America’s relationship with guns is like that of no other country.
There are now more guns than people in America
We are the only country in which guns outnumber people — a fact that became true in 2009. And we keep manufacturing more and more guns. Between 2010 and 2013 alone, the number of guns produced in the United States doubled.
Guns are ubiquitous in the United States in a way that is unique. This is a big part of the explanation for why the United States has higher gun homicide rates than other countries — why mass shootings are constantly in the news here.
Understanding the size of America’s gun problem can be a daunting task. These GIFs walk you through some of the basics about guns in the United States. You can read more Vox coverage on the subject here.
Guns outnumber people in the US and are increasing at a faster rate
The year 2009, the first of Barack Obama’s presidency, marked a turning point in America’s relationship with guns: It was the first year when guns outnumbered people in America.
America’s gun population is growing more than three times faster than our human population.
From 1994 to 2009, the number of guns Americans owned grew on average by 4.1 percent annually. Over the same time frame, total US population grew 1.1 percent annually.
The number of guns in America has more than doubled since 1968. But the US population has nowhere near doubled its 1968 population (it was 201 million, and we’re currently estimated to be at 332.7 million).
So if recent trends are any indication, these numbers will only continue to diverge — and guns will increasingly outnumber people.
America is manufacturing more guns too...
US gun manufacturers are ramping up firearm production to meet America’s growing appetite for ammunition. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the number of guns manufactured in the US has almost doubled in just three years, from nearly 5.5 million in 2010 to nearly 10.9 million in 2013.
What’s more, most of these guns stay in the US. Only a small fraction — 400,000 firearms in 2013 — are exported.
...and Americans are buying more guns than ever before
While one background check does not necessarily equal one gun sale for a variety of reasons, background checks are a good — albeit imperfect — proxy for gun sales.
Gun-related background checks have steadily risen for the past 10 years. But it wasn’t until Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election that we saw a dramatic surge in background checks.
Many people feared the Obama administration would enact stringent gun control laws, and background checks more than doubled from 7 million in 2002 to 15 million in 2013. What’s more, the monthly spikes in background checks for firearms either coincide with President Obama being elected (or reelected) or follow in the wake of a mass shooting or terrorist attack.
Or, as was the case in January 2013, a combination of both.
Obama had just been reelected in November 2012, and the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary that killed 20 children and six teachers happened that December. Background checks climbed shortly after, hitting a record 2 million by January 2013.
Similarly, in the aftermath of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, that killed 14 in December 2015, a staggering 1.5 million background checks were performed that month.
As my colleague Zachary Crockett noted, this is business as usual for the gun industry. Gun sales typically soar after a terrorist attack or mass shooting.
But fewer Americans own guns. So more guns are increasingly concentrated in a smaller number of homes.
Americans might own more guns than ever before, but the number of households that report owning a gun is actually shrinking.
In 1977, one in two American households owned a gun. But by 2014, less than one in three households reported owning a gun. Gun ownership in the US has been in decline since the mid-’90s, but 2014 marked a 40-year low in gun ownership, with only 31 percent of homes owning a gun.
Researchers point to the declining popularity of hunting as the reason. Not only did 2014 mark a historic low in household gun ownership, it also marked the lowest level of hunters reported living in a household in the past 40 years. In 1997, 32 percent of households reported a member being a hunter, but by 2014 that percentage had been cut in half, dropping to 15 percent.
The data comes from a survey conducted by NORC, an independent research organization at the University of Chicago, which examines gun ownership in America alongside other demographic trends in its biennial General Social Survey (GSS).
States with more guns do have higher homicide rates
There is one thing the research is pretty clear on: Places with more guns generally have higher homicide rates (both firearm and non-firearm-related). The research holds up no matter how you slice it — country to country or state to state.
”Multiple reviews of the research, including the Harvard Injury Control Research Center’s aggregation of the evidence, have consistently found a correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths — including homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings — after controlling for other factors,” German Lopez has written for Vox.
The numbers are clear: The United States has many, many guns. And our unmatched levels of gun ownership have deadly consequences.
How fast 4 different guns can shoot and reload
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