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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 20 2016, @02:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-aim-at-statistics dept.

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.

Washington Post

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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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @04:43PM (#404315)

    It is interesting because of suicide.
    We shouldn't be talking about the 3% who own 8+ firearms.
    It is all the other owners who aren't gun fetishists that are interesting.

    From TFA:

    But Azrael’s immediate reaction to the survey results, she said, was not to focus on the gun owners with dozens of weapons, but on the nearly 50% of gun owners who had just one or two. “To change their behavior with respect to guns, and the ways in which they store them, or their decision-making – we could have a really big impact on suicide,” she said.

    Roughly 20,000 of America’s more than 30,000 annual gun deaths are suicides.

    “I don’t know anybody who thinks or talks seriously about confiscating guns,” she said. “From a public health perspective – you don’t seize cigarettes.” But, she said, “you do try to make good science available. You do try to help people think about the risks and benefits of the behavior they choose to undertake.”

    Gun ownership alone increases the risk of dying by suicide by 300%. [foxnews.com]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @10:08AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @10:08AM (#404729)

    It also turned out that people who drink water are significantly more often found to be thirsty than people who don't drink water. So in order to fight thirst, I suggest banning water.

    Or in short: Correlation != Causation

    If you plan to commit suicide, you're going to get a means of committing suicide. A gun is a reliable means of committing suicide. Therefore if you plan to commit suicide and guns are easy to come by, the probability is high that you'll acquire a gun. This implies that at the time you commit suicide you are likely to be a gun owner (the other alternative is you got access to a gun you don't own).

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @11:17AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @11:17AM (#404740)

      If you plan to commit suicide, you're going to get a means of committing suicide.

      Sort of, but suicide is very rarely carefully planned in advance. It is commonly a spur-of-the-moment, emotional, "I can't take it any more" thing.
      If such a suicidal person has an easy means of suicide at hand, such as a gun, they're likely to use it then and there. If it takes time and effort to commit suicide (eg. walking to a bridge), then they get time to alter their emotional state, and can have a more considered mental state at the moment of truth.

      Time heals all wounds, but a gun takes no time at all.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @12:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @12:58PM (#404767)

        I don't think sleeping pills take more time to use than a gun. And I guess most suicidal people, including those who use a gun to commit it, already have sleeping pills, since whatever drives them into suicide probably has caused them sleepless nights for a while.