Jim Carrey‘s Funny or Die video is titled “Cold Dead Hand”, and yet the late Charlton Heston‘s famous NRA statement used the plural — i.e., the only way the proverbial and ignominious “they” could take his guns away would be to pry them “from my cold head hands.”

Rightie bloggers have reacted angrily to Michael Moore’s recent comment that “90% of guns are owed by white people,” the implication being that they’re looking to protect themselves from disadvantaged minorities. The gun-ownership stats shouldn’t be hard to prove or disprove. (A site called Statisticbrain offers a survey stating that 44% of gun owners are white, 27% are “non-white” and 27% are black.) But even if Moore’s claim is even partly true his conclusion seems reasonable and intelligent. Older rural whites have this thing about wanting to protect themselves from the “other.”

A 2.1.13 Gallup poll doesn’t seem to address the racial gun-ownership issue in cut and dried terms, but it states the following: “Non-Hispanic whites (33%) are significantly more likely than nonwhites (22%) to own guns. Hispanics (18%) in particular show below-average gun ownership. Twenty-one percent of blacks own a gun. Younger Americans (20%) are much less likely to own guns than older Americans. There are only minor differences among adults 30 and older by age group (ranging between 31% and 34%). Gun ownership is much higher among those who are politically conservative (39%) than among those who are politically liberal (17%).”