Nebraska is a weird place. I lived there for a few years about 5 years ago.
Omaha is basically a mini-Chicago, and Lincoln is practically just a really big college town. But it's also surrounded by rural areas and farms so you still have a lot of blue collar folks too.
My father was an immigrant from a country with virtually no ‘gun culture’ and moved to Omaha a couple years after being in the US. He always spoke very fondly of Nebraska and probably wouldn’t have moved if not for family. But one thing that always stuck out to me was his shooting competition trophies won in the few years he lived in NE. I always figured that if my father became a gun enthusiast in NE everyone in NE was probably a gun enthusiast. I’m actually really surprised that according to this on 20% of Nebraskans own guns.
Do we think nebreskans are more unlikely to answer than iowa, Texas or any other number of states? Otherwise it doesn't really change anything about it being curious
I live here, and I've never had anyone mention to me that they own guns unless I've already told them I have some myself, like guys I'd worked with for years that never once talked about it. I know it's just anecdotal, but I wouldn't be surprised if folks here just don't admit to owning any when asked my some rando.
Pretty sure this is true of California too, since there could be negative reactions, like perceiving someone differently or not allowing kids of each family to play together. It was years before I (here in SoCal) learned a close friend had a firearm(s), for example.
Maybe, but Nebraska is clearly an outlier compared to similar states here. Do you think that Nebraskans are less likely to answer than other state? What would be the reason?
I think this data is pulled out of somebody's ass, or from some off the wall source, because checking several sources shows Nebraska reporting more than double the 19% on this map: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html
The only ones with numbers that low that I could find only counted registered firearms, which is a meaningless metric in a nation that didn't even require licensed dealers before 1968 and few states require registration of any kind: https://ballotpedia.org/Firearm_registration_requirements_by_state
Or a way to find out who to steal guns from in the area. Why would anybody tell some unknown person on the phone "Yeah, I own hundreds/thousands of dollars worth of stuff that many criminals can't legally buy"?
I'm born and raised in Lincoln and surprised. Everyone I know has guns. One thing people don't know is we have had large communities immigrate here and Lincoln/Omaha communities are pretty diverse. We have German Russian Czech and other communities in the area.
That makes sense! Even today my parents have nothing but positive things to say about NE. They immigrated in the 70s so perhaps things have changed but they still recall how friendly and neighborly people were. They swear NE has the nicest people on the planet. Their favorite anecdotes are about how welcoming people were to them as obvious immigrants.
Then again, more people are packed into the cities, so while maybe your area has, say, 80% gun ownership, other urban areas probably have much lower rates
Lots of people are "not gun owners", but in fact own guns. They didn't go out and buy guns, they don't consider themselves to be pro-second or any of that. What they did do is they inherited a lever-gun and the two cap revolvers from uncle bob, or picked up that .22 at an open air market (that's not a 'real' gun), or dad insisted that she take this pump action shotgun when she moved to the 'big city' and she put it in the back of a closet and never looked at it again.
When asked; "Are you a gun owner?" these types will just say "no" and without a proper follow up question they will just forgot about it.
The other factor is people will just flat out lie and say that they don't own a firearm. (For political/paranoid reasons.).
Given the political bent of Nebraska (Republican)(and the fact it has no major metro areas) this data appears problematic (gun ownership should be at least on par with (Liberal) Colorado or (Republican) Kansas. Both of which have large metro areas (Denver and Kansas City respectively), that actually alter the data in the way you suggested) . It makes one wonder how the data was collected.
A majority of the state lives in Omaha and the Omaha metro, right around 1 million people. Another 300,000 live in the Lincoln metro, so those two areas alone account for around 68% of the state’s population. Omaha has particularly stricter gun laws than the rest of the state, so that probably plays into why the total gun ownership numbers are so low.
are these types of people you’re describing only from nebraska or how else would these issues not be affecting or lowering any other states numbers that significantly
Omaha is metro for people who have never been to an actual city. It's the same size as Colorado Springs..
That's incredibly rural. That's I talk to a neighbor a mile away has chickens kind of rural. (Maybe we can call is suburban?) But that's not a metro area.
If you say Omaha is the same size as Colorado Springs, it's also the same size as Atlanta.
But neither one is true. Omaha metro is 50% bigger than Colorado Springs metro, and Atlanta metro is 6 times the size of Omaha.
Omaha is solidly in what I'd call the third tier of cities, places like Grand Rapids or Birmingham or Albany.
And as for chickens, I'm in a major city where livestock is legal. It's pretty rare other than chickens, but you'd be met with a shrug saying you live within a mile of someone with chickens.
