Bill Clinton to liberal donors: Don’t condescend to gun owners

Hotair ^ | 01/21/2013 | AllahPundit

[SirLurkedalot]

I have no handy reference source....but my answer is “More than enough”

Molon Labe!!!

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Question for the forum – can anyone point me to a reference sources that details how many gun owners there are in the country?

Per SeekAndFind’s Gallup link:

One in Three Americans [Adults] Personally Own a Gun.

Per http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_gun_owners_are_there_in_the_United_States_of_America:

Most estimates range between 39% and 50% of US households having at least one gun (that's about 43-55 million households). The estimates for the number of privately owned guns range from 190 million to 300 million. Removed those that skew the stats for their own purposes the best estimates are about 45% or 52 million of American households owning 260 million guns)

Annually there are roughly 15,000 gun murders in the US; if you divide that number into 45 million households with guns, you come up with about 3,000 households with guns for every (annual) gun murder.

Which only means that an awful lot of people legally buy guns with no intention of murdering with them. Nearly all guns are bought for legitimate reasons.

A gun is a responsibility. You know, like a car, or a swimming pool. There are people who earn their living by carrying and if necessary using a gun; policemen and security guards for example. There are even instances when men have been legally required to carry, and to shoot, guns - and even to fire cannons. It was called, "the military draft.” The fact that people have the inherent right to assume the responsibility entailed by gun possession is explicit in the Constitution. The choice to exercise that right is a prudential, rather than a moral, issue.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Annually there are roughly 15,000 gun murders in the US;

According to UN figures via WaPo the number of gun hommicides in America is not 5 per hundred thousand but about 3.25 per hundred thousand. Times 10 (hundred thousand per million) and times 300 million Americans yields not 15,000 but “only” (each one a tragedy) 9750 gun homicides annually.

if you divide that number into 45 million households with guns, you come up with about 4,600 households with guns for every (annual) gun murder.

An awful lot of people own guns for reasons other than committing murder. As noted above, the Constitution asserts that they have a right to do so. It takes a 2/3 majority in Congress to propose an amendment, and a simple majority in 3/4 of the state legislatures to ratify it. I doubt that the adults who own, or reserve the right to contemplate owning, a gun will be persuaded to defer to the “wisdom” of a few children who don’t understand the Constitution and may not know the difference between a thousand and a million on the prudential issue of the risk/benefit ratio of gun ownership.