ar-15 black gun owner first time
The new face of gun ownership in America (Image by John Boch)

“It may be that a percentage of firearm owners are concerned that their information will be leaked and the government will take their firearms or that researchers who are from universities that are typically seen as liberal and anti-firearm access will paint firearm owners in a bad light,” the authors allowed. They also speculated that many respondents falsely denying owning guns may come from communities that are traditionally unfriendly to gun ownership. That’s an interesting possibility considering that nearly half of all those designated as potential gun owners are unmarried urban women of color. In fact, as the study points out, many new gun owners are women and minorities.

“An estimated 2.9% of U.S. adults (7.5 million) became new gun owners from 1 January 2019 to 26 April 2021. Most (5.4 million) had lived in homes without guns,” according to a separate study published last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “Approximately half of all new gun owners were female (50% in 2019 and 47% in 2020 to 2021), 20% were Black (21% in 2019 and in 2020–2021), and 20% were Hispanic (20% in 2019 and 19% in 2020–2021).”

With gun ownership becoming increasingly common beyond the traditional ranks of white suburban-to-rural men, there are big implications for politics and policy. New gun owners will certainly resist proposals to strip them of self-defense tools they acquired out of necessity. They’re also likely to resent restrictive policies that urban, left-of-center politicians promote to torment gun owners once assumed to be safe targets, but which apply to anybody who owns firearms no matter where they live and vote. Basically, the gun-ownership landscape is growing and changing, but new owners are even more reticent than established ones about revealing their existence to researchers and government officials.

After decades of debate, arbitrary crackdowns, and draconian enforcement actions, who can blame them?

Until recently, many gun opponents tried to paint firearm ownership as a fading fetish among a disappearing class of Americans. …

Recent years have seen a surge in gun sales, spurred by rioting, social disorder, and political turmoil. Given that many of these gun buyers are first-time owners, it’s apparent that firearm ownership is becoming more widespread and being enjoyed by Americans who might have resisted the idea in the past. These new owners are even more suspicious of scrutiny than their predecessors in the already privacy-minded gun-owning community.

“Our results highlight the potential that several groups, particularly women and individuals living in urban environments, may be prone to falsely denying firearm ownership,” adds the Rutgers report.

Academic researchers and policymakers who draw from their work clearly regret such opacity. But they should cast the blame not on gun owners, but on the activists and politicians who vilified the exercise of self-defense rights and who drove growing numbers of Americans to evade scrutiny.

– J.D. Tuccille in The Ranks of Gun Owners Grow, and So Does Their Resistance to Scrutiny

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

76 COMMENTS

  3. By most estimates around year 2020, 350 – 400 million firearms of all types, + add almost 1 million a month for the last 36 months so figure 386-436 million +/- 50 million. I think that’s enough to defeat any military in the world that doesn’t use nukes on our soil. No country could even begin to match that. Why else do you think the Democrats want to take them away? The answer is obvious, they plan to do thinks that we would shoot them for.

    • there will be a summit at the end of next year to decide if the u.n. will be granted, basically, the way it’s worded, unlimited emergency powers over their members. the soiled tennatwist sockmonkey regime supports this. nuclear, medical, war outbreak, extreme environmental, supply issues, grid, communication… and of course anything they deem appropriate gets slipped in there.
      backs to the wall.
      i hate everybody that sits on that panel.

      • Need to go back and read the preceding comments, and the article for that matter. Whoever believes he has the power to authorize whoever might want to, to do whatever with our guns, will find himself facing more firearms than any army on the planet could defeat. If all those zeroes then agree to turn off the electric grid in order to starve us to death, we will reinstate the electric grid and kill those who try to keep it shut down, raise our own food and cleanse our shores of treason. We have the guns, and so we have all the power needed to take care of our own business, do not fall for the left’s constant drumbeat that you are helpless and stupid, cannot accomplish anything at all without government assistance. From the exact same government which constantly fails at everything it attempts.

    • Don’t think they will go to guns other than a feint to see if intimidation will work. After that fails they will shut down the electric grid to use starvation as a weapon.

      • And here we are.
        Depending on .giv.
        As I’ve said before Americans have not had true freedom since 40 acres and a mule would not support a family.
        What I am annoyed at is .giv waited until I grew old to pull this shit. Not just me but a whole bunch of us. No more are there ones who dig splinters from their hands with a pocket knife. No the new age male is more worried about his fake eyelashes matching his fake fingernails.
        God save the queen,man.

  4. I would never own a gun!
    You know, owning a gun turns them into a mass shooter! Just like that BLM supporting, transgender guy in Philadelphia!

