It’s a question everybody wants an answer to regardless of which side of the political spectrum they fall on. The reasons are abundant, and sometimes not so obvious. Politicians want to know which way the wind is blowing when it comes to passing legislation. Pro Second Amendment groups want to know what firearms are in common use to support defenses in court, and what kind of grassroots support the gun community can generate. And anti-gun groups want to know what they are up against.
But there are other groups and interested parties as well. Insurance companies often have special riders for firearms. Doctors are increasingly asking patients if they have firearms in the home. And nosy neighbors are starting to wonder if their kids might be playing at a house that has firearms as the anti-gun groups put the screws to what was once a very normal part of American culture.
Beyond that, the world is watching. There have been increasingly stronger calls over the last decade from international groups to curtail private firearms ownership in the United States. The United Nations-backed “Arms Trade Treaty” that then-President Trump withdrew from is one such example. This uniquely American freedom is coming under attack from hostile entities who would like to see Americans disarmed. At the same time, recent current events in the Ukraine, Israel and Gaza have illustrated how firearms are the sole means of defense for civilians in an armed military conflict.
So, how many adult Americans own a gun in the United States, in 2024? There’s one thing that’s for certain, gun ownership is on the rise, and the demographics of gun owners are changing dramatically.
Every few years, organizations like Gallup and Pew Research Center conduct surveys to determine answers to similar questions. While the nature of their questions illustrates a subtle, liberal, anti-gun bias, the numbers from their surveys have fallen in line with other national surveys on the same subject. The last major study from Pew, conducted June 5-11, 2023 among 5,115 members of the Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel, was published on August 16, 2023.
(They published a similar study in 2017.)
According to the 2023 Pew study: roughly a third (32%) say they own a gun; another 10% say that while they do not personally own a gun, someone else in their household does. Or, put another way, about four-in-ten U.S. adults say they live in a household with a gun.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is the firearms industry trade association and has been a reputable source for benchmark surveys on gun ownership. The 2023 Edition of “Firearms Ownership & Sports Shooting Participation” survey was conducted in January and February, 2023, and asked about participation in 2022 and was based upon just over 3,000 completed questionnaires. Their findings were almost equivalent: 32% of adult Americans personally own a firearm, and 42% currently have a firearm in their household.
One of the largest ever studies on the topic was conducted by Centiment in February and March of 2021, and was based on a representative sample of about 54,000 adults, 16,708 of whom were gun owners. It was commissioned by Georgetown University political economist, William English. The findings were consistent with the surveys above and put adult firearms ownership at an overall rate of 31.9% (equating to approximately 81.4 million Americans aged 18 and up).
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the estimated July 1, 2023 US adult population is 262,083,034. Applying the commonly accepted baseline gun owner numbers above gives us approximately 83,866,570 adult firearms owners as of that same date, just about a year ago.
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Here’s where we jump into the deep end of the pool and apply a little bit of speculation, anecdotal evidence, and common sense analysis to the above.
First, many gun owners are in the closet, including both new and old. Despite the impressive number of gun owners, the topic of gun ownership has become controversial amidst the politicization of headline mass-shooting events, police-involved shootings, and social events in 2020-2021 that included major riots and self-defense incidents. New gun owners may not want their liberal friends and family knowing they’ve chosen to arm themselves, and long-time gun owners may prefer to keep it under the hat as rogue agencies, such as the ATF, prosecute (and even kill) law-abiding gun owners over technical missteps.
Either way, it would be fair to say that some people would respond to such surveys in the negative out of fear or preference for privacy. What’s that number? Nobody knows. But we could use very conservative numbers to illustrate a point. Assuming 5% of respondents didn’t disclose their gun ownership, that could easily add 13.1 million gun owners to the fold. If just 2.5% of respondents didn’t disclose ownership, that would still be an additional 6.5 million firearms owners.
A second point is that there are so many new gun owners (including between 2023 and now), it’s likely that surveys will miss some of this demographic as they haven’t been in the pool long enough to identify and survey. The numbers are staggering. NSSF reported data from the FBI-conducted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) shows June 2024 marking the 59th consecutive month exceeding 1 million adjusted background checks.
These numbers don’t equate to direct firearm sales and a one-to-one correlation between background checks and sales isn’t possible since they also include some permit checks and rechecks. However, if only 50% of these checks resulted in a sale (and we’ll use a baseline of just 1,000,000 checks per month to be even more conservative), that means that in the last 24 months, adult Americans could have purchased an additional 12,000,000 firearms NOT included in the studies above, which, focused on behavior in 2022.
Even if only half of these sales were to new firearms owners, that would be an additional 6,000,000 firearms owners not tallied in above surveys, bringing our hypothetical number of current adult firearms owners to 96.3 million (the current US population as of 2023 was nearly 335 million).
There are other reasons that such surveys may under-represent the actual number of gun owners in the United States. Consider the changing demographics. Women and minorities are the fastest growing segment of new gun owners (see our sidebar with stats). Over the last 10 years, for example, the growth rate for permits has been 111% faster for women than men, according to a study conducted by Dr. John Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC). Women who are arming themselves in the face of a possible domestic violence scenario have good reason to keep that information private.
And finally, consider the ethos of the “concealed carry” concept at its very foundation: concealed implies an action that is not visible to public scrutiny; it’s a private, personal act intended to give a tactical advantage.
Whatever the final number may be, it appears that even a very conservative reading of the numbers, along with some common sense, would indicate that American adult firearm ownership is well north of one-third of the population. And every trend to which data can be applied is showing that number increasing rapidly. Just a few weeks ago, during a congressional hearing, it was disclosed that the ATF has nearly one billion gun records illegally stored in a digital database.
So how many American gun owners are there? Enough that it should dissuade anyone from trying to disarm them. Although it’s never been substantiated, there is a famous quote attributed to a Japanese General who surmised that attacking America wouldn’t be prudent because, “there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”
If you are one of the estimated 100,000,000 gun owners, or thinking about becoming one, we encourage you to join the community by supporting at least one of the Second Amendment / gun rights groups (see our home page), and NEVER give up your uniquely American heritage and right to defend yourself and your loved ones.
See some interesting gun ownership numbers below.
Gun Owner Statistics
29 states now have a form of permitless, or Constitutional, carry.
Changing demographics – Increase in gun purchases in 2020 from 2019 according to NSSF data:
- 58% increase for African-Americans
- 49% increase for Hispanic-Americans
- 4% increase for Asian-Americans
By race, gun owners number:
- 25% among African Americans
- 28% among Hispanics
- 19% among Asians
- 34% among whites
By gender:
- Men accounted for about 58% of gun owners
- Women accounted for 42% of gun owners
Defensive use:
- Guns are used defensively approximately 1.67 million incidents per year (with handguns being the most commonly used in 65.9% of defensive incidents)
Concealed carry:
- Approximately 20.7 million gun owners (26.3%) carry a concealed handgun in public
Magazine capacity:
- Nearly half of survey respondents (48 percent) have owned a magazine with a capacity in excess of 10 rounds.
AR-15s – popular as ever:
- Survey results suggest gun owners have 44 million AR-15-style rifles and about 542 million magazines with capacities exceeding 10 rounds.
The average guy/gal:
- The average gun owner owns about 5 firearms.
