Posted on 07/21/2008 7:16:34 AM PDT by blam
Survey: Alabama gung-ho for guns
Sunday, July 20, 2008
By BRIAN LYMAN Capital Bureau
Next time you walk into your favorite Alabama restaurant, look around. Chances are that two-thirds of the customers will own a gun and nearly half will have a permit to carry a concealed weapon into the establishment.
That's according to the results of a new Press-Register/University of South Alabama poll. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they own a gun and 46 percent have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The telephone survey of 424 Alabama residents was conducted Monday through Thursday, with a 5-percentage-point margin of error.
More than 80 percent of those surveyed said they agree with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last month in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which a majority of the justices ruled that the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual's right to bear arms.
"It's not surprising, given the fact Alabama is a relatively conservative state where it's not only a constitutional issue, but a lot of people have guns and a lot of people hunt," said Keith Nicholls, director of the USA Polling Group, which conducted the survey.
Alabama has some of the least restrictive gun ownership laws in the nation, and experts said Thursday that the high court's decision will not affect the state. Permits to carry guns are only required for concealed weapons and there is no requirement for handgun owners to be licensed.
Of respondents with guns, 67 percent said they own a handgun, 54 percent a rifle and 56 percent a shotgun.
The poll results reflect a rate of gun ownership that is close to double the nation's, said Doug Pennington, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a Washington, D.C.-based gun control group.
Pennington knew of no research to explain that difference, but speculated that it is woven into the fabric of society. "There's a tradition and a culture that has grown over the generations, passed down from one to the other," he said.
At the National Rifle Association, the Virginia-based gun owners lobby, spokeswoman Rachel Parsons saw the Press-Register/USA poll results as further confirmation that a majority of Americans believe the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own firearms.
A slight majority ? 52 percent ? said it is "very important" or "somewhat important" to have a firearm or ammunition when facing a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, while 46 percent said it is "not important" or "not very important." The Alabama Emergency Management Agency bans firearms in its emergency shelters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency did ban firearms in trailer parks for victims of 2005's Hurricane Katrina, but later lifted it after protests from gun advocacy groups.
A little more than half of respondents ? 53 percent ? said they do not keep their weapons loaded at home.
While Alabamians support gun ownership, they do think there should be some restrictions in certain cases. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said felons who have paid their debt to society should not have a right to own a gun while 77 percent said they favor prohibiting ownership of fully automatic weapons.
Those numbers largely square with the beliefs of the Alabama Sheriff's Association, said executive director Bobby Timmons. The group supports individual gun ownership and banning ownership of automatic weapons.
"An automatic weapon is not used to kill anything except a person," Timmons said. "You're entitled to hunting weapons, (but) an automatic was invented with the intention to kill somebody, not an animal."
Gary Palmer, director of the Alabama Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, called the automatic weapons ban question an "uneducated debate," saying some confuse fully automatic weapons, which fire bullets as long as the trigger is pulled, with semi-automatic weapons, which fire one bullet for each pull of the trigger.
The federal assault weapons ban, which lasted from 1994 to 2004, expanded a 1934 ban on automatic weapons ? which is still in place ? to cover certain types of semi-automatic firearms.
The NRA's Parsons signaled disagreement with respondents who believe that people should be barred from keeping machine guns and fully automatic weapons in their homes.
Anyone wanting to own such a weapon faces a lengthy and demanding review process, including several background checks, Parsons said, adding that legally owned fully automatic firearms result in little or no crime.
"The NRA stands firmly by the notion that law-abiding citizens are not the problem," she said.
A Press-Register/USA poll conducted in 2000 found that 60 percent of respondents wanted stricter control of gun sales, but 63 percent said they believed such measures would do little to reduce violent crime.
Last week's poll also found significant disparities in gun ownership. Eighty-percent of people surveyed who live in rural areas possess firearms, while 54 percent of those in suburban areas do. Seventy-five percent of whites said they own guns, while only 40 percent of blacks own them. Experts contacted by the Press-Register said they did not know the exact reasons for those disparities.
Sixty-one percent of suburban gun owners said they keep their guns loaded, while only 40 percent of rural ones said they do.
"My speculation is that people have more practical uses for weapons in rural areas," Nicholls said. "In suburban areas, they're more concerned about protecting themselves."
(Press-Register Washington Bureau Reporter Sean Reilly contributed to this report.)
I have a friend who says that if you know how many guns you have, you don't have enough.
I probably have more guns than I need but not as many as I want.
Am I suppose to care about what the people of Alabama do?
I guess that I need more guns cause I know how many I have.
I'll take the BBQ!
We may not live in Alababma, blam, but we have been living by that saying the past couple of years!
i’m gonna go with, if your wife knows how many you have, you don’t have enough :)
i’ve never met anyone who couldn’t tell me at least how many they had, more likely list off the top of their head what all they had. and and know a couple guys with collections into the 100s.
Slacker! ;^)
Luckily, the real need for a gun hasn’t happened to me yet. All the guns are based on “want”.
There is one thing I haven’t done yet. I haven’t purchased the necessary accesories I need for each one. I was in an IDPA match the other day and I had to borrow some magazines for the course. Naturally, one of the borrowed mags didn’t work. My safety glasses also failed. The nose piece kept falling off and spreading the glue onto the lense I needed to see.
I’m just satisfied all the things that go wrong are doing so in matches and not the real thing.
By the way, the article is wrong about machine guns. But that isn’t unusual for the media.
My favorite trick is...when I buy a new gun I make sure my wife doesn't see it for at least two months. When she finally notices and asks about it I can honestly say "Oh that? I've had that a while."
As to large collections, a now deceased friend received enough pension money each month to live on and for 20 years spent all his social security income on guns. No one (except possibly his sons after taking inventory) had any idea how many he had when he died, and I'm not sure they did either. He had cabinet after cabinet crammed full, well over 200 and I wouldn't be surprised if it totalled 300-400.
It sounds like he may have been more of a hoarder than a collector. At least he didn't have a house full of neglected animals. I hope he lubed his hardware.
I’m doing my part.
Semper Fi & ROLL TIDE!
Q:How many is a “safe full?”
A: Time to buy another safe.
And what, exactly, is the problem with that?
Criminals will be deprived of their careeer opportunities..
When I got my first CCP it was from an Alabama county. The sheriff there issued CCP and kept a list to use when he needed to deputize people. It was a smart move since CCP people already have a familiarity with weapons so they don’t require so much ‘instruction’ in an emergency.
***”You’re entitled to hunting weapons,***
Entitled? No sir, you have the Second Amendment completely wrong.
***The sheriff there issued CCP and kept a list to use when he needed to deputize people. It was a smart move since CCP people already have a familiarity with weapons so they don’t require so much ‘instruction’ in an emergency.***
I agree, it’s definitely a smart move.
I like a lot of older rifles, those that saw service in one of the World Wars or are notable for some other reason (Swiss K-31 or Finn M39, for example). When my wife asks, I can honestly say that I didn't buy a new gun.
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