The estimates of gun ownership in the US are usually low because about one third of all gun owners answer "no" instead of saying "it's none of your business".


How Many Americans Own Guns?

Posted on December 21, 2012

That depends a bit on how you look at it. The narrowest definition of a gun owner is a person who has put money on the counter, fulfilled all legal requirements and taken a gun home. The broadest definition is someone who lives in a home with a gun. The most direct way of determining either number is to call up two thousand or so homes and ask.

Gallup has been doing something like that, with much the same result seen in the graphic on the left. Unfortunately, there is a problem with that. Gun "control," actually gun confiscation, drives have so many gun owners frightened to the point they will deny they own a gun. So other than the fact that a lot of Americans own a gun, polls like the Gallup poll are not very informative.

Since the main road is blocked, let's take a detour and see what the scenic route will turn up. Starting with the number of occupied dwellings.

The National Association of Homebuilders says there are 105,480,101 currently occupied dwellings in the United States. The 2010 Census found 111,800,000. Given the number of foreclosures and abandonment's, the NAH may be correct – but for appearances sake it will probably be better to use the official Census number.

Next, a private telephone poll that contacted 1,200 individuals found 58% of respondents indicated a gun in the home. This is slightly higher than the highest percentage from the Gallup poll, 54%, but the Gallup poll numbers are pulled down by fear engendered by active gun control campaigns in the Northeast and West.

A poll of individuals known to be gun owners contacted 758 individuals and found a 29% denial rate. When all the variables, including the geographic ones, are factored in, and with a three percent margin of error, 77.5 percent of American homes have at least one gun.

So we come back to the number of occupied dwellings. Using the Census number of 111,800,000 there are at least 86,650,000 Americans who own a gun.

On the other hand, if we allow that everyone who lives in a home with a gun has some ownership claim, the census says that each occupied dwelling in the United States houses 2.72 people. Which totals 235,675,000 Americans have some claim to gun ownership.