  5. “It may be that a percentage of firearm owners are concerned that their information will be leaked and the government will take their firearms or that researchers who are from universities that are typically seen as liberal and anti-firearm access will paint firearm owners in a bad light,”

    What do you mean “It may be” – it has happened and continues to happen. Its a fact, for example; California (a state government) leaked the personal information of concealed carry permit holders and so called ‘researchers’ that are ‘liberal and anti-firearm’ accessed that and used it to flat out lie about gun owner ship. The U.S. Government (under Biden) deliberately deleted years of proven valid data from the CDC website upon demand of anti-gun interests and used that deletion to exploit a lie that self-defense with firearms is so rare its only happened maybe a few hundred times over many years when in reality it happens millions of times annually (and overall, based upon reported to police for all crimes against victims it happened over 5 million times in 2022)

    • And do not forget the New Yor Times reporter that did the same thing a few years back. As for new gun owners fear, they have every right to be concerned, and it is no one’s damned business anyway…

      • Some unknown dude or dudess calls on the phone and in a moment of temporary insanity I answer a phone number neither I nor my phone recognizes. They want to know if I own any guns. If I am in a super happy mood, I just hang up on them. If I am the least bit out of sorts they hang up on me in the midst of my stream of invective scorching their eardrums.
        And I don’t even own a gun. I put an inquiry like that in the same category as calling a stranger and asking him if he cheats on his wife.

    • Downunder a copy of the NSW firearms registry database was on the unrestricted police intranet in a password protected MS Access file.

      It wasn’t long before copies of the database were found outside and dealers and collectors targeted.

      MS Office security can be broken in less than 5 minutes. I know because I’ve done it. Open the file in 7zip. Edit the config file and delete a certain block of text. Save the changes. Close 7zip. Tada. MS Office password protection removed.

  6. Those same “activists and politicians who vilified the exercise of self-defense rights” also promoted the 2020 Summer of Fire and Love.

      • I’ve been saying this here in TTAG for (cripes, maybe 10 years by now?) that the Left would be shocked if they really knew how many of their own were gun owners and would never let it slip they were over fears of being ostracized by their own fascist buddies.

        This is zero surprise to me…

  7. If this really is a free country people wouldn’t be afraid to admit to partaking in enumerated rights. Some South American dirty war shit.

    • They don’t want a ‘free country’.

      Wasn’t Biden caught on video bitching about ‘too much freedom’ one time, and ‘nobody needs 27 different varieties of deodorant’ another time?

      “Freedom is Slavery” (Orwell, 1984)… 🙁

  8. Who could have imagined that defunding the police and allowing violent criminals out of the jails would increase gun ownership.

    • You and I both know the answer to that one.

      They seriously believe if they just click their heels together 3 times and focus really, really, REALLY hard, utopia is just around the corner where everybody is nice to one another, and everyone has a high-paying job and lives in a really nice home with a fridge full of safe, healthy food.

      And, all those evil, fascist Trump supporters were put up against the wall and shot.

      That’s the kind of acceptance of others they want… 🙁

  9. Gee, you think?

    Larry Correia, on his MHI blog, currently has a writeup on “The Death of Good Will.” He’s talking mostly about companies and marketing … but the principle is also applicable in other areas, such as trust in political, social and academic institutions.

  10. To the left, women don’t exist and men are toxic. Even if every single person asked were to be completely and totally honest with every question it still wouldn’t matter. It would all get ignored anyway. If the person polled said they do own guns at all then they are painted as extreme right MAGA Republican Trump voters that want to overthrow the us government. So why be honest with any of it? It’s all just a joke anyway. It makes any result worthless and a situation the left created.

  12. When I see statistics about the number of gun owners my first thought is who answers one of these surveys? How else can they get their numbers?

    If some random person calls me up and asks how many guns do I own? Yeah, I’m not answering that!

    Do you answer calls from unknown callers? I get so much spam that I almost never do. Does anyone nowadays?

  13. If some random (or government)jerk called me or wrote me “got any gunz?” I would hang up. Or burn the letter. Lost in a flood🙄

  14. There was a push once, to have physicians ask patients if they owed a firearm.

    “Doc, I own so $*(*-#($*&% many firearms they have to change Dianne Feinstein’s depends every time she thinks about it.”

    • Yes, but you aren’t required to give an answer. Just say no comment. They’ll probably try to use that information to charge you more for insurance.

      • last time wifey went in for a tune up (as the patron saint of everyone, she becomes distraught at the layers she does grasp) that was asked. she says she deadpanned them into a “next.”
        if they have a box for “likely” they checked it.

      • I was asked by my black lady doctor. If I had guns? I told her I wouldn’t tell her if I had or didn’t have guns. She asked me why not? I told her that as a black man in America, I didn’t want anyone to know the answer to that question. Including the government.

        btw
        We have already discussed on TTAG. Where a gun dealer who was a medical marijuana user lost his business. The ATF took it away from him. Because his private medical records were placed in a public searchable database.

