A new survey has found that one in three (1 in 3) American adults own a gun, and that they don’t just keep them to themselves. Quite a few of them are involved in gun cultures, where their friends and relatives also own guns, and it all becomes kind of a social event. That means that roughly a third of Americans are members of a gun club of sorts.
Dr. Bindu Kalesan, lead author and member of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health (New York), gave a statement saying that the researchers were not at all surprised by how many people own guns. But he quickly went on to add that “what is never really emphasized in studies that quantify ownership is how it relates to the concept of gun culture – meaning involvement in social events that revolve around guns”.
The poll had 4.000 adult participants from all of the 50 states answering questions and found that, compared to those who do not own guns, those who do in fact own guns are at least two times more likely to spend time with their loved ones participating in activities that involve guns.
Nationwide, their total was somewhere around 29 percent (29%), however there’s an important addendum – the number of adults who own guns differs from state to state.
The lead author informs that there are currently an estimated 310 million guns across the United States, but that 62 percent (62%) of the 29 percent (29%) can be fount in the state of Alaska, while just five percent (5%) of the 29 percent (29%) lived in Delaware, and no more than six percent (6%) of gun owners were staying in Rhode Island.
The middle ground was covered by New York with a gun ownership rate of 10 percent (10%), New Jersey with a gun ownership rate of 11 percent (11%) and New Hampshire with a gun ownership rate of 14 percent (14%).
Only 10 percent (10%) of participants went to gun safety classes.
An unsurprising but valuable finding is that twice as many people own guns in the states that have a higher number of gun related deaths.
Most of the people who owned a gun turned out to be male, white, over the age of 55, and married.
Roughly five percent (5%) of all gun owners admitted that they have used their gun to hunt, while 32 percent (32%) admitted being a part of a gun related social life known as “social gun culture”. Six percent (6%) of adults who don’t own guns also said that they’ve been exposed to “social gun culture” through friends and family.
Professor Jeffrey Swanson, an expert in psychiatry and behavioral sciences from Duke University’s School of Medicine (Durham, New York), gave a statement stressing that guns are being domesticated in the United States, we generally celebrate them, and own a great deal of them. It’s who we are as a nation.
He went on to add that many Americans don’t simply own guns because they go hunting or need to protect themselves, but that they simply like the way guns look.
Professor Swanson also insisted all we can do, and should do, is to try and figure out which of the gun owners are dangerous and should not be allowed to have weapons, and which are not. It’s an issue that affects gun owners as well as non gun owners.
While fewer and fewer people own guns in the United States, a statistic also revealed that gun sales are on the rise, which would seem to suggest that people who already own a guns keep buying more of them.
The results were published earlier this week, on Monday (June 29, 2015), in the journal Injury Prevention.
Image Source: media.namx.org
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