3% own half

I’ve heard the statistic that there are enough guns in America for everyone to have one. Lois Beckett, writing for The Guardian delves into that a bit more. Here’s a bit of what she reported.

American civilians own at least 265 million guns. Ownership is so private that estimates have gone as high as 400 million – more than 100 million between estimates. For a population of about 315 million, 265 million is indeed close to one each (and might be one each for every adult), in other terms this is at least 85 guns per 100 people. This is the highest rate of gun ownership in the world. Second is Yemen at 55 guns per 100 people.

I don’t have a gun and most people I know don’t pack heat. That leads to the second observation: The number of adults who actually own a gun is somewhere between 22% and 31% (see above on difficulty of estimating). Ownership is concentrated.

Out of the gun owners, nearly half own just one or two guns. And most of the rest average 3 guns (yeah, that stat seems especially vague – how did they decide what gets included in the average?).

But America’s gun super-owners have amassed huge collections. Just 3% of American adults own a collective 133m firearms – half of America’s total gun stock. These owners have collections that range from eight to 140 guns, the 2015 study found. Their average collection: 17 guns each.

That’s about 7.7 million super-owners. Wow!

Which leads to a quandary for law enforcement. The Last Vegas shooter had 42 guns in the hotel and at home. But personal arsenals of 40 guns are rather common. How to tell the difference between a potential terrorist and an enthusiastic collector?

Super-owners tend to be less diverse – more likely to be male and white – than gun owners overall.

Some gun violence statistics:

* 36,000 Americans were killed with guns in 2015. That is broken down to:

22,000 suicides
13,000 homicides (about 750 were related to domestic violence, the vast majority of victims are women)
1,000 shot to death by police

* More than 60,000 are shot each year and survive.

* A quarter of gun homicides are in neighborhoods with only 1.5% of the population. Homicide rates here are 400 times higher than in other high-income countries. Even in those neighborhoods the violence is concentrated. In Oakland, CA about 0.3% of the population was involved in 60% of the city’s murders.

As many have noted before 36,000 deaths in a year and the resulting public outcry would get Congress scurrying for a solution. Even automobile deaths prompt investigation and safety features. Yeah, there are exceptions, such as the AIDS epidemic.

I wonder why these white guys feel the need for so many guns? That question is important because to me guns are for violence and violence is for enforcing ranking. Which means these white guys have guns to protect their privilege and your life is a whole lot less important to them than maintaining that privilege.

So what might be the reason why these guys switch from admiring their arsenals to using them? What might make them feel their white male privilege is threatened?

We now have a guy in the White House and one prominent campaign theme that got him there is an assertion of white male privilege. His words and actions loudly proclaimed that it is good to be bigoted. So might all these white dude super-owners feel threatened if their champion is ousted?