Ever wonder the reasons why people own firearms? What about the amount of firearms manufactured and what types of firearms? We did some research for you to find some of the basic facts about firearm production, sale, and ownership.
Production & Sale
The number of firearms manufactured each year in the US has been showing a positive correlation since the early 2000s. The production peak occurred in 2013 with over 10.8 million guns created, but dropped down a bit in 2014 & 2015 to 9 million. Of those 9 million in 2015, 3.6 million were rifles, 3.5 million pistols, 885,000+ revolvers, 777,000+ shotguns, and 447,000+ in the miscellaneous category*.
Number of registered weapons in the U.S. in 2017, by state**
Gun Ownership
In 2017, Texas held the top spot for the most number of registered weapons, reaching over half a million. Following Texas are California and Florida, which both reported over 340,000 registered firearms. The regions with the lowest registered firearm count include US territories with only 671, after Rhode Island and Delaware with over 4,000.
According to a report, 46% of people living in rural areas own a firearm, 28% in the suburbs, and 19% ownership in urban areas.
Additionally, there are some trends regarding gun ownership in political parties and with individual households. With political parties – 44% of republican or republican-leaning citizens own a firearm, whereas democrats and those who lean toward the democratic party only reported 20%. There is a positive trend in gun ownership in relation to gun exposure as a child; almost 2 out of 3 gun owners grew up in a household with guns.
Reasons to Own
So why do people own guns? There are a number of reasons and most gun owners actually have multiple reasons for owning a weapon. Protection is the primary and probably most obvious reason to have a LTC; 67% reported that they own a gun for protection, 38% for hunting, followed by sport shooting, gun collection, and for occupational uses.
*Miscellaneous firearms are any firearms not specifically categorized in any of the firearms categories defined on the ATF Form 5300.11
**Sourced from https://www.statista.com/statistics/215655/number-of-registered-weapons-in-the-us-by-state/
Sources:
www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
www.statista.com/topics/1287/firearms-in-the-us/