Gun Ownership in America – Number of Guns Owned by State

As we pointed out in our article on gun safety in the home, America has a long history of firearms ownership that began well before the USA was founded. The right of the people to keep and bear arms was formalized in the Bill of Rights and has survived multiple challenges in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). The Court has held that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms for certain purposes, including—at the very least—self-defense in the home. SCOTUS has also determined that the right to bear arms is a fundamental right.

As Federal firearms laws change and states continue to modify their gun regulations, it can be interesting to look at the available data on gun ownership by state and see if there may be any correlation between more restrictive laws and the number of firearms owned when adjusted for population.

However, attempting to obtain accurate information regarding the number of guns owned on a state-by-state basis is extremely problematic. We’ll go into additional detail below, but the fundamental difficulty lies in the fact that most states don’t require firearms registration, though some more restrictive cities and counties do. Reliable nationwide firearms ownership data simply isn’t available, despite many media outlets’ reports claiming their information is accurate. Gun ownership survey data is voluntary and many law-abiding firearms owners feel it’s nobody’s business whether they own firearms or not, so they aren’t likely to volunteer accurate information to a random survey administrator. Since accurate data on the total number of guns owned by state (and/or the ratio of state population to firearms ownership) is not reliably available, we can instead look at the FBI’s data on annual firearm sale background checks to have some idea of the trends.

For the purposes of the graph below, we have combined the FBI’s data by state for Handgun, Long Gun, Other, and Multiple NICS background checks. Unlike some other reports, we are not tweaking/adjusting the reported numbers for Handguns/Long guns or Multiples but rather reporting the data as the FBI presents it (see discussion below the table for more information). We are also not including Private Sale NICS checks since the vast majority of private sales deal with firearms that are already in the state (versus new firearm sales via FFL dealers), and states like Illinois and California require NICS checks for private sales, but most states don’t.

Next, we used the most recent available complete year’s NICS data compared to the 2020 Census population information by state to determine an estimated number of firearms sold per 10,000 adult residents (according to the Census, an adult is a person 18 years or older). We are including the District of Columbia and omitting Hawaii due to insufficient data available in the report.

Estimated firearms sales (NICS background checks) per state

*For better view of table on mobile, turn phone to landscape view.  

Also, the total estimated firearm purchase numbers may be incorrectly low in states where a Permit Check is permitted in place of an NICS Handgun Check. As noted in the FBI’s report, Some states may reflect lower-than-expected numbers for handgun checks based on varying state laws pertaining to handgun permits. Since the permit check is done in place of the NICS check in most of the affected states, the low handgun statistics are often balanced out by a higher number of handgun permit checks.

However, since some states have these Permit Check procedures in place and some don’t, in our view, it would be disingenuous to attempt to combine or fabricate a calculation to account for this discrepancy. We will simply acknowledge that the available data is inherently incomplete, and the information we have provided represents our best efforts at making an intelligent guesstimate based on the FBI’s numbers without fully accounting for all 50 states’ variables.

Large and ostensibly more credible news and data sources are also impacted by the same lack of available information, though they present their numbers as factual. CBS incorrectly reports that the FBI’s published data includes ONLY NFA firearms and items. This kind of misunderstanding of firearms statistics or terminology is extremely common in the media. CBS also admits that Most US firearms go unregistered, so numbers are hard to come by.

Additionally, a 2020 Rand report on the number of adults living with at least one firearm supposedly uses statistical data, but if you read their methodology, they began with voluntary firearm ownership survey data, then used a small-area estimation technique to create state-level ownership estimates for each of 51 nationally representative surveys assessing household firearm ownership rates. They then used structural equation modeling to combine these survey-based estimates with administrative data on firearm suicides, hunting licenses, [and] subscriptions to Guns & Ammo magazine.

Not exactly iron-clad data, folks. Correlating firearms ownership with Guns & Ammo magazine subscriptions is akin to correlating yacht ownership numbers with subscriptions to Yachting magazine.

Relying on survey data is already incorrect or at least incomplete because, as we pointed out above, asking firearms owners to volunteer information about their guns to a stranger is not likely to produce anything close to an accurate picture of the real numbers.

Also, before the Gun Control Act of 1968, non-NFA firearms (almost all firearms) could be legally sold by mail order or directly from local retailers without any special paperwork, forms, or background checks. Many millions of firearms were sold before this period, and when properly maintained, they lasted for centuries. They don’t evaporate even when they are banned or restricted.

Additionally, the NICS background check data doesn’t accurately provide a complete picture of the number of firearms in a particular state. There are several situations where even recent, new firearms purchases may not be reflected in a state’s NICS numbers, such as:

• Purchasing firearms in one state and then moving to another
• Giving a firearm to a friend or relative (where legal) and that person then moving to another state or locality where firearms registration is not required.
• Private sales between law-abiding citizens of the same state (no FFL involvement required in most states), where the purchaser may then legally change residence to another state

These are just some examples that demonstrate why the FBI’s NICS background check statistics don’t give a complete picture of the number of firearms owned by residents of any particular state.

By far the largest determining factors on the huge upswing in total firearms sales, particularly since 2020, are political factors, threats of nationwide gun bans, social unrest, and economic uncertainty. All of these significantly add to firearm sales. As an example, the turmoil and unrest caused by the pandemic starting in 2020 led to a historical high in estimated new firearms purchases, at over 22.5 million nationwide in that year alone. This represented approximately a 64% increase over the prior year’s estimated sales and the largest annual increase in firearms background checks (estimated sales) in 20 years.

Additionally, there has been a growing trend in the firearms world over the past few years: more women are purchasing a gun for the first time. More women are becoming interested in shooting sports and taking responsibility for their personal defense, and this has impacted firearms ownership rates, particularly within this demographic.

State laws that are more restrictive on NFA items, handguns, or firearms in general also have a significant impact on the number of new firearms purchases. Nearly every state considered to have very restrictive firearms laws has a concomitantly low per-capita number of firearm background checks (and estimated purchases) per year. Obviously, states where the ownership of NFA items such as machine guns, short-barreled rifles, and suppressors has been banned outright report little to no NICS checks for those items, and we are assuming those few that crop up are likely for security forces, members of the military, or law enforcement that are allowed by state law to apply for the federal tax stamps necessary to own these items for their employment or their own use.

In places such as Oregon, where lawmakers have recently enacted much more restrictive regulations than in previous decades, numbers can temporarily increase as citizens scramble to purchase firearms that will be illegal to purchase in the future. This is one reason Oregon’s 2022 per capita numbers (the most recent complete year data available from the FBI) are extremely high and why we expect to see Washington’s numbers shoot up (pardon the pun) in the coming year’s data, as that state has joined the group of states that have enacted severely restricted firearms ownership laws over the past couple of years. However, after the laws go into full effect, we expect the data from these states will exhibit a dramatic decline in the number of NICS requests per capita compared to less-restrictive states.

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