Gun Ownership declining

[Thump553]

Personally I approach the subject of guns with much the same trepidation as a discussion of religion or abortion-far too many people have rigid views based on personal doctrine and are interested only in converting others to the "correct" view.

That said I saw an article with some unexpected news in the paper over the weekend. It seems that the percentage of gun ownership in the US is actually declining, and rather significantly-from 53% in 1994 to 36% today. This seemingly contradicts the numerous reports we have all seen that gun sales spike after every mass murder, election of a black man to the Presidency, etc. until you dig into the stats a bit further and discover that of the people that own guns they now each own twice as many. The average gun owner today in the US owns EIGHT guns.

It seems our national policies are being dictated by an increasingly fervent and increasingly shrinking sector of the population dominated by those who adamantly contend that the government (at any level) has NO authority to do any sort of gun regulation-which flies in the face of even Judge Scalia's judicial activist rewriting of the second amendment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...erican-gun-ownership-is-now-at-a-30-year-low/

 

[Artdeco]

http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/05/news/fbi-background-checks/index.html

40% increase in background checks, buried in the throwaway Friday press release, people forget the news over the weekend.

If sales are up, and ownership is down, that means those with guns would tend to have a lot of them. I tend to buy multiples when they run a background check, picked up 5 last week with one background check.

 

[sm625]

Personally I approach the subject of guns with much the same trepidation as a discussion of religion or abortion-far too many people have rigid views based on personal doctrine and are interested only in converting others to the "correct" view.

This is not like religion at all. It has nothing to do with personal doctrine. There is only one "correct" view. The Constitution clearly and unambiguously states "Shall not be infringed".

The Preamble to the Bill of Rights states:

[FONT=Baskerville,Georgia,Oxford,Palatino,Times,Times New Roman]

[SIZE=+1]THE[/SIZE] Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added

[/FONT]
The document clearly states "in order to prevent misconstruction" and then follows that statement with the specific phrase "shall not be infringed". There is simply no room for misconstruction, personal beliefs, or opinions.

 

[Knowing]

I'm still wracking my brain to try and figure out why people would be reactionary when other people who don't understand guns keep passing gun legislation that doesn't work.

 

[Artdeco]

Those background checks are prior to the new CA legislation, expect another huge jump this month, and leading up to the election.

 

[glenn1]

Personally I approach the subject of guns with much the same trepidation as a discussion of religion or abortion-far too many people have rigid views based on personal doctrine and are interested only in converting others to the "correct" view.

That said I saw an article with some unexpected news in the paper over the weekend. It seems that the percentage of gun ownership in the US is actually declining, and rather significantly-from 53% in 1994 to 36% today. This seemingly contradicts the numerous reports we have all seen that gun sales spike after every mass murder, election of a black man to the Presidency, etc. until you dig into the stats a bit further and discover that of the people that own guns they now each own twice as many. The average gun owner today in the US owns EIGHT guns.

It seems our national policies are being dictated by an increasingly fervent and increasingly shrinking sector of the population dominated by those who adamantly contend that the government (at any level) has NO authority to do any sort of gun regulation-which flies in the face of even Judge Scalia's judicial activist rewriting of the second amendment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...erican-gun-ownership-is-now-at-a-30-year-low/

I don't care if it's only 1 person in the entire country owning guns, you don't get to abridge their rights just because that person exercising the right scares you. Stop being a fucking pussy and respect others for a minute like a goddamn adult.

 

[fskimospy]

Personally I approach the subject of guns with much the same trepidation as a discussion of religion or abortion-far too many people have rigid views based on personal doctrine and are interested only in converting others to the "correct" view.

That said I saw an article with some unexpected news in the paper over the weekend. It seems that the percentage of gun ownership in the US is actually declining, and rather significantly-from 53% in 1994 to 36% today. This seemingly contradicts the numerous reports we have all seen that gun sales spike after every mass murder, election of a black man to the Presidency, etc. until you dig into the stats a bit further and discover that of the people that own guns they now each own twice as many. The average gun owner today in the US owns EIGHT guns.

It seems our national policies are being dictated by an increasingly fervent and increasingly shrinking sector of the population dominated by those who adamantly contend that the government (at any level) has NO authority to do any sort of gun regulation-which flies in the face of even Judge Scalia's judicial activist rewriting of the second amendment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...erican-gun-ownership-is-now-at-a-30-year-low/

This is overall good news though. As gun owners continue to decline their outsized influence will eventually diminish. Then we can implement common sense gun restrictions that have been blocked for years.

It's only a matter of time until we win on this matter, it's just a shame that so many people will die needlessly before it happens.

 

[glenn1]

This is overall good news though. As gun owners continue to decline their outsized influence will eventually diminish. Then we can implement common sense gun restrictions that have been blocked for years.

