control for any bias with regard to “financial value” versus “social opprobrium,” ask about sex toys.

  46. “… the mainstream media is too lazy to actually analyze the data that’s spoon fed to them before publishing. That, or they failed high school statistics.”

    Or, the most likely answer, increasing gun ownership does not fit the narrative. It gets hard to ben something that most people own (although they managed with light bulbs,)

  47. The 2nd to last paragraph is completely wrong and needs to be deleted.

    That problem is magnified when you do in-person interviews, basically stopping someone on the street. That not only narrows the pool for respondents to large metropolitan areas (where there are enough people that you might get someone to actually stop and talk with you) and also will skew your answer depending on the geographic areas selected. In this case, I can’t find any evidence to indicate that NORC even left the greater Chicago area while conducting the survey.

    The NORC GSS survey is conducted in every state and the respondents are very carefully chosen so that they represent a nationally representative random sample. They are most certainly not stopped on the street. The interviews are 1-1.5 hours long and are conducted in an office utilizing highly trained interviewers. Furthermore. face to face interviews are much more likely to elicit true information than phone interviews. http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/67/1/79.abstract

  48. Really useful information. Cool to read such a well-considered article! I just filled out TREC 9-11 with an online software. It looked much better typed than hand-written. I used https://goo.gl/dKh9U5 and it’s very easy to use.

  49. 1. The AR-15 Semiautomatic Rifle is semiautomatic Rifle Fires 40 rounds per minute . only too! It is part of second amercement of the U.S.A, Constitution to of the Bill of Rights too! State Governments of 50 States Will Abide by the Amendment of the Bill of Rights too . On Federal Judge can”t change the ruling of the Gun Laws or add His Or Her: own words is not legal to add the Laws reads to a op ion too! agree! The Federal Circuit Quarts of law to read the laws on those books too! Now They can”t add any there words to the Laws by U.S. Congress & U.S. Senate laws makers too! The elected Assembly & State Senate can”t over Step There the Authority of the Federal Government at all is illegal of breaking federal Laws as well too. The Circuit Judge can be removed from the bench off the U.S. Circuit Court of law by Chief Judge too! Agree!

  50. 1. There will Be: In the U.S.A. only it will be a max cap limit of Retailers Gun Dealers Store Fronts Businesses in Commercial zones locations only too! The maximum Cap is (5000) F.F.L.s Holders Dealers too. The State Governments: 50 State is (100) F.F.Ls holder Retailers Store Fronts Businesses too! There will be better controls on F.F.L.s Licences Renewals Applications as well it will be harder to processes those Applications for renewals too! Do you agree??? No more Gun Dealers Licences will not exceeds The maxim Cap limits of F.F.L.s Holders Gun Dealers Retailers Businesses too! There Will be better Controls on those Renewals Application Fr oms too!!! BY the A.T.F. Rules are Very St ricked too! Do you Agree??? Yes ??? One out of Ten Gun Dealers is roe Gun Dealers is (01)(02) Regular Gun Dealers. N.F.A Gun Dealers (09) too. Class-1 With Tax Stamp is (03 Licence is N.F.A too! Agree! Reason is There is a lot,roe bad Gun Dealers still out there yet too! It True!!!

Comments are closed.