We did it! According to a decade-long survey of gun ownership around the world, the United States now has more firearms than people, about 1.2 gunsfor every man, woman and child. It’s always appalled civilian disarmament types and their media stenographers that Americans love their guns so much, so expect this news – that America accounts for almost half the one billion civilian-owned firearms globally — to induce plenty of spittle-spraying cries of horror and think pieces lamenting the depravity of a nation so in love with guns.
[US Small Arms Survey America Guns 1 Billion]courtesy washingtonpost.com
The Small Arms Survey spent a decade guesstimating how many civilian-owned firearms there are in the world. And as the Washington Post details,
The report, which draws on official data, survey data and other measures for 230 countries, finds that global firearm ownership is heavily concentrated in the United States. In 2017, for instance, Americans made up 4 percent of the world’s population but owned about 46 percent of the entire global stock of 857 million civilian firearms.
With an estimated 120.5 guns for every 100 residents, the firearmownership rate in the United States is twice that of the next-highest nation, Yemen, with just 52.8 guns per 100 residents. In raw number terms, the closest country to the United States is India, with 71.1 million firearms in circulation. These numbers do not include firearmsowned by law enforcement agencies or militaries.
Of course our almost 400 million guns aren’t distributed evenly.
If global gun ownership is concentrated in American hands, American gun ownership is concentrated even more narrowly in the country’s gun-owning households. As of 2017, Gallup found that 42 percent of American households reported owning guns. With an estimated 118 million households in the United States, per the U.S. Census, that would mean that the country’s 393 million guns are distributed among 50 million households. The implication is that the average gun-owning household owns nearly eight guns.