It's only a matter of time until we win on this matter, it's just a shame that so many people will die needlessly before it happens.

Let's leave aside your "ends justify the means" approach to abridging rights and say you impose your will on gun owners, their wants and desires be damned. After urban poor continue killing each other and terrifying people like you then what's your next step? Go total North Korean and ratchet up the police state even more and put the at-risk groups into reeducation camps, reinstate"stop and frisk" with an even greater level of vigor, throw even more taxpayer dollars into welfare and plead for them to stop? What's your end game aside from obviously just imposing your authoritarianism on the minority (in both the gun owner and racial sense)?

 

[TheVrolok]

This is not like religion at all. It has nothing to do with personal doctrine. There is only one "correct" view. The Constitution clearly and unambiguously states "Shall not be infringed".

The Preamble to the Bill of Rights states:

[FONT=Baskerville,Georgia,Oxford,Palatino,Times,Times New Roman][/FONT]
The document clearly states "in order to prevent misconstruction" and then follows that statement with the specific phrase "shall not be infringed". There is simply no room for misconstruction, personal beliefs, or opinions.

Please. There is common sense precedent for limitations on the rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. The second ammendment is not hallowed ground.

 

[fskimospy]

Let's leave aside your "ends justify the means" approach to abridging rights and say you impose your will on gun owners, their wants and desires be damned. After urban poor continue killing each other and terrifying people like you then what's your next step? Go total North Korean and ratchet up the police state even more and put the at-risk groups into reeducation camps, reinstate"stop and frisk" with an even greater level of vigor, throw even more taxpayer dollars into welfare and plead for them to stop? What's your end game aside from obviously just imposing your authoritarianism on the minority (in both the gun owner and racial sense)?

I don't know why you keep trying that whole 'you're scared of urban poor people' shtick. I have spent years living in neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly poor, black, and Hispanic. It's simply not an issue for me. Considering how often you bring it up I do wonder if it is an issue for you though.

There's not much point in addressing your other hyperbole other than to say 'no'. The Constitution was written to allow for the government to restrict rights when it had a strong interest in doing so. I have no problem with this.

 

[thraashman]

I don't know why you keep trying that whole 'you're scared of urban poor people' shtick. I have spent years living in neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly poor, black, and Hispanic. It's simply not an issue for me. Considering how often you bring it up I do wonder if it is an issue for you though.

There's not much point in addressing your other hyperbole other than to say 'no'. The Constitution was written to allow for the government to restrict rights when it had a strong interest in doing so. I have no problem with this.

Hell the wording of the Second Amendment indicates the government's right to regulate the right to bear arms.

 

[glenn1]

I don't know why you keep trying that whole 'you're scared of urban poor people' shtick. I have spent years living in neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly poor, black, and Hispanic. It's simply not an issue for me. Considering how often you bring it up I do wonder if it is an issue for you though.

There's not much point in addressing your other hyperbole other than to say 'no'. The Constitution was written to allow for the government to restrict rights when it had a strong interest in doing so. I have no problem with this.

If it's not an issue then why do you support their forced disarmament?

 

[fskimospy]

If it's not an issue then why do you support their forced disarmament?

There are not enough eye rolls. You seem to have problems with urban minorities, problems you're trying to project on other people. Not a good look.

 

[Genx87]

This is overall good news though. As gun owners continue to decline their outsized influence will eventually diminish. Then we can implement common sense gun restrictions that have been blocked for years.

It's only a matter of time until we win on this matter, it's just a shame that so many people will die needlessly before it happens.

Eh you may want to look at the demographics. The millenials arent buying into the ban gun culture like the generations before them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...b9d0c2-9d20-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html

A decade or two post-adolescence — as our own preschool-age children now practice “active shooter” drills in which they’re coached to cower in the closet or throw toys at a tactical-gear-outfitted maniac — millennials seem to have neither the desire nor the willpower to pressure our political leaders to do much to prevent such tragedies. If anything, we may be slightly more blasé about them than our elders.

Which does not bode well for liberals hoping that the arc of history will eventually bend toward greater gun control.

If liberals were truthful on the matter and wanted meaningful legislation that would actually reduce gun violence. They would work on rolling back the war on drugs instead of banning the thing that makes the gun go up.

 

[fskimospy]

Eh you may want to look at the demographics. The millenials arent buying into the ban gun culture like the generations before them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...b9d0c2-9d20-11e5-8728-1af6af208198_story.html

If liberals were truthful on the matter and wanted meaningful legislation that would actually reduce gun violence. They would work on rolling back the war on drugs instead of banning the thing that makes the gun go up.

We aren't even close to gun bans and most common sense gun restrictions like universal background checks, etc, are overwhelmingly supported by millennials. I mean just overwhelming.

