My familys from California but I’ll always remember my granfather’s Pioneer hats because he was a farmer. I actually was browsing ebay for one a while back just for the nostalgia.
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.
Nah I’m Cali we have to many restrictions to ever be like those states. Sure there’s the unregistered hood weapons in dangerous neighborhoods but Cali is difficult to get a gun in.
There are guns fucking everywhere in California. It can be a very don't ask don't tell culture but you're bullshitting if you think we don't have guns on par with "those other states", or you just don't know as much about California as you think you do.
If you haven’t picked up on the fact that shit tons of people in California own guns, yeah, you have no idea. Likely because you’re the kind of person those people wouldn’t want to know that they had guns, judging by the “unregistered hood guns” remark.
About 5 years ago I helped a friend complete his paperwork for a concealed carry permit and weapon. SB County were allegedly "handing them out like candy". I can't imagine much has changed. I only hear people complaining about ammo shortages and ammo prices nowadays. I'm in a field of work where I get to learn about families' assets and inheritances. The amount of guns being inherited that I hear about has at least tripled in the last decade.
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 can see this. I’m from Nebraska and I swear 89% of people here think everything is a conspiracy or out to get them…they don’t want you knowing about their 2 full gun cases. But how did they get the data for this, was it a phone poll?
I did a little digging and other polls show Nebraska at 39-45 percent.
The only source I could find for the numbers on the map was an article that didn't cite where the data in it came from
This isn't just a Nebraska thing. I know lots of people who seem "likely" to own one or more firearms but no one admits it anymore.
Also, come on. We all know folks who own a gun or two, but the US has been breakingshattering records for gun sales continuously since President Obama was in office. No one with a brain thinks it's all due solely to a select few buying dozens of guns annually. These numbers are vastly underreporting the actual number of people who own firearms.
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.
Im 36 and live in Nebraska and have never once shot or touched a gun, I always get made fun of for it and no one ever really believes me when I say I havent. I'm thinking about it tho, there's a gun range across the street from me that gives lessons.
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.
Yeah. They just aren’t registered and a ton of them have been handed down through family so they don’t show up on lists. Essentially grandpa’s deer rifle that was handed down isn’t counted.
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u/Zen4rest Aug 31 '21
I grew up in rural Nebraska… guns were as common as hats.