How many gun owners are there, really?

U

USP45

New member
So the most recent election puts me in somewhat of a quandry.

First some assumptions. (Please correct my where i err.)

There are approximately 80,000,000 gun owners in the USA.

During the recent election, approximately 100,000,000 votes were cast. They were cast as follows, 50,000,000 for Gore; 48,000,000 for Bush; 2,000,000 for 'Other'.

Now, though i live in Massachusetts (hot bed of liberalizm), i know not a single fellow gunnie, who voted for Gore. I know a few that voted for 'Other' (i voted for Browne), but there are not very many of us. The majority voted for Bush.

So this is my confusion. How did 80,000,000 gun owners translate into only 50,000,000 votes for a pro-gun president? Or, 50,000,000 votes for an anti-gun president?

Only two options seem to be valid solutions. 1) there are much fewer than 80,000,000 gun owners. or 2) the gun owning population is much less civically educated than previously thought.

On a simmilar note. Does anyone know what the total membership of the NRA, GOA, JPFO, ... etc. is? I suppose that the NRA is up to 4,500,000 members and probably half that again in the GOA and JPFO (et al) making 6,750,000 in total.

Would anyone like to comment on this?
 
That brings up a good question about how many guns there are in America.

BATF says about 230 million...but how many of those are owned by government agencies?

I mean, didn't the IRS just order a whole bunch of lean, mean killing machines?
 
The best example...

The best example I can give is a customer of mine who owns several firearms. He voted FOR Amendment 22. When I asked him why, he said, "Well, we need to close that 'LOOPHOLE' so that criminals won't be able to buy guns at gun shows. This from a college degreed, upper level manager, Vietnam vet. You would think most people like this wouldn't buy into the 'criminals get guns at gun shows' but it amazes me how many 'gun owners' would turn their guns in when told. THAT'S why we have so few voting for GWB.

Plus, a lot of gun owners I know think there is not one lick of difference between the Dems and Reps. I basically agree with that statement, but feel that you got to vote your conscience.
 
The fact(?) that there are 80 million gun owners in this country doesn't mean that they regard RKBA as very important. If they did, the NRA would have a larger membership than 4 million.
Many gun owning voters obviously had a different set of priorities than the average TFL member.
 
Assuming that gun owners vote in the same proportion as the "average" American, you can assume the following:

Out of 80,000,000 gun owners, probably only 32,500,000 or so actually voted.

I know of quite a few gun owners that voted for Gore. Some more that voted for Nader. Their major "issue" isn't Gun Rights, it is The Environment, or Education, or Tort Reform, or Abortion Rights, or Labor Unions.

The biggest error in assumption that I see is, "all gun owners believe in the Right to Keep and Bear Arms." It seems absurd, but obviously most of them don't. If most of them did, NRA's membership wouldn't be 4 million, it would be 40 million. We don't need to convince fellow gun owners how to vote, or write to their representatives, or to boycott S&W, or anything else.

What we need to do is *convince them* that their Freedom is in jeopardy and that their Freedom is more important than their jobs and their bank account.

The rest, votes, letters and boycotts, will follow naturally from there.
 
Offical (from CNN site) tally:
Democrat Gore got 50,996,064 votes or 48.39 percent; Republican Bush drew 50,456,167 votes or 47.88 percent; Green Party candidate Ralph Nader had 2,864,810 or 2.72 percent; Reform Party nominee Pat Buchanan took 448,750 or 0.43 percent; and Harry Browne got 386,024 or 0.37 percent.

I have a feeling that many gun owners voted for Gore, possibly 10-20 million. Someone I know said "yes protecting the 2nd ammendment is important, but I like AlGwhore's economic policies better and look at our economy".

I knew of another "gun owner" years ago, who may only own a double-barrel shotgun, who feels that's enough for anyone. (a true FITH socialist democrat)
 
I think most vote for an entire package rather than folks like us who become 1 issue voters because of our love for the 2nd amendment.

I have a friend who is a big time Clinton and Gore supporter. He also owns a lot of firearms and is a hunter. Both items are a pastime that C&G would like to disolve.

He votes for them because he is a big labor union supporter even though he has'nt work under a union for a long time. He is in IT working 70 hrs a week like the rest of us. I believe unions are a good thing too if managed properly, although my gun rights come first. After the last 8 years, we don't need anymore controls on the 2nd.

On amend 22 in colorado, I think the sales job on the part of the anti gun movement did us in. As Wallew stated, people want to ensure criminals don't have access to guns. Only a small handfull such as myself read all the fine print and saw the measure for what it was. We lost on a lot of good/bad amendments because NOBODY takes the damn time to get involved and read what they are voting for.

NOBODY wants to get involved in their government affairs, gun clubs, whatever clubs, etc. If you don't care enough to spend a little time and/or money your going to lose. The politico's count on your apathy, that why they get away with controls on all freedoms, even when they don't make sense.
 
The most recent statistics I saw concerning voters based on exit polls and whatever, is that 36% (about 18,000,000) of the people who voted for Gore reported being gun owners.

