“There’s no question that gun rights groups like the NRA are winning the battle for hearts and minds on the issue. A December 2014 Pew Research Center poll showed that for the first time in two decades, there is more support among Americans for gun rights than gun control. So far, gun rights advocates haven’t been able to capitalize on this sentiment to broaden the base of gun ownership. But they have been able to convince their supporters to keep buying more firearms.” – Christopher Ingraham in America has more guns in fewer hands than ever before [at washingtonpost.com]
Continued regurgitation of a bad study. Nothing to see here.
True for a great many reasons.
That said. I’ll just keep inviting every non-psycho person I know to try my “arsenal”.
So far I’ve infected 6 people to become new gun owners in the last three years. Most have or are getting CPLs.
Shooting is its own best advertisement.
This data, when adjusted for population growth, actually reveals 7million NEW gun owning homes, and statistically ignores the recent trend of dual spouse ownership. There are also more multi-family homes than ever before. Obviously, the 12 million CCWs are also greater in number than at any time in history. Death by ND is at historic lows, AND homicide is down nearly 50%. So yes, winning.
Spot on.
My daughter, who lives at home, just told me she wants a gun for protection.
Same home, one more gun, one more gun owner.
Oorah!
Boy, I bet she had a tough time talking you into that, huh?!
It’s useful to contrast the GSS numbers with the Gallup numbers. Both estimate household ownership. Gallup has been fairly stable- about 40% of homes. But always more than the GSS in recent decades. http://www.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
I tend to trust the Gallup numbers more which use anonymous phone calls instead of the GSS using in person interview. I think a fair number of gun owners will tell the truth to Gallup but not tell the person at their home that they have a gun.
My wife and I are recently armed and it had more to do with proposed bans by the current government than the NRA.
One speech by Barack Obama has more impact on gun sales than ten years of marketing by the NRA.
The NRA and related groups have being going head to head with the likes of Nelson “Pete” Shields, Sarah Brady, Lautenberg, Di Feinstein, Joe Biden, Eric “Brainwash Americans Against Guns” Holder, Chucky Shoomer, Joe McNamarra, Bloomer etc. since the 1970s. Otherwise, what Barry says would be moot. “Pete” Shields goal in the late 1970s was to get every gun in America registered and then ban them. That is still the strategy of Handgun Control Inc now known as The Brady Campaign.
12 million +1… just submitted my application yesterday.
Actually, Mr. Ingraham, it’s people like you who have convinced us to keep buying more firearms. What? Hold on, my 1000 rounds of M855 are here.
Need help shooting that? I have a few NEW acquisitions I’d like to break in.
bwahaha keep telling yourself whatever you need to make yourself feel better.
Ah yes. The old demonize gun owners as “arsenal” storing kooks bit.
He didn’ even try for that thin veneer of originality. He just regurgitated an article from a different site.
What? How dare you contradict the narrative that its only been a handful of old white poor uneducated bible thumping redneck rascists living in shacks innawoods buying all the millions and millions of guns sold? Wait…
I remember reading most of the growth in gun ownership has been minorities and females. But they never let facts get in the way, do they?
Bloomingidiotberg says we should disarm minorities for their own good. If you’re white and say something like that then you better be a liberal. Anyone else and the liberal news will crucify you.
The bigger issues are ……
What exactly are people thinking (or more correctly NOT thinking) when they tell a stranger on the phone as to their gun ownership status?
How feeble is the writer to not wonder that this question could lead to a lot of lying either way.
I would give a Nigerian prince my bank information before I would talk about my guns on the phone.
Really……because I need a help to make available monies unjustly held. Only required are 3000 american dollars and you will receive 1 million American dollars and new ak47 for the help.
Yeah, it’s funny how the “expert pollsters” never want to acknowledge how many people would never tell a stranger – over the phone or in person – that they own a gun. They also don’t like to tell you how many fall in the “refuse to answer” category. When I get a call from a pollster, I either hang up immediately or enjoy myself lying to them. The other factor in the “non-increase” of people admitting they own a gun has been the last 40 years of relentless media badmouthing of gun owners. Lots of people that own guns don’t want to put up with the sanctimonious crap from the anti-gun left.