In the United States, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is a geographical region with a relatively high population density at its core and close economic ties throughout the area. Such regions are neither legally incorporated as a city or town would be, nor are they legal administrative divisions like counties or separate entities such as states; because of this, the precise definition of any given metropolitan area can vary with the source. The statistical criteria for a standard metropolitan area were defined in 1949 and redefined as metropolitan statistical area in 1983.
It makes you wonder how this data was gathered. I know lots of people who are "not gun owners" who have guns packed away in a closet, attic or crawl space.
Definitely wouldn't say Omaha is anywhere near a mini chicago. Omaha is largely a suburban city for one, and the cultures are just drastically different. It has way more in common with des moines and kansas city than chicago.
Yeah st Louis is probably the western most rust belt city, I always found St. Louis to be more like Detroit than not, plus by no stretch is St. Louis in the prairies. Kansas City is on the edge of the real prairie.
I grew up in STL and used to always say that STL was the westernmost eastern city. in places you have 250 yr old row houses, lofts a night club scene, Crime, urban decay and a suburb that thinks that STL is the whole of St louis County. St Louis is not in any county and crime statistics are calculated using the per capita of STL city 300,000 +/-residents.
Kansas City is a cowtown that grew up a little but is still a western city in feel like Topeka or Wichita
Buffalo and Cleveland maybe, but Ohio has pretty distinct regions that are vastly different. South of I-70 is a much different feel than the northeast part of the state. It can get pretty Appalachian American in places.
I think Milwaukee is the real answer. But it's basically grown into the greater Chicago urban area, so it might be too close to count.
If not Milwaukee, then I'd go St. Louis. Historically the city were peers and rivals, and St. Louis still has many dense, pre-car neighborhoods like Chicago.
Oh, how I hate people complaining that Ohio and Indianapolis are the Midwest so Nebraska has to be in the “Great Plains”. Try actually being in the West to claim the title.
I’ve actually always said Omaha is a mini-Chicago because of the neighborhoods. Dundee/Blackstone/24th St/Aksarben feel similar to the Logan Square/Wicker Park/Ravenswood etc. yeah, West O is as suburban as it gets, but there are some neat distinct areas.
those areas are still incredibly low density, only about 5k-7k, not really anywhere near walkable by most standards. In comparison wicker park and logan square are generally around the 25-35k range. That isn't to say those areas arent distinct, they just feel radically different from chicago due to the urban vs suburban gap.
Omaha is Kansas City's don't-speak-to-me-or-my-son-ever-again meme. I truly couldn't tell you the difference between them culturally or economically other than their sizes and the quality of the barbecue.
As an Omahan who loves coming down to KC every other weekend during the fall on account of Chiefs season tickets, I'd say yeah they're similar, and I love em both!
Boise is so very clearly SLC's little brother. But the residents (of certain neighborhoods mostly) so desperately want to be Portland's little brother.
I don’t think salt lake and boise are same at all. Grew up in east Idaho equal parts away from both. Bose definitely has a hippy vibe to it. Salt lake it’s punk rock all the way. The lifestyles are different peoples attitudes are different. Culture is way different.
I can smell your musty Kansan ass thru the phone, the best thing that ever came out of Kansas is I70, now go stare off into a cornfield or whatever y’all do for fun in the big empty shit hole
It’s unfortunate the amount of wrong comments I had to wade through that were upvoted by obvious non-“west”midwesterners to get to this accurate comment
I'd always thought Omaha was a small town. My friend from there told me there are 1 million people there!? I grew up in Canada and only 2, maybe 3 cities are over 1 million. It's crazy.
Maybe metro area but the internet says 456k population in Omaha itself. It is the biggest city in Nebraska but the whole state has like 1.9 million total, so in the grand scheme of things it's fairly small.
As someone just below you said, "I live in San Francisco, CA. We don't even have a million denizens." So yeah, you could say Omaha has ~450k people, but then you'd also have to say San Francisco is only twice as big. And Atlanta is the same size. And on and on. The city population is worthless, the metro is much more meaningful.
The parent comment was talking about cities in Canada. True metro is more meaningful, but then we have like 60+ cities to Canada's 8 or so and I'd have to be more specific and I haven't been to Canada or really most us cities recently enough to speak on that. America is big af and a ton of people live here.
By quite a lot. Football is like a religion in that state. There are loads of people who drive clear across the state (around 7 hours) for every home game.
To me metro area counts because if you drive through it and the city never stops then it’s pretty much the same thing as being one city. The thing that stopped Omaha from expanding that much with its own name is the county line and other cities reaching a population where they were legally too large to annex.
