There are far too many guns in circulation already. Fur- ther production and purchases by fearful people should be discouraged and restricted in order to improve public safety.
Estimates differ over how many guns are in the hands of private citizens (excluding members of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies) and how many people own a firearm. But it appears that a shrinking number of Americans own two- thirds of the nation’s firearms, and although they constitute less than 1 percent of the world’s popu- lation, this heavily armed group might possess as many as one-third of all the guns in circulation across the globe (Brennan, 2012).
At the start of the twenty-first century, about 75 million Americans owned an estimated 200 mil- lion to 250 million guns, of which about 70 million were handguns (Riczo, 2001; and Kohn, 2005). By 2011, the estimated number of privately owned firearms approached 300 million, of which nearly 100 million were handguns, and tens of millions were extremely lethal “assault weapons” that for a time (1994–2004) had been banned by federal law. This arsenal stockpiled by 80 million owners set an all-time record. The number of firearms in circula- tion is much larger than it was in 1970, when fed- eral gun control laws first became a hotly debated political issue (Morganthau and Shenitz, 1994; Witkin, 1994; Cook and Ludwig, 1997; Riczo, 2001; and NRA-ILA, 2011; 2012). Gun sales and federally mandated background checks increased from 2008 to 2012. On “Black Friday” in 2012, licensed firearms dealers requested over 150,000 background checks from the FBI for shoppers seek- ing to purchase handguns, rifles, and shotguns that day (Oatman and Gordon, 2012).
The proportion of households in which there is a gun remains unclear, along with trends in gun ownership. The answer depends on which survey organizations are cited. Gallup Polls over the dec- ades from the late 1950s through 2014 revealed that during most years, less than half of all American households possessed at least one gun. The highest figure for gun ownership was 54 percent in 1993, and the lowest was 43 percent in 2013. In 2014, interviewers were told that a gun was owned by 44 percent of all households (note that this question counts guns kept in the home plus in other places like garages, barns, or vehicles). In terms of trends, a slight decrease can be discerned over the years, but with no substantial changes since the mid-1990s (McCarthy, 2014).
But according to the widely used General Social Survey, the highest level of household gun ownership was registered in 1977 at 54 percent. Over the decades since then gun ownership has steadily declined, and hit an all-time low in 2010 at less than 33 percent. From 1985 to 2010, the number of Americans who claimed that they per- sonally owned a gun (as opposed to their family in
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general) dropped by nearly one-third, ending up at roughly one in every five people. Only 1 in every 10 women and one in every three men told inter- viewers they owned a gun in 2010. Several reasons (not directly related to the question of self- protection) might explain the decline: the end of military conscription and the decline of participa- tion in military service, a loss of interest in gun ownership by younger people, an increase in single-parent households headed by women, and growing restrictions on hunting lands and shooting ranges (VPC, 2011; and Tavernise and Gebeloff, 2013).
Gun ownership generally was higher among men than women, whites than blacks, older people than people under 50, higher-income than lower- income families, Southerners than inhabitants of other regions, residents of rural rather than urban areas, and Republicans rather than Democrats (Roper, 2004; and McCarthy, 2014).
Critics worry that many of the millions of guns owned by “law-abiding” citizens fall into the wrong hands when burglars steal them. Over 230,000 guns were stolen each year from homes during the time period of 2005–2010 (VPC, 2013).