America may hold a reputation as a country of gun owners, but a new survey shows that roughly half of the nation’s weapons are owned by just three percent of the population.
Three percent of Americans own eight or more firearms, a cumulative 133 million of the country’s 265 million weapons, according to an unpublished survey from Harvard University and Northeastern University, whose results were reported by the Guardian and The Trace on Monday. These “super owners” have a multitude of reasons for accumulating their stash, from the guns' investment value, to their historical significance, to concerns about personal protection, the primary factor motivating about two-thirds of all gun owners, according to the study.
While many gun owners are staunch in their defense of what they consider their Second Amendment right to protect themselves, some experts say that the fear that motivates many to accumulate weapons can be dangerous in its own right.
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“If we hope to reduce firearm suicide, if we hope to reduce the other potential dangers of guns, my gut is, we have to speak to that fear,” Harvard School of Public Health firearms researcher Deborah Azrael, the lead author of the study, told The Guardian.
According to the Harvard/Northeastern study, about 22 percent of American adults are gun owners. Fourteen percent of gun owners own between eight and 140 guns each. About half of American gun owners possess just one or two firearms.
Yet while such massive collections might seem unusual to non-gun owners or those with just one or two guns, the individuals who assemble them say that accumulating such an arsenal happens surprisingly naturally.
“The fact that you’d open the closet and have a stack full of guns in this country is really not a big deal. I know it sounds weird,” John Risenhoover told The Trace, which also reported on the study results. “It’s like buying shoes,” said Mr. Risenhoover, a retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent.
Like any carefully curating collector, many gun buyers make purchases to fill gaps in their collection – a historically significant firearm or a specific weapon to hunt a different type of game, for example.
For some, guns are an investment. The weapons hold their value, and can be worth thousands of dollars, leading some major collectors to treat them as a potential source of retirement funds.
Many others, however, became interested in collecting weapons due to a fear of violence, present or future. Two-thirds of American gun owners now say that self-defense is their main reason for owning a weapon, a dramatic change from just two decades ago, when the most-mentioned reason was recreation.
One subset of the gun-owning population has assembled small arsenals in order to prepare for more apocalyptic situations. When that happens, they say, Americans will want to be armed.
One Florida truck driver with an approximately 40 gun-collection, identified only as Fred, told the Trace said that after a stint as a civilian truck driver in Iraq, he worries about what could happen to society if American infrastructure breaks down. And it isn’t pretty.
“All of our morals or ethics would be out the window in the fear of the inability to survive as soon we got just a little bit hungry,” he said.
Fred also expanded his collection for other reasons: personal protection and readiness, as well as the aesthetic appeal of his guns, which he likens to a woman’s expensive jewelry collection.
Others share Fred’s concern about a societal collapse that could leave them underprepared.
"If I had to pick a number to survive a collapse, I think every person in your family or group should have a personal handgun and a personal carbine," Bryce Towsley, the author of "Prepper Guns," told The Trace. "That's a bare minimum."
And, like the majority of gun owners, some super owners are interested in personal protection against more typical crime. Yet while the idea of self-defense is a powerful motivation to for buy weapons, many public health experts say that concerns about violence are largely unfounded.
“The desire to own a gun for protection – there’s a disconnect between that and the decreasing rates of lethal violence in this country. It isn’t a response to actuarial reality,” Matthew Miller, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and Northeastern University, and an author of the study, told The Guardian.
Some super owners expressed concern after the study came out, worried that the idea that so many guns are in the hands of so few Americans would open a path forward for gun control campaigns to demonize them.
“I’m what used to be considered a Joe Average American,” Mr. Towsley told The Trace. “I’m a little conservative in my politics. I work hard. I pay my taxes, I raised my kids.… I try to give back.”
Poster Comment:
Different tools for different purposes: handgun, shotgun, deer rifle...
#1: Hondo68 To: Willie Green (#0)
Hondo68 posted on 2016-09-21 21:16:41 Reply Private Reply
#2: GrandIsland To: Willie Green (#0)
I have 47... and a gun vault big enough to hide the bodies of any libtards brave enough to come take them.
All Guns Matter, you reverse racist pile of Obunghole dung.
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-21 22:58:56 Reply Private Reply
#3: Hondo68 To: GrandIsland, pimp guns (#2)
Lorcin .25 throw downs don't count.