        It was the Obama administration. Who encouraged and eventually passed a law that would force doctors and medical companies to use electronic medical records.

        That can be made into a searchable database.

        Some private medical companies have created their own electronic medical record keeping system. But this has its own security protocols not accessible by anyone, including the government. The Obama law may change that in the future.

        You get “free” government health care. And in turn. The government gets to know everything you’ve been up to. That has caused you any medical problems.

      • just lie about it, like when they ask me if I smoke or otherwise use tobacco. NOYB. Why admit to anything that will be used against you (or your interests)?

  15. “Our results highlight the potential that several groups, particularly women and individuals living in urban environments, may be prone to falsely denying firearm ownership,”

    That’s true. Between my wife and I we personally know several woman who borrowed and purchased guns for home and self defense and carry them. The ones owned in the purchased sense were bought in private person-person sales, the ones borrowed are owned in the possession sense. Some have had to actually use them. We have loaned and sold some of those guns to them, some they got from others. Everyone of them will deny owning these firearms, even though they do own them either by borrowed possession or actually purchasing them in per-person private sales.

    There are many women and minorities around here that do these same thing as these women we personally know, and they deny owning guns.

    The reason for their denial of ownership is exactly the same – they don’t want anti-gun entitles to know who they are because its not uncommon for anti-gun entities to use or want to use that information to in some way persecute or endanger them and their families. For example, the ATF with their unwarranted visits to 4473 based law abiding purchasers trying to gain access to homes – and there are many cases of anti-gun interests trying to out gun owners in ways that can endanger them, for example, some politicians want guns to have tracking chips and make those locations known to the public through cell phone apps so the general public will know when they are near someone with a gun and this not only endangers the law abiding gun carrier but their family too as there are simply too many mentally ill left-wing people who think they have a right to violently or aggressively confront a gun owner.

  16. And researcher Allison refers to gun owners who don’t want strangers to know their business as “dishonest “. Allison can go suck start a glock.

  17. Where are these “researchers” going to get honest answers? Do you answer calls from people you don’t know?

    Will this get m0derated into oblivion too?

  18. This is something I have known since I was a kid. Any talk of a regular black person owning and enjoying guns, is just Forbidden in public discourse.

    But the internet has changed everything. The gatekeepers no longer have control of what is discussed in public. And that is just driving these people crazy.

    It now turns out that many in the traditional news media actually don’t support the First Amendment at all. They want the government to censor views and discussions that they disagree with. It’s amazing to me to see the number of news media people, call for Alex Jones to be taken off the air.

    And these are the same. People who complained about President Richard Nixon and what he was doing???

    At the end of the day, the libertarians liberals and the left actually agree with Nixon. They just want it done to somebody they don’t like.

    It’s ok to show blacks with guns as long as they’re wearing some type of uniform with mean faces. But you’re not allowed to show black people standing next to white people, and all of them holding guns and smiling.

    btw
    Alex Jones supports legalizing marijuana. But that wasn’t good enough for the libertarians at Reason, Magazine who supported taking him off the internet.

  19. I’ve never been surveyed about guns, by phone or mail. If I ever am my response will be do you? Everything they ask me I’ll ask of them. If they won’t answer me I won’t answer them. I won’t answer them anyway but it seems like it would be good for a laugh

  20. Everyone can make money now a days very easily…dd…..I am a full time college student and just w0rking for 3 to 4 hrs a day. Everybody must try this home online job now by just use… This Following Website.—–>>> http://Www.EarnCash7.com

  21. Who would dare to lie to an academic researcher? How rude, you gun-owning liars! The pure, sweet researchers just need data so they can shape their gun control recommendation policies or use as a media talking point to show why “the science” says that gun control is necessary, gun owners bad. Why are those nasty people not conforming to the plan?!?!

    • Exactly. You call me and ask about guns. I know who you say you are but who are you really and what information is this to you.

      It doesn’t take much to correlate a phone number to a street address and then get targeted for doxing, SWATTING, robbery, or worse.

  23. Over 48 million guns sold in the last 47 months. One of these days the politicians are going to understand they are playing a dangerous and losing game with the American Public. 250,000 pistol braces registered out of millions. ATF projected a 60% compliance rate. They are lucky if that number even represents 3%. American Citizens gave them the middle finger and courts gave them injunctions. Time for these socialist gestapos to wake up that they will not intimidate the American Public.

  24. I’ve been asked to participate in a gun ownership survey twice in the past 10 or so years.

    Both times, I refused.

