Gun Inequality Has Got To Stop

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America has a love affair with cars and guns.

Christopher Ingraham writes in a Washington Post October 2015 article, “It's tough to know exactly how many guns we have in the United States.

Most estimates of the number of guns in the U.S. use federal tallies of the firearms manufactured, imported and exported by U.S. gun makers.

A 2012 Congressional Research Service report published exactly one month before the Sandy Hook school shooting put the number of civilian firearms at 242 million in 1996, 259 million in 2000, and 310 million as of 2009.

If that 310 million number is correct, it means that the first year of Barack Obama's presidency was an inflection point: It marked the first time that the number of firearms in circulation surpassed the total U.S. population.

Adding up new guns and imports and subtracting gun exports, in 2013 there would have been roughly 357 million firearms in the U.S. — 40 million more guns than people.”

What About Household Gun Ownership?

According to several sources personal gun ownership in the US has declined but the number of guns in households owning guns has risen.

Using census data and the known households that own guns it is estimated that in 1994 there were 4.2 guns for each gun owning household. Fast-forward to 2013 and that total has almost doubled to 8.1 guns per gun owning household.

We Need To Fix Gun Inequality

Research has shown that the share of gun owning households has been declining over the past 20 years according to Gallup Polls and The General Social Survey.

On the flip side firearm production and imports of firearms have risen sharply in recent years.

What does this show?

Current owners are making those increasing gun purchases and first time buyers are doing less or no purchasing of firearms.

In 2006 the top 20 percent of gun owners controlled 65 percent of American firearms. The top 3 percent of gun owners possessed 25 guns each.

How Is This Fair?

Why should 3 percent of the population control that many guns? Where is Bernie Sanders on this issue?

Shouldn’t these “fat cat” gun owners be forced to share the wealth of gun ownership with those with a more meager cache of weapons?

This gun inequality has to stop. Where is the 99 percent outrage? Where are the marches in the street?

Why aren’t we taxing big gun owners more and subsidizing guns for those who have fewer guns? Where is the “Fair Gun Ownership Act?”

It’s only fair.

The Myth Of Background Checks

There have been way too many mass shootings in the US in recent years. The president thinks the answer is stronger background checks.

What is a background check? When you buy a firearm the state accesses the FBI’s national database file on you. If no criminal or mental history is found then there isn’t a valid reason to prevent your firearm purchase.

But the database is only as good as the information compiled on you.

If no one reported any instance of mental instability that triggered a police report then that information would not be included in your file.

Doctor patient privilege prevents your mental history to be public record. So it’s very possible for a psychopath to easily pass a background check if his or her mental problems went undiagnosed.