Are there too many gun owners in the United States?

Are there too many gun owners in the United States? No, I do not believe that there are too many gun owners in the United States.

 

 

How many guns are registered in America?

 

That’s a seemingly obvious question without a straightforward answer. There’s no universal gun registry, and thus not a simple way to pin down the exact number of firearms in the U.S.

 

There are estimates, however. According to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey – the leading source of international public information about firearms – the U.S. has the best-armed civilian population in the world, with an estimated 270 million total guns. That’s an average of 89 firearms for every 100 residents — far ahead of Yemen, which comes in second with about 55 firearms for every 100 people, or Switzerland, which is third with 46 guns for every 100 people.

 

There are certain types of firearms that do require registration in the United States: those subject to the National Firearms Act, including machine guns, shotguns and rifles with barrels shorter than 18 inches, and silencers.

 

According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which handles that registration, there were more than 3.1 million National Firearms Act-registered weapons in the U.S. as of March 2012. That includes more than 488,000 machine guns and more than 2 million “destructive devices” such as grenades, which are also classified under the law.

 

Are we seeing any trends in gun ownership?

 

Despite the high number of guns estimated to be in the U.S., indications are that gun ownership is actually on the decline. The long-running General Social Survey, maintained at the University of Chicago, has been asking about gun ownership since its inception in the 1970s. It has found that the number of people who say they have a gun in their home is at an all-time low – hovering around 30 percent, from a high of 50 percent in the 1970s.

 

Survey data shows self-reported gun ownership peaked at 53 percent in 1973 before seeing a fairly steady decline to 32 percent in 2010, the most recent year available. He cautioned singling any one year out, saying the numbers are better judged in the context of a whole: the 1970s averaged about 50 percent, the 1980s averaged 48 percent, the 1990s at 43 percent and 35 percent in the 2000s.

 

There are several main factors responsible for the overall decrease in firearm ownership: a general decline in hunting, the rise of single-adult households and an overall drop off in crime.

 

Hunting, while still a major part of American life, has seen a decline in part because of urbanization.

 

The household effect is twofold: first, because fewer adults in the house mean fewer potential gun-owners, and second, that women are much less likely to own a firearm. “Millions of women of course do have firearms but their level is significantly lower than man,” Smith said.

 

Men are five times more likely than women to own a gun, and being married nearly doubles a person’s chance, according to surveys by Gallup.

 

Gallup polling from 2007 to 2012 found that gender, region of the country and marital status were some of the biggest predictors of whether an individual owned guns. In the South, 38 percent reported owning a gun, compared to 27 percent in the West or 21 percent in the Eastern U.S.

 

 

I have only met 1 person who is against gun violence, here is what they had to say:

 

It just doesn't add up that law abiding citizens with guns will never do anything wrong with them. It never has and it never will. That is because our laws are loose enough that just about anyone can get a gun in this country. And with so many guns around and so many "law abiding" citizens with loaded guns in public, it is inevitable that something will go wrong. Actually many things go wrong.

 For instance, there are so many incidents of kids getting shot or shooting someone or bringing guns to school, etc. Many of these are accidental shootings when a child finds the gun of a family member (mostly law abiding, by the way) easily accessible and loaded.

 

It seems that some of the stuff that comes from NRA lobbyists and their minions is actually made up. Take, for example, the idea that gun permit training classes in Texas should be shortened because there are now so many people applying for permits to carry loaded guns in public that they just can't keep up with the demand for classes. Bad idea.

The thing is, guns are dangerous. People who own them and carry them have an awesome responsibility to be safe with them. Way too often they are not. That is what this is all about. The bottom line is common sense about guns and gun policy.

We have a problem with gun laws that are not strong enough to keep people who shouldn't have guns from getting them anyway. We also have a problem with laws that assume that people who own and carry guns will be responsible with their guns. That is part of a gun culture that the American public is learning more about after the Sandy Hook school shooting. It all adds up to over 80 Americans a day dying from gunshot wounds from homicides, suicides and accidents. That's a big number- too big. On 12/14, the total was 26 lives lost. That was 26 too many. Both our laws and our culture need examining with an eye on how to make our communities safer. Lives depend on our getting this right. So far we have failed. More guns and more people carrying them in more public places has clearly not made us safer. This is what needs to change and change soon.

 

 

 

Banning guns is not the solution to gun violence

The Second Amendment of the constitution of the United States says that Americans have the right to keep and bear arms, and that right should not be infringed. President Obama proposes that a certain type of guns and assault rifles, should and will be outlawed in the United States and will no longer be available for purchase. Hmm, seems ironic to me. Obama wants to solve the problem at hand here, but banning rifles is not the solution: psychological testing, or any form of mental testing is.

 

The Second Amendment states that the right to bear arms should not be infringed, yet the president is trying to pass a law that would take away the right to bear a certain type of gun; that is, in fact, unconstitutional and against everything our nation stands for.

 

First off, if Obama wants to avoid shootings such as the one at Sandy Hook Elementary, why is he trying to put a ban on assault rifles? All this has done is rally people up, and make them want to go and buy assault rifles before they are taken out of stores. As an effect, the number of rifles bought in the last couple months has skyrocketed higher than ever before. In December of 2012, 900,000 more background checks were administered than in December of 2011. That is a lot of citizens wanting guns.

 

But my question is why did Obama do this? If he wants to avoid shootings such as Sandy Hook, why is he emphasizing the ban on assault rifles when he should be looking into more thorough mental testing for those who wish to purchase a gun? I think this is one of the stupidest acts that Obama has done as president, and he is only making the problem worse.

 

It just doesn’t make sense to me why there is a need to outlaw such rifles. Obama wants to prevent incidents such as what happened at Sandy Hook, but how does outlawing assault rifles do so?

 

If we’re really going to take this idea of stopping violence and run with it, I just don’t understand why the president isn’t looking into psychological testing. A psychological test would be able to tell if the person wishing to purchase a gun had a mental disorder such as schizophrenia, which gunman Adam Lanza of the Sandy Hook shooting did have. The guns used at Sandy Hook were not registered to Lanza, so a psychological test would not avoid all problems, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

 

Maybe we can avoid bad situations like this in this future, but we have to face the problem at hand. Assault rifles is not our problem, psychotic people with any type of guns is our problem. And until we put the focus on who has guns instead of who has what type of guns, nothing is going to change. If we want to stop future bad events from occurring, Obama needs to get off his high of banning assault rifles and look deeper into psychological testing, making a step to the change we need.