MaverickNH
NES Member
The ranks of gun owners grow, and so does their resistance to scrutiny
Researchers report that many gun owners, especially newer ones, falsely deny owning guns.
reason.com
”Believe it or not, people are reluctant to tell total strangers about their potentially controversial activities. In particular, Rutgers University researchers say, gun ownership is something many Americans decline to reveal when questioned by people they don't know. That's especially true of women and minorities newly among the ranks of gun owners amidst the chaos of recent years. Academics are unhappy that privacy-minded respondents impair their understanding of the world we live in, but such evasion is an inevitable consequence of decades of fiery debate and punitive gun policies.
"Some individuals are falsely denying firearm ownership, resulting in research not accurately capturing the experiences of all firearm owners in the U.S.," says Allison Bond, a doctoral student with Rutgers University's New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and lead author of "Predicting Potential Underreporting of Firearm Ownership in a Nationally Representative Sample," published last month in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. "More concerningly, these individuals are not being reached with secure firearm storage messaging and firearm safety resources, which may result in them storing their firearms in an unsecure manner, which in turn increases the risk for firearm injury and death."[i/]
