Dear Editor;
Bryan Miller in her piece “Guns & Women” [February 4] has unfortunately bought the line of the National Rifle Association and the gun manufacturers that women have been arming themselves at a rapid rate. In fact, gun ownership by women did not increase by 53 percent from 1983 to 1988. Surveys by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago indicate NO change in the ownership of either firearms in general or handguns in particular from 1980 to 1993. About 11 percent of women owned a gun and 8 percent a handgun in 1980, and these levels have remained essentially unchanged through 1993.
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Second, the statistic quoted from Self that 34 million women have “access to firearms” is misleading in several regards. These figures are from the above cited surveys of NORC (and not the National Opinion Resource Center as quoted in the article) and represent the number of women living in a household in which someone owns a firearm. The approximate figures are that 10.9 million women personally own a gun, 23.3 million don’t personally own a gun, but live in a household with a gun owned by another, and 65.4 million neither personally own nor live in a household with a gun owned by others.
Tom W. Smith Director General Social Survey National Opinion Research Center
