Those who favor strict gun control are trying to create the meme that all of these guns being sold this past year are going to the same bunch of people who are simply adding to their “stockpiles”, not to new shooters.
Share of Homes With Guns Shows 4-Decade Decline
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.
Or maybe people are increasingly distrustful of government as well as people they don’t know calling them for surveys on their guns. Next to asking random people the last time they had sex and who with, asking people about their gun ownership is pretty personal stuff.
When we see attendance at gun shows and reports of brisk gun sales at gun stores, it’s easy to get the impression that a larger percentage of Americans are choosing to purchase firearms. There is, however, ample evidence to the contrary — even as gun sales go up, the percentage of households with guns goes down.
Ample evidence, huh? Let’s look at the very blue state of Illinois, shall we?
A few years ago, there were 1.2 million Firearms Owners ID cards – in essence, registered gun owners if you will, in Illinois.
According to Monique Bond, the ISP spokesman, today there are 1.6 million FOID holders, an increase of 33%.
There’s also a 49,000-card backlog of applications pending with the state’s top law enforcement agency.
Do you really think those 400,000 newly “registered” FOID holders just went to all of the trouble to apply for and receive a FOID card for their good lucks, keen intellect and cutting-edge attractiveness?
Keep dreaming, New York Times and all the rest of you gun control fanatics.
Why are gun control fanatics such control freaks, anyway?
Behind the numbers on Illinois gun permits
Springfield (NWI Times) – The issue of gun permits surfaced briefly in the Illinois governor’s race, when a candidate claimed that the Illinois State Police had a backlog of 75,000 gun-owner’s ID applications under Gov. Pat Quinn, forcing hunters to miss entire hunting seasons.
The real number isn’t that high — just 49,000, according to state police. But those numbers belie a bigger headache awaiting the state’s bureaucracy now that lawmakers have set in motion a process to facilitate the carrying of concealed weapons in public, as mandated by a federal court order.
Whereas a few years ago, 1.2 million Illinoisans held Firearm Owners Identification cards, the number has jumped to 1.6 million, state police spokeswoman Monique Bond said. Soon after the court decreed in December that Illinois couldn’t ban public carry anymore, demand for FOID cards jumped precipitously. In January alone, Bond reported, there were 61,000 FOID applications, nearly double the 31,000 in January 2012.
Once the state’s new concealed-carry law is fully in place, state police officials expect 400,000 applications in the first year for the $150 “carry” permits, a number on top of the 49,000 waiting for a $10 FOID which gives them permission to own a gun — permission that’s unique among states.
Guns rights advocates say the numbers prove that the demand is high and broad-based across the nation.
“People say it’s the same ‘gun guys’ buying more guns,” said Todd Vandermyde, the National Rifle Association’s lobbyist in Illinois. “FOID proves that it’s just the opposite.”
UPDATE
Someone asked us if we had better numbers and low and behold look what showed up in our mailbox.
FOID Card Holders Calendar year
Active FOID Cards
2010 1,316,508
2011 1,395,114
2012 1,476,408
As of 09/06 1,633,039
FTIP Transactions (Calendar year)
2010 229,444
2011 275, 894
2012 358, 791
2013 (YTD) 287,629
Sorry, New York Times.
Empirical data just blew a big hole in your “polling as news” scheme. We suppose that digging a little deeper would require investigative reporting. Heaven forbid you do that!
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