More on gun sales
Slate’s Jack Shafer on gun sales:
If all 8.6 million background checks in 2008 were for first-time buyers, one could make the potentially chilling case that growing numbers of citizens are bearing arms. But that’s not very likely based on established survey data. Ownership of most of the nation’s estimated 200 million guns is concentrated in relatively few hands—according to a recent article in the journal Injury Prevention, 48 percent of gun owners reported owning more than four firearms. A similar data point collected by the National Institute of Justice (PDF, Page 2) states that of “gun owners in 1994, 10 million individuals owned 105 million guns, while the remaining 87 million guns were dispersed among 34 million other owners.”
This year’s uptick in buyers must reflect some new gun owners, but if past surveys are a good guide, surely most of these buyers are repeat buyers. This means that the well-armed are probably getting better-armed—a point none of the recent news stories makes.
I do not, however, think firearms scare almost everybody. They do, however, seem to spook the press.
Other posts on Gun Sales here.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
WTF is “chilling” about more gun owners?
He may be correct about the number though, I can account for over 20 myself.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Since the election, two women friends have told me that all they want for Christmas is ammo.
Talk about a change in orientation.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Oh, I know I can’t possibly shoot everything in the closet if the need arose, but I could darned sure pass a good rifle and a plentiful supply of ammunition on to somebody who was going to stand beside me…
MC
November 14th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Shafer has a point that not all new sales are to new owners, but he wants us to have the impression that a few of us bitter clingers are accounting for all those new 4473s, and that’s not true either.
I personally know six people who have no firearms now but are buying them now, either because of the The One’s ascension or because they fear a depression and civil disorder.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Must confess…two years ago our family owned zero firearms.
Today, we own 7 firearms. So we’re totally skewing the statistics. That’s 7 firearms but only one new gun owner per year statistically.
Sorry…
November 14th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
I’d wager there are also significant numbers of first-time EBR buyers. I see two people on a daily basis who were gun owners before 11/4, but who only became EBR owners after the election.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I’ve been a gun owner for less than a year, and tomorrow’s purchase will make 9 or 11 depending on if you’re MA or the feds.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
I only have so many hands… in other words, they’re not all just for me.
I can remember people buying SKSs by the case a few years ago. Was that because they REALLY liked the SKS? Or because it was an easy and inexpensive rifle to hand to someone willing to fight?
November 14th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Mark me down as a first-time EBR buyer, since my tacticool M1A does not technically count.
And I do love that use of the word “chilling”… no bias there, nope!
November 14th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I’ve helped two co-workers become first time gun owners this year, and helped one become one last year.
I haven’t accounted for a background check in 6 or 7 years myself. That wonderful conceal and carry permit of mine means the dealer doesn’t have to call the feds to sell to me.
Thinking about it, most of my friends are permit holders, most of our collections haven’t had background checks run on them, so we don’t count at all. I’d guess that’s around 100 firearms just in my circle of friends over the past few years that haven’t had a NICs check called in.
Good old Texas, skewing the numbers. I know other states have the same deal going for them.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
“…spook the press.” Good.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I helped 3 DC residents get guns (well, one lives in DC but is a Minnesotta resident) and have helped 6 formerly non gun owning Virginians purchase guns this fall.
Add in two AR15 lowers for my kids (that’s +1 on the new gun owners since son#1 already had a 10/22) and well, I’d say he’s wrong about his impression that lots of newbies aren’t buying guns, as well as wrong about the total # of guns (and # of Americans with guns).
Just saying.
November 14th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
I helped 3 DC residents get guns (well, one lives in DC but is a Minnesotta resident) and have helped 6 formerly non gun owning Virginians purchase guns this fall.
Add in two AR15 lowers for my kids (that’s +1 on the new gun owners since son#1 already had a 10/22) and well, I’d say he’s wrong about his impression that lots of newbies aren’t buying guns, as well as wrong about the total # of guns (and # of Americans with guns).
For instance, I know at least a dozEn people who have firearms but would answer no the question and are classified as such by their state of residence (Jersey and NY). As they (and I) say, better to have it when you need it than to not have it at all.
Just saying.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:07 am
They also fail to consider the fact that many of us own multiple guns in the clear expectation of distributing them to our kids/grandkids/heirs later in life.
I may only constitute a single owner with…um…several firearms…but eventually many of those “several” are going to be distributed to “new” gun owners without the any visible evidence that they went to “new” owners.
