WS>>DOJ study “Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership
and Use of Firearms”

MENU TITLE: Guns in America: National Survey on Private
Ownership and Use of Firearms.

Series: NIJ Research in Brief
Published: May 1997
20 pages
41,893 bytes

National Institute of Justice
Research in Brief

Jeremy Travis, Director
May 1997

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Issues and Findings

Discussed in this Brief: Results of a nationally repre-
sentative telephone survey (1994) on private ownership and
use of firearms by American adults. The survey provides
the most complete data available on the private stock of
firearms in the United States.

Key issues: With nearly 200 million guns in private
hands, firearms have an important impact on the quality of
life in America. What is the size and composition of the
Nation’s private gun inventory? What are the methods of, and
reasons for, acquiring firearms? How are firearms stored?
How frequently are guns used against criminal attackers?

Key findings: The survey data and analysis yielded the
following results:

* In 1994, 44 million Americans owned 192 million fire-
arms, 65 million of which were handguns. Although
there were enough guns to have provided every U.S.
adult with one, only 25 percent of adults actually
owned firearms; 74 percent of gun owners possessed two
or more.

* The proportion of American households that keep fire-
arms appears to be declining.

* Sixty-eight percent of handgun owners also possessed at
least one rifle or shotgun.

* Gun ownership was highest among middle-aged, college-
educated people of rural small-town America. Whites
were substantially more likely to own guns than blacks,
and blacks more likely than Hispanics.

* The most common motivation for owning firearms was
recreation. Forty-six percent possessed a gun primari-
ly for protection against crime.

* There were 13.7 million firearm transactions in 1993-
1994, including 6.5 million handguns. About 60 percent
of gun acquisitions involved federally licensed deal-
ers.

* About 211,000 handguns and 382,000 long guns were
stolen in noncommercial thefts in 1994.

* Slightly more than half of all privately owned firearms
were stored unlocked; 16 percent of firearms were
stored unlocked and loaded.

* In 1994, about 14 million adults (approximately one-
third of gun owners) at least once carried a firearm in
their vehicles or on their person for protection.

* Evidence suggests that this survey and others like it
overestimate the frequency with which firearms were
used by private citizens to defend against criminal
attack.

Target audience: Criminal justice and public health
researchers and practitioners. Legislators and policymakers
at all levels of government.

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Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership
and Use of Firearms

by Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig

The United States is unique among wealthy nations in
its vast private inventory of firearms. The nearly 200
million guns in private hands are used in part for recrea-
tion, mostly hunting and target shooting. But what en-
genders the most public controversy over firearms is their
use against people during either the commission of or de-
fense against crime.

Gun advocates regard firearms as an important crime
deterrent and source of protection, while control advocates
denounce guns for the damage they do in the hands of crimi-
nals. What both groups can agree on is that widespread
ownership of firearms has an important impact on the quality
of life in America.

To learn more about the role of firearms, the National
Institute of Justice (NIJ) sponsored– through a grant to
the Police Foundation–a nationally representative telephone
survey in 1994 on private ownership and use of firearms by
American adults (see “Firearms Survey Methodology”). This
Research in Brief reports some of the survey’s more import-
ant findings, including the following:

* Size, composition, and ownership of the Nation’s pri-
vate gun inventory.

* Methods of, and reasons for, firearms acquisition.

* Storage and carrying of guns.

* Defensive use of firearms against criminal attackers.
Gun ownership

Prevalence. According to conventional wisdom, about
half of American households own guns, a belief affirmed by a
long series of national polls dating back to 1959.[1] Yet
data from the 1994 telephone survey (National Survey of
Private Ownership of Firearms–NSPOF) indicate that just 35
percent (plus or minus 1.3 percent) of households own guns.
This estimate may be somewhat off the mark but not by much.
Conventional wisdom appears out of date.

The best available survey series on gun ownership is
the General Social Survey (GSS), conducted by the National
Opinion Research Center. Its estimates have been lower than
some others, in the range of 40 to 43 percent during the
1990s. In particular, the GSS estimate for 1994 was just 41
percent. Another telephone survey in 1994 produced a still
lower estimate for gun ownership, 38 percent of
households.[2]

Concentration. Despite enough guns in private hands to
provide every adult in America with one, only one-quarter of
adults actually own firearms. Those who have one gun usual-
ly have several: 74 percent possessed two or more in 1994.

Gun ownership is quite concentrated but not more so
than for other durable goods. In marketing circles, the
“80/20 rule” suggests that the top fifth of all consumers of
a product typically account for four-fifths of all purchases
by value. NSPOF data indicate that the top 20 percent of
firearm owners possessed 55 percent of privately owned
firearms.[3] Of gun owners in 1994, 10 million individuals
owned 105 million guns, while the remaining 87 million guns
were dispersed among 34 million other owners.