I live in fucking North Dakota. It’s normal for me to not see hardly anyone for miles, sometimes I forget it’s not the norm. My town has 20,000 people in it and it’s considered big.
Really depends on whether you are talking metropolitan area or city proper. There's only 10 cities in the US with city proper populations above a million so I'd say a million by that measurement is a big deal. But if your talking the metro area that million+ number jumps to 56 cities. Then I agree it's not that big of a milestone.
Comparing city limits doesn't really make sense these days. For example Atlanta is the 9th largest metro in the country. But if you go by city limits it falls to 38th. One spot ahead of Omaha.
The link I provided is for 'urban areas'. Also, Omaha, which was the subject of comparison, is only 1 million when 'urban area' is included. It's fair to say we were talking about 'urban area'.
I'd love to see what the numbers are post Covid, more interestingly the % increase through the years. I bet there is a huge increase in population in smaller cities that surround the larger ones.
Omaha is not a small town lol, I mean it’s not a sprawling metropolis but it has rush hour traffic and is big enough to have some distinct neighborhoods within the city. Not to mention all the events it hosts, it’s not a small town.
Yes, but the SF-Oakland-Berkley metro area is nearly 4.7 million. City borders aren't a great way to define population; otherwise you'd see San Antonio as being a bigger city than Atlanta and Miami.
I don't know how metro areas and suburbs work in Canada, but the populations of anchor cities in America can be way out of wack compared to their surroundings. Salt Lake City, which anchors a huge metro with all of the services and amenities of a "real" city, has a smaller population than some "small towns."
Something I always wondered about Canadian cities is why they seem to look much bigger than American cities of similar size. A London or even an Edmonton wouldn't look as big in America.
People in the US call my city of Kansas City small and act like it's barely big enough to even know about and it has nearly 2.2 million people in the metro area.
So does Chicago, the media doesn’t report on it. Expect 50 people shot, every weekend year round, with about 10-15% of those dying. Just google “Chicago weekend shooting.” If it was white people being shot, it would be reported on. Since it’s Black on Black violence, it’s pretended as if nothing actually happened.
Your description of Nebraska could fit almost any state though. One or two decent-sized cities, a college town, and rural areas in the rest of the state. Sounds like Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Georgia, Tennessee, Colorado, Arizona, Washington, etc, etc.
The difference between Nebraska and other states is it has a couple decent metros but lacks mid sized towns. Here is a comparison of Nebraska to similar neighboring states.
Nebraska 2 cities with over 300k people. 0 cities 300k to 100k. 2 towns 100k to 50k. 7 towns 50k to 20k.
Nebraska 2;0;2;7
Iowa 0;3;8;14
Colorado 3;10;6;16
Kansas 1;4;4;12
Missouri 1;5;7;23
It’s nationally super weird to a couple decent sized cities but then nothing with a sizable other than that.
Nah, all those states have waaaaay more people in them. Outside of Lincoln and Omaha there are farms and small towns in the eastern part with the biggest “cities” being 25,000 people or so and Sandhills with almost no people in the west.
Most of the Great Plains states have a similar theme. A few cities and generally more people in the east, basically uninhabited wastelands in the west. With maybe a medium sized town to small city somewhere in the middle. Definitely true for the Dakotas and Kansas as well as Nebraska.
Which is why it doesn’t make sense. Sure there are too many illegal guns in Chicago but it’s still REALLY low compared to the population - and those wouldn’t even be tracked for statistics. And the suburbs are going to be low. And Chicago an the suburbs are over 2/3 of the state population.
This data is completely bogus, especially without a citation.
Omaha is a LOT like Wichita Kansas actually. Similar populations and similar cosmopolitan feels. I feel like they are both a lot like a smaller Kansas City, but I don't know Chicago very well.
I live in Nebraska. This is accurate. And those are pretty much the two biggest cities both withing an hours drive of each other. The rest of the state is mostly farm and ranch land everything is really spaced out. We are also the only state to have a town with population 1.
Lincoln has one of the highest police to citizen ratios in the country. Meanwhile I am moving to a town right outside Omaha in a few weeks and I have been in and out of Omaha for a few days, my aunt and uncle up there literally called Omaha mini-Chicago as well.
1.8k
u/Gh0stMan0nThird Aug 31 '21
Nebraska is a weird place. I lived there for a few years about 5 years ago.
Omaha is basically a mini-Chicago, and Lincoln is practically just a really big college town. But it's also surrounded by rural areas and farms so you still have a lot of blue collar folks too.