Hondo68 posted on 2016-09-21 23:14:05 Reply Private Reply
#4: Stoner To: GrandIsland (#2)
I did include in the count my M3 Half Track w/Quad 50's, which is great if the BLM & Black Panthers try to storm up my driveway. One burst, problem solved !
:)
Stoner posted on 2016-09-22 07:43:16 Reply Private Reply
#5: misterwhite To: Stoner (#4)
misterwhite posted on 2016-09-22 11:39:50 Reply Private Reply
#6: Stoner To: misterwhite (#5)
Stoner posted on 2016-09-22 11:47:30 Reply Private Reply
#7: BobCeleste To: Willie Green (#0)
BobCeleste posted on 2016-09-22 13:02:49 Reply Private Reply
#8: Hondo68 To: BobCeleste, misterwhite, Stoner, Willie Green, GrandIsland, *Bang List* (#7)
Future Nobel Peace Prize winner?
He wants the Army to take everyone’s guns...
Hondo68 posted on 2016-09-22 14:53:54 Reply Private Reply
#9: GrandIsland To: Stoner (#4)
Stay ready at all times.
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-22 18:59:50 Reply Private Reply
#10: GrandIsland To: hondo68 (#8)
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-22 19:01:56 Reply Private Reply
#11: Stoner To: hondo68 (#8)
I would say he is a " Waste of Oxygen " winner!!
What a dumb ass!
Stoner posted on 2016-09-22 19:18:17 Reply Private Reply
#12: Hondo68 To: GrandIsland, Banana Republican progressive totalitarians, Generalissimo Che Donnell (#10)
You'll turn your guns over to Generalissimo Donnell, on demand!
Hondo68 posted on 2016-09-22 19:28:32 Reply Private Reply
#13: GrandIsland To: hondo68 (#12)
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-22 19:41:29 Reply Private Reply
#14: buckeroo To: GrandIsland (#13)
buckeroo posted on 2016-09-22 20:47:05 Reply Private Reply
#15: Gatlin To: A K A Stone, GrandIsdland buckeroo, Fred Mertz, misterwhite, (#14)
Hey, GrandIsland, I don’t see how throwing someone “overboard two miles out to sea with a twenty pound anchor wrapped around [their] neck is any more of a “death wish” than putting “a bullet through [someone’s] unpatriotic Paultard like cop hating forehead”….do you?
How long was your suspension? Oh, Yea....fifteen days.
Gatlin posted on 2016-09-22 22:41:01 Reply Private Reply
#16: Deckard To: Gatlin, Fred Mertz (#15)
How about posting all of what the freak GrandIsland said.
#3. To: misterwhite (#1)
Someone should put a bullet through his unpatriotic Paultard like cop hating forehead and burry that halfrican in a pit full of shit, with his faggot ass cop hating practice socks still on his lifeless feet.
Here is a half white, half black child, raised by white folks because his black father abandoned the little piglet, raised with a silver spoon by whitey... and now all of a sudden it's time to pull an Obunghole racist revolution. Well fuck you, Kap. Hopefully you're found dead with a 40 caliber hole over the left nipple... and your cop/pig socks stuffed inside the slit of your throat.
I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-01 23:10:26 ET
Deckard posted on 2016-09-22 22:53:14 Reply Private Reply
#17: Gatlin To: Deckard, GrandIsland, A K A Stone, buckeroo (#16)
A death wish is still a death wish and the suspension was given for a "death wish"....wasn't it?
What is the difference in the two "death wishes?" Only the method....right?
Gatlin posted on 2016-09-22 22:59:29 Reply Private Reply
#18: Hondo68 To: Gatlin, canary gangstas, buckeroo, Fred Mertz (#15)
An anchor rode around the neck is much more passive and organic. The natural buoyancy of the progressive libtard gasbag is overcome by the heavy metal, and gently sinks for recycling as fish food.
No comparison with Bustin' a Cap on a "Paultard", which is violent, unnatural and perverted, like you canaries.
Hondo68 posted on 2016-09-22 23:00:48 Reply Private Reply
#19: Fred Mertz To: Gatlin (#17)
FireIsland can handle it. Just ask him.
