Gun ownership rates in the US have been declining in recent decades. The National Rifle Association has started to produce denialist rhetoric to obscure this well documented fact. One of the reasons there is less gun ownership is because of changes in the demography of the US population; Angry white men whose recent ancestors were angry white men are declining in numbers and less paranoid and less violent browninsh people often with recent ancestors from other, non gun-happy countries are becoming more common.

You’ve heard about the rush to buy guns that happens every time Obama mentions firearms, or every time a bunch of babies are slaughtered in a school (the idea being that such an event will cause the rest of the country to consider backing off on our national worship of deadly weapons). These things do seem to happen but they are not as large scale as the press seems to tell us and consist almost entirely of angry white males who already own guns using an available excuse to squander more of their household income on their toys.

The gun ownership rate has dropped across all regions of the country and across a wide range of demographics from about 50% in the 1970s to about 35% now. In 1970, about 44% of Americans where white males. In the present year, that number is closer to 35%. In other words, the same guys are holding on to their guns, more or less, as the rest of the country changes. It won’t be long before the number of people who care about protecting gun ownership, for their own personal reasons, will be small enough that a constitutional amendment to repeal the second amendment and replace it with something useful will be a possibility. For instance, we could get rid of the “well regulated militia” thing and replace it with an amendment that says that the Armed Services and federal police can’t treat US Citizens like they weren’t US Citizens. (Eventually one would hope that we would also stop treating non citizens like non citizens as well, but one step at a time.)

Anyway, the gun ownership study is summarized here.