NCIS checks are up over 50% since 2002.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2012/08/23/what-the...

So overall purchases are up.

However, the number of households with guns is down: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/rate-of-gun-ownership-i...

So I think you is mistaken in that gun ownership is increasing as a share of the population in a major way.

Come on; while the NYT is now paywalled for me as of today (I guess I used up my monthly quota), the date of the article shows it's during the Sandy Hook furor, when after a decade's pause the Democrats at the national level returned to gun-grabbing. Self-reported gun ownership to a nosy stranger calling you on the phone has always tracked the political situation.

Doing the math is a lot more productive; I don't know about the above (since I can't read it!), but when I ran the numbers on another gun-grabber claim of the sort at around the same time, it implied we gun owners have now, on average, accumulated gun collections worth more than $100,000. That obviously doesn't pass the smell test, especially N years into the Great Recession.

It was a discussion of the long term trend, not specific to that instance.

So you are saying more people lie about owning a gun to a nosy stranger than they did over the past 40 years?

It also isn't a democrat or republican issue. The growth in gun purchases began in 2002.

Since it won't let me reply yet:

"But by the mid-2000s, the federal government stopped asking the questions, leaving researchers to rely on much smaller surveys, like the General Social Survey, which is conducted by NORC, a research center at the University of Chicago.

Measuring the level of gun ownership can be a vexing problem, with various recent national polls reporting rates between 35 percent and 52 percent. Responses can vary because the survey designs and the wording of questions differ.

But researchers say the survey done by the center at the University of Chicago is crucial because it has consistently tracked gun ownership since 1973, asking if respondents “happen to have in your home (or garage) any guns or revolvers.”

The center’s 2012 survey, conducted mostly in person but also by phone, involved interviews with about 2,000 people from March to September and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Gallup, which asks a similar question but has a different survey design, shows a higher ownership rate and a more moderate decrease. No national survey tracks the number of guns within households."

Key flaw here is the fact it doesn't track nationwide [and there isn't one, even by the NRA and other gun rights groups].

The article itself shows a decline from about 50% to about 30%. I don't think reading the rest would really help you pick apart what I've said.

"It was a discussion of the long term trend, not specific to that instance."

Well, point me at a source I can read, or quote the relevant parts, or email me them (see my profile). Or just tell me which polling outfit did it, e.g. Gallup puts this sort of stuff on-line and without a paywall.

"So you are saying more people lie about owning a gun to a nosy stranger than they did over the past 40 years?"

See above WRT my not being able to know what you're asking, but I wouldn't be at all surprised by such a trend, though I'd really like to look at the endpoints; also note phone surveys have had an increasing problem with just getting people to even answer questions of any sort. The errors in all too many election based surveys ought to give you pause in taking this claim so far.

And, as I said, the math doesn't work. That should be enough to falsify this claim.

"It also isn't a democrat or republican issue. The growth in gun purchases began in 2002."

Which just might be why I said in my original posting above that "it started post-9/11, I believe because the government made it clear we were on our own".

Do you have a source for the increase of "rifles of military utility?"

Either way, it lines up perfectly with what I just said. Those buying these rifles are a vocal minority. Most Americans see them as a problem and want stricter gun laws, or safety switches on guns. They fail to realize that this group's plight parallels with the plights of the groups they do stand behind.

Yeah, data from Pitman-Robertson tax collection on new ones (and ammo as well), and imports of surplus rifles are regulated and reported by the BATF. And the prices of the latter, as each country's stock of "turn of the century battle rifles", that is, bolt action rifles generally designed around 1900, has been exhausted.

Russian Mosin Nagants are the very last set. They're no longer dirt cheap, and looking at gunbroker.com right now, they might be starting to move from the general price of $150. Quality time spent at the website of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF, they're the true gun industry lobby, http://www.nssf.org/) will get you the details, plus NICS instant background check numbers for purchases of all guns from gun shops, which have been amazing and further reinforce my point (and are a lot simpler, a single monthly figure).

Ammo is also still in iffy supply for rifles and handguns.

Seriously, I've watched this market since the early '70s, and know at least the general history in the 20th Century, and nothing like it has ever happened before.

"Most Americans see them as a problem"

Do you have a reliable source for that? As opposed to generic polls that say "Crime is bad, should there be stricter laws?" when even many gun owners don't know the current purchasing strictures, vs. "This Colorado law will make it illegal for you to leave your guns with a friend before your house is flooded" (the latter is not a hypothetical, BTW, but a recent event), "Do you approve of that?"

What I'm referencing above is very hard info, for new and imported guns with a granularity of 1 (every single one is reported), revealed preferences if you like.

The very self-evident political power of gun owners suggest we're something more than what you associate with the term "vocal minority".

"safety switches on guns"

What do you mean by that? With the exception of some single shot target rifles, and hard trigger pull self-defense oriented double action, or loathsome striker fired handguns like the ubiquitous Glock, which the gun grabbers are not demanding get manual safeties, I'm not aware of any that don't have a safety that prevents firing when the trigger is pulled.

ADDED: In your OP you said "*The average American has almost assumed the government to be perfect except for the few parts it dislikes..." and expounded on that thesis. I think what I'm claiming strongly cuts against that, however that's based on my belief that more than half of the nation's households have guns vs. what I think you're implying, so I think our models of "the average American" are different.