Tea Party golf cart
The share of American households with guns has declined over the past four decades, a national survey shows, with some of the most surprising drops in the South and the Western mountain states, where guns are deeply embedded in the culture.
The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions.
The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.
The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data…
In 2012, the share of American households with guns was 34 percent…The findings contrast with the impression left by a flurry of news reports about people rushing to buy guns and clearing shop shelves of assault rifles after the massacre last year at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
“There are all these claims that gun ownership is going through the roof,” said Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “But I suspect the increase in gun sales has been limited mostly to current gun owners. The most reputable surveys show a decline over time in the share of households with guns.”
It’s reassuring that someone has reliably determined we’re not entirely a nation of nutballs.
Fishwrap in a rare attempt to bring some dignity to this forum says:
3/13/2013 at 7:03 am
Bobbo, without resorting to ad hominem attacks concerning the quality (or lack thereof ) of your mental processes, /// and yet you immediately get into the mud. Revealing……. we are all too much hopelessly the same. Some just better than others.
I believe the Second Amendment permits, // yes, thats what it says
nay requires, /// doesn’t say that at all. Old timey law passed to say that. Don’t recall the details on what happened thereafter.
citizens to be armed in a manner equivalent to the modern military infantryman (or infantry-person if you prefer), /// doesn’t say that at all. Thats a Court Inspired piece of Active Interpretation. Don’t modern infantry have full auto weapons?
including an M136 AT4 (bazookas went out in the Korean era), /// yep–its not even current/up to specs yet you still can’t have one.
a selective-fire M4 carbine, M249 light machine gun (LMG), M240B general-purpose machine gun (GPMG), night-vision capability, body armor, and so forth. /// got a link…or is this indeed just what you “believe” totally unattached from any reality? Your belief is obvious not true—just look around. Read a few newspapes?
It’s not about deer hunting. “Sporting purposes” is a canard. /// I agree. Sporting doesn’t go to purposes of the 2nd Amendment. Its more often stated as what motivates the public in wanting to keep rifles legal. The actual canard is the one you believe==that it is to protect the people from the government. Thats just plain stoopid silly. The Militia was to protect the government from foreign governments, not the Feds.
Put that in your musket and smoke it. /// And that touches on what I think the SCt will some day conclude: what the 2nd Amend enshrines is only the level of lethality that private weapons represented back then. Its the danger compared to the benefits that sets the level and quality of what guns should be allowed. Today, that still remains “muskets.”
Hard to argue that the Const changes to recognize more sophisticated guns yet should not change to recognize the associated threat.
Now the Supreme Court just needs to hold that the First Amendment only applies to media that existed when it was adopted. Internet, TV, radio can be censored.
Mickey thats a good example of bumper sticker non-think that marks the conservative right wing.
The rule is the same: matching the goals of the Bill of Rights to technology, society, pros and cons over time.
The goal of the 2nd Amnd was to allow for self arming and protection IN THE CONTEXT of single shot muskets where one man with a weapon could not do that much harm. Thats not true if you upgrade weapons to what an adequately militia might have today.
Now==what is the PURPOSE of the 1st Amend and how is that purpose affected by changes in society and technology??? at the time, free speech was saying what you wanted to, reading what you wanted to, seeing what you wanted to. Instead of foolishly only looking at changes in the technology==what are the changes/risks/benefits to the 1st Amend and to Society with the various forms of speech we have today?
I hope you can see the difference? so like a magpie you are–you see a bright shining object and see nothing else.
Can you do any better?