According to the Small Arms Survey released this week, world wide private firearms ownership has increased from about 650 million in 2006 to 857 million at the end of 2017. That’s a 32% increase over the eleven year period, or 207 million firearms.

The estimate for the United States jumped from 270 million to 393.3 million, a 46 percent increase or 123.3 million firearms. The United States accounted for 60 percent of the total global increase.

From smallarmssurvey.org:

Uncertainty about any firearms data requires systematic estimation that relies on a broad spectrum of sources and makes approximation unavoidable. The Small Arms Survey’s estimates of civilian firearms holdings use data gathered from multiple sources. However, with much of civilian ownership concealed or hard to identify, gun ownership numbers can only approximate reality. Using data from several different sources, at the end of 2017 there were approximately 857 million civilian-held firearms in the world’s 230 countries and territories. Civilian firearms registration data was available for 133 countries and territories. Survey results were used to help establish total gun civilian holdings in 56 countries. The new figure is 32 percent higher than the previous estimate from 2006, when the Small Arms Survey estimated there were approximately 650 million civilian-held firearms. Virtually all countries show higher numbers, although national ownership rates vary widely, reflecting factors such as national legislation, a country’s gun culture, historical and other factors. While some of the increase reflects improved data and research methods, much is due to actual growth of civilian ownership.

While the United States accounted for 60 percent of the total increase, nearly all countries experienced an increase in firearms ownership. The United States was estimated to have 41.5% of privately owned firearms in the world in 2006.  At the end of 2017, the Small Arms Survey estimated the U.S.A. had 46% of privately owned firearms in the world.

My estimation of the private firearms stock in the United States is a bit higher. I use the method first used by Newton and Zimring, then outlined by Gary Kleck in his book Point Blank.

Using that method, there were closer to 295 million private firearms in the United States in 2006. At the end of 2017, using Kleck’s methodology, there would be about 418 million firearms (2017 numbers estimated from NICS checks).

The BATFE’s numbers, plus the estimation for 2017 from NICS, shows an increase of 123 million firearms added to the private stock over the period. The Small Arms Survey shows 123.3 million added over the same period, a virtually an identical increase. Thus, the only difference is in the estimation of the private stock in 2006.

The number of civilian-owned firearms tends to increase with prosperity. Firearms are a highly desired manufactured good. It’s to be expected that as societies become more prosperous, the number of private firearms increases.

Of course, no one knows how many guns have been manufactured by individuals, either as hobbyists or for the unregulated market, or in small, unregulated shops. Such guns can make up a significant number. In 1986, 20% of the guns confiscated in Washington, D.C., were reportedly home made.

Similarly, no one knows how many guns are removed from the private stock by destruction, wear, or loss due to tragic boating accidents. Some guns are buried and forgotten. Guns are extremely durable items, capable of lasting and being operable for hundreds of years.

Illegal and unregulated importation and exports are also unknowns. Despite the huge number of guns already available in the United States, it does happen. Guns that originally were procured by the U.S. military, which then are transfered to private citizens, aren’t counted as additions in the BATFE totals.

While all these numbers are unknown, they are assumed to cancel each other out. That’s why the estimation by the Small Arms Survey is exactly that; an estimate.

 

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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32 COMMENTS

  1. First things first.

    Before we have anyone pop out of the cake, we need to ensure that the UN is not allowed to release anything ever again.

    • I’m kind of disappointed with my fellow Americans. I would have thought that we would have been >50%. I’m certainly doing my part.

  3. I think we can do better! POTG need to step up and get us from a plurality to a clear majority.

    • Yeah, the POTG don’t need more guns, we need more POTG. Especially in places where we are an underwhelming minority. Why doesn’t the gun industry have the same understanding of the term “market penetration” as, say, the computer industry or the automotive industry?

      • We are not a minority. US gun ownership is likely up at about 60%. About half of gun owners, especially younger ones, will not tell a pollster or surveyer they own a firearms, since all modern training says never tell a stranger you have a firearm.

        If you are 55 years old and live in wyoming or Montana and half your neighbors have a rack on their pickup truck and an NRA sticker you don’t really consider gun ownership a secret, in fact it is a social activity.

        But if you if you live in Connecticut or Palos Verdes, are 32 years old like me, and own two or three fire arms strictly for home and self defense, like me, especially if you have modern firearms training, you almost certainly will say “NO” if a stranger, including a pollster or surveyor asks if you own firearms. I had to take a police department run course (instructor was also NRA PPOH instructor) for my carry licence. The instructor must have said five times to never tell anyone that you even own a firearm.

        In some cases indirect questions get more accurate answers, and it is a proven fact in the science of social science surveying that when it comes to high confidentiality issues, indirect questions are the best. Look at both the raw number and trend on this indirect question:
        http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2015/04/FT_15.04.01_guns_Safer-260×367.png

  5. Wow! According to the left wing loons, this means that a few super-owners own almost 100 million guns each!

    I gotta meet those guys.

  7. Privately-owned firearms? As in “owned/housed by individual citizens/subjects/cretins/whatever”? I can’t believe the US isn’t a much higher percentage than 46% if we’re talking individuals owning and caring for the firearms outside of some organized militia or collective armory. I guess there are just a lot of old, single-shot shotguns out there in the rural and aboriginal countries…

    I’d like to see the percentage of handguns and/or MSRs. 96% perhaps?

  8. This is disappointing. I want that number over 10 billion in this country. Come on people.

  9. If some of the “wretched” on our border (in the Statue of Liberty usage) had some more steel close at hand, we wouldn’t be separating kids from parents for deportation back to places that make Detroit City look gentrified.

    /DonsFlameproofSuit

  10. Seriously no one surveyed ME…anyone answer a survey?!? Probably 500000000 gats in the USA😄

  11. No one surveyed me either and 70℅of my firearms were by private ssles. I’d have lied anyway, damned leaky boat and all. I would have liked those numbers to be 80℅ more then any other country though. Disappointments abound.

  12. Combine this with the FBI crime data, and blacks are more likely per capita to be involved in a murder than a gun.

  16. This piece on “Small Arms” is the ammunition we need to argue and advocate for “Larger” arms, to restrict us to “small arms” is just “discrimination” against “Big” arms and with “equality” and all we cannot have that in today’s “politically correct” culture.

  17. My takeaway from this article is that we are “deficient”, we MUST increase our percentage of firearms and expand into “large” arms

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