NBC News is touting a “shocking” new study about gun ownership in the United States which seems designed to see what sort of generalizations they can draw about people who exercise their Second Amendment rights. (And perhaps to give an idea of where they’d need to go to grab them all if that became possible.) Published by something called Injury Prevention, the numbers will be shocking… to anyone who has never paid any attention to this subject.

A new study aimed at figuring out who owns gun in the United States and why suggests that about a third of Americans have at least one.

Most are white males over the age of 55, and a “gun culture” is closely linked with ownership, the team at Columbia University reports.

The study, published in the journal Injury Prevention, is one of several trying to pin down the number of gun owners in the United States. No agency keeps statistics on gun ownership and many pro-gun activists advocate keeping gun ownership private because of fears about potential future laws that might take guns away.

Without having much more to draw on, the survey seeks to break down the respondents into geographical areas by state and as to whether or not they live in a “gun culture.” (Gee… that’s not too leading of a question, is it?) By that they mean people who regularly participate in gun related sports and activities. They find stark differences along geographic lines, pointing out that in the Northeast, Rhode Island has the lowest rate of gun ownership at 5.8% while Vermont has the highest with 28.8%. I wonder if anyone conducting the survey ever stopped to consider that those number correlate with states which have the most oppressive gun laws (Rhode Island) and the ones with virtually no gun control laws at all. (Vermont) It’s really funny how that works, eh?

The usual list of suspects were quick to jump on the study and draw their own fact free conclusions. Enter Ed Kilgore.

Putting aside for a moment geography or the objective advisability of owning some sort of gun for self-protection, there is something fundamentally disquieting about the fact that the Americans most likely to own guns are also the Americans most likely to embrace a political rationale for gun ownership and most likely to believe they’re getting outvoted by people who don’t share their values. Somewhere in these overlapping circles is a hard core of dangerous folks who are being told constantly by Republican politicians that they are losing or have already lost their most fundamental rights. And this is why political extremism is a bad thing even if its devotees lose most elections.

As I said, rampant generalizations don’t generally require a response, but it’s always good to keep an eye on what the gun grabbers are up to.

Returning to the factual world, the numbers in this survey, at least at the top line level, are nothing new or unusual. The last big Pew survey on the subject back in 2013 found essentially the same thing, with roughly 34% of law abiding Americans owning guns. It’s important to add in the “law abiding” part here because these surveys have absolutely no way of knowing how many criminals are packing. The real total number is much higher I’m sure.

The authors also choose to focus on gun owners being mostly older white people. As Pew indicates, it’s true that whites tend to legally own guns at a higher rate. As to the age groups involved, that gets rather complicated. The 40% ownership rate is indeed found in the 50-64 and 65+ age groups, tailing off from there as you get to the younger folks. Of course, that’s a fairly natural function. Gun ownership can be expensive and is most often found among people with homes to protect. It takes a while to establish yourself, so obviously that comes up more often in older demographics. Location is a factor also. Pew found that “rural” residents were more than twice as likely as “urban” residents to legally own guns. There’s a no brainer for you. You find an older demographic in the country while younger folks flock to the city for perceived job opportunities and social activities. Also, the cities are where the most onerous gun control laws are passed. Again, none of this is shocking or terribly informative.

But hey… if you’re in the gun grabbing business you can always use a new headline, right? Honestly, I have no idea who would have paid to commission this study in the first place.