If everyone in America would just see it as a moral duty to lie on polls, they would quickly go out of business – and then the politicians might have to tell us what they really believe instead of what they think we want to hear. Nahh, that’s a pipedream.
Winning and losing, really. The 9th Circuit had no issue with the Sunnyvale, CA 10 round mag ban – with no grandfathering. That’s at least an obvious violation of the 2nd and 5th Amendments. The M855 ban looms large, and .223 / 5.56 prices are up again.
The MSM, Obama, Holder, Feinstein, Bloomberg, and big government lie continually in their “interest of public safety” paradigm while moving towards civilian disarmament at every possibility. DC enacted a predictably onerous “may issue” system.
Meanwhile, CCW is up and negligent (listed as accidental) firearms deaths are down. States loosening restrictions to carry are doing just fine.
I figure it’s roughly a slow decline federally (given our anti-gun POTUS), a faster decline in Democrat-controlled states, and resounding victories in red states.
I’m also concerned that net neutrality will wreck the Internet and good access to the wonderful FBI stats and studies which handily disprove the lies about M855, school shootings, murder rates, MDA propaganda, etc.
+100 Couldn’t agree more with what ya said.
+101
It seems like the nation is becoming more and more polarized by the minute.
Always funny to me the people who never set foot in a gun store claim there are fewer owners. They never see how many first time buyers fill the counter space asking questions or completing the 4473 form. All with such big smiles at their first firearm purchase.
Never fails to make me chuckle.
Yep. Not only do I see a lot of (obviously) first-timers at the LGS / range…. I regularly get emails and FB messages from friends looking for advice on their first gun purchase. It’s almost a weekly thing.
Every time I’m in a gun store I see people applying for Illinois FOID cards and others who are obviously buying their first gun. The fact that Illinois has a fairly new concealed carry law may have something to do with this.
Yup Curtis. Crowded Illinois gunshops and huge business for Indiana gunstores with a big Illinois buying and shooting contingent. This “writer” isa goofball…
I know I’ve helped “broaden the base” of gun ownership by taking a local acquaintance to the gun range when she expressed interest in firearms. She has since taken the NRA Basic Pistol class and just bought a GP100 revolver.
So, suck on that Mr. Ingraham.
Excellent choice. She’ll make a grandchild very happy someday when she passes it on.
So the NRA is evil because they’re growing gun rights supporters and broadening the base, but gun owners are a minority whose numbers are dwindling.
Got it.
It’s from Wuss-ington Post. What did you expect?
Thank God for the NRA. Which reminds me, I need to renew my membership.
Actually, these days, I know MORE “new gun owners” than I do OFWG hoarding guns. New, as in got into guns within the last 6 years or so thanks to the libturd grab for gun confiscation.
Most of the motivated gun rights activists are also new converts. A lot of my older relative Fudds are all supportive of the 2nd, but don’t like the “confrontational” open carriers. Its been a struggle to explain to them that without protests nothing will change and our rights will disappear.
That may or may not be true. At a minimum, though, a four-decade trend of declining firearm ownership has been halted.
Of course, NRA-ILA nicely puts the lie to the claim:
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20140314/more-fuzzy-math-gun-control-supporters-misrepresent-gun-owner-trends
And also:
So, if 50% of US households in 1980 had firearms, and only 40% (most recent figure I could find was 39%) of US households have firearms today, assuming an index of 100 households in 1980:
1980: 100 households -> 50% with firearms -> 50 households with firearms
2015: 100*1.4 = 140 households -> 40% with firearms -> 56 households with firearms
So, just based on those numbers, the number (not percentage) of households with firearms has increased by 12% since 1980.
Awhile back I was looking at some Pew Research data going back several decades. They ask the same questions year after year, and the percentage of people claiming guns in their homes rises and falls rather dramatically from one year to the next. There is obviously a high margin of error, for whatever reason.
“America has more guns in fewer hands than ever before [at washingtonpost.com]”
Come a ground war with China, gun-grabbers are going to wish you could grow more hands.
Tell that to the folks in gun stores asking first time buyer type questions.
Warm…..getting warmer……….Cold.
While I’ve always been a gun rights supporter, I didn’t own any guns before Sandy Hook. Now I own 8 handguns and 4 long guns. Molon Labe.
