Trucks and guns seem to go together pretty well. Max Motors in Missouri is holding a promotion for just that, $250 of gas or $250 gun.
“Everybody has a right to protect themselves,” store manager Walter Moore told us. “So we’re giving them guns.”
What did they pick? So far out of 45 people, only 2 picked the gas. Guess which 43 aren’t going to get robbed?
As Brad Paisley sings, “my eyebrows ain’t plucked there’s a gun in my truck, oh thank G-d, I’m still a guy”.
Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.
Nor are they “bitter.” In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were “very happy,” while 9% were “not too happy.” Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.
In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling “outraged at something somebody had done.” It’s easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn’t true. The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don’t have guns.
The gun-owning happiness gap exists on both sides of the political aisle. Gun-owning Republicans are more likely than nonowning Republicans to be very happy (46% to 37%). Democrats with guns are slightly likelier than Democrats without guns to be very happy as well (32% to 29%). Similarly, holding income constant, one still finds that gun owners are happiest.
Why are gun owners so happy? One plausible reason is a sense of self-reliance, in terms of self-defense or even in terms of the ability to hunt their own dinner.
Not only are they willing and able to take care of themselves, they take care of others more it appears:
That response is not evidence that gun owners only care about themselves, however. In 2002, they were more likely to give money to charity than people without guns (83% to 75%). This charity gap doesn’t reflect their somewhat higher incomes. Gun owners were also more likely to give in other ways, such as donating blood. Are gun owners unsentimental? In 2004, they were more likely than those without guns to strongly agree that they would “endure all things” for the one they loved (45% to 37%).
It amazes me how often politicians get the demographics wrong about the real America. We are not bitter, and don’t have to cling to G_d, we do it because we want to, not a crutch.
Last round of elections they trashed NASCAR also, bad move there.
I’m happy, glad to be able to take care of myself, and if you want to see some of my guns, break into my house at night….I’ll give you a good view of the front end of one of them. 
Hat Tip to TackyChristmasyards.com
While I like the ones that make the Griswalds look like global warming advocates…I had to go with the two deer above.
Merry Christmas!
With all kudos to Brad Paisley, (Here is Brad singing the song) (Here’s Brad and Hank Jr. singing the song at the CMT awards) I took my son hunting… and here is his first deer, a nice 8 pointer. To you vegetarians, sorry, but I’m an outdoorsman and I believe in being able to take care of yourself which is growing and harvesting your food…..both meat and vegetables.
It’s also because of hunting and fishing that I get to connect with my offspring. I see many parents fighting with their kids, but we’re getting to spend hours together away from the computer, video games and other distractions that are potentially harmful to teenagers. We put the deer stand together, painted it camo, grew the food plots and reaped the rewards.
We also fed a herd of 50+ animals and worked the land from scrub to ecologically very fruitful and crop producing.
As Brad says, “but what can I say at the end of the day, honey I’m still a guy” .
Once again, I’m satirically inspired. This post is brought to you by a walk on a beautiful beach in Florida, in a winter coat. These guys were the only other beach walkers besides us. We were hoping for a Jimmy Buffet oriented post like “The weather is here, I wish you were Beautiful“…but alas, not this year as the weather didn’t cooperate.
We’ll make up for it with a huge family gathering and shrimp boil today to catch up on everything, which is always a pleasure as was Thanksgiving with my Mom yesterday.
And next week I’ll be in the other summer wonderland of Stamford Connecticut for the SWG analyst briefing we’ve put so much blood, sweat and tears into. At least it’s hunting and striper season when I get home.
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