Liberals have in fact been at the forefront of wanting to end the war on drugs so I don't get where the 'honesty' thing comes in. We can be in support of both ending the war on drugs and implementing gun control at the same time. I know I am.

 

[glenn1]

There are not enough eye rolls. You seem to have problems with urban minorities, problems you're trying to project on other people. Not a good look.

You didn't answer my question. You trust the "overwhelmingly poor, black, and Hispanic" residents of the neighborhoods you live in, yet evidently not enough to allow them to exercise their constitutional rights to firearms, why is that?

 

[cyclohexane]

Meh, doesn't effect me. I live in a nice neighborhood of a large metro area. Guns are expensive and I have no use for them. Not into hunting either. Imo there are much better ways to spend my money than iterally shooting them away at gun ranges.

 

[fskimospy]

You didn't answer my question. You trust the "overwhelmingly poor, black, and Hispanic" residents of the neighborhoods you live in, yet evidently not enough to allow them to exercise their constitutional rights to firearms, why is that?

You are continuing to project your fear of urban minorities onto other people, why? You might as well be asking why I don't trust urban minorities enough to speak because I think parade permits should exist. It's a transparently stupid question and you know it. Why keep making yourself look bad?

 

[Venix]

Personally I approach the subject of guns with much the same trepidation as a discussion of religion or abortion-far too many people have rigid views based on personal doctrine and are interested only in converting others to the "correct" view.

That said I saw an article with some unexpected news in the paper over the weekend. It seems that the percentage of gun ownership in the US is actually declining, and rather significantly-from 53% in 1994 to 36% today. This seemingly contradicts the numerous reports we have all seen that gun sales spike after every mass murder, election of a black man to the Presidency, etc. until you dig into the stats a bit further and discover that of the people that own guns they now each own twice as many. The average gun owner today in the US owns EIGHT guns.

It seems our national policies are being dictated by an increasingly fervent and increasingly shrinking sector of the population dominated by those who adamantly contend that the government (at any level) has NO authority to do any sort of gun regulation-which flies in the face of even Judge Scalia's judicial activist rewriting of the second amendment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...erican-gun-ownership-is-now-at-a-30-year-low/

That's household gun ownership rate, not personal gun ownership rate. The household growth rate has been nearly twice the population growth rate over the last 40 years, as the composition of the average household has radically changed. Most of these new households are woman-led, and women purchase fewer firearms than men.

According to the GSS, from 1980 to 2014 the household ownership rate has dropped from 47% to 31%, but personal ownership rate has only declined from 28.1% to 22.4%. 2014's rate is actually higher than 2010/2012's, and is the same as 1998's. That also means that there are 8 million more firearm owners today than in 1980.

Total gun ownership has increased over the past few decades. Gun owner growth has just been outstripped by population growth, hence the declining per capita rate. That's not surprising, since Hispanics are the fastest growing group, and they're not as likely to purchase firearms as whites.

 

[Moonbeam]

You are continuing to project your fear of urban minorities onto other people, why? You might as well be asking why I don't trust urban minorities enough to speak because I think parade permits should exist. It's a transparently stupid question and you know it. Why keep making yourself look bad?

Because he will never allow himself to feel his own self hate that is the reason he projects onto those minorities and that creates the assumption that you feel his paranoia too.

 

[glenn1]

You are continuing to project your fear of urban minorities onto other people, why? You might as well be asking why I don't trust urban minorities enough to speak because I think parade permits should exist. It's a transparently stupid question and you know it. Why keep making yourself look bad?

Are you likewise seeking to restrict the types of parades to allow analogous to targeted restrictions on semiauto rifles? Or restrict the amount of floats and marchers they can contain analogous to large magazine bans? Or argue for restrictions on speech because after all the 1st Amendment specifies "freedom of the PRESS" analogous to rationalizing restrictions on the Second because it mentions militias?

The types of restrictions that gun control supporters focus on betray their fears. Shotguns kill far more than semi-automatic rifles yet you focus on AR-15s. You target high capacity semiautomatic pistols in calibers favored by middle class recreational shooters, yet homicides typically get committed by urban poor involved in gangs or drugs using either a revolver or small cheap made pistols in a lower caliber like .25 and .32ACP that generally hold less than your seeming 10-round magazine gold standard anyway. Or a 9mm in the class of the shitload of cheap and plentiful Rugers, Smith and Wessons, and other makes that are often police duty sidearm surplus sales.

Do you want to do something that would actually help with firearms homicides? Then insist that your state and local police departments only use high-quality firearms like Sig Sauers instead of buying then EOL public selling some domestic POS just because it cost $300 new and a gangbanger can then buy for under $100. And focus new sales restriction on the super low end guns like the Hi-Points, Ruger LTCs, KelTecs, and the ilk. The suburban dad buying a $2,000 custom M1911 or AR15 mod is exactly the kind of person you SHOULD NOT be targeting because they represent effectively zero risk.

