Mr Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post took to that newspaper's blog with an article, after someone counted up the number of Starbuck's Coffee shops and McDonalds versus the numbers of museums in the USA. Museums win out.
He decided to do the same comparison, both by county and by state, of the numbers of gun shops versus the numbers of libraries and museums combined. The results have a few surprises, listed below the orange puff of gunpowder smoke.
His research breaks out by state and by county those with more museums and libraries, and those with more gun shops. Unsurprisingly, the top three library and museum loving states are in the liberal Northeast, whilst the top three gun shop loving states are in the conservative Rocky Mountain West or Dixie.
Manhattan (New York County) has the highest ratio of libraries and museums to gun shops, Deschutes County, Oregon has the lowest ratio. (Aside from that Oregon county, the next twenty-four are all in Rocky Mountain West or Dixie states.)
Only thirteen states have more libraries and museums than gun shops. My own state (Nebraska) ranks number fifteen (barely more gun shops).
In this deeply red state in my own even-redder county in the Nebraska Panhandle bordering Wyoming, we have three incorporated cities: Bayard, population 1,209; Bridgeport, population 1,545 (the county seat); and my own city, Broadwater, population 128 (2010 census).
Of those, all three cities have a museum and a library. There are only two gun shops, one each in Bridgeport and Broadwater. So, libraries and museums outnumber gun shops in this county by a factor of three-to-one, a decided outlier amongst conservative counties.
Right next door in Wyoming, that state ranks number forty-eight in numbers of libraries and museums to gun shops (a ratio of gun shops 2.5-1). The nearest city to us in Wyoming though (La Grange, population 448) has two libraries and a museum but no gun shop.
Pew Research recently conducted a survey of political polarisation. Amongst other things, it found that liberals value close museums and theatres in selection of a home far more than conservatives (73% versus 23%, one of the most striking diferences). That makes Morrill County, Nebraska even more of an outlier.
The survey indicates many other things showing the cultural divide between liberals and conservatives. For example, large majorities of liberals prefer cities, whilst conservatives prefer rural areas (this liberal excepted). Liberals are more likely to emphasise racial and ethnic diversity, whilst conservatives emphasise shared religious faith (my town being an outlier again, since it re-elected this liberal atheist to the village board/city council).
So, today's poll: do you live in an area with more museums and libraries, or more gun shops?