Some Interesting Statistics On Handgun Ownership

Shooting News Weekly (h/t Instapundit) has an article with some interesting statistics on handgun ownership: "We’ve Seen the Handgunization of America Over the Last Half Century." Using data from General Social Survey, the author was able to show that "[f]om 1973 to 2024, the proportion of gun-owning households with at least one handgun rose from 40.9% to an all-time high of 80.4%, fitting a single 50-year trendline almost seamlessly (r-square = 0.91)." A few points that are interesting:

• First, you will notice a surge in handgun purchases between about 1984 and 1990, which I would correlate with the popularity of the "wonder-9" pistols and people afraid because of drug gang and cartel related violence (the "Miami Vice" effect would probably be as good of a moniker for this as any).  
• Second, there was a plateau between 1996 and 2008 (actually 2005 looking at the graph) where handgun ownership hardly grew.   The author doesn't give an explanation for this period, but if I were to hazard a guess, it likely was the result of the decline in violent crime rates that happened about that time.
• Third, handgun ownership began to climb again after 2005 (or 2008 if you are looking when it recovered from the post-1996 plateau), although there is another bend showing a slightly greater increase starting in 2016. The author of the article suggests that this post-2005/2008 climb "mark[s] the consolidation of Gun Culture 2.0 as the core of American gun culture — when personal protection firmly supplanted hunting and recreation as the primary basis of firearm ownership." That might be true, but it doesn't explain why. I suspect there were multiple factors. First, there was a jump in violent crime in 2005-2006 that might have restarted interest in owning handguns for self-defense. Second, by the early 2000s the majority of states had adopted "shall issue" concealed carry permit laws. Third, 2010 saw the beginning of the trend of states adopting "Constitutional carry" gun laws. Fourth, Obama was elected president in 2008--and there is a reason that he has been called the greatest gun salesman in history. Fifth, we started seeing more and more racially motivated violent protests starting in 2014. Sixth, I suspect the further bend upward in 2016 was probably a result of Sandy Hook and fears of increased gun control legislation that followed.