OK, the guy making the claim is patrick egan. His source is in theory gallup polls on gun ownership and the general social survey.
According to him, in 1973 the answer to "do you keep a gun in your home" on the GSS was "about half" He then claims that is has drop to nearly 1/3. It's mostly true, it was at about 50% of households for most of the 80s as well. There is another GSS due this year.
However, go to gallup where htey ask this question every year, and not in some long drawn out poll about a jillion things, and the repsonse is 47% of households own guns. However, they ask about in the home and elsewhere. THe breakdown is 45% in the home, and 2% elsewhere. Gallup's comment for their gun stats for 2012 was "Self-Reported Gun Ownership in U.S. Is Highest Since 1993." In 2005 it was 38%. They basically have a sawtooth pattern of holding flat since 1996 or so, which means eithter their random sampling methods have a large margin of error, or people are buying lots of guns then ditching them.
They used to have gun onwership as a question on voting exit polls. For 2008, the last presidential election with it on there, the answer for all households was 45%, which is a close match for gallup's numbers for 2011.
For 2004, the rate for this was 41%. For 2000 is was 48 for household ownership.
Something else to give perspective. For polls done form 12-14 to 12-16 this month, CBS came up with 57% for stricter gun control, ABC at 54% for stricter gun control. Similar polls from 2004 were 60% in favor of stricter gun control. If you look at 2000 to 2008, and shoved this data point in there, we'd be batting about average for that time period and this poll question. Also compare it to 1990-2000, and for that decade the number for more strict ranged from 78% to 62% in favor.
So I'm curious how a tipping point has been reached now when public sentiment is less amenable to gun control than in most of the last 20 years.
