Nearly a Third of Americans Own Guns
As an American firearms owner, you’re in good company. A new Columbia University Study indicates that nearly 30% of American adults own at least one gun. As you might expect, state gun ownership rates varied greatly. States with low population density showed a higher percentage of gun owners. The Top Five gun-owning states were: Alaska (61.9%), Arkansas (57.9%), Idaho (56.9%), West Virginia (54.2%), and Wyoming (53.8%). As you’d expect Montana (52.3%) and New Mexico (49.9%) were in the Top Ten, but to our surprise Texas, at 35.5%, was not. Must be those Yuppies in Austin …
Two East Coast micro-states were at the bottom of the scale, with gun ownership rates under 6%. Delaware, at 5.2%, had the lowest percentage of gun owners, followed by Rhode Island (5.8%).
The gun ownership study, published on the Injury Prevention website, showed that 29.1% of Americans over age 18 own firearms. Results were based on a web survey of a representative sample of 4000 persons from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. CLICK HERE to Read Full Study.
Gun Culture Supports Firearm Ownership
The study also tried to assess the impact of “gun culture” on gun ownership rates. Not surprisingly, where family and social group attitudes favored gun ownership, more people owned guns: “Gun ownership was 2.25 times greater among those reporting social gun culture. Exposure to social gun culture was robustly associated with gun ownership and to our knowledge, this is the first study to establish empirical evidence of the relation between social gun culture and gun ownership.” However, “we cannot infer whether exposure to social gun culture predisposes one to gun ownership or whether the latter increases likelihood of participation in the former.”
General Findings
The study summarized its findings as follows: “A strong association between gun ownership and being a part of a social gun culture was observed, even after adjusting for significant covariates. The other individual covariates independently associated with gun ownership were age > 55 years, not black, male, income > $25 K, ever married/partnered and medium/high violence exposure.” Worthy of note is that the lead statistician for this project, Dr. Bindu Valesan, is a Vice-President of the Gun Violence Survivors Foundation (GVSP). She works as an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University.
Because of Valesan’s association with the GVSP, some have challenged this study’s conclusions regarding “gun culture” and the reasons Americans own firearms. Nonetheless the findings regarding the percentage of Americans who own guns are noteworthy. These numbers show the importance of firearms to a huge segment of our society. If anything, the Columbia University Study numbers support the NRA’s claims that nearly half of American households own guns. In 2010, 39% of Americans surveyed by the Gallup Poll said they had a gun in their home. Infoplease.com states that the percentage of U.S. households with firearms: “has been fluctuating between 38% and 42% in polls taken since 2000, and has ranged between 36% and 51% since polling began in 1959.”
No surprise the states with lowest gun ownership have the worst gun laws.
I wonder how accurate this really is… in my circle of friends and acquaintances it would be near 90% and very few would tell someone they dont know that they own guns…
I always grin when I see these polls or surveys. Not because of the information in them, but because of what’s left out. I wonder how many of those surveyed claimed no gun ownership with a full safe locked up in the den?
Niles, you beat me to it.
I would guess that under reporting is a greater factor in states with garage laws and lower gun ownership rates. Here in southern Louisiana I think more people would be willing to admit gun ownership than in, say, new York city.
California surprised me
Since when is Delaware a “southern” state?
This is total crap, an average of 80 people per State was used out of the 11,471 that were interviewed…..flawed at best by the folks that did the survey, YouGov
“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain
Will’s comment wins.
One on the lower end happens to be California. Now, put things into perspective. There are 8 million gun owners in the state of California. More gun owners than the entire population in most of the states with the highest percentage.
Another way to look at things in the state of California for those who refuse to sell guns to people in that state. If roughly 1/8 of those owners are NRA members, that’s about one half of the NRA membership. You wouldn’t want them to cancel those memberships. The NRA would soon be another enterprise to go belly up!!!!!
These studys are BS for sure. I don’t know what hat they pulled the numbers out of but like new York, there are way more gun owners than the computer generated phony numbers they sold us.
The real question would be to which states are the most guns shipped. In Texas, if you own a gun at all, you are likely to own a great many and shoot often, as that is a common pass time. People that own “a gun” for protection in rural areas aren’t necessarily the enthusiasts supporting the weekly competitive and hunting segments, purchasing multiple guns every year.
As mentioned by others, this “survey/study” is total BS. Specifically, I have been on the on the yougov survey list for a number of years and get at least one survey a week from them.
