You are probably hanging aroung like minded folks which skews your perception. The facts is gun ownership as a percentage of the population is decreasing each year all across the country even in rural conservative areas.
My friend the principal is strong 2nd amend, NRA, etc and he knows the stats in his own school. As someone else mentioned kids don't even go outside today.
Face it we are dinosuars and want we want and believe in will be outbred from us. Ireland abortion vote yesterday 70% for abortion, in 1983 it was 90% against. Yesterdays vote over 95% of people, YES 95% under 35 voted yes.
Same with gay marriage
The liberals have won by winning over the young even though we have a short term victory with Trump.
@Smokin Joe
Sure, I am hanging around like-minded folks. It is why I have lived here the past 40 years. While some of the pseudo-urbane on the liberal side of the state may not fully share those attitudes, they are quite common on the side of the State that lives on farming, ranching, and oil/gas/coal industries. Liberals tend to congregate in cities, and while that influence is being pumped out (pimped out) through the mass media daily, we're still pretty resistant out here.
The liberals only win if we let them, and they have indoctrinated the young with a lot of crap. As the young see the destruction wrought by such libertine policy, they rebel against that liberal philosophy. That's more and more of what we see here. We are the counter-culture (to the Liberal near monopoly on the press), which places us well to capitalize on the natural tendency of the young to rebel against whatever status quo is present. The liberals did this with the whole hippie/Haight-Ashbury/sexual revolution thing, and then took that to its libertine and self-destructive extremes. Skipping a generation, we can co-opt that same rebellious spirit when and where the parents bought into liberalism and bring their kids back the other way.
Liberalism fosters dysfunction, and kids see that. They just need a path out of that mire.
As for declining, it's like reading the stock ticker. THis might bring you a little more hope.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/249740/percentage-of-households-in-the-united-states-owning-a-firearm/Note annual shifts in the statistics of as much as 3 or more % cause me to suspect the data gathering methods, and their accuracy. If they tell the tale the liberals want, and the data are as often cherry-picked as global temperatures, they will be reported as gospel. I look at sites like this one:
http://demographicdata.org/facts-and-figures/gun-death/ and then note their rate (given as 12.1 per 100,000 population for North Dakota, from the graphic) nearly exceeds the numbers of murders for the state (all causes), not just per 100,000 population, so I deeply question the veracity of such information.
So they are using all firearm deaths including suicides, accidents, police shootings, and not just murders.
The actual murder rate in ND (all causes) hit a local high with a rate of 2.8/100,000 of population in 2015, and dropped to 2.0 per 100,000 in 2016.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/table-2One of the chief tactics used by the Bolsheviks (what's in a name, right?) was to assure they were the Majority Party, that they were right, that no one had more power, that they had won. By the sheer weight of getting people to believe that, they did. Here we go again. The article which claims that 12.1 figure has an axe to grind. If you read it, it tries to present the states with some of the worst (most repressive) gun laws as the safest, while sending the message that southern rural states are the least safe (Louisiana, for instance, neglecting to mention that New Orleans is the culprit, not the rural areas.)
As for firearms, note, too, that those firearms which existed prior to the 1968 gun control act are still out there, many fine rifles and other firearms which have never been documented or had a Form 4473 filled out, and which have changed hands without that documentation, handed from father to son, uncle to nephew, sold or bequeathed (best given beforehand). Such firearms command a premium over those with paperwork. Kids today are savvy enough to know that some things are better left below the radar, despite the facebook and other stuff out there.
I can't speak to national trends, perhaps no one really can with the sheer volume of disinformation out there, but I won't go quietly into that night, either. Not ever promoting violence, but the idea that us old farts can ignite the desire for freedom in the youth, can take kids shooting and teach them proper firearms handling, can convey the love for the shooting sports to those indoctrinated from their first viewing of Bambi to the University with how "evil" man is and the "fire sticks" he carries.
