Question about gun ownership stats

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

So, I'm used to seeing charts like these in gun control debates:







Predictably, these are usually shared by the anti-gun control side.  However, I've also found graphs which totally contradict the narrative that gun ownership is on the rise.


(This article makes the claim that 31% of US households owned a gun in 2015, down from 50% in 1977)





Half the gun control debate includes use of statistics, which obviously makes it easy for either side to use cherrypicked studies to their advantage.  I'm not sure how these studies produce their data, and honestly I have neither the interest nor the expertise to pick apart each one.  I assume there's at least some error in methodology in some of these studies (and of course these are just a few examples), but they seem to get their data from the same sources, all biases aside.

So, has gun ownership per capita declined in past decades, or has it increased?

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

without actually looking up any statistics – are the two sets of graphs really contradictory? it would seem both are consistent with a situation of fewer gun-owners owning a lot more guns each.

I'm not sure if that's the case, actually.  That's still a stark increase in the number of guns purchased, even if much of those are by people who were already gun-owners.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

If I own two cars am I twice as likely to get into a wreck?  The number of households with guns has gone down but he number of guns gun households own has gone up.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/21/the-average-gun-owner-now-owns-8-guns-double-what-it-used-to-be/

Can't read the article because of the stupid paywall, but if this is the case, my guess would be the majority of gun-owners own guns for hunting or for sport rather than self-defense.