Gun Control & RKBA

beardown: Regardless, non-gun owners supporting gun ownership.

You apparently read it wrong; most increase I mentioned would be to existing gun owners obtaining a ccw permit, 'just to have it'. Tiny percentage of non gun owners would get one, unless they subsequently became a gun owner as well.

beardown: - you cannot infer a 61% increase in gun owners over the 4 year period. " is quibbling over the crumbs. 61, 66, 57, it is increasing far and above the rate of population increase.

Again that's not what I wrote; since the total of 'non-gun-owners' is increasing along with that of gun owners, & you missed the point about existing gun owners getting ccw permits. Somewhere between 5% & 10% yearly increase in gun owners, imo, for those 4 years. Massachusetts doesn't have that high a rate of gun ownership to begin with (22.6%, 2015).

Actually there are 3 reputable polls that show NATIONAL gun ownership RATES have fallen over the past 20 years: Gallup, Pew, & GSS (general social survey).

1) Gallup: .. even Gallup's numbers show a decline in gun ownership since the early 1990s, from 54% of households in late 1993 to 43% as of this fall. http://www.gallup.com/poll/186236/americans-desire-stricter-gun-laws-sharply.aspx

2): General Social Survey (GSS) .. data show a substantial decline in the shares of both households and individuals with guns... 1973, 49% reported having a gun or revolver in their home or garage. In 2012, 34% said they had a gun in their home or garage.
.. personal gun ownership in 1980, 29% said a gun in their home personally belonged to them. This stands at 22% in the 2012 GSS survey. http://www.people-press.org/2013/03/12/section-3-gun-ownership-trends-and-demographics/
3) ... The Pew Research Center has tracked gun ownership since 1993, and our surveys largely confirm the General Social Survey trend. In our Dec 1993 survey, 45% reported having a gun in their household; in early 1994, the GSS found 44% saying they had a gun in their home. A Jan 2013 Pew Research Center survey found 33% saying they had a gun, rifle or pistol in their home, as did 34% in the 2012 wave of {GSS}.