One in Three Americans Own a Gun

I'm sure everyone by now has read the headlines, even dove off into the articles. There are numerous articles about a study on 'gun culture' that makes that proclamation. Make no mistake, though, the term 'gun culture' was not used in a favorable way to refer to those of us in the culture of gun ownership and shooting sports. Dr Bindu Kalesan was studying the 'gun culture' to support "prudent gun policies that aim to reduce gun ownership..."

The gun control organizations run  around screaming "we need more gun control laws to reduce gun death, wahhhhh". But, is that true? Do 'stronger gun laws lead to less gun death'? That would be a no. In the figure below, you'll see the states with the lowest gun ownership rates listed at the top and the ten states with the highest gun ownership rates are on the bottom.

click to enbigger

You'll notice that the states with the lower gun ownership rates also have the highest average Brady Campaign score. The Brady Campaign score indicates the 'strenghth' of gun laws. Apparently, states with "stronger" gun laws have higher "gun homicide" than states with lower Brady scores, and have the same overall murder rate.

If we turn our attention to the "Firearm Suicide Rate" column, we see that states with higher gun ownership rates and lower Brady scores have higher suicide with firearm rates. Will a law address this? If laws would affect suicides rates, we would just pass a law making suicide illegal, but we don't. Perhaps Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws would reduce suicide. Column J would indicate no. The only state with enough information to accurately estimate the number of suicides of persons 17-years-old or younger is California, and they have CAP laws.

Now, more about that gun control social gun culture study.

Exposure to social gun culture was associated with gun ownership by 2.25-fold

You know what that means folks? You need to start inviting your non-gun-owning friends to the range and let them plink with your .22. This way we can get more people into the 'social gun culture' and increase the ranks of gun owners. I've had many new people on my private gun range, not one of them every said "I'll never do that again", and they've all asked to come back.