Correct.
Yes, it wasnt always this way, but now it is.
The often quoted 300 or 400 million private guns in the US is very outdated. This FBI chart shows the number of background checks done, by month and year only since 1999. (another 498 million)
Most of the people that are not going to pass the check already know that, and it is a crime to buy a gun when you can’t pass the check. And the failure is reported to the local police. So most of these checks resulted in sales. We don’t track gun sales actually, but the NICS check is a reasonable number to use.
What I am leading up to is this:
NICS Firearm Checks: Month/Year — FBI
Between 2 and 3 million background checks each month.
OK, there are an awful lot of guns in private hands in the USA. But they are not evenly distributed: some people have many, some people have none. Are there any reliable numbers concerning those? How many adults in the USA do not own guns at all?
Could it be a majority, or close to a majority? What about the geographical distribution, state by state, or rural vs. urban? Any data on that?
They are our only defense against jack booted Democrats
Just in case it wasn’t clear, this question wasn’t entirely rhetorical. I am generally interested in whether you have an impression about whether this MAGA Libritarian would consider going after immigrants or leftists to be too authoritarian for them.
A fairly quick scan if you’re interested:
ETA: More:
It used to be “Who watches the Watchmen?”. Now it is “Who saves us from the Saviors?”.
Here are some numbers, its from a pro gun group but it pretty much matches what I’ve seen elsewhere. In terms of gun ownership only 32% of people own a gun with 40% living in a household with at least one gun.
Here is a breakdown by state. From 15% owning a gun in New Jersey up to 2/3 owning one in Montana.
Both of these are from this year
Thank you both, DavidNRockies and Buck_Godot, that is what I wanted to know. Good data, and illustrating. Two thirds of American aduts do not own guns, but half of those could contemplate owning one in the future. But as of today, they do not. With enormous disparities by state. I believe that must be taken into consideration when talking about resisting dictatorship.
Also I did a quick stab at the urban vs rural question by contrasting the percent urban population of a state with its gun ownership, and while its there, not the only thing going on.
There are no rural states with low gun ownership. All of the states with less than 40% gun ownership are at least 80% urban. Also all the states with very large gun ownership rates are very rural. No state with 52% or more gun ownership is more than 72% rural. But there is a big middle ground, with Nevada and Maine both having 47% gun ownership despite Nevada being 94% urban and Maine being 39%.
Some of the people who own guns are entirely out of practice with them. There’s a gun in the house because Granddad had one. They may or may not be able to find any ammo.
Some of them, of course, have a dozen of various sorts in the house and hundreds of rounds of ammo right to hand and go shooting all the time.
Politics within both groups vary; and neither set is likely to accomplish much against a dozen well-armed tanks coming down the road at them. Let alone helicopters or planes dropping bombs from the air.
In 1776 everybody had the same muzzleloaders, plus the army had some cannons which were really hard to move around. This is not 1776.
Small arms don’t help resist dictatorship. You could hand every American their weight in pistols and rifles and it would make a dictatorship no harder. Easier in some ways, in fact.
My initial reaction to this premise is to equate it with the Trump campaign strategy, in macro, and the MAGA movement in micro.
You get the people who own the overwhelming majority of those weapons on your side – either by making it worth their while, making it seem worth their while, or simply convincing them that – for the first time in recorded history – being on the side of Trump will pay huge dividends to the common man.
Thus turning your biggest risk into maybe your greatest asset.
And you paint the other side – everybody else – as the mortal enemy and existential threat.
At which point, the places with the highest concentration of guns and gun ownership (ie, red states, rural areas) are your de facto military.
Just … guns instead of votes. Otherwise … functionally identical to the campaigns.
My comment might make more sense in German. Happy to translate it if anybody wishes 
The whole reason the USA has guns in the first place is because the Founders held this ideal of the ultimate basis of power being populist armed force. So why does half the country surrender on the issue? Either private firearms are irrelevant in the face of government power– in which case why worry about how many gun owners support Trump– or else stop complaining about how under-represented liberals are in the gun owning populace, when there’s absolutely nothing stopping them from arming themselves. I started a whole thread on that topic. Is the Left so gun-phobic that they would actually rather be victimized then fight back, if it really came down to brownshirts with armbands rounding up the opposition? ETA: You think we’re facing fascism now? How about when Richard Nixon, Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man and arch conservative became president? Where are the Weathermen, the Black Panthers and the Symbionese Liberation Army when you need them?
Because mobs with guns are useless against the government, but great for massacring innocent people. Gun owners supporting Trump isn’t dangerous because they’ll over throw the government, it’s dangerous because they are prime death squad material. Liberals arming themselves wouldn’t help, not when the killers have the backing of the police and military if anyone shoots back.
Civilians having guns, being anything near a relevant military force; ended at least a century ago.
Seems in the current Ukrainian war; frontline troops are much worried about artillery, and armed drones. Than a random guy with gun.
No they didn’t. Not at all.
They wanted an army for free. It didn’t work.
Never mind.
I have wondered how the experiment might have worked out differently if the national government hadn’t been immediately dominated by the hard-core “obey the government” Federalists. I mean heck, the Alien and Sedition Acts practically instituted lèse-majesté. Not exactly libertarian.
This is a question I have. Would the US military actually use heavy artillery in US cities? They know exactly how fucked up a city gets in short order when they do that. Would they be willing to see that happen to New York, LA, Chicago, et al.?