Sometimes – if we are to believe the media reports – we may feel that we’re in a small and extremist minority because of our interest in firearms, and our personal ownership of them. It isn’t just the media – the chances are you probably know some friends, colleagues, and/or neighbors who are vociferously opposed to any sort of guns and any sort of gun ownership, under any sort of situation.
The loudness of these people’s sincerely held opposition to firearms sometimes serves to obscure the fact that it is they, not us, who are the minority extremists.
This is vividly shown in the annual Gallup Crime Poll, where the well-known polling organization gathers statistics on people’s attitudes to guns as part of their crime survey. This year’s results (the poll was held in early October) have just been released, and the results are very conclusive.
Only one in four American adults favor an outright ban on handgun ownership. A record low of only 26% favor this, whereas an all time high of 73% of Americans are opposed.
We know there are two types of gun the media (and gun haters) particularly focus on – pistols and so-called ‘assault rifles’ – a made up term that has no meaning or reality other than whatever it is the anti-gunners choose it to mean from time to time. And this year, even with the best will in the world (and a question designed to make it easy to support banning), Gallup can’t get people to support an ‘assault rifle’ ban, either. An all-time low of 43% of American support banning ‘assault rifles’, compared to 53% who oppose such bans.
There are also significant changes in the number of households who are now admitting to owning a firearm. This year 47% of adults said there was a gun in their house or elsewhere on their property, up from 41% last year, and the highest level since 1993.
Interestingly, Gallup themselves wonder if part of the reason for the sharp drop in claimed household gun ownership in the second half of the 1990s was due to people simply lying and not admitting to owning guns. This is understandable – it is not always prudent to admit to a stranger on the phone that you keep guns in your house.
So maybe the increase in apparent household gun ownership is due merely to more people feeling free to tell the truth about their gun ownership?
On the other hand, it seems reasonable to expect that overall gun ownership – whatever the real true level actually may be – is on the rise. Gun sales are booming, and more guns are being sold per month now than at any other time since gun sales started to be nationally tracked. All new gun sales are sort of reported in the form of gun dealers needing to get approvals from the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), a system instituted in late 1998. The FBI publish monthly statistics on the number of requests received each month and as you can see, these numbers have been steadily and significantly increasing for the last ten years.
If anything, it is surprising that only 47% of households have a gun. With 130 million NICS checks since 1998, and – by coincidence – the same number of households in the US, it seems that, on average, every household in the country has bought a gun in the last 13 years. And because guns have very long lives, most of these gun sales have been new guns rather than replacement guns.
This is supported by our own sense of who it is that come into our stores and buy guns from us. We’re seeing a lot more ‘first time’ gun buyers, in all age groups and demographics, coming in, getting advice, carefully considering it, and walking out with their first ever gun.
Anyway, whatever the level of real true gun ownership is, this Gallup survey shows us some very clear things. People are more supportive of gun ownership than at any previous time over the last 20 or more years, and people are both buying and owning more guns than ever before, too.
So, please don’t feel part of a strange minority group. You’re part of the (silent) majority.