More than half of American voters – 52% – say they or someone in their household owns a gun, per the latest NBC News national poll.
That’s the highest share of voters who say that they or someone in their household owns a gun in the history of the NBC News poll, on a question dating back to 1999.
In 2019, 46% of Americans said that they or someone in their household owned a gun, per an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. And in February 2013, that share was 42%.
DB2
Most fascinating thing about that survey is that the massive jump in ownership in the last four years is almost entirely democrats. Reps have slowly grown from 2004 to 2023 by 9% but democrats have jumped 8% just since 2019 with virtually no increase prior.
More from the article:
In August 2019, 53% of white voters said that they or someone in their household owned a gun, and 24% of Black voters said the same.
This month, 56% of white voters report that they or someone in their household owns a gun and 41% of Black voters say the same, – a 17-point increase among that group in just four years.
Looks like Black voters are increasingly taking up arms. One wonders what has happened since 2019 to cause them to feel the need.
Well, 2020 saw an almost 30% increase in murders in the US, a majority of which were black.
There were some 21,500 murders in 2020—nearly 5,000 more than in 2019. That’s a 29 percent spike, far outpacing the previous record increase, 12.7 percent, set in 1968.
DB2
There is a direct relationship between gun ownership per capita and the murder rate by state. Mostly it hold except where some populations are very thin.
It is a dumb behavior. Gun ownership should not be allowed. We have mass shootings endlessly. The country has a sense of loss we are very numb towards.
Guns are like an emotional crutch to some folks which is truly odd.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality/homicide.htm
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/guns-per-capita
I noticed the media blathering about the incident at the bridge to Canada, and “terrorism”, has almost entirely obliterated any coverage of the 4 shot dead in a Walmart in Ohio.
Steve
I find it interesting that the vehicle involved seems to be a Bentley.
Those aren’t cheap…
There’s guns and then there’s guns. As a rural person with chickens and a garden, I own a 1930s single shot, bolt action .22 for varmints or possibly anmal euthanasia. I do believe that firearms for self protection is a dangerous fantasy however.
I should add, self protection from other humans. Bear country might be different.
No one needs a gun outside of a percentage who hunt and could keep their guns by law in the clubs. Then there are farmers and ranchers who need guns.
After that the “right” to own a gun is crap. The right to “bear” arms does not mean individual ownership other than from a bs’er on the court who made up total garbage out of zero history.
Meanwhile people are murdered and vets commit suicide.
…and even without actual violence, the crucial sense of civil peace is destroyed. Every human, even first graders, may be “packing” and that means all must live in fear.
Insanity.
david fb
There’s rural then there’s rural. My land is 200 feet from BLM land here in New Mexixo.
There are coyotes and javelinas in abundance and an occasional mountain lion to say nothing of rattlesnakes.
A few years ago a small pick up was driving on a raised dirt road on BLM land. They went off the road into a ditch next to the road that was a 20 foot drop. I was outside at that time so I saw the incident. I ran from my property climbed over the 3 1/2 foot fence and went down into the ditch to see about injuries. Happily no blood spurting but they were shaken up. I asked if they wanted me to call for the paramedics. They did. So I climbed out of the ditch as there was no cell phone reception down there and called for an ambulance. They sent a deputy sheriff first who then radioed in for the fire department as they needed a ladder. The deputy showed up nearly 30 minutes after I called. So no I will not be depending upon a law enforcement response to someone breaking into or in my house. I will be responding with my handgun.
It’s MAD.
The concept scales easily from the macro/national level down to the neighborhood gang level to the micro/personal level.
ralph
There is a weak relationship. The slope of the regression is not significantly different from zero, and the relationship only explains about 5% of the variation.
Homicide rate = 0.1 x (Guns per capita) + 5.8
P value = 0.115
r-squared = 0.05
The lack of statistical significance is not surprising because you find things like this:
Guns per Homicide
capita rate
Louisiana 27.4 21.3
Texas 28.6 8.2
Utah 30.4 2.7
DB2
Since almost 55% of homicide victims are black, I decided to look at the statistical relationship by state between percent of the population and homicide mortality rates.
The relationship was much stronger than with guns per capita. The slope was significantly different from zero.
Homicide rate = 0.28 x (% black population) + 3.7
P value < 0.0001
r-squared = 0.59
DB2
I qualified it depending on how few people there are in the area.
Perhaps you do not mind the rate of killing. You can somehow say to the rest of us all these deaths make the right all the more important? Can you?
Are you okay with the losses?
Have you ever had to defend yourself in your home? You are age what? Never had an actual need?
Is that from Democrats buying guns or from gun-owning Republicans becoming Democrats? What would be really interesting is including the non-partisans (neither Democrat nor Republican) in the analysis. As a first-order approximation, we are roughly 1/3 of each on a nationwide basis. So skipping over the non-partisans these days is a significant error.
There has been a significant increase in violent political rhetoric since then. That could be one piece of the puzzle.
–Peter
Three or four points of that increase would be from higher black ownership, depending upon the percentage of D voters in the group.
DB2
Gun deaths are highly correlated with racism, ignorance, innumeracy, and low taxes.
If you want low gun deaths, move to a state like Massachusetts or Rhode Island where there are lots of educated people. Of course, they’re going to heavily tax you for the privilege of living there.
intercst
Homicide is quite different than suicide, and the two shouldn’t be mashed together.
DB2
Do you have some links?
For example, I’m sure there are racist homicides. At the same time, almost 90% of black homicides are by other blacks and 79% of white homicides are by other whites. These numbers would lower the correlation with racism.
DB2