Read some survey that around the year 2000, the number of handguns in the US passed the number of long guns (rifles/shotguns). Looking at my inventory,
I have 125% more long guns than handguns, so I have a long way to go to catch up to the average norm for gun owners. Now I recognize that, as members of a gun board, we are not a statistical cross section of the population. I'm sure 99% of us are members of the super owner group. So even though the ratio of my collection is out of balance, the number of guns I own tip the scale back for me. Anyway, I dug up some stats and conflated them since many of them are from different years, from around 2021 through 2023, and some going back to 2009, so take them for what they are worth.
The percentage of adult Americans that own at least one gun is 32%. With 261,744,000 American Adults in 2023 equates to
83,758,080 gun owners in America.
In 2023, there were an estimated 466,000,000 firearms in the U.S. Using estimates from 2009 and adding in ATF estimates of manufactured firearms from 2010 to 2022, there are an estimated 178,000,000 handguns, 150,000,000 rifles, 96,000,000 shotguns and, I'll say, 42,000,000 misc. firearms, to make 466,000,000 (monkey math ensues). Sooo....
In 2021, 83% of gun owners owned a handgun which equates to 69,519,206 Americans own a hand gun. An average of
2.56 handguns per handgun owner (I will assume the 0.56 handgun is parts for now
)
In 2021, 69% of gun owners owned a rifle which equates to 57,793,075 Americans own a rifle. An average of
2.6 rifles per rifle owner.
In 2021, 58.4% of gun owners owned a shot gun, which equates to 48,914,718 Americans own a shotgun. An average of
1.96 shotguns per shotgun owner.
50% owned 87% of the guns, or 41,879,040 gun owners owned 405,420,000. An average of
9.68 guns for the upper 50% of owners. I'm looking good here.
23% owned 66% of the guns, or 19,264,360 gun owners owned 307,560,000. An average of
15.97 guns for the upper 23% of owners. I'm looking good here, too.
So, I'm above average on overall numbers, but the average gun owner has more handguns than rifles. Not sure I can settle for less than average in that regard. I need to buy 12 handguns to get my ratio close to the
1.2:1 handgun to rifle ratio that America has achieved. Please don't ask me to cite my sources as it was a hodge podge of Google searching and I didn't write down the links. It's all monkey math anyway.
My "list" currently has 8 handguns at the top, which will help with my handgun to long gun ratio. I've run out of room in my safe for rifles, and handguns just seem to make sense right now, regardless of my ratio. I can't argue "need" as functional tools as I have all I "need", but I guess I can come up with some more excuses. (10mm is good for bear defense, right?
)
Are you below average?
Do you need to buy more handguns, or have you properly allocated your resources over time? Where are you lacking to be statistically adequate?