Americans own 423M guns & 8.1B rounds of ammunition, latest data shows

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These numbers just demonstrate the folly of the strategy of reducing the supply of guns as a way to reduce crime. There are orders of magnitude more guns available than the numbers necessary to meet every criminal "need"/input for hundreds of years.

This calls to mind the USAAF's* strategic bombing approach in Europe during 1943-45. They wanted to attack German's industrial output and thereby deprive the German military of the materiel required to wage modern war. Not surprisingly, our air force decided that among the most important tools for the enemy was his own air force - they wanted to destroy the Luftwaffe and its supply of planes. So the USAAF did a big analysis of the required inputs for German aircraft manufacture. They wanted to figure out which inputs to aircraft manufacture were not just required, but sufficiently concentrated/few as to be susceptible to material impact.

For instance, sheet metal bending is a required input for aircraft manufacture... but it's not hard to replace most simple sheet metal bending tools. There are a lot of them. And they either are or can be scattered around the countryside easily. A campaign of destroying German aircraft manufacturing capability by taking away the ability to bend sheet metal is a losing proposition. You could destroy hundreds of press brakes and other basic tools and German industry could quickly replace them and/or just commandeer those used for other purposes. You'd be bombing for a very long time before you moved the final number - German aircraft production - at all. The same would be true for bombing rivet production, or the sewing machines used to stitch headrests and parachutes. Those things are all critical - but they are so numerous and readily-dispersed/-substituted that it is folly to attack them.

So, instead, the USAAF tried to identify the real "choke points" - the highly-constrained required inputs. Ball bearings, for example. Making aircraft (and tanks and trucks and modern artillery and a lot of other stuff) requires ball bearings. A lot of them. And ball bearings are apparently pretty hard to make. https://insights.globalspec.com/images/assets/523/4523/Bearing_Manufacturing_Process.jpg It's not something that can really be done as a cottage industry or dispersed very well. The machinery required is big and complex and very difficult to replace if it gets blown up. So the USAAF spent a lot of time (and lives) trying to destroy the ball bearing plants, which were mostly concentrated in one big industrial center (Schweinfurt).

This strategy didn't completely work, because there were sufficient stocks, and bombing of Germany was extremely difficult and costly... but at least it made some kind of sense. It's plausible that it could have ultimately worked, and, according to post-war statements by Albrecht Speer (German's wartime minister of armaments - basically the head of wartime industry for the Nazis), it almost did and would have if the USAAF had focused on it just a little harder.

In the U.S., guns aren't like ball bearing plants. They're not even like press brakes. They're about like sheet metal itself. You could never impact the U.S.'s ability to wage war by attempting to blow up all the sheet metal in the U.S., even if sheet metal is often used by the U.S. military and its tools. The idea that we're going to materially degrade the ability of criminals to get guns by targeting "the supply" is just farcical.

*The precursor to the U.S. Air Force before it was a separate branch.
 
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Maybe not a lie, but certainly a wild-ass guess.;)

I doubt anyone has a clue how many firearms or ammunition are in our nation.

I see it as more than "they" know and less than we'd like.

Where I grew up; other than a sales receipt, there wasn't any paperwork required to buy a firearm until after the 1968 GCA.
 
I just tried to estimate how much ammo that I have - not including components - and realized that I would have to resort to measure by cubeage or weight. After all, you can hold 1,000 rounds of .22lr in one hand easily.
Meanwhile, I find that I'm going to have to reinforce the floor under my ammo storage corner... .
 
The actual round count has got to be in the trillions, I just don't see how it couldn't be...

That number also doesn't take into account reloaders out there, or 80% lowers. Or the fact that serial numbers weren't mandated until the 1930s or 1940s.

Either way, this is great news! I heard that the amount of guns sold on black Friday alone was enough to arm the Marine Corps... The more guns the better I say!
 
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and with all the liberal go easy on crime attitude and the population our murder rate is fairly low.
 
I see it as more than "they" know and less than we'd like.

I certainly agree. But 1 shred of common sense or a calculator would tell anyone that 8 billion is ridiculously low. Like I said earlier. There are 19 million handgun carry permits. If they all have only 1 brick of 22 then we already blew past 10 billion. There are supposedly 5 million NRA members. 4 bricks each and your at 10 billion again. So why bother guessing if not even an educated guess? It wouldn't be wise to go throwing out how many rounds we have. I wouldn't say and I wouldn't expect anyone else to. But in the "post shortage" era, how many here honestly dont have at least 2k rounds total. Hell I've ordered my 22lr by the case many times.
As far as guns its anyones guess and i wouldnt say if, or how far that 425 million is . Many of the old single shots and handguns have been lost, burned, broke and discarded (and yes....believe it or not I'm sure there was an honest to god boating accident or two) . No one could ever have much more than a guess. But with ammo I'm 110% certain it's well over 8 billion and it's simply not even an educated guess. Just a dumb random number.
 
I think the gun number could actually be a little high, but probably pretty close.

The ammo number is most likely low, but much harder to guess than the firearms number as many more variables are unknown.