  25. “But they should cast the blame not on gun owners, but on the activists and politicians who vilified the exercise of self-defense rights and who drove growing numbers of Americans to evade scrutiny.”

    Excellent summation.

    “activists and politicians”: code for socialist-democrats.

    • Remember that when media sources say “activist”, they mean “left-wing extremist”. Actual left-wing activists are referred to as “experts”. In case you were wondering, the word for a right-wing activist is “extremist.”

      • Expert: A guy from out of town with a Cross pen.

        Nationally known expert: A guy from out of town with a Cross pen and an attache case.

        Internationally known Expert: A guy form out of town with a Cross pen, an attache case and a three-piece suit.

        • I like the phonetic breakdown: Expert = x + spurt. What is x? In Algebra, an unknown. What is spurt? A drip under pressure. What is an expert? An unknown drip under pressure.

  27. Let me try this again.
    Never been called or received mail asking about gun ownership. If it ever happens I’ll ask them if. they own any.
    I will tell them about my collection of bb guns including my favorite Red Ryder and my slingshot .
    Guess moderators gotta moderate

    • I finally, at over age 80 have achieved a life long dream. I now own a Red Ryder bb gun, something I have desired since age 6. What I got for Christmas in the long, skinny box was not a Red Ryder but a single shot, dumb jazz, load one at a time bb gun. Hence the reason for my distorted personality.

  29. Since there is a concerted effort by said ‘Academics’ to take away said guns from everybody, theres no way in hell I’m going to say anything about any said firearms that I might or might not have to anyone, period.

  30. Received a couple of survey calls.

    Me: “How do I know you are who you say you are? How do I know you are going to anonymize this data? How do I know what you are going to do with my data? With whom it will be shared?

    Surveyor: Click (politely).

  31. It’s just a Chronic Case of the “NunYa’s” It’s NunYa’s business WTF I own, How Many, and How Much Ammo I Have.

    It’s especially not the Government’s Business.

  32. Welp, i ain’t got nothing to register either, nor do i need to be checked for any confiscation. Nonono.

  33. They don’t NEED to know if you have guns unless THEY want to confiscate them – see Amendment 2, US Constitution for clarification.

    • Whenever someone who is a gun-control zealot yells at me something like, “We need to know who has the guns!” I ask, “Why?” “Well, so we know,” they reply. “Why do you need to know?” I ask. “Well, because, uh, hmm, crime, yeah crime – that’s it.” So I say, “OK, I have guns.” “Now, explain to me how that information prevented a crime.” They say, “Uh, uh, uh, well, uh, you suck and want to kill children.” and then I accuse them of being a liar and a lunatic and then my wife grabs my sleeve and says it is time to go home.

  34. I’ll admit that I’m a gun owner. I won’t tell you who I am but I will admit that. 😉

  36. “Screw the UN and anyone who supports the idiots in other countries.”

    ‘Oh, do come along, Bond.’

    UN is the one-world government that will make everyone safe, happy, wealthy, riskless and free of any constraints or cares.

    You gotta buy into the vision; what’s good for all is good for one. Oz is the promised land.

  38. First off, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m on some fed flunky’s list. Used to have an FFL and worked with several police departments. Used to own a couple full auto weapons as well.
    Several of my friends are either current, or retired law enforcement. So, my collection is not much of a secret should the idiots think they need to go looking for firearms. Of course many of them are actually antiques or collectables. As are the artillery pieces I own.
    It’s also known by anyone who checks me out that I was Army SF for several years back in the day. Sure, I’m old and not a threat to anyone, but I have something that can’t be confiscated or stolen. Knowlege. Had training with a number of things that could make life difficult for anyone with ill intent towards me or mine. Sure, I’m under no delusion of grandeur. In a confrontation with federal enforcement, or military, chances are I would not survive. But, I, and those living with me or working with me in the local community could make life difficult for those trying to do unkind things to us.
    If someone ever asks me out of the blue, or claims to be conducting a random survey or poll would get the biggest shovel of BS I could muster. As for my MD. He was out here shooting with us a couple months ago. All he saw were a few everyday side arms and a collection of BP firearms. But, I replaced a broken extractor in his 870 last fall, so he knows I can do some work on firearms.
    Hopefully the GOP regains the Senate before the UN treaties come for a vote. While I don’t trust either political party to do the right thing, regarding that issue there is at least a chance they might not ratify it.

  39. I used to sometimes tell people, if they asked, that I owned guns.

    Now when they ask if I own guns I ask them “Do you have sex with clowns?”

    They go “What?”

    I go “Exactly.”

    Question and answer session over.

  40. Like your doctor asking if there are guns in the home..
    Unless they are ALSO asking about trampolines, pools, dogs, illegal drugs…etc etc etc…NUNYA!

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