Says Arthur C Brooks here
Excerpt from the article
I know I’m happier than I’d be without.
I’d be happy if I had a gun. But I’d be happier if the psycho down the road from me didn’t.
Luckily I live in place where I can say that there are no psychos near me with guns.
On second thoughts no. I would be worried if I had a gun. Any number of things could happen - many of them unforseeable.
I’d be happiest if nobody had guns, psycho or normal people. I’ll go away now. Back to the gun love fest.
Obama’s comments aren’t going to die, are they?
Measuring for “happiness” is a rather subjective measurement, wouldn’t you say? The income one I will probably buy, because as a gun owner I know how expensive it is to shoot frequently.
Nevertheless, while I might once have taken this and gleefully posted it, I’m really not too keen on fighting over the details anymore, so I’ll simply assert that all things considered I’m happy and I’ll leave it at that.
I wish they had controlled for income levels; if gun owners are generally richer, well, groups that are generally richer are usually happier, if you compare from poor to middle/upper class. And I’m not surprised gun owners (at least the one who’d admit to being gun owners to a study, registered gun owners of legal guns) are generally richer, because guns and bullets are expensive. It’s like finding out that people who ski are generally richer. I find the study a bit of a meh, at least as it’s reported.
What a bitter bunch around here. You need to go shooting (at the range!) 
Happiness Is A Warm Gun
People who REGISTER their weapons are richer and happier, they mean. Right?
How on earth do you know this for certain? Have you been in every house in your neighborhood and ransacked through their houses to make sure they don’t have guns? Surely even someone on the Isle of Man could buy a black-market, smuggled handgun somewhere and hide it in their house.
I would imagine not. Most places don’t have registration requirements. Barring a select few cities and certain firearms in only a few states, registration is not required in the US. If they went by that criteria there would be a very small sample indeed.
Something tells me that there are plenty of very poor people in very poor areas who have guns and are not happy. They would not, however, be sampled in such a survey.
Are you sure about that Jeremy Clarkson?
Or they are the 9% referenced in the survey.
Obama’s comment, which was admittedly pretty dumb, wasn’t that gun owners are either more poor or unhappy then average, so I don’t really see the point of the Brooks column
In anycase, guns are essentially a luxury item, for most folks anyways, I’m not particularly surprised that they correlate to income.
How do we define a luxury item?
Boat owners are happier. This doesn’t surprise me either.
And presumably you’d be happier if everyone had a pony. A pink pony. And we could all ride our ponies to work.
Except, of course. no one would have to work, so we’d all ride our ponies to the park. A pink park.
Look, sorry for the sarcasm. But the comment exposes the whole reason reasonable gun ownership is necessary: there ARE psychos out there, both of the clinical and non-clinical variety, and there’s no real way to avoid that problem because it’s existed since Cain slew Abel. If we could guarantee that all people would be caring and kind towards one another, we’d have little need for guns, and, really, no fear of them. Even if we kept handguns for target shooting, we’d know we were safe from injury, since no one would be violent against anyone else.
But we can’t.
I’m reminded of one the of “Treehouse of Horror” Simpsons episodes where Lisa wishes for world peace, and all the world’s weapons are destroyed. Shortly thereafter, we’re conquered by the aliens Kang and Kodos, armed with a board with a sharp nail in it, now the most fearsome weapon on the planet.
We can’t remove the badness from some of our fellow alleged human beings. We can only protect ourselves.
Guns are expensive. That’s why I don’t have more guns than I currently do. Guns are also fun. More fun = more happiness. Wealthy people can buy more guns, and therefore have more fun. More Money=More guns=more fun=more happiness.
Well of course they’re richer and happier, what with all the armed robberies they commit!
I don’t know it for certain - nor do I know for certain that Clint Eastwood can stand on the surface of the sun and feel slightly warm.