Share of Homes With Guns Shows 4-Decade Decline
Source: New York Times
The share of American households with guns has declined over the past four decades, a national survey shows, with some of the most surprising drops in the South and the Western mountain states, where guns are deeply embedded in the culture.
The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions.
The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.
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, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/rate-of-gun-ownership-is-down-survey-shows.html
A smaller pool of extremists own an abnormal amount of guns.
Gun ownership is becoming an aberration.
Observe the 'diversity' in that photo.
= new reply since forum marked as read
But you said until the pro gun side can show power at the voting booth, little will change, I think you meant to say until the pro gun control side can show power at the voting booth, little will change.
That is, if I'm reading it right. 
and swarm every single thread assuring us (1) "RKBA" gun culture is here to stay and (2) you are "not worried" about legislative attempts to curb that same gun culture's bloody legacy and ongoing tragedies belies your constant insistence on point #2.
And you should be worried: "RKBA" as you and your friends in the Gungeon know and understand and want it is not going to last past this generation. Fifty years from now the NRA notion of the 2nd amendment will be considered a quaint oddity, like those ante-bellum secessionists who thought it was "constitutional" for states to simply leave the Union because they didn't want to see slavery curbed or outlawed. Fifty years from now, folks who make the arguments the NRA routinely does today will be objects of point-and-laugh derision, or simply astonishment: and the only Americans who will even know what an "assault rifle" is outside of the military context will be historians, who will study with wonder and some justified moral disdain the attitudes of what passes for "RKBA enthusiast" ideology and thought. Indeed, my sig line will be considered a tautology in the year 2063.
Yup.
just like the abolitionists and suffragettes and Civil Rights workers and LGBT rights advocates and feminists and environmental advocates that have done so much to make this country a better place to both live, and to live up to its founding promise. There is still much to do in many of these areas, but we've also come far.
You see, the true test of whether someone is "worried" about such things or not is where they go to argue their cause. Since I'm confident that, as MLK said, the arc of history bends toward "justice," I'm not over at FR pretending to be a "concerned" or "moderate" conservative/Republican, trying to slip progressive commentary underneath JimRob's radar. I'm confident the future is "Blue," so to speak, so I'm where I belong: at Democratic Underground.
Others, not so much... 
And you should be worried: "RKBA" as you and your friends in the Gungeon know and understand and want it is not going to last past this generation. Fifty years from now the NRA notion of the 2nd amendment will be considered a quaint oddity, like those ante-bellum secessionists who thought it was "constitutional" for states to simply leave the Union because they didn't want to see slavery curbed or outlawed. Fifty years from now, folks who make the arguments the NRA routinely does today will be objects of point-and-laugh derision, or simply astonishment: and the only Americans who will even know what an "assault rifle" is outside of the military context will be historians, who will study with wonder and some justified moral disdain the attitudes of what passes for "RKBA enthusiast" ideology and thought. Indeed, my sig line will be considered a tautology in the year 2063.
Yup.
And we can just keep starting over until you are willing to focus on the issue at hand.
"I am where I belong"
Uh-huh.
multiple sub-threads insisting he's not "concerned," all the while sputtering and spewing nothing but "concern" mixed with bravado assurances that "RKBA is here to stay!!!!!11".
Funny stuff. 
*( )
One thing you are going to learn about our "pro gun progressives"* is that they don't do debate or discussion very well. Once you have exposed or debunked the latest talking point's list of NRA memes and propaganda, they usually fall back on either one line-attempts to "get the last word," rank personal attacks, or, as the Gungeon host *himself* pioneered, merely repeating the reply "Ibid" over and over and over again.
It really is all too easy. Less this :
And more this: 
You'll know when the surrender flag is being waved, because that's when one of three tactics I mentioned above gets rolled out and inserted into replies as "debate." It's really kind of a cute way to concede the debate, and our intrepid Gungeoneers never fail to deliver.
Again, welcome to DU!
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) 
Nice sig line, speaks volumes.
members every chance you get. Seriously: why hang out in a joint that makes you so angry and sad?
More and more of those guys feel the need to tote in public and accumulate a few assault weapons.
Line at Atlanta gun show one week after Sandy Hook. Reporters inquired and the paranoid folks were hoping for a chance to acquire an assault weapon, some wanted one just like the one used at Sandy Hook.
People here are so used to fighting the NRA that they forget the NRA does not represent the average gun owner. It represents, instead, a politicized kind of gun owner.
Most gun owners are hunters or recreational shooters. They view their gun much as they do their canoe or their climbing ropes. It's important to them, but not something that they necessarily view as part of their political outlook.
Two groups can change that. The first group is the NRA and its ilk. It would like nothing more than to turn every gun owner into a supporter and wingnut.
The second group are those who demonize gun owners as a whole, or seem to, when their real target is the NRA.
Gun ownership is declining because hunting and recreational shooting are declining. But you're looking at decadal trends, and nothing still done by someone in 30% of American households is an aberration.
Gun ownership is becoming an aberration.
Observe the 'diversity' in that photo."
1. This is going to continue to trend on this pattern as the country turns more "Blue" and gets more civilized. Owning a firearm for the avowed purpose of plugging another human being in the name of "self defense" a la Georg Zimmerman is a barbaric, uncivilized attitude leading to ugly, and often murderous, behaviors: owning a firearm for the purposes of hunting, sports shooting, plinking, etc., etc. is a privilege that is justifiable only to the extent that the person exercising that privilege does no harm in the act of possession, i.e., leave his/her gun laying around for some kid to pick up or make it easy for a criminal to get his hands on.
As the country continues to mature and turn "Blue," firearms ownership will increasingly fall into the latter category as it does in Australia, Canada, and Western Europe. And the vicious howls of rage and anger from our "RKBA enthusiasts" will continue to intensify as the bloody gun lobby and their NRA shills and sycophants watch America's sick gun culture go into the trashbin of history.
2. Even that level of gun ownership for reasonable reasons - hunting, sports shooting, etc. - is going to drop. Legislation is coming that is going to make firearms ownership increasingly expensive and attendance-to-intensive. Further, none of our grand or great-grandchildren are going to be able to walk into Gump's Sporting Goods and buy either an assault rifle, or a semi-automatic handgun, or a .50 caliber sniper rifle, as is the case today. They simply aren't: such implements are going to be as illegal as segregated restaurants of the Jim Crow era, and illicit ownership of them as stigmatized as racist attitudes are today. Those who persist on defying the law are going to be (a) locked up when caught and (b) otherwise shunned from decent society when it is known that they insist on endangering their family, neighbors, and the entire community by owning illegal tools of mayhem. This is as it should be.
3. Yep - the "RKBA enthusiast" movement is largely the domain of Angry White Males, who feel "their" (
) country is being "taken" from them by people of color, women, LGBT Americans, and, of course, them there godless liberuls. All that has really happened, of course, is that those communities have stepped forward and claimed their civil and human rights, and right to be treated with equality, fairness, and dignity. This enrages our "RKBA enthusiasts" to no end: see sig line.
Good article, great commentary!
Kick, Rec. 
IN HOODIES, of course
