Why Gun Control advocates will end up with egg on their face once again...

[iverglas]

133. "gun ownership"?

Gun ownership in America has been high the last century or so. We're probably in the range of about 800 guns per 1,000 people. It's creeped up to what is presumably an all-time-high over the past few years, but there's no difference between 600 per capita and 800 per capita.

(I know you meant "per thousand"!)

That's a rate for guns owned. Not owners of guns.

How does a rate for the objects -- x/100,000 -- tell us how many people own said objects?

It doesn't. And that really is the meaningful information. Not specifically in relation to crime rates, because that is a much more complex relationship. Just in terms of who is really actually involved here, and what is really goingon.

Any reasonably reliable estimates I have seen over the last decade have shown that firearms ownership rates -- the proportion of the population that owns firearms -- in the US have steadily declined over the last 35 years.

In more nuanced terms, the number of people who have firearms, and specifically long guns, for hunting/sports purposes has declined markedly. That has been offset somewhat by the number of people who have handguns, for, well, other purposes.

Firearms owners, in the traditional sense, were a dying breed. Demand for firearms for other purposes, by other people, was then drummed up. What industry would not seek to diversify its product line and broaden its market in the face of a declining market for its traditional products?

High firearms (and other) violent crime rates back around the same time that firearms ownership rates among the public began declining were the perfect opportunity to start the campaign to persuade the public it needed guns - handguns specifically - for "self-defence". Never mind that the people they were defending themselves against were getting their own guns from the same firearms industry directly, or indirectly from the people it sold its products to.

And of course, never mind that the rise of this particular "gun culture" coincided with the backlash to desegregation.

"Your home is your castle; defend it!" cried George P. Mahoney, who championed "gun rights" and fought tooth and nail against housing desegregation in 1968, and was responsible for the Democratic Party losing the Maryland governorship to Spiro T. Agnew ... and just look where that got ya.