I remember this one and also remember that I answered every question regarding gun ownership in the negative. Most of the stuff I get is surveying brands or products, but when a political one comes along, I always give the most conservative answers possible. Firstly because that’s what I think and second just to be annoying.
Please remove this trash. It is either a joke or the folks that posted it assumed no one would read the Supplement. Example:
Participants were asked to respond to EVERY ONE of these “Reason for owning a gun” “questions” (this is the COMPLETE list of those “questions”):
Q5_1 Reasons for owning a gun –‐ Exciting to hold loaded gun
Q5_2 Reasons for owning a gun –‐ People will look up to me
Q5_3 Reasons for owning a gun –‐ Feel powerful or protected on street
Q5_4 Reasons for owning a gun –‐ Feels powerful to hold loaded gun
Q5_5 Reasons for owning a gun –‐ Don’t owe the world anything
Q5_6 Reasons for owning a gun –‐ Fun to play around with real gun
Q5_7 Reasons for owning a gun –‐ Care about how actions affect others
Q5_8 Reasons for owning a gun –‐ Responsibility to make world a better place
Q5_9 Reasons for owning a gun –‐ None
To see a count of Yes and No responses to these “questions” and the survey demographics, go to http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/suppl/2015/06/08/injuryprev-2015-041586.DC1/injuryprev-2015-041586supp.pdf
Editor: Thanks for the link. You list some of the questions asked on the survey, questions designed to determined “feelings” about gun ownership. Those are not the questions used to determine whether a respondent has firearms, which are:
Q1_1 Gun ownership status – Owner, gifted
Q1_2 Gun ownership status – Owner, bought before 2000
Q1_3 Gun ownership status – Owner, bought after 2000
Q1_4 Gun ownership status – Owner, hunter
Q1_5 Gun ownership status – Owner, attended safety classes
Q1_6 Gun ownership status – Owner, advocate responsible ownership
Q1_7 Gun ownership status – Non-owner, might buy
Q1_8 Gun ownership status – Non-owner, will never buy
In addition, there are questions about family ownership:
Q2_1 Family gun ownership culture – No friends own guns
Q2_2 Family gun ownership culture – No family members own guns
Q2_3 Family gun ownership culture – Some friends own guns
Q2_4 Family gun ownership culture – Some family members own gun
Q2_5 Family gun ownership culture – Social circle thinks less of non-ownership
Q2_6 Family gun ownership culture – Family thinks less of non-ownership
Q2_7 Family gun ownership culture – Social life with family involves guns
Q2_8 Family gun ownership culture – Social life with friends involves guns
Q2_9 Family gun ownership culture – None
There are many other questions also.
— The survey has some odd aspects, that’s for sure. The survey-makers were obviously trying to quantify things that are hard to pin down, in an effort to understand why people purchase firearms.
The lead “writer” is one Bindu Kalesan. The footnotes include. “Competing interests – BK is an unpaid Vice-President of Gun Violence Survivors Foundation”.
Editor: Good find. It does seem, then, that Ms. Kalesan could have an anti-gun bias. But does that alter the validity of the ownership numbers? If anything, her affiliation with GVSF might motivate her to over-state the number of guns in society. Yet the complaints are that the study’s numbers for gun ownership are too LOW (assertedly because all gun owners don’t reveal that fact when asked). Here are her academic credentials:
Clinical Epidemiologist/Biostatistician
Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University
Education:
PhD in Health Sciences, University of Bern, ISPM, 2012
MPH, Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2004
M.Sc, Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, 2002
As much as I would like to believe the rate of gun ownership here in Hawaii is 45%, I know it’s not. Everything I have seen is more like 10%.
We do, however have a gun for every man, woman, and child, according firearms registration records.
Guns?
What guns? Mine were all lost in a boating accident a couple years ago. A real tragedy.
I’m sure that there are flaws in the study, since certain groups would deny ownership while possessing firearm(s). Some, perhaps, because of the deep distrust government has engendered. And the criminal element…why would they report accurately?
I think the number of firearms in the possession of citizens would be higher.
After all, there are a lot of blades of grass that need protecting. Sasdly, from not only enemies from the outside but also from enemies on the “inside”.
Paul:
You are simply WRONG! This was a blatant attempt to disparage gun owners and ownership. When you ask the question, “Reason for owing a gun” and do NOT offer “self and family protection” and “sport shooting” you are misleading – here quite intentionally! Talk about tailoring the questions to meet an agenda. Wake up!
What guns? I certainly don’t own any of those things…they kill people!
Bet you could double those numbers…or more!