National Gun Group Estimates Americans Own Over a Combined 500 Million Firearms
If guns were votes, America would already be a landslide.
A new estimate from a Second Amendment group suggested that Americans collectively own more than 500 million firearms, a staggering figure that underscores just how deeply embedded gun ownership remains in the national fabric — despite years of political pressure, media panic, and legislative headwinds aimed at shrinking it.
According to estimates analyzed by the Firearm Industry Trade Association, also known as the NSSF, gun ownership is absolutely thriving in the Land of the Free.
The estimate, citing data collected from 1990 to 2023, claimed that Americans collectively owned an astounding 506.1 million firearms.
Data from the Pew Research Center adds some fascinating context to these staggering figures.
According to Pew’s 2023 research, nearly one-third of all U.S. adults said that they owned a gun.
A further breakdown of that data showed that “45% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say they personally own a gun, compared with 20% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.”
By sex, the breakdown indicated about 40 percent of men own a gun, compared to 25 percent of women.
Furthermore, when Pew broke down its findings by race, “38% of White Americans own a gun, compared with smaller shares of Black (24%), Hispanic (20%) and Asian (10%) Americans.”
Roughly seven in 10 gun owners say personal protection is a primary motivation for owning a firearm, with 72 percent citing it as a major reason.
That finding reinforces the idea that self-defense — not recreation or employment — is the dominant driver behind gun ownership in the United States.
Far fewer gun owners point to other motivations.
About 32 percent say hunting is a major reason they own a gun, while 30 percent cite sport or target shooting.
Smaller shares say firearms are part of a personal collection (15 percent) or are necessary for their job (7 percent), further highlighting how secondary those purposes are compared to personal safety.
Despite that emphasis on personal safety, the NSSF also had one particularly curious finding: gun manufacturing had actually dipped.
The NSSF found that almost 8.5 million guns were manufactured in 2023, which represents a 15.4 percent decrease from the year prior.
Firearm availability in the United States reached significant levels in 2023, with more than 13.5 million guns entering the domestic market.
That figure reflects the combined number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. and imported from abroad, after accounting for exports sent overseas.
Handguns made up the clear majority of those firearms, totaling 8.2 million units. Rifles followed at 3.9 million while shotguns accounted for 1.5 million, rounding out the overall breakdown of weapons available to American consumers that year.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
