Good day all. In the western states of Flyover country, firearms are considered a tool and a necessity in people’s lives. People use them to hunt, and to deal with animals that may be preying on their livestock or are damaging to their farms. This led to a question regarding which state has the most gun owners.
The answer appears to be Montana. Here are the details from Just The News:
Montana leads the nation in gun ownership, a new study by the personal finance website WalletHub found.
Well that’s interesting. Why would a personal finance site be interested in which state has the most gun owners?
Montana’s gun ownership rate is 65%, and the state also ranks fifth in the study for its “dependency on the gun industry,” which the website measured using three dimensions (firearms industry, gun prevalence and gun politics) and 16 metrics.
I suspect that might be on the low side. Significantly on the low side.
Gary Marbut, president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association, is not surprised by the state’s ranking, he told The Center Square. The group estimates that 90%-95% of the homes in Montana contain firearms, Marbut said, with hunting being one reason for that high percentage.
That sounds about right. The other 5-10 percent might be able to own firearms due to “Reasons”.
“There are people who live in Montana just for the hunting,” he said. “In the fall, there is deer and elk hunting. In other times of the year, there is bear and mountain lion hunting, moose hunting, sheep, goats, game bird and waterfowl hunting. When none of those is in season, there is always gopher hunting and prairie dog hunting, coyote hunting and other kinds of hunting of unregulated species.”
Gophers and prairie dogs are very destructive animals. They tunnel all over the place and this can lead to a horse breaking it’s leg if it doesn’t see the hole, or breaks through the ground into a gopher tunnel. From what I understand, these animals are also prodigious breeders and in no danger of going extinct.
I’ve seen hunters going after these things in videos. They rarely get much closer then a couple of hundred yards. (The animals see or smell the hunters and duck into the holes) From what I’ve seen it actually quite challenging to actually hit these things and hunters like to show off their prowess by firing from as far away as possible.
Marbut added that the state also has a very strong competitive shooting community.
“There are all kinds of shooting communities,” he said. “There is bullseye and high power, smallbore, long range, metallic silhouette, trap and skit, sporting clays, practical pistol and long-range precision rifle and others.”
Then there are the “plunkers,” who just like to go out and shoot at tin cans or go to the firing range and shoot at paper targets, according to Marbut.
Plunkers? Must be a Montana thing. Everywhere else, the term used is “Plinkers.” of course, that is the sound, (plink), a tin can makes when you hit it with a .22. Perhaps when you hit a gopher it goes “Plunk”. Oh well, to each his own.
Self defense is also a major factor in gun ownership in Montana, he added.
“They just want to be able to choose whether or not be victims,” Marbut said. “You put all of that together and there are a lot of reasons why people in Montana own firearms.”
I could be mistaken, but I believe there was some attempts by Antifa to go into a couple of small towns in Montana and cause some trouble. A few hundred locals showed up, armed to the teeth and sent the Antifa thugs on their way.
The state has a low rate of mass shootings and gun violence, Jill Gonzalez, analyst and attorney for WalletHub, told KGVO.
“We actually did a correlation here in terms of the state dependency on the gun industry versus the number of mass shootings,” she told KGVO. “And Montana is one of the states where you do see a high dependency on the industry with relatively low mass shooting numbers, and that’s the same with states like Idaho, Wyoming and South Dakota, so that number does look pretty good here.”
There is a reason for this of course. Unlike cities and states that prevent people from having the tools to defend themselves, those states have no problem with armed citizens walking around with a pistol on their hips and a rifle or shotgun on their trucks. If some whackjob tries anything, he, she or they is going to be facing a lot of people who know how to shoot. I doubt you’ll have the issues the citizens, (And one police officer), had with their local constabulary preventing them from taking out the criminals. Basically, crime is low because criminals don’t want to get shot.
Congratulations to Montana for leading the nation in utilizing their 2nd Amendment rights. For the rest of America, it’s time to pull your thumbs out and say these two very important words.
Challenge, Accepted.
Thatisall
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