3% Of American Adults Own Half Of Guns In The US

Hound Of Hades

Folks, this country is not as armed as people think. There are people that buy guns just to buy guns, and these folks make up 3% of the adult population, but they own 50% of the guns in private hands, according to a Harvard Study…yeah, Harvard is studying who owns the guns…

Americans own an estimated 265m guns, more than one gun for every American adult, according to the most definitive portrait of US gun ownership in two decades. But the new survey estimates that 133m of these guns are concentrated in the hands of just 3% of American adults – a group of super-owners who have amassed an average of 17 guns each.

The unpublished Harvard/Northeastern survey result summary, obtained exclusively by the Guardian and the Trace, estimates that America’s gun stock has increased by 70m guns since 1994. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who own guns decreased slightly from 25% to 22%.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/19/us-gun-ownership-survey

Now some may be wondering why I opened up the article with a picture of Cerberus, or the Hound Of Hades.Well, that’s who is making about 60% of all the profit of gun sales in the US…that’s right, one Hedge Fund named Cerberus Capital ran by a Jewish billionare Stephen Feinberg.

There had been Big Pharma, and Big Oil, but never Big Gun.

Cerberus set out to create it. A catalyst was the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, pushed by NRA lobbyists and passed by a Republican-controlled Congress in 2005. PLCAA granted gunmakers broad immunity from lawsuits from victims of gun violence. A year later, Cerberus bought Bushmaster for $76 million from Richard Dyke, the company’s founder.

Bushmaster was folded into Freedom Group, the holding company Cerberus had chartered to conquer the gun business. Its play was obvious: roll up small gun companies, centralize management while combining costs and cutting overhead, and then, when the moment was right, sell the conglomerate to the public via an IPO. After Bushmaster, Freedom purchased Marlin, a manufacturer of lever-action hunting rifles; Parker, a manufacturer of ornate, collectible shotguns; DPMS, another assault-rifle manufacturer; and the big one, Remington, America’s oldest continuously operated gunmaker

Freedom Group’s business strategy was to use America’s Special Forces as an R&D department for selling guns at Walmart. What worked in the battlefield worked in the forest. “Shooting a 180-pound deer is the same tech as shooting an 180-pound man,” said Brittingham, and Freedom was staffed with a number of people who’d done both.

Further Reading

 “Guys like Steve Feinberg live in a different world than Dick Dyke,” he told me. “Their way of making money is very different than mine.” Dyke had held his companies for decades, earning money via dividends paid out from company profits. Feinberg earned money by charging his investors management fees.​​​​​​​