{"id":98080,"date":"2023-11-27T21:26:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T03:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=98080"},"modified":"2023-11-27T21:26:14","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T03:26:14","slug":"98080","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=98080","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Where Did New Gun Owners Come From and Where are They Going?<\/a><\/p>\n

Our society is changing. Those changes caused many of us to buy a firearm. We see that crime is rising around us. We notice that criminals are no longer routinely caught by police and prosecuted in the courts. We consider moving to a safer location. (examples from\u00a0California<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0New York<\/a>) We decided that we need a gun to be safe. That chain of events might sound like mere speculation but a number of recent surveys have confirmed it. Almost 14 million of us bought a gun for the first time in 2020 and 2021. The increase in gun ownership will not lead to a significant change in political affiliation.<\/p>\n

Personal protection is the main reason we buy a gun today<\/strong>. By a two-to-one margin, more of us think crime is getting worse rather than getting better. The margin increases to three-to-one when we consider crime in our inner cities. Those opinions come from\u00a0a Harvard-Harris poll<\/a>\u00a0conducted only a few weeks ago in mid-November of 2023. Democrats think the increase in crime is because of a worsening economy while republicans think it is because criminals are not prosecuted for their crimes. Most republicans think that the police are afraid to do their job while most democrats disagree. By a four-to-one margin, voters in both parties think that laws about minor crimes like shoplifting should be rigorously enforced. Except for democrats, a majority of us blame woke democrat politicians and district attorneys who won\u2019t prosecute crimes. Most of us think that the US justice department is focused on politics rather than stopping gangs and crime syndicates.<\/p>\n

A majority of voters from both parties now think that it is necessary to own a gun<\/strong>\u00a0for personal protection. Including independent voters, 63-percent of us now believe it is necessary to own a gun to prevent criminal attacks.<\/p>\n

We acted on those personal motivations and gun ownership has grown over time.<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019ve seen\u00a0record gun sales<\/a>\u00a0for the last 50 months. We also have mixed data on the number of new gun owners. A\u00a0Pew research poll from August<\/a>\u00a0said that 41 percent of us live in a household with a firearm. That estimate may be on the low side since\u00a0a Gallup poll<\/a>\u00a0put the number at 44 percent. A recent NBC poll put the number at 52% of us who live with a gun in our home. The variance between different polling organizations are significant, but the trend of increased gun ownership is consistent.<\/p>\n

We have to be skeptical about these polling numbers.<\/strong>\u00a0A recent research report said that many of us don\u2019t tell the truth to strangers on the phone when the strangers ask if we own firearms. The research report estimated that as many as\u00a060 percent of adults might own a gun<\/a>\u00a0as compared to 30 percent reported earlier.<\/p>\n

That is another part of our changing society. It now makes sense that we are reluctant to tell strangers whether we do or do not own firearms. Gun owners don\u2019t want to be targeted and have their guns taken. Households without a gun feel more vulnerable if they admit they are disarmed. All of us have become more concerned about having our personal information gathered and sold. In addition, the precise details of the polling question are critically important.<\/p>\n

Let me give a practical example to prove my point. My first auto accident was a dented fender on my parent\u2019s car. My worst auto accident was as a passenger. I wouldn\u2019t mention either of those accidents if you asked me about accidents where\u00a0I<\/strong>\u00a0was driving\u00a0my<\/strong>\u00a0car. The same situation applies to gun owners as applied to drivers. Many older teenagers and younger adults depend on using someone else\u2019s firearm for protection when they are at home. Likewise, a husband or wife might carry a gun that is actually owned by their spouse.<\/p>\n

It is undeniably true that the face of gun ownership is changing. The stereotypical gun owner used to be an old, white, rural male. That face is now a young, urban female minority. In short, gun ownership now represents the population at large. The older stereotype of gun owners was that they were politically conservative. It does not follow that new gun owners will follow suit and vote republican.<\/p>\n

Gun ownership is unlikely to change voting patterns.<\/strong>\u00a0Party affiliation is a stronger predictor<\/a>\u00a0of attitude towards firearm regulation than is gun ownership. In general, republicans who don\u2019t own a gun are slightly closer to democrats. Democrats who own a gun are slightly closer to republicans. That said, the\u00a0difference between the political parties is larger<\/a>\u00a0than the difference between gun owners and non-gun owners within the parties.<\/p>\n

Owning a firearm is only one of many cultural differences that separate liberal politics from conservative politics. Given the Democrat party\u2019s recent adoption of firearms prohibition, most liberal gun owners ignore their party\u2019s position on guns and vote for liberal candidates anyway.<\/p>\n

As usual, change happens at the margin. A centrist democrat who recently bought a gun may now see the Democrat party\u2019s gun prohibitions as the issue that changed his vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where Did New Gun Owners Come From and Where are They Going? Our society is changing. Those changes caused many of us to buy a firearm. We see that crime is rising around us. We notice that criminals are no longer routinely caught by police and prosecuted in the courts. We consider moving to a … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98081,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98080\/revisions\/98081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}