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From The Washington Post:
The survey's findings support other research showing that as overall rates of gun ownership has declined, the number of firearms in circulation has skyrocketed. The implication is that there are more guns in fewer hands than ever before. The top 3 percent of American adults own, on average, 17 guns apiece, according to the survey's estimates.
Interesting. Lawyers, guns, and money! Which of these has the smallest percentage and largest absolute amount? Of course, the other major shift the survey reveals is in the rationale for owning firearms: currently, a majority of owners cite personal protection as their motivation, prior to the 1990's the majority owned guns for sport.
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Three Percent own Half of America’s Guns
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Tuesday September 20 2016, @03:41PM
This conclusion depends entirely on the data that is driven to it.
How is the "rate of gun ownership" determined? Most importantly, is it driven by REGISTERED ownership? And how do you determine uniqueness, given there is no national database of gun owners (thanks, NRA!)?
But let's say they're looking at the number of permitted owners, based on some state-by-state looks at things. Let's say they're seeing the rate of guns being produced exceeding the rate of registrations.
That could lead to several conclusions. The one in the article implies "it means more and more guns are being bought by people who already have guns, so no need to register." Certainly that's one possibility.
But another possibility is that we're seeing a decline in registrations. People aren't failing to register because they already own other registered guns. They're just not registering. Or buying in private sales. Or more guns are going directly to the black market where you can't track them. That's a much more frightening possibility to me than people who own 5 guns buying guns 6, 7, and 8.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:12PM
How is the "rate of gun ownership" determined? Most importantly, is it driven by REGISTERED ownership?
No, it's a survey.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:46PM
RTFA - what a concept, eh?
So much easier for someone to just project their own neurosis on to the story. Facts, who needs those?
Soylentnews, we're better because of the high quality of insightful comments!!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 20 2016, @05:31PM
Hell, I'd settle for making it to the end of the first sentence in the summary!
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 20 2016, @06:10PM
Soylentnews, we're better because of the high quality of insightful comment
I'll bet we are in the top 3%, or something!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 20 2016, @08:55PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Touché) by bob_super on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:48PM
According to my survey of youtube, rap artists own the majority of guns and bitches.
A not-so-small subset also owns cars and mansions.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 20 2016, @06:08PM
I wouldn't call watching a bunch of twerking videos a "survey", but, whatever floats yer boat!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @07:06PM
According to my survey of soylent news comments, 50% of commentors don't know what a survey is.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 20 2016, @08:49PM
I don't know, but my theodolite was at ninety degrees, I can tell you.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday September 21 2016, @12:19AM
I wouldn't call watching a bunch of twerking videos a "survey", but, whatever floats yer boat!
Maybe not, but it's probably just as valid a statistical sample as the one used by the study. It was an online survey for $deity's sake!
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday September 20 2016, @07:28PM
"The Harvard/Northeastern study is based on a survey of nearly 4,000 Americans conducted online in 2015 by a market research company, GfK, with a nationally representative panel of opt-in participants who are compensated to complete surveys on a variety of issues."
From the Guardian article that is linked in the WaPo article (I hate flash masks on sites that want to force me load what ever some ad company places on the site): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/19/us-gun-ownership-survey [theguardian.com]
So They have 4000 people who are paid to take surveys. How representative of the total American population can they be? If they are (which I doubt) how many are actually making factual responses, and how many are saying what they think the surveyors want to hear?
"There are lies, then there are damn lies. then there are statistics."
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 20 2016, @08:10PM
So They have 4000 people who are paid to take surveys. How representative of the total American population can they be?
Well, that would be statistically representative, if it were a properly selected unbiased sample of the whole population. Are you one of the 50% of Soylentils who do not understand statistics?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 20 2016, @08:53PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday September 20 2016, @09:05PM
I was going for obliquely deliberate, but evidently I failed.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 20 2016, @09:28PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:19PM
I am at a loss as to where this "black market where you can't track them" actually is. I am unsure what you feel a black market is and how it is different from a private sale. Selling a gun at a garage sale is not going to be trackable, so is this black market? Seems to me to be demonizing people for not doing anything wrong, at least until it is accepted and made wrong.
Getting tired of these black market automotive parts that allow drivers to, believe it or not, control their own vehicle on the road. Reasonable legislation has kept all human-operated vehicles kept only off roads paid for by tax payer money. I don't want my money going to people who make our roads less safe. We need to crack down on untracable steering and acceleration overrides. Surely anyone who would put an accelerator in their vehicle is only doing so for the purpose of speeding. Just yesterday I saw a villian buy wire at a garage sale that could be used to convert his car to having human-controlled brakes. Unbelievable.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 20 2016, @05:40PM
I am unsure what you feel a black market is and how it is different from a private sale.