Fred Mertz posted on 2016-09-22 23:06:07 Reply Private Reply
#20: buckeroo To: Gatlin (#17)
Oh no. It is committment.
buckeroo posted on 2016-09-22 23:10:09 Reply Private Reply
#21: Gatlin To: Fred Mertz (#19)
Maybe GrandIsland could and survive;
Just as Jim Saunders has survived for 30 years with a bullet in his brain after his first wife put a gun to his forehead while he was asleep and pulled the trigger. Story here.
So, if one is a death wish….then both are death wishes.
Conversely, if one is not a death wish….then the other was not a death wish.
Gatlin posted on 2016-09-22 23:23:58 Reply Private Reply
#22: Fred Mertz To: Gatlin (#21)
See you in the funny papers, loser.
Fred Mertz posted on 2016-09-22 23:33:07 Reply Private Reply
#23: Gatlin To: Fred Mertz (#22)
I am not "that" way....try Bucky or Deckturd for your sexual desire.
Gatlin posted on 2016-09-22 23:35:24 Reply Private Reply
#24: Hondo68 To: Gatlin, losers (#23)
Hondo68 posted on 2016-09-22 23:51:51 Reply Private Reply
#25: Hondo68 To: Fred Mertz, Gatlin, tater (#22)
Hondo68 posted on 2016-09-23 00:42:18 Reply Private Reply
#26: Ferret Mike To: buckeroo (#14)
But could you then sleep at night knowing you poisoned innocent little fishes?
Ferret Mike posted on 2016-09-23 01:40:08 Reply Private Reply
#27: Stoner To: GrandIsland (#9)
Roger that !
Stoner posted on 2016-09-23 08:42:29 Reply Private Reply
#28: GrandIsland To: buckeroo (#14)
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-23 19:53:54 Reply Private Reply
#29: GrandIsland To: Deckard (#16)
I don't know what's weaker. Someone that relies on big daddy gov to eat everyday or someone that can't read a paragraph or view a confederate flag without shitting themselves in fear. You've always disgusted me with your weakness.
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-23 20:02:24 Reply Private Reply
#30: Deckard To: GrandIsland (#29)
Seems to me, you were the one who got a time out for your temper tantrums here.
Congratulations, you win the prize.
Someone that relies on big daddy gov to eat everyday or someone that can't read a paragraph
Perfect description of your "career" as a cop.
Deckard posted on 2016-09-23 20:23:17 Reply Private Reply
#31: GrandIsland To: Deckard (#30)
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-23 22:59:44 Reply Private Reply
#32: buckeroo To: GrandIsland (#28)
And you give advise on the Internet for free?!
buckeroo posted on 2016-09-24 08:11:16 Reply Private Reply
#33: Gatlin To: GrandIsland (#31)
He does so repeatedly...
Gatlin posted on 2016-09-24 08:53:27 Reply Private Reply
#34: Fred Mertz To: Gatlin (#33)
I won't forget to wipe my FireIsland.
Fred Mertz posted on 2016-09-24 09:17:10 Reply Private Reply
#35: Gatlin To: Fred Mertz, GrandIsland (#34)
If it is not coming out our your ass, it is coming out of your mouth.
Gatlin posted on 2016-09-24 18:05:05 Reply Private Reply
#36: buckeroo To: Fred Mertz (#34)
Yeah a BIG tater for the sewer.
buckeroo posted on 2016-09-24 18:06:51 Reply Private Reply
#37: GrandIsland To: buckeroo (#32)
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-24 22:28:26 Reply Private Reply
#38: buckeroo To: GrandIsland (#37)
Isn't that a homo act?
buckeroo posted on 2016-09-24 22:31:17 Reply Private Reply
#39: GrandIsland To: buckeroo (#38)
Only if you say that statement AND:
A) your name is Meguro.
B) You're a faggot loving D. Johnson supporter
C) You're Stink Peter Puff a-lot or one of his 40% fag relatives.
D) You're Tea Party Reveler, crying like a 7 year old girl while getting handcuffed.
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-24 22:37:07 Reply Private Reply
#40: buckeroo To: GrandIsland (#39)
buckeroo posted on 2016-09-24 22:38:08 Reply Private Reply
#41: GrandIsland To: buckeroo (#40)
lol
GrandIsland posted on 2016-09-24 22:39:47 Reply Private Reply
#42: buckeroo To: GrandIsland (#41)
buckeroo posted on 2016-09-24 22:41:25 Reply Private Reply