"Share of homes with guns shows 40 year decline"

[Heffay]

And also 2k is still a piss poor sample size of 330M for the type of resolution they are trying to determine.

Is that a fact? What is the math you used to come up with the actual sample size needed for this problem?

[bensdad]

And also 2k is still a piss poor sample size of 330M for the type of resolution they are trying to determine.

Is that a fact? What is the math you used to come up with the actual sample size needed for this problem?

I hate to agree, but even with wildly burdensome margin of error and conf. level, that sample size is big enough. However, bad info would be highly likely on a collection like this. Hence an f score that would render the data meaningless.

[Snowgun]

And also 2k is still a piss poor sample size of 330M for the type of resolution they are trying to determine.

Is that a fact? What is the math you used to come up with the actual sample size needed for this problem?

Since they said they couldn't get statistical significance from recent data, I calced out that they would need double that sample size, depending if they are going for a 5% or 1% interval. No evidence of difference is not evidence of equivalence!

Yes, 2K would be good for ball park numbers, but they are basing their entire story on decreasing trends, and then conveniently show no significance on an upward trend in the last couple years. And again, totally assuming perfect sampling, which is highly unlikely.

[CUZICAN]

the actual survey wasn't about guns, it was an analysis by the New York Times from data derived from the General Social Survey. I tried looking at the internals of the data for demographic and geographic samples, but I'm not that smart and my ADD kicked in real quick. I'd agree with the principal point of the article saying that households with guns has declined over the past 4 decades. population has grown, the composition of the average household has changed - single parent head of household that is female for example would be less likely to have a gun in the home for hunting (just an example), more single professional, college graduate types would also lag behind what we are used to in blue collar midwest geographies.

however, they are trying to portray something that is not true - that americans have lost their taste for gun ownership - if you look at how many households there are and multiply it by 43% (gallup) that is a lot of guns...

i would have liked to see the findings stated in thousands of HH instead of % of HH, but then that would not have made very sensational news.

[FJ540]

In other news - first time gun permits are at historic levels. AR15 sales are at unprecedented levels. There's a huge move to arm the people who've been unarmed thus far.

So going off data that's even 6 months old is going to be wrong despite how accurate it was at the time it was collected. The country is shifting, and big government is losing popularity fast. There's a lot of middle road voters who used to feel they could afford to give a little extra in taxes to help the poorer folks, but the fact that government is spoon feeding the uber rich with those funds, and then borrowing even more has people torqued off.

[AFTERMATH]

I bet if you called up 2000 households and asked; "Do you have a gun?"
Only the ones who didn't, would answer in the affirmative.

[xd9]

........ And with fewer members, the chance of losing your rights increases.

We should not lose our RIGHTS no matter how small a group would appear! That thinking is very dangerous. If is a right, it should not be infringed no matter how many people should choose to avail themselves of the right.

Would you say the same of other rights?

[Heffay]

........ And with fewer members, the chance of losing your rights increases.

We should not lose our RIGHTS no matter how small a group would appear! That thinking is very dangerous. If is a right, it should not be infringed no matter how many people should choose to avail themselves of the right.

Would you say the same of other rights?

That's a fantastic attitude, but how practical is it?

Lot's of shoulda woulda coulda there...

[Motoman]

I did my own informal survey, and of all the people I know, only one doesn't own at least one firearm, and it isn't my mom.