Pretty sure it becomes a "black" market when the sale is illegal. Selling a weapon to a felon, for example.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday September 21 2016, @05:30AM
Garage sales are black market, at least in most jurisdictions. Things getting sold illegally without the taxman knowing for a start. Then there's worse, plain old illegal stuff sold. Way worse then guns, my wife bought a copy of a movie on DVD-R at a garage sale, paid a dollar, which makes it commercial infringement, good for a few lifetimes in prison I'd imagine.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:33PM
"That's a much more frightening possibility"
Why? Why would it frighten you to know that 7 out of 10 of your neighbors own weapons, which they haven't declared to the government?
I know a lot of people with unregistered weapons. Some of them are family heirlooms, produced before any type of registration was required. Some of them have very low serial numbers, meaning, the weapons were new when only a few thousand of that model had been produced.
Everyone buys a gun from a friend. Or from a gun show. My guess is, half or less of the guns in Ameria are registered to the current owner. That's just a guess, based on my own personal experience.
But, why do you care who has guns?
Everyone should have a couple weapons in their home. It does discourage criminals from trying to victimize you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @07:05PM
I think you missed the point. Quoting the GP:
But another possibility is that we're seeing a decline in registrations. People aren't failing to register because they already own other registered guns. They're just not registering. Or buying in private sales. Or more guns are going directly to the black market where you can't track them. That's a much more frightening possibility to me than people who own 5 guns buying guns 6, 7, and 8.
I'm sure you'll agree that guns going directly to the black market is much more frightening than people who already have some registered guns buying more.
I'll also assert that the other situations described here (guns to first-time buyers in private sales who don't register, on just neglecting to register) is also slightly more worrying to me than an already well-equipped person getting more weapons. It's not a "run-for-the-hills" type worry, but it's obvious why having in increase in the number of people armed in near proximity could be a concern. For example, it is one more person who can make a mistake and leave a gun in an unsafe condition.
A person with 5 guns presumably already knows how to take care of them, so a 6th is not a big deal. A person buying their very first gun is by definition less experienced... and there are just more armed people so more chances for people to make mistakes (or worse).
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 20 2016, @07:55PM
Don't forget you can make your own guns. My friend's father was a talented weaponsmith and made them for friends all the time. He had something like ten rifles he kept for himself.
You don't have to register any of those, and even if you did, why would you? It would just give some officious bureaucrat or would-be tyrant a road map to come and take them away.
Then there are the assault rifles many of the Vietnam Vets brought back and buried in caches in the mountains where I grew up. They did that because they didn't trust one mother in the government and wanted to make sure they could arm themselves at any time. It would surprise me if returning vets from all our wars since hadn't done the same.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @01:03AM
It would surprise me even more if any of those assault rifles worked after being buried in the ground for a few decades.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday September 21 2016, @05:33AM
Grease, lots of grease.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 20 2016, @09:09PM
Clearly a superior solution to encouraging a society where only the tiniest fraction of the population, a fraction so small you're never likely to actually meet one, is a criminal.
You still haven't evolved beyond the wild west. That quoted paragraph says little more than "I am paranoid" or "I am scared" - take your pick.
And since when was it "a couple weapons"? In English it was, is, and hopefully always will be "a couple of weapons". Even those in Compton know that the "of" survives as a trailing "-a".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @04:04AM
I've met criminals. Quite a few, in fact.
A couple tried to rip me off - in fact, I met some of them face to face in court.
But sure, call me paranoid. Or scared. Or both. I'll pencil in some time to care what you think.
(Score: 2) by timbim on Tuesday September 20 2016, @05:10PM
They surveyed the gun owners you idiot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @06:24PM
Random caller: Hi! Do you have guns in your house?
Annoyed gun-owner: No. *click*
Analysts: Gee, the survey says almost no one actually owns the guns which have been flying off the shelves in absolute record numbers for years!
(Don't worry, though - I'm SURE that's all been taken into account, and there's no ulterior motive for implying that only a tiny minority of people own most of USian firearms.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday September 20 2016, @06:38PM
And of course, everyone answered truthfully.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Wednesday September 21 2016, @12:38AM
true, *but* it would seem almost certain that the lying would go one way: it is EASILY understandable why you *might* lie that you only had X guns, when you had 5X guns (or zero guns when you had at least one)...
it would seem that if you don't have a gun, WHY would you want to lie and say you do for an anonymous survey ? ? ? *who* are you 'scaring' by that anonymous factoid, or *who* are you 'impressing', or why would you lie for some weird reason of wanting to overstate gun ownership ? ? ?
can't think of many reasonable reasons to lie that way, but can think of quite a few why you would undercount your guns...
feebs/enn ess ehh/etc: i have two, one handed down from granddad (one of a billion mossberg 410 shotguns), and a 22 nylon-stock varmint rifle from a pawn shop ($99), to defend the garden...
um, i *really* would like a rocket launcher, though, then some...