November 15th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Well, in the strictest sense, i am not a new gun buyer. technically i do own the rifle that is kept at my dad’s house, but since it is a bolt action hunting rifle more than 6 hours away, i am de facto gun free. that means that when the gun store finally comes up with my XD .45ACP, i will be a new gun owner. that and the PA LTCF (concealed carry permit in Pennsylvania) kind of changes the spin on things. hopefully i will get the gun before the permit shows up. they have 45 days to get me my permit, i hope it doesn’t take that long for them to find an XD at a distributer.
November 15th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
S(n)ide comment: Is the “more on” = “moron” thing unintentional?
November 15th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Before anyone gets all excited about the number
of guns in circulation, consider this. New gun
sales have been fairly steady at six million
per year for almost forty years. Yes, plus or
minus a bit, so call that 225,000,000 new guns.
Now, how long does a gun last? The “experts”
say a gun and an automobile last about the same
length of time. BUT we know how many Sharps
Rifles were made, and we can make a fairly good
guess about how many are left. My daily under cover toter is a Remington 51, built in 1922. When I
carry openly, it’s a Smith 57, going on a half
century now. Hunting? Rem 721, circa 1950, and a
Winchester Cornsheller, circa 1930. So given any kind of TLC, guns last a very long time.
These survival percentages give the lie to the
“experts.” So how many guns are in circulation?
By any reasonable calculation, certainly upwards of 300
million and very possibly more than 400 million.
Or more, considering the number of surplus
military firearms that were bought before records
were kept.
How many people own guns? We cannot tell, since
a high percentage of respondents LIE when asked
the question direct. As we found out in 1969
when some nameless (for obvious reasons) soul
called 100 people who had bought ammunition and
asked them the question, point blank. Only 53
admitted owning a gun.
However, there are supposedly 78 million or so households in the US. While this is not the
right place for details, it appears at least
48 million homes contain guns, and 180 million
of us have access to those guns.
That should be a very substantial majority of
us.
Pete Allen
November 15th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
“Ownership of most of the nation’s estimated 200 million guns is concentrated in relatively few hands”
How soon should we expect calls to “spread the guns around” from the new boss?
“It’s not that I want to punish your (safety/preservation of life/freedom/exercising of fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution,) I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance at (safety/preservation of life/freedom/exercising of fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution,) too.”
November 16th, 2008 at 1:38 am
The wife and I dropped by a local indoor range and retail establishment this evening about 6ish to see what was new and different. I’d estimate there were 40 people looking and buying; yes, they were making purchases, for the most part. A friend who works there said that it had ‘cleared out a little’ as far as the number of people in the store, as there were times when people were waiting 10 to 20 minutes to be waited on today. He’s also hired additional help out front. All the lanes were occupied most of the day as well.
I did see a man and his wife renting an M4gery and head to the the rifle bays with a couple of boxes of .223. We were there long enough to see them buy a similar AR after shooting the rental, before we left the store. My friend told me he figured they’d sold 8 today, but he hadn’t checked on the last 3 hours. They also have decided to stop doing layaways on ‘military-type’ rifles due to the increased demand in walk-in sales. Seems they’d had folks trying to do ‘holds’ on them while price-shopping around at other places and it began affecting inventory available for immediate sale.
Regards,
Rabbit.
November 16th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Well heck, I wish I could contribute to the totals, but I lost all mine in a tragic boating accident. Yeah, that’s it, a boating accident.
November 16th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
New owner this year, getting my second gun… mostly due to the type of articles I’ve put out. No true active threats, but the people coming into office will probably do very little to protect the individual from their friends in low places. Don’t really need a long arm where I’m at nor CCW due to physical problems, although that will be applied for, too. Plus getting a C&R license. Plus encouraging other members of my family to learn about arms and take them up, and should have at least a one more armed by years end.
An armed society is a polite society, and we could use a bit more of both.
November 16th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I don’t know how accurate gun ownership polls are. I think someone who owns no guns is more likely to be forthcoming to an anonymous pollster than someone who owns “a” gun, let alone someone who owns lots of guns.
If some stranger called me and asked me how many guns I own, I’d laugh and hang up.
Years ago the NRA polled and determined that the average licensed hunter owned seven long guns. At the time there were 17 million licensed hunters. That’s about 120 million guns right there. Not including hunter owned handguns. Not including the many tens of millions of other folks who owned firearms of all types. Not including the tens of millions of new guns sold since.
I believe the 200-225 million guestimate of privately held firearms in the USA is very low.
November 16th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
(1) As someone who owns about 100 firearms, I’d like to think that I’ve done my part to keep guns off the streets and out of the hands of criminals.
