The NYT catches up on guns

I wrote about it here almost two weeks ago (Feb. 27), and yesterday the New York Times finally wrote a lead front page story about the decline in the percentage of homes with guns.

It's based on the same study from the prestigious General Social Survey, done by a research center at the University of Chicago, which asks people about a number of things in their lives and is the source for many important demographic data bases.

From the news about gun shops being flooded with customers, and the total number of guns owned in the U.S. (about 200 million), you would think that two out of every three homes were armed.  Not so.    Here, quoting the Times:

The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s, and 35 percent in the 2000s.

The latest data is from 2012 and shows 34 percent of homes have a gun.   And the decline is true in all parts of the country, in red states as well as blue states, in cities as well as suburbs, in homes with children and in homes without children.   The biggest demographic drop was in people under 30. 

The one big difference was political affiliation.   There was a steep drop among Democrats and only a slight decline among Republicans.

The director of the survey attributes the decline to the decline in hunting and to a sharp drop in violent crime.   This fits with the general shift in population from rural areas, where ownership is high, to urban and suburban, where it has always been lower.

The NRA simply refutes the findings of declining ownership, pointing to the increase in gun sales and the long waits for gun safety training, as well as the growing number of background checks triggered by would-be gun purchasers.

Why the apparent discrepancy?   Assuming the data are right, the obvious answer would seem to be:   fewer people buying more guns.   Some folks who own guns have just got to go out and buy the AR-15 while they still can and pick up a Glock while they're at it.   The paranoid mistrust of the government, and the right-wing hype about Obama wanting to take away their guns certainly contributes to the craze among those with such fears.

But how large is this paranoid fringe?   Probably not as large as we think given the amount of emotion surrounding the issue and the media's mega-amplification of the hype.

Here's the question:   Which moves the Congress to pass laws:   data?   or emotion?   I'd like to think it was a balance of the two:   emotion bringing the questions that are then tempered by data.

The real answer, in this case, sadly, is probably neither.   It's money from the gun lobby and the threat of opposition in the next election if they dare vote for gun control of any sort.

Ralphre