This is hardly surprising.

Law abiding gun owners tend to believe in self-sufficiency as a personal virtue of character, which typically rules out tendencies toward self-pity and other sorts of whininess.

Also, in order to feed one's gun buying addiction, one must be gainfully employed--another factor that typically contributes to happiness.

Often, gun owners feel they have someone in their lives worth defending--even if it is only themselves, although that is justification enough for practicing self-defense.

Lastly, shooting guns is fun!!!

"Happiness is a warm gun"--along with all the other circumstances usually concomitant to being inclined to practice the Second Amendment.

This just shows that Robert Heinlein was right, a well-armed society is a polite society, and polite people are happy people.

Everyone at Gunsite is always armed, and they all seem pretty happy to me. Polite too.

Doesn't surprise me. I believe in personal responsibility, but I donate blood about every 60 days. I give to charity, too, and we don't have much to spare.

What surprises me a little is the finding that gun owners are so radically different from the rest of the population. I would have expected us to be more or less in line with the general populace. Maybe self-reporting gun owners are more unusual.

While I am firmly on the side of the RKBA, I'm afraid this article contains too much speculation to be of much use in the ongoing debate with the anti-gunners.

I'm not sure the differences are statistically significant since there is so little information about the methodology. The article about the results suffers from the same problems as the articles supporting anti-gun survey results.

As a heterophobic, church-going gun-clinger, I'm happy and proud to be a member of the vast, right-wing conspiracy.

Is there a checkbox for that?

Alan A.: the author of this article has been doing a lot of work with this data (Google his home page), what I wonder about is selection bias in it.

Only those willing to tell the interviewer they own guns during the 90 minute session will be scored as such, and in the current historically severe gun control regime we live in, there's going to be some undercounting, we just don't know how much. Imagine the undercounting in cities where handguns are de jure or de facto banned....

He says "34% of American homes have guns in them" and that strikes me as low from what I've heard elsewhere.

This sort of "paranoid" or more properly cautious attitude on the part of interviewees, plus the bias in all surveys from those who refuse to participate presents problems. But for now, I say let's run with the propaganda victory, there's likely to be at least some truth in what he says.

- Harold

Excellent point, Harold.

I have been asked by pollsters if I own a gun, and I am one of those who respond "refused".

If I do own a gun, I would not want just anyone to know that fact.

And if I did NOT own a gun, I would especially not want just anyone to know that, either.

Let 'em guess.

Frankly I believe selection bais is the number one problem with all surveys, although I'm no expert. I personally refuse to participate in any surveys and I'm sure there are a lot more non-participants out there. It seems to me the refusal to participate as well as the geographic selection (ex: only large urban, etc.) introduces a very large unknown. I personally X 10 the "margin of error" publicized for most surveys as a matter of course.

Frankly I believe selection bais is the number one problem with all surveys, although I'm no expert. I personally refuse to participate in any surveys and I'm sure there are a lot more non-participants out there. It seems to me the refusal to participate as well as the geographic selection (ex: only large urban, etc.) introduces a very large unknown. I personally X 10 the "margin of error" publicized for most surveys as a matter of course.

Poll is already biased.

It pre-selects respondents ... only those who would answer the "Do you own guns" question were polled.

I would be very interested in knowing the percentage of people called who hung up on the pollsters when the firearms question was popped.

This Barack person seems to be the unhappy one, clinging to all the urban liberal elitist worldviews where they are perpetually angry and outraged over slights real and imagined. I thank God every day we are truly blessed to live in the greatest country ever in history the good old US of A !

As a heterophobic, church-going gun-clinger, I'm happy and proud to be a member of the vast, right-wing conspiracy. Is there a checkbox for that?
Posted by: Jim D. at April 20, 2008 11:33 AM

Heterophobic church-going gun-clinger? By God man, whatever you do, don't let them call you schizophrenic. You're diverse!

Anyway, that was a tongue-in-cheek protest joke at how polarized everything is. Seems that according to some, if you take a position on one issue, then in theory your position on everything else is just a given. Insanity. Dyed in the wool liberals or conservatives alike, whenever I tell someone that I am pro-gun rights and pro-choice rights regarding abortion, homosexuality, or narcotics, their jaws just drop.