Canadian Media Repeat Obvious Anti-Gun Myth

In Barack Obama's last two years - his unleashed years - gun control is on the docket.  However, a first gambit had not gone too well as a proposed ban on M855 ammo was beaten back.  Still, the show must go on and the media has to do it's part.  As gun blogging gurus at TTAG like to point out, it is a conscious MSM strategy to minimize gun ownership so that gun owners can be depicted as 1) a crazed minority and 2) a tedious barrier to legislation that Americans overwhelmingly support.

And it's always good to get a little assist from foreign media to add a little bit of that "Hey look, foreigners think we're crazy" sneer to the campaign.  Today, it is the Canucks with the assist, furthering the obvious falsehood that gun ownership in America is declining.  This has been debunked over and over...the facts are:

- Gun sales are way up

- Background checks (to be able to buy a gun) are way up

- Permits to own or carry a gun are way up

- Instructional attendance is way up

- NRA membership is up

- Pro 2nd Amendment sentiment is way up

and yet we keep hearing that it is a small group of yahoos taking their gun collections from 1 to 47 guns that is driving all this.  Um, no.  To get a taste of the strong evidence debunking this myth, go here.

BTW, another statistic you'll hear in support of this theme is that gun ownership per household is declining.  That stat likely suffers from one of the same flaws that drives the declining ownership myth - there is a difference between people who own guns and people who own guns and will tell a pollster about it.  But it also suffers from a flaw that economists have pinpointed regarding "household" data.  The sharp rise in divorce and the decline of the nuclear family has severely distorted household data.  For instance, a married couple where the man earns $50,000 and the woman is a homemaker is one household with a household income of $50,000 naturally.  They get divorced and now the woman is forced to get a job, and she earns $30,000.  Now we have two households with an average household income of $40,000, a decline of 20%.  Same with guns.  That married household, if they owned a gun and got a divorce, becomes two households with one not owning a gun, a decline of 50%.  One of the divorcees would have to go out and immediately purchase a gun to preserve the household gun ownership ratio created by the divorce.

Bottom line.  Don't believe that gun ownership is on the wane or getting concentrated among a fringe element in society.  Gun ownership is exploding.  Barack Obama has not been called the Greatest Gun Salesman of All-Time for no reason.