Americans owning guns are a large group but remain a minority. We are one of the very few groups (the only group?) consisting of law-abiding citizens that are socially acceptable to hate or defame. Gun owners are portrayed as angry, fearful, uneducated, and unsophisticated, stereotypically as rural white men only. Gun owners are vilified as mentally ill, religious bigots with “blood on their hands” who don’t care about children being shot. Such baseless defamation goes unquestioned by many. Even groups and individuals professing to be moderate and in favor of “common sense” policy have openly stated that “there is no such thing as a responsible gun owner” and that mere possession of the “wrong” type of firearm is deviant behavior. Consider: what other minority group would it go unchallenged to claim that everyone in that group is inherently irresponsible?
Despite the rhetoric, the numbers are on our side. Pew Research has conducted polls over the years and has compiled the results in its annual Gun Report. According to Pew Research, slightly more than 60 percent of Americans say they view gun ownership favorably, and 72 percent of adults have fired a gun. Among women, 22 percent own a gun, 36 percent of gun owners are women, and 40 percent of women live in a gun-owning household. Two-thirds of gun owners own more than one gun. Among Americans who don’t currently own firearms, 52 percent of them said they are open to owning a gun in the future and 72 percent think that most people should be able to own a gun.
Most gun owners have taken a safety course. Seven in ten gun owners say they have taken some form of formal firearm training or at least a gun safety course such as hunter education. This is particularly the case among those who consider it essential for gun owners to take such courses – 83% of gun owners who say it is essential to take a course also say they have done so. The more firearms owned, the more likely they will do so as gun owners with multiple firearms are more likely than those who own only one gun to report taking firearm training; about three-quarters of those who own two or more guns (77%) say they have done so.
Most gun owners report that gun violence is not a problem in their local communities: 68% state that violence is either a small or non-existent problem in their community. The majority of Americans also realize gun violence problems are due to criminals willing to break the law, especially gun control laws, with over half (53%) saying this contributes “a great deal” to gun violence and roughly a third (32%) saying it contributes at least “a fair amount.” Most people, gun owners and non-owners alike, say there is little link between access to guns and the likelihood of committing a crime, with 75% saying that people who want to kill or harm others would find a way to do so whether or not they had access to a gun, and 73% saying same when it comes to people who want to harm themselves.
The good news here is that many Americans can see past the nonsense. That’s the real strength of the gun lobby, not some imagined amount of spending or perceived lobbying power by pro-gun groups.
The gun control groups hate drilling down into the data. If we all could see where homicides are happening, # of legally purchased guns are used in crime, and who is the shooter and victim by demographics, might identify we need more crime control. A heat map of where the homicides happen might just coincide with urban areas that have cashless bail, weak sentencing for gun crimes, and high gang violence activity. Chicago is a city that is removing “shot locators” because they are not equitable. I want to write more…. maybe later.