I think that most of them where uninformed regarding the Clinton/Gore radical anti-RKBA position. A couple of reasons is that Al Gore started running from gun control as fast as he could during the campaign was, first, it became obvious that it was a losing position. The fact that NRA membership went from 2.7 million to 4.2 million is short period of time before the election was probably a good indicator. So, Gore in his campaing speeches started to soft-pedal his position.

Second, I read that the leadership of some of the labor unions like UAW published notices to their members that there was little difference between Gore and Bush regarding gun rights. Obviously, this was a lie to keep the rank-and-file from abandoning Gore.
 
Of the local gun-owning friends, more than half voted for Gore. That includes several who call themselves libertarians, too. Sad.
 
There are gun owners, and then there are people who happen to own guns. Bad mistake to confuse the two.

Why would so many of the latter vote for Gore? It isn't just that Gore was downplaying his anti-gun views for all he was worth, it's also that Bush was letting him get away with it. Why? Bush, like his daddy, assumed that we were already a sure thing, and was trying to appeal to the OTHER side! Which kind of precluded making a fuss about Gore's anti-gun tendencies.
 
Good point Brett! Of Gun owners.. I know nearly 8000 who care. Is that enough? I would dare say that most of us here are not your typical gunowner, I also question BATF quotes on # of guns and # of owners. My limited 46 year experience in this world has reinforced the 80/20 rule. 20% do the work and give the bucks while 80% sits back and enjoys. If 20% is the total committed, ie. GOA NRA, etc. what is the real number?
 
First of all, 80 million gun owners is a pretty optimistic estimate. As of 1994, ATF was estimating around 65 million gun owners based on 1992 data. Cook and Ludwig (of Johns Hopkins Center on Gun Policy Research - an anti-gun group) estimated 44 million gun owners and 192 million guns, based on smapling.

So you are looking at anywhere between 44 million and 80 million gun owners.

Of these gun owners, not all of them vote. About half of eligible voters chose not to vote in the last election. Even if we want to assume that gun owners are more likely to be politically active, chances are good that anywhere from 45% to 30% of gun owners didn't even bother to vote.

Finally, of those gun owners who did vote, 39% of them bought the Gore line completely and voted for him.

The idea that gun owners vote as a unified block is a myth - if they did, gun control wouldn't even be a political issue - nobody would touch it. On the bright side, things aren't as bad as they sound either - mobilization of gun owners was comparable to what the Unions managed to mobilize for the Dems (and with some overlap too)
 
A decent, commercial market research firm could put together a marketing study of the firearms industry. We know who the US based manufacturers are. Add to that the foreign companies with US outlet. Mix in foreign companies that import into the use through brokers but do not have resident US outlet.


Then do the same thing with the ammo manufacturers that way you get some kind of cross reference. What will not be known is the number of guns in the US due to smuggling or those that were here before the feds dropped the curtain. An anonomous survey would get you close. Add it all up and you'll get a number plus or minus 25% accurate. Business spends lots of money on that kind of accuracy.

Is there 230 million firearms??? I doubt it. That number is promoted by Federales and guess who wins if that is the number. Why it si the Feds. I think it useful for them to believe that number because that appears to be impossibly high goal if anyone wanted to grab 'em. So just keep thinking that.
 
S.P Fjestad, editor of "Blue Book of Gun Values", who does try to keep track of all the types of firearms and their approximate rarity in his own very interested way, has said that he believes there are at least a MINIMUM of 300 million fire arms of all types in circulation in the U.S.A. alone.
Nobody really knows the answer to how many fire arms there are and how many people own them in this country. The variations in the estimates alone are enough to ensure a massive, very hot civil war for any future tyrrant who miscalculates on this matter.
Lets all make sure this situation never changes in the world's most important democracy.
 
I know some folks who voted for Gore because they are as scared of the Religious Reich as of the gungrabbers.

You want widespread support of RKBA? Then dump the bigots and their issues.

TOR
 
TearsOfRage, if the GOP "dumps the bigots" they lose perhaps 20-30% of their base. Where are those "bigots" going to go? To the Democratic party? Not likely. No opposing views allowed there.
Those "bigots" work harder on a grassroots level than any other interest group I've seen in the last few years. Consider that they may view those of us with strict 2nd Amendment views as albatrosses.

The GOP allows for a wide array of views. The Democrats somehow miraculously manage to keep everybody towing the party line, even when there's discord amongst their ranks over issues like gun control. We would be better served by opening those divisions in their ranks than dumping people who work harder than just about any gun owner I know to help elect conservatives.

Dick
 
Hey, I might resemble one of those "Religious Reich"'s, I go to church on Sunday and throw money in the plate and I think that ripping an unborn child out of it's mother's womb is murder and I jealously defend my RKBA. I don't think I'm a bigot!

Our biggest problem as "gun owners" is we are not united. Since we all have very fine lines of geo-theo-political convictions and "no exceptions tolerated" attitudes we will always have some of us on the other side.

RKBA, as big an issue as it is for me and maybe you, isn't big enough to unite us all. Individual freedom may be, but I don't think even that is big enough to unite us. Ideology is very difficult to dismiss. Until the RKBA is a large enough issue to unite the "80 million" we will always be divided by other issues.

Although, I still can't fathom how any thinking person would have voted for Gore, many did, even if some of them were dead!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top