The cartoonist is not only prejudiced and has a negative stereotyped view of gun owners but is delusional. Gun ownership rates are difficult to measure but there are a lot of indicators that ownership rates are going up. The belief that gun ownership is going down is comforting to the anti-gun person. Being part of the “herd” is important to them and their “herd” getting larger provides more comfort. As Heinlein said, “Delusions are often functional.”
I am of the opinion that it is to our advantage to let the anti-gun people keep this particular delusion. For now.
Ok, it seems they have nothing to worry about. Seriously, when I encounter “happy talk” on our side, it bothers me.
This cartoon, makes me happy for some strange reason.
The only real metric we have for counting gun ownership is concealed weapons permits. Lets look at my own state. As of February 28, the state of Florida has 1,374,341 active concealed weapons permit holders. According to the US census, the population of people over 18 in Florida is 15,795,277. This means that there is one concealed weapons permit holder for every 11.49 residents.
In December of 2013, there were 1,278,246 permit holders in Florida, with an adult population of 15,562,646. This means that 14 months ago, there was one concealed weapons permit holder for every 12.21 residents.
This means that the rate of gun ownership in the state of Florida is 6 percent higher than it was 14 months ago, which translates into about a 5 percent annual increase in gun ownership.
In fact, the number of concealed weapons permits in the state of Florida has more than doubled since 2009, when there were 591,830, which was double the number of permits from 2002, when there were 295,658 permit holders.
Notice the bit of bigotry in the image of “if you’re a non-white, you must be a Democrat”.
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It’s interesting to see how the “declining gun owners” reports can be squared with the increases in CCW permits and the whole Gun Culture 2.0 thing.
That is the increase in people having guns for self defense, and the demographic changes where there are more female, and younger, and urban shooters.
(Just look at the perennial reports on women shooters or the more recent spate of reportings on “Guntry Clubs”).
For both to be true that would mean that for there to be less less *overall* gun owners those OFGs and hunters are being replaced by young, urbane, and/or female gun owners. And doing so in rates that these new demographic groups are distinctly changing the overall makeup of gun owners, and the reasons for which gun owners have guns.
Which…. isn’t out of line with the Gun Culture 1.0 versus Gun Culture 2.0 concept. But then that doesn’t mean things are better for the antis now does it?
People who own guns for the purpose of justified lethal force are a bit harder to pull the “We’re only after those isky assault weapons and pistols. Your hunting gun is safe!” N’est-ce pas?
But if one looks… the cartoon is *really* about is othering guns and being a reassurance to gun controlers that no Gun Culture 2.0 isn’t happening. And that all the enlightened people are on *their* side and no one but the untermensch has guns. It also stokes fears because these, oddly well off, untermensch are arming themselves.
Course there’s also the whole doublethink of “Silly paranoids no one is after your guns but… maybe we should take yours away.”
And there’s the innumeracy behind the idea that “Most of X, and Most of Y, and Most of Z don’t do A”, doesn’t necessarily mean A is unpopular.
Math is hard!
They spin the numbers. As a PERCENTAGE of households, yes, gun ownership is down. What they neglect to mention is that the total number of households has increased faster then the households owning guns. By actual number, in the 70’s about 33 million households had guns, now it is almost 50 million.
1970s – 50% = 33,630,250 (Average – 67,260,500)
1980’s – 49% = 41,053,425 (Average – 83,782,500)
1990s – 43% = 43,519,182 (Average – 101,207,400)
2000s – 35% = 39,041,800 slight drop (Average – 111,548,000)
Approximate households in 2012 = 126,000,000. Rate was about 2 million/year after ’07
2012 – 34% = 42,840,000 Big jump since obama was elected
Estimate 128,000,000 households for 2013.
2013 – 39% = 49,920,000 Even bigger jump
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005055.html
(As of 2012 ) The system (NICS) has received 156,577,260 applications since 1998. That’s an average of around 10 million per year.
The figures show that there have been 16,808,538 applications in 2012 so far to the end of November.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/number-of-guns-sold-in-us-each-year-2012-12#ixzz3TpxJOdjm