Also, of the people that I know that have guns and guns/CCW, most of them have less than 100rds unless maybe they are at the range, where they'll buy 100 and shoot 100 and then be done. They also have 1 gun per adult on average. I'd say for every owner that has at least 10 guns and 1k+ ammo, there's 5-10 that have 1 or 2 guns and 100 or less rounds of ammo. And for every one that has 20+ guns and 100k of ammo there's probably 5-10 that have 1 shared gun that has 5rds in it and no reloads.
 
brewer12345 said:How do guns get junked? I am assuming they don't just get tossed in the trash.

I had frame rail fail on an inexpensive handgun after years of use. I stripped all parts except the broken frame/receiver and damaged grip. The parts I mailed to Numrich Gun Parts and accepted their offer for the parts (they re-embursed me my postage). The broken useless frame and grip went in the trash, literally. To the dump with the eggshells, coffee grounds, empty cereal boxes and soup cans.

On the other hand, I have taken what I call pawnshop orphans (abused guns in the $50 -$80 range, an AR-7, Nylon 66, Marlin 60) and refurbed them as "stuck-in-the-house-in-winter-with-time-on-my-hands" projects.

All projections of number of guns currently in America (or capable of being restored to fuctional) are probably very, very low.

Ammo number. Hmm. Since the gun control rhetoric of the 1960s was often about restricting or banning or limiting or sin-taxing ammo, I made a point of stockpiling at least a five year supply of every caliber. If I were typical, their 8.1B estimate would be way low.


Guestimate the crime guns at 400,000 to 800,000 based on reported to estimated gun crimes per year, and make the unwarranted assumption* that each gun crime represents one gun.
Ask: What percentage of those guns get lost, stolen, ditched, broken, and need be replaced? The crime gun market could possibly be satisfied by theft, bribery, extortion from military and police sources, smuggled from overseas, or manufactured underground (like Australian motorcycle clubs make MAC-10s in their garage workshops). Crime control through over-regulation of legal guns is futile.

*(hint: ATF NIBIN found one gun used in sixteen armed robberies in one year, either a prolific robber, or a gun swapped among gang members)
 
423 million? A nonsensical and astronomic number. Get real.

The few guns we Americans have left are the those antiques and non-working weapons that weren't lost to the oceans, lakes, and rivers. Everyone but the authorities seem to understand this concept.
 
How do guns get junked?


I had frame rail fail on an inexpensive handgun after years of use.

Ive seen single shot shotguns and older rifles rusted or bent and destroyed. I have a colt police positive that was found under a porch thats a rusted pile. I have a clerk 1st revolver that's completely broke in half. A Philippine m16 training rifle in 22lr that is trash. A Hamilton double barrel 12 guage that was found in a barn that burned (over my fireplace) . All brought to me by folks who didn't want them. Should be scrapped but i throw them in a bin. Ive also seen 2 single shot shotguns blown up with pumpkin balls. I have no idea if they got fixed but I highly doubt it. Same with some Jennings/ lorcin/RG handguns I've seen broken. If they weren't fixed then they shouldn't count since they aren't really firearms anymore.
I also have a sig mosquito that the slide broke in half after many thousand rounds. Sig charges 55 dollar shipping on any gun over 3 years old to warranty. A very worn mosquito simply isn't worth the 55 dollars. I routinely see them like new for 100. So it will likely never be fixed unless I get one with a broke frame, which is unlikely.
 
The ammo number is most likely low, but much harder to guess than the firearms number as many more variables are unknown.
The article garbled that one. From other news outlets, 8.1 billion rounds appears to be the amount that was purchased last year alone, not the total stockpile.

That is down a bit from the peak of the ammo runs a few years ago; I saw estimates of 12-14 billion rounds produced in one of those years.
 
Maybe not a lie, but certainly a wild-ass guess.
It depends upon how thorough the journo was (as is, sadly, all too often the case), and the data set chosen.

Starting in about '86, NICS records were kept--not the transaction (that would violate 18 USC 922), but the result of the transaction (e.g. allow, deny, delay) could be summed, and has been.

Now, "we" understand the limitations on that dataset.--that "deny" can be appealed, and often is; that "delay" defaults to "issue" if no other action is taken, and so on. We also all know that not every NICS transaction equals a "sale"--we know that interstate transfers, pawn redemption, etc., also produce a NICS transaction. "We" also know that 14 States operate as POC, and handle the transactions internally, and not reported to Federal NICS per se.

So, "we" would only use NICS numbers with a lot of multipliers and conditionals to work out a calculus.
That's "us," we know (generally) better. Now, a journo whose experience is their nephew playing lazer tag might not be so rigorous.

The political climate since the 60s has ostracized firearm owners (a flagrant restriction on their 1st amendment rights). So, there is little reason to expect any sort of accuracy in self-reporting or in self-identification to be of very much help at all. (Although, a case could be made for collating those States with FOID cards, and comparing those to State population to get a measure of the number of firearms owners in the most restrictive States if only to give a baseline.)
 
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