The top 10 guns used in crimes in the U.S. in 2000, according to an unpublished study by U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and obtained exclusively by TIME:

1. Smith and Wesson .38 revolver
2. Ruger 9 mm semiautomatic
3. Lorcin Engineering .380 semiautomatic
4. Raven Arms .25 semiautomatic
5. Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun
6. Smith and Wesson 9mm semiautomatic
7. Smith and Wesson .357 revolver
8. Bryco Arms 9mm semiautomatic
9. Bryco Arms .380 semiautomatic
10. Davis Industries .380 semiautomatic

The list is derived from the center's investigations of 88,570 guns recovered from crime scenes in 46 cities in 2000, is being analyzed for ATF's youth gun crime interdiction initiative, which helps local police forces understand and counter gun trafficking to youth in their jurisdictions.

 

[Preyhunter]

I don't know why you keep trying that whole 'you're scared of urban poor people' shtick. I have spent years living in neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly poor, black, and Hispanic. It's simply not an issue for me. Considering how often you bring it up I do wonder if it is an issue for you though.

There's not much point in addressing your other hyperbole other than to say 'no'. The Constitution was written to allow for the government to restrict rights when it had a strong interest in doing so. I have no problem with this.

Bolding is mine. Your understanding of the Constitution is wrong. Therefore, any argument you make based on Constitutional knowledge or meaning is wrong. The writing of the Constitution was meant to LIMIT the authority of the federal government. As the US was established, total freedom of the people was a given. Of course, TOTAL freedom isn't acceptable because that would infringe on others' freedoms. We became a nation of laws at that point in order to establish a rule of law (rather, "you are free to do as you choose so long as you do not restrict others from being free to do as they choose").

Your interpreted federal authority granted by the Constitution, as well as thraashman's revisionist meaning of "well-regulated" in the 2nd Amendment, are completely unfounded when compared to the texts written by the same authors of the time. Try reading the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers to determine what the definitions of those words actually meant at the time they were written.

 

[fskimospy]

Bolding is mine. Your understanding of the Constitution is wrong. Therefore, any argument you make based on Constitutional knowledge or meaning is wrong. The writing of the Constitution was meant to LIMIT the authority of the federal government. As the US was established, total freedom of the people was a given. Of course, TOTAL freedom isn't acceptable because that would infringe on others' freedoms. We became a nation of laws at that point in order to establish a rule of law (rather, "you are free to do as you choose so long as you do not restrict others from being free to do as they choose").

Your interpreted federal authority granted by the Constitution, as well as thraashman's revisionist meaning of "well-regulated" in the 2nd Amendment, are completely unfounded when compared to the texts written by the same authors of the time. Try reading the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers to determine what the definitions of those words actually meant at the time they were written.

I'm sorry but you don't know what you're talking about. The constitution was indeed meant to limit the powers of the federal government and nothing I wrote said otherwise. Those rights were clearly understood not to be absolute by the people who wrote the constitution however as clearly shown by their actions while governing under the constitution.

I have read most of the federalist papers at one time or another and if you think the constitution wasn't designed with the idea that the government could limit people's rights to speech, arms, etc if necessary then you have been badly misinformed.

 

[ivwshane]

Bolding is mine. Your understanding of the Constitution is wrong. Therefore, any argument you make based on Constitutional knowledge or meaning is wrong. The writing of the Constitution was meant to LIMIT the authority of the federal government. As the US was established, total freedom of the people was a given. Of course, TOTAL freedom isn't acceptable because that would infringe on others' freedoms. We became a nation of laws at that point in order to establish a rule of law (rather, "you are free to do as you choose so long as you do not restrict others from being free to do as they choose").

Your interpreted federal authority granted by the Constitution, as well as thraashman's revisionist meaning of "well-regulated" in the 2nd Amendment, are completely unfounded when compared to the texts written by the same authors of the time. Try reading the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist Papers to determine what the definitions of those words actually meant at the time they were written.

There is only one person in this thread pushing revisionist history and that's you.

The constitution was written by 55 men, all of which who didn't have the exact same opinions. Why would you look to the opinions of a few when we can look at the constitution itself, that has agreed upon language in already? For example, the word militia, no where in the constitution does it imply the meaning to be independent individuals. The constitution also clearly lays out who and what and how this nation is to be protected, including that there should be no standing army.

So maybe you should read the actual document where consensus was required instead of pointing to other sources that didn't require consensus.

 

[zinfamous]

I don't care if it's only 1 person in the entire country owning guns, you don't get to abridge their rights just because that person exercising the right scares you. Stop being a fucking pussy and respect others for a minute like a goddamn adult.

gets to end of rant, reads final statement, reminds self of rest of rant.