Persons owning several guns tended to have varied
collections, including rifles, shotguns, and handguns.[4] We
find that 68 percent of handgun owners also owned at least
one rifle or shotgun, suggesting some experience and inter-
est in the sporting uses of guns. Exhibit 1 provides addi-
tional data on the composition of private gun collections.

Demographic patterns. In 1994 gun ownership was far
from uniformly distributed across the population, as is
evident from exhibit 2. Most striking is the gender gap: 42
percent of men but just 9 percent of women owned guns at the
time of NSPOF. (The gap is even wider when the focus is on
whether the respondent ever owned a gun.) With respect to
race, whites were substantially more likely to own guns than
blacks (27 versus 16 percent), and blacks more likely than
Hispanics (16 versus 11 percent). But for handguns alone,
the ownership rates among blacks and whites were nearly
equal (13.1 versus 16.5 percent).

Gun ownership (and handgun ownership) was highest among
middle-aged,[5] college-educated people of rural and small-
town America. But one of the best predictors of gun owner-
ship was the presence of firearms in the respondent’s child-
hood home. People whose parents possessed guns were three
times as likely as others to own one themselves. In fact,
80 percent of all current gun owners reported that their
parents kept a firearm in the home.

Motivations. The most common motivation for owning
firearms was recreation. As shown in exhibit 3, about 35
percent of gun owners (15 million people, 8 percent of the
adult public) hunted in 1994, and about an equal percentage
engaged in sport shooting other than hunting. Given the
substantial overlap between the two groups, about half (23
million) of the Nation’s 44 million gun owners participated
in a gun sport during 1994. Of those who owned only
handguns in 1994, 40 percent used them recreationally,
almost entirely for sport shooting other than hunting.

Another reason cited for firearm ownership was self-
protection. Overall, 46 percent of gun owners possessed
firearms (usually handguns) primarily for protection against
crime (41 percent for males; 67 percent for females).
Almost three-quarters of those who owned only handguns kept
them primarily for self-protection. Of course, some people
seek the protection of a gun because they may be dispropor-
tionately likely to lead risky lives or associate with
violent people.[6] Those who had been arrested for nontraf-
fic offenses were more likely to own firearms (37 percent
compared to 25 percent in the general population).

But most persons do not own guns, and the NSPOF includ-
ed several items to find out why. In 1994, about two-thirds
of gunless adults were actively opposed to having guns in
their homes because they viewed guns as dangerous,
“immoral,” or otherwise objectionable. The remaining one-
third were at least open to the possibility of obtaining
firearms and might do so if their financial condition or
motivation became stronger. For many, the needed motivation
may have come from an increased concern about crime: nearly
5 percent of respondents reported that they planned to
obtain a gun for protection against crime within a year.

The stock of guns in private hands

The NSPOF-based estimate for the total number of pri-
vately owned firearms is 192 million: 65 million handguns,
70 million rifles, 49 million shotguns, and 8 million other
long guns (exhibit 4). Of the handguns, 48 percent were
revolvers, 40 percent semiautomatics, and 12 percent were
reported as “some other type of handgun” by respondents.

The millions of guns in private hands included every-
thing from cheap .22-caliber “snubbies” to finely made high-
powered rifles worth thousands of dollars. The variety of
firearm designs reflects the multiplicity of uses for which
they are intended and also influences the weapons’ capaci-
ties for harm. Firearm regulations place special restric-
tions on commerce in short-barreled guns (because they are
easily concealed and disproportionately used in crime) and
on large-capacity magazines.

From our analysis, we find that the magazine capacity
of one-fifth of all handguns was 10 or more rounds (exhibit
4B). The barrel of about one in six handguns was 3 inches
or shorter (exhibit 4C).[7] Comparing handguns acquired in
1993 or 1994 with those acquired prior to 1993 permitted
examination of changes in the demand for different kinds of
handguns over time. Handguns acquired more recently were
more likely to have large magazine capacities (37.8 versus
14.1 percent held 10 or more rounds) and were less likely to
be of small caliber, defined as .32 or under (28.6 versus 38
percent). (See exhibit 4D.)

