On 2012-12-17, at 6:13 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com>
>
>> The arming of white America began in earnest after the rise of the black movement for civil rights...
>
> Don't know where you got that, but how does it match with this?
>
> http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/chart-day-gun-ownership-30-year-decline
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> [...]
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> For the last 30 years, it turns out, gun ownership has dropped steadily. Today, only about 30% of households own a gun. Most of this is due to demographics. Apparently there was a big spurt in gun ownership in the generation born between 1920 and 1960, and then the spurt went away. Cohorts born in later years all own guns at substantially lower levels….Still, unit gun sales seem to have gone up pretty explosively between 2005-10, doubling from around 5 million per year to 10 million per year. FBI background checks, a proxy for gun sales to individuals, have gone up too.
>
> So I'm not sure what's going on. Gun sales to individuals seem like they've increased a fair amount over the past decade, but the number of households reporting gun ownership has decreased a bit. Does this mean that fewer households own guns, but the ones that do own guns have more and more of them? More data please!
While the absolute number of gun sales has increased over the past decade, might not the lower percentage of gun owners be attributable to the relative decline of the white population? Of the estimated 40% of the population who now own guns - the percentage has fluctuated unevenly in the 40-50% range since the 70's - Gallup reported 44% were white and 27% non-white. See: http://www.statisticbrain.com/gun-ownership-statistics-demographics/
Anecdotally, wasn't there a surge in gun ownership after Obama won election in 2008? According to today's New York Times, there was in any event a decline in support for gun control following his election. Note also that "about 70 percent of Republicans favor gun rights, while the same number of Democrats supports gun control, according to the July Pew poll. Whites are more likely to say it is more important to protect gun ownership; blacks overwhelmingly back gun control. And men tend to give gun rights more importance, while women favor controlling gun ownership."
So while white children and adults are as apt to be killed by psychologically disturbed white gunmen as anyone else in these random shooting sprees, it seems clear that they are presented with a greater opportunity to commit mayhem because of the broader social context, ie. the pervasive gun culture and ubiquity of firearms in the mostly Republican white community.
In Recent Years, a Drop in Public Support for Gun Control Laws By MARJORIE CONNELLY New York Times December 17 2012
Support for gun control measures has steadily dropped over the last decade, and previous mass shootings had little effect on public opinion about gun laws. It is too early to tell if the age and the number of the victims in the killings in Newtown, Conn., will now have an impact on attitudes toward gun control.
Throughout much of the 1990s and the last decade, a solid majority of Americans said they supported stricter gun control laws. But the percentage has dropped sharply in the last several years, according to polls by both the Pew Research Center and Gallup, and the country is now more evenly divided.
The reasons for the shift are not fully clear, though much of it followed President Obama's election in 2008.
The recent spate of mass shootings, with 6 of the country's 12 deadliest shootings having occurred since 2007, has not appeared to increase support for stricter gun laws.
After the July 20 shootings in a movie theater in Colorado, Pew asked whether it was more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns or to control gun ownership. Forty-seven percent of respondents favored protecting the right to own guns, while 46 percent favored gun control. This was essentially unchanged from the results of a poll conducted in April 2011.
There was no increase in support for gun control in January 2011 after the shooting in Tucson in which Representative Gabrielle Giffords was wounded or after a mass murder at Virginia Tech in April 2007.
The question of gun control divides along lines of party, race and gender. About 70 percent of Republicans favor gun rights, while the same number of Democrats supports gun control, according to the July Pew poll. Whites are more likely to say it is more important to protect gun ownership; blacks overwhelmingly back gun control. And men tend to give gun rights more importance, while women favor controlling gun ownership.
There is greater support for some specific changes. In August, a CNN/ORC International poll asked about semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips. Nearly 6 in 10 of those surveyed would outlaw the manufacture, sale and possession of semiautomatic assault guns, such as AK-47s; a similar number would ban the sale and possession of high-capacity or extended ammunition clips, which allow some guns to shoot more than 10 rounds before they need to be reloaded.
The results of that poll, taken in the weeks after the 12 gunshot fatalities at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and six deaths at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., were essentially unchanged from the findings of a poll taken in January 2011, after the shooting in Tucson, which resulted in 6 deaths and the serious injury to Ms. Giffords.
The CNN poll conducted in August also found that more than 9 in 10 of respondents favor background checks and preventing convicted felons and people with mental health problems from owning guns. Three-quarters approve of registering firearms with local governments, but more than half oppose limiting the number of guns any individual can own.
The Gallup Poll has not asked its gun control questions since last year. At that time, it found its lowest support for making stricter the laws covering the sale of firearms, as well as the lowest number of Americans in favor of banning the possession of handguns to non-law enforcement personnel. Gallup's data stretched back to 1990.
In October 2011, 43 percent said that laws dealing with the sale of firearms should be made more strict; 44 percent said the laws should remain as they are now. Only 11 percent favored more lenient laws. As recently as 2007, a majority supported stricter legislation regarding guns, and when the question was first asked in 1990, 78 percent wanted to see more rigorous gun laws.
At the same time, 73 percent of those surveyed opposed a law that would allow only police and other authorized people to possess a handgun, while 26 favored such a ban. When Gallup first asked the question in 1959, 60 percent supported this type of gun control, but since 1975, a majority has opposed it.
In the same poll, nearly half of adults reported having a gun in their home or elsewhere on their property. Forty-seven percent of all adults said they or someone in their household owned a gun, including a majority of men, residents of the Midwest and the South, Republicans and those with no college education.