(2) Even if there are a lot of gun owners, and even new gun owners, so what?! My guess is that a lot of those guns are going to sit in closets and night stand drawers, and the owners will eventually lose interest.
For many of us, there’s no where to go shooting. Or at least no where that’s convenient and not unpleasant. And that was true before gas was $4 a gallon. We put up with a lot of crap regarding ranges because we like guns and shooting.
But a lot of new gun owners are going to discover that actually shooting is a hassle, an inconvenience, and often an unpleasant experience (depending on how the range is set up and operated).
And unfortunately, I don’t think this is something the gun culture thought far enough ahead about when fighting the legal battles of the 1990s. Not all of our enemies are anti-gunners.
November 16th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Wow, according to that article cited above, in 1994 around 45 milliion people in the United States owned guns. Surely it has gone up by now. That is a very heartening number as it indicates it will probably become increasingly dangerous to strip away the gun rights of American citizens without paying a heavy price politically. Although I know this issue requires eternal vigiilance to ensure our Second Amendment rights are protected, it is a good sign when even the most liberal presidential candidate in the history of the United States concedes that gun ownership by private citizens is a protected right.
Personally, I have bought 7 firearms in the past year, including a Russian SKS an AK-47 and a DPMS Panther Classic in .223 Remington. I own twelve guns in total and I fully intend on purchasing at least two more by the end of January.
November 16th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne are driving up the road. Mary Jo says: Teddy, I’m pregnant. What are we going to do about it?” Ted answers: “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
November 16th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Supposedly Bushmaster, one of the larger AR-15 makers, is backordered 60,000 rifles right now. I think it’s likely that over 100,000 AR-15 style rifles were sold this month, a lot of them to people who already own guns, but didn’t yet own an AR-15.
Most of those people are going to be calling their representatives if the Democrats try to reinstate the assault weapons bill. The Democrats should take this as a warning about the political opposition they’ll run into.
November 16th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
In my family, we’re buying guns almost as fast as we’re having more babies.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Nice Jewish boys from NYC are supposed to shy from guns, but add this one to the new ownership list as of last Saturday.
It is clear from the election results that the majority opinion in the territory currently known as the United States of America no longer agrees with the values upon which it was founded, and we have chosen a president who is quite in synch with it.
Over the next two years we will see a dramatic decline in armed forces enlistment as those upon who we depend to fill those positions (all those southern white crackers so vilified in the enlightened precincts of Berkeley, DC, and the Upper West Side of Manhattan) no longer will feel like risking their lives for a country that no longer wants to remain together.
When that happens, it’s every family for itself.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Once you’ve mentally subtracted all the MSM PSH, and look at what’s leftover, the most interesting feature of that article is that the author is setting the table for making the case that most guns in the US are owned by a (presumably suppressible, for the good of the public) minority of people.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Firearms can last forever.
Most AKs sold in the USA today were made in the early 80s or before.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Now that you all have told us what you own,PLEASE go to the NRA website and tell you representatives that 2010 is just around the corner and ANY gun control,ammo tax increases etc are a third rail with 250000 Voters/volts waiting to go off.
Same with the bailout let the auto companies go chapt 11.
Peace thru overwhelming firepower!!!!!
November 16th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
It does my heart good to see that folks in NJ/NY are buying firearms. There are several ways to vote and I think buying guns sends a clear message. In Idaho and I would imagine in other states the ATF records 4473’s weekly, so they know when I purchase a new gun,(4 this year alone). CCW’s mean that you already passed a background check .Those XD’s and AR’s flew off the shelves and a lot of people are waiting for the next shipment.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
There are still a ton of Springfield Trapdoor carbines for sale in the $1,000-$1,500 range. That was the US army issue weapon in the post civil war era. 125 years old, and that was before metallurgy and corrosion resistance got sophisticated.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
The implication seems to be that, while there may be alot of guns in the country, there are comparatively few gun owners. This means gun owners are a small minority that can be marginalized….for the “greater good”.
See where this is heading? Why should the “many” be exposed to danger because of a right that’s only important to a “few”. We’re a threat to the peace and security of Obama’s new tomorrow.
When Obama’s new “Security Force” takes to the streets, we’ll be numbered among those who can be “eliminated”. We’d better get organized.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
If you know how many guns you own you don;t own enough.
Make sure you have enough to hand out to relatives and friends and that they are trained when and how to use them effectivly, safely and legaly.
Get trained and become a trainer.