Transactions

Acquisitions. To date, little information has been
available about gun flows in the United States. The poten-
tial importance of this information is its use in evaluating
regulation of firearms commerce. For example, the Gun Con-
trol Act of 1968 restricts interstate shipments to federally
licensed firearm dealers (FFLs), who in turn are required to
follow laws regulating retail transfers. Transactions not
involving FFLs, known as the “secondary market,” typically
do not require recordkeeping and are exempt from the Federal
requirement (for handguns) of a waiting period and criminal
record check.[8] Moreover, secondary market transactions are
not subject to regulatory oversight. Thus, knowing the
volume of informal transfers that do or do not involve FFLs
would be useful.

The average firearm in circulation in 1994 was acquired
by its present owner in 1981, with the average handgun
having been acquired in 1983. Persons owning handguns in
1994 acquired about 28 percent of them in 1993-1994, com-
pared with 20 percent of long guns. An estimated 13.7 mil-
lion transactions occurred during 1993-1994, including 6.5
million involving handguns. Sixty percent of long guns and
68 percent of handguns were new at the time of acquisition
by their 1994 owners during the 1993-1994 period.

How do people typically acquire firearms? As shown in
exhibit 5, almost all guns acquired during 1993 and 1994
were either purchased by the respondent (73 percent) or
received as a gift (19 percent). The remaining 8 percent
were obtained through inheritance, a swap of some kind, or
other means.

The predominant sources of guns, unsurprisingly, were
stores (60 percent). Other important sources included
family members and acquaintances. The 3 percent of respond-
ents who indicated that they obtained guns “through the
mail” (which is illegal for all but FFLs) may have misremem-
bered or may have referred to a mail-order purchase arranged
through an FFL.

The average gun obtained in 1993 and 1994 was worth
$392 at the time of transfer, with little difference between
handguns and long guns. Fewer than 1 in 20 guns acquired
during those 2 years were valued at less than $100.

Fifty-seven percent of firearms were obtained from
stores, pawnshops, or other sources that the respondents
were certain to have been federally licensed firearm deal-
ers. Some respondents were not sure about whether the
source was an FFL. Others indicated that the source was an
FFL but then reported that the transaction was a trade
rather than a cash sale or that the source was an acquaint-
ance or family member. If those cases are included, the
proportion increases to 64 percent.

We conclude that approximately 60 percent of gun acqui-
sitions involved an FFL and hence were subject to Federal
regulations on such matters as out-of-State sales, criminal
history checks, and recordkeeping. A somewhat higher per-
centage of handgun acquisitions than long gun acquisitions
involved FFLs. The remaining acquisitions, amounting to
about 2 million per year, were off-the-books transfers in
the secondary market.

Thefts. A major theme highlighted in a 1986 survey of
incarcerated felons was that theft was an important means of
obtaining firearms for those with criminal intentions: 32
percent of surveyed felons had stolen their most recently
acquired handgun.[9]

Based on the NSPOF, an estimated 0.9 percent of all
gun-owning households (269,000) experienced the theft of one
or more firearms during 1994. About 211,000 handguns and
382,000 long guns were stolen in noncommercial thefts that
year, for a total of 593,000 stolen firearms. Those esti-
mates are subject to considerable sampling error but are
consistent with earlier estimates of about half a million
guns stolen annually.[10]

Gun safety

Gun storage. Of 1,356 accidental deaths by gunshot in
1994, 185 involved children 14 years old and younger.[11]
For each such fatality, there are several accidental shoot-
ings that cause serious injury. Guns were also the means of
destruction in 19,590 suicides, 210 involving children 14 or
younger. For these reasons, safe handling and storage of
firearms have attracted the attention of the public health
community.

We found that 20 percent of all gun-owning households
had an unlocked, loaded gun in the home at the time of the
survey. This figure was substantially higher among handgun-
owning households than among households with long guns
only–30 percent versus 7 percent.

Slightly more than half of firearms of either type were
stored unlocked, but handguns were much more likely to be
loaded. Reflecting their predominant use in self-defense,
handguns were likely to be stored in bedrooms or vehicles of
owners or even on their person, while most long guns were
kept in gun closets or other out-of-the-way places (exhibit
6).

Although training programs usually include suggestions
on how to store guns safely, it does not appear that
trainees are paying attention. More than half (56 percent)
of owners had received some form of “formal” training from
the military, law enforcement, National Rifle Association,
National Safety Council, or other source. As a group,
owners who received such training were no less likely than
others to keep guns loaded and unlocked. This surprising
result is consistent with other recent studies.[12]

However, a more detailed analysis of NSPOF data that
examined the effects of different formal training programs
separately indicated one exception: training programs such
as those offered by local affiliates of the National Safety
Council were associated with a significant reduction in the
likelihood of keeping a gun unlocked and loaded. This
result speaks well of that training, the trainees, or both.