tifosi77 wrote:What I think is interesting in that is the demand for both guns themselves and their accessories is largely coming from a relatively small - and shrinking - population of existing gun owners, not new buyers flocking to gun stores. The rate of gun ownership in this country has gone down from 50% to just over 30% in about thirty years. But the number of guns in private circulation is higher than it's ever been. So it's people buying multiple firearms as opposed to a lot more people only owning one weapon. Hoarding might be one way to describe it.
I am not sure about the rate of gun ownership being down by that much. That number comes from a long-running private annual survey that asks people if anyone in their household owns guns. Thus, it’s not measuring guns/people, it’s measuring gun owners/households. That number could be affected by many factors, some of which I discussed in the PDT at this post:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38742&p=2260507&hilit=+households#p2260507For example, take a world where there is one household, where I live with my wife and daughter. I own guns, but neither my wife or daughter is interested in doing so. 100% of households in that world possess guns. Let’s say my wife and I get divorced and she moves out to her own home. Now only 50% of households possess guns, even though the number of gun owners is still constant. Say my daughter turns 18 and she moves out on her own to a third house. Only 33% of the households in the world possess guns, even though the number of gun owners (me) is still constant. The fall in per-household gun ownership rates can also be explained by factors like an increase in the number of women-headed single-parent households; statistically, women are much less likely than men to own guns.