If you repeat a lie often enough, eventually people believe it. Make no mistake, gun ownership is actually on the rise. Women make up the fastest growing group of gun owners and minorities of every stripe are also taking up guns. But given the tendency of left leaning pollsters (like those from National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago) and the media in general to vilify gun owners, could it be that we’re seeing, not so much a decline in gun ownership but, a decline in the number of people willing to give away that information to these people? Or might it be that their “sample” is limited to a specific demographic group or geographic region?
-GM
WASHINGTON, DC —
A major U.S. trend survey finds that the number of Americans who live in a household with at least one gun is lower than it’s ever been. That decline is paralleled by a reduction in the number of Americans who hunt.
According to the latest General Social Survey, 32 percent of Americans either own a firearm themselves or live with someone who does, which ties a record low set in 2010. That’s a significant decline since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when about half of Americans reported a gun in their household.
The drop is probably linked with a decline in the popularity of hunting, from 32 percent who lived in a household with at least one hunter in 1977 to less than half that number saying so now.