Worth repeating….
“30-40%” who are willing to tell a stranger over the phone that they have guns” just doesn’t punch quite right as a headline.
Boom: Up to 60% of Americans could own guns, twice estimate
A surge in “quiet gun owners,” much like the so-called “silent majority” in political circles, is leading firearms analysts to believe that far more Americans own weapons than the accepted 30% cited in polls.
At the highest end, it’s possible that up to 60% of Americans own guns, especially with the pandemic-era rise in gun buying among women and minorities, especially in suburban and urban areas.
At the lowest end, it’s likely that at least 40% of Americans own guns, according to a groundbreaking study of those who lie to pollsters about firearms.
The study from Rutgers University’s New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center is spreading like wildfire in the industry, which for years has tried to accurately estimate United States gun ownership and determine why polls show support for gun control, but then there is little follow through when legislation is proposed.
Reason Magazine’s J.D. Tuccille put part of the study in the spotlight in an early July post that began the buzz in the gun industry about the potential of far higher U.S. gun ownership.
He highlighted the study’s conclusion that nearly a third of those polled might be lying when they deny having a firearm.
Tuccille wrote, “The report dealt in probabilities, with the researchers building profiles of confirmed gun owners. They then applied the profiles across their sample of 3,500 respondents to estimate who was likely fibbing about not owning guns. The results depend on the probability threshold applied, but they came up with 1,206 confirmed owners, between 1,243 and 2,059 non-owners, and between 220 and 1,036 potential but secretive owners lying about their status.”
That caught the attention of Stephen Gutowski, founder of The Reload blog, who featured Tuccille yesterday in a video post about the numbers and potential impact of the study.
“This is something that we assumed, perhaps, for a long time,” said Gutowski. “But now there is a study that is quantifying it to some degree. I mean, the amount that they put on it is that almost half the people who said that they don’t own guns fit the model, at least to a certain threshold, for people who do own guns. So that’s a huge discrepancy. That put — the number would rocket up from something like 33% into the 60 percentage range,” he added.
Tuccille described those who “fib” as “quiet gun owners” who may be driven to be untruthful to pollsters because they are worried about the government or their neighbors finding out they own guns.
For example, he said, those who live in urban areas where gun ownership can be frowned upon may deny owning one. Local culture may also drive denials.
He and Gutowski said that the likelihood of far greater U.S. gun ownership than cited by major polling outfits such as Pew and Gallup could have a big impact on lawmakers pushing gun control.
“There is actually a lot of import to this,” Tuccille told Gutowski. For example, he said, if the study is accurate, then it’s not just conservatives who own guns and liberal efforts to “punish” the Right by targeting guns will fail.
“You’ll end up hurting your own political base,” he said, adding, “It’s no longer safe to target a good if you want to punish an enemy.”
He also wrote in Reason, “With gun ownership becoming increasingly common beyond the traditional ranks of white suburban-to-rural men, there are big implications for politics and policy. New gun owners will certainly resist proposals to strip them of self-defense tools they acquired out of necessity.”
He continued, “They’re also likely to resent restrictive policies that urban, left-of-center politicians promote to torment gun owners once assumed to be safe targets, but which apply to anybody who owns firearms no matter where they live and vote. Basically, the gun-ownership landscape is growing and changing, but new owners are even more reticent than established ones about revealing their existence to researchers and government officials.”