As I said, David is a great guy. We need more social scientists who do legit investigations of gun usage, etc.
The idea of two gun cultures (sports, hunting vs. SD) is not unique to David (his work is a contribution on this concept). For example:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...7.00087.x/full
SIZE OF HOUSEHOLD FIREARM COLLECTIONS: IMPLICATIONS FOR SUBCULTURES AND GENDER*
Authors
First published: August 2007Full publication history
DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-9125.2007.00087.x View/save citation
Cited by (CrossRef): 1 article Check for updates
*
Abstract
Recent work (Cook and Ludwig, 2003) has linked local firearm density to increased burglary victimization risk. The current work investigates within-household gun density or household firearm collection size. Previous work has suggested two subcultures of gun owners: protection-minded and sport- or hunting-minded. It also has identified gender gaps in reporting any household guns and in the number reported. None of the earlier work, however, has controlled for selection into gun-owning household status. This limitation raises potential questions about earlier findings. The current research controls for selection. If the two subcultures thesis is correct, protection-minded owners should report smaller household firearm collections. The expected impact is observed in one national survey and is partially replicated in a second. Gender gaps seemed more independent than previously suggested. This study is the first to provide evidence of two partially overlapping subcultures of gun owners even after controlling for selection into gun-owning household status. Practical implications for burglary risk may exist.
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The issue is quite important to the RKBA because antigunners want to portray the gun user population as sports oriented for the most part and the SD group as nuts. This leads to folks supporting the RKBA as they are 'hunters'. You get so-called conservatives like Morning Joe (now not a conservative as the womanly powers of Mika have transmuted him) saying: I don't see why I need an assault rifle with 30 cop-killer bullets to take my son hunting. You get the typical politician goose or Tweety Bird hunt as evidence that we support the 2nd Amend.
I think also the data of current gun sales supports the dichotomy. Handguns sales have risen dramatically while shotgun sales have been flat for many years (see Shooting Industry's production reports). Rifles - biggest rise in sales is in the EBR domain, not the bolt action guns. You may remember that there was fraudulent pro-gun organization called the Bolt-Action Rifle Association. It was not a legit specialty group but a fake counter to the NRA that wanted to ban the evil guns. Also, remember the Zumbo and Metcalf fiascos.