Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
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Gun Violence Guns in America
Overview
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PROBLEM: The U.S. has weak federal gun laws and a patchwork of state laws which make it easy for dangerous people to get their hands on guns.  Bringing a gun into the home raises the risk of homicide, suicide, and unintentional shootings.

DID YOU KNOW? The United States has millions of guns in civilian hands.

  • The U.S. has an estimated 283 million guns in civilian hands (Hepburn, p. 18). 

  • Each year, about 4 to 7 million new firearms are manufactured for sale in the United States (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), 2012, pp. 1, 3, 5).

  • An estimated 2 million secondhand firearms are sold each year as well (ATF, 2000, p. 1).

  • In 2009, police recovered at least 239,883 guns in connection with crime (Brady Center, 2010).

  • Gun owners throw away an estimated 36,000 guns every year (Police Foundation, p. 30).

DID YOU KNOW? Household gun ownership has been declining since the 1970s.

  • The percentage of American households with a gun has been steadily declining over time, (from a high of 54 percent in 1977 to 32 percent in 2010) (Smith, 2008 and Violence Policy Center, 2011).

  • Gun ownership is highly concentrated.  Approximately 20 percent of gun owners own 65 percent of the nation's guns (Hepburn, p. 16).

  • Household gun ownership may be declining even though millions of guns are sold each year in part because gun owners are adding more guns to their collections. The average number of guns per owner has increased from 4.1 in 1994 to 6.9 in 2004 (Hepburn, p. 18).

  • Approximately one-quarter of U.S. adults owns a gun (Cook, p. 268).

  • Household gun ownership levels vary greatly by state, from 60 percent in Wyoming to 9 percent in Hawaii (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001).

DID YOU KNOW? Thousands of guns sold by gun dealers are recovered in crime a short time after their original sale. 

  • A short “time-to-crime” (within 3 years) is regarded by ATF as a strong indicator that a gun has been trafficked (ATF, p. 22).

  • In 2007, roughly one-third of crime guns recovered by police and traced (41,178) had been purchased at a gun dealer within the past 3 years (Brady Center, 2008).

  • Five percent (7,276) had been purchased from a gun dealer just 3 months before recovery in connection with crime (Brady Center, 2008).

DID YOU KNOW?   Where there are more guns, there are more gun deaths.

  • Higher household gun ownership correlates with higher rates of homicides, suicides, and unintentional shootings (Harvard Injury Control Center).

  • Every time a gun injures or kills in self-defense, it is used:
    • 11 times for completed and attempted suicides (Kellermann, 1998, p. 263).
    • 7 times in criminal assaults and homicides, and
    • 4 times in unintentional shooting deaths or injuries. 

SOLUTION: Without stronger, sensible gun laws, thousands upon thousands of people will continue to die and be injured needlessly each year.  The Brady Campaign fights for sensible gun laws to protect you, your family, and your community.

Sources

Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 6-2010, based on data from Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, ATF Firearms Trace Data Reports 2009, accessed at: http://www.atf.gov/statistics/

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Commerce in Firearms in the United States, Washington, DC: Department of the Treasury, February 2000, and Gordon Hawkins, Crime is not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Firearms Commerce in the United States, Annual Statistical Update, 2012, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, BATFE, 2012. Calculations by Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 11/21/2012

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, accessed 10-01-2009

Cook, Philip J., Wendy Cukier, and Keith Krause, ”The Illicit Firearms Trade in North America,” Criminology and Criminal Justice 9(3) (2009):265-286

Karp, Aaron, Small Arms Survey: Guns and the City, Geneva, Switzerland: Graduate Institute of International Studies, 2007

Harvard Injury Control Center, Firearm Research: Guns and Death, available at: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html, accessed 5/19/2009

Hepburn, L., Miller, M., Hemenway, D., “The U. S. Gun Stock: Results from the 2004 National Firearms Survey,” Injury Prevention 13 (2007): 15-19.  The number of guns in the home is estimated via telephone survey research.  We don't register guns in the United States, so it is not possible to know for sure how many guns exist.

Kellermann, Arthur L.MD, MPH, et al, “Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home,” Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection, and Critical Care 45 (1998): 263-67.

National Institute of Justice, “Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms,” Research in Brief, May 1997, NCJ 165476

Pierce, Glenn, et al, The Characteristics and Dynamics of Crime Gun Markets: Implications for Supply-Side Focused Enforcement Strategies, Final Report to the National Institute of Justice, September 11, 2003

Police Foundation, Guns in America: Results of a Comprehensive National Survey on Firearms Ownership and Use, Washington, DC: The Police Foundation (1996) We don't register guns in the United States, so it is not possible to know for sure how many guns exist.

Smith, Tom, Data from the General Social Survey, 2008, University of Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, personal communication, on file with the Brady Center, 2009

Violence Policy Center, A Shrinking Minority: The Continuing Decline of Gun Ownership in America, Washington, DC, April 2011
Studies and Reports