It seems to me that surveys like this which ask about firearm ownership aren’t providing data about actual ownership, rather they inversely represent the lack of trust the average gun owner has in both our society and government and would rather keep that information to themselves. As any one of us can attest, since this administration has take office, the ranges seem to be flooded with newbie gun owners. And that is quite a powerful statement to the contrary of these studies.
Some stranger calling me on the phone telling me I’ve won a free all expenses paid trip to the Hawaii, all we need is your credit card number “right now” to finalize the deal. Right.
Some other stranger calls asking if I have any guns in the house for some “poll” that they are doing. Right.
They might be real offers and polls, but I don’t have the time to verify their credentials, so no, I don’t give that kind of information to some stranger cold calling me on the phone.
I don’t know why everybody seems so skeptical about this report. I certainly don’t own any guns (well, other than certain NFA items, which seem to be written in stone, but I also live on a lake, if you get my drift) and I bet if I were to call you up, you don’t own any either, right?
It is difficult to believe anyone could be as stupid as this writer.
Irony~TTAG
For the record-The truth about my guns…….you can’t handle the truth.
P.S.-as far as I know the rowboat fed MY former firearms to the local canal. I stand by that version……..
They keep saying that fewer Americans own guns than ever before. What is this based on? I know so many people who bought their first gun in the last 5 so 6 years.
This, “America has more guns in fewer hands than ever before” is an outright lie. During the last 3 years I have helped 9 people who never owned a firearm in their entire lives learn to handle and pick pistols and rifles. Sadly 6 of them went with ARs, other 3 are now proud Zastava N-PAP M70 owners. Can’t win them all.
Among the LGS crowd I run with the most noteworthy matter they bring up is how many new gun owners they have sold to during the last 6 years. Perhaps these liars who keep spewing this crap should actually speak to people who know what the f**k has been going on in America since 2008? Naw! That will never happen, they will continue to spew the same lies endlessly without end.
We are making progress !! H.R. 1180 would prohibit BATF from unlawful bans by fiat.
Better still Rep. Sensenbrenner has a Bill to eliminate the redundant ,corrupt agency.
But wait , there’s more , TheHill.com reports a growing push to ‘ Vacate ‘ the Speaker , that is FIRE JOHN BOHNER , the RINO democrats love . Keep CALLING / E-Mailing !! Ignore those who say it wont work .
This Rep has a bill. That Rep has a bill. Whatever. Yesterday TTAG blogged about a Rep in Illinois who has a bill to require full gun registration, among other things.
Sing it with me! “I’m just a bill, yes I’m only a bill, and I’m sittin’ here on Capital Hill…”
Wake me up when something actually happens beyond the usual pointless pandering.
The title of that article is typical WaPo passive denialism. More guns in FEWER hands?….Really? ASS.
WTH? I helped teach a basic pistol course last week that was filled to the ceiling with first time gun owners. The chief instructor needed help because he cannot keep up with demand. It is the same with many other instructors. The NRA has more certified instructors than ever before, and I suspect it isn’t enough. I am planning to teach a class this summer. I haven’t advertised this class to anyone, and I already have enough people to fill a classroom.
There would be a lot more gun owners if Slave States stopped jacking with 2A.
Oh, I think the slave states jacking with the 2A might actually be helping gun sales. Legal or illegal.
Do they take into consideration the fact that I for one and many like me may not answer this type of poll truthfully? Sure they say it’s anonymous, but us paranoids with guns don’t want to admit we have any in the house, let alone the half dozen stash guns and gun safe full of shotguns and long rifles. None of their business.
Stay safe!
I started giving the CCW class in the last 18 months and have trained over 100 people thus far. I hope to double that number in the next 12 months.
And every class I give, about 10% become NRA members (many already are).
Best way to defeat the gun nuts is to recruit more sane people into shooting/carrying.
So far, gun rights advocates haven’t been able to capitalize on this sentiment to broaden the base of gun ownership. But they have been able to convince their supporters to keep buying more firearms.” SSDD. This is getting to be decades old a$$ hattery.
My wife is the latest gun owner in my family, but I helped pay for it as a gift and had the DROS under my name… so she won’t show up as a new gun owner, but she is…
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