There is no way of knowing the actual number of privately owned guns in the United States. Each state has its own system of counting and classifying guns. Some states do not require registration of guns, and unregistered guns cannot be included in an official count. The result is that there can only be estimates of the total number of guns that American citizens possess. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tob…
Table 2.1 shows the number of firearms manufactured in the United States from 1994 through 2000. Firearms manufacturing represents a very small segment of U.S. manufacturing. Annual firearms manufacturing reached a peak in 1994 with more than five million weapons, half of which were handguns (pistols and revolvers). After that, manufacturing declined each year until 1999, when it rose slightly, th…
The United States is a big importer of foreign guns. Table 2.3 illustrates a 56% increase in gun imports for the U.S. civilian market from 1986 to 2000. According to the 1968 Gun Control Act, imported firearms must "be generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes, excluding surplus military firearms." Data about gun imports since 1899 co…
Table 2.5 shows the number of firearms exported by the United States in 1998, 1999, and 2000. Exports had reached an all-time high in 1995 (438,809), including a record number of pistols and revolvers (229,603). After 1995, exports declined. In 2000 the United States exported 173,214 guns, a decrease of 18% from the 1998 figure (212,628) and a decrease of 27% from 1999 (238,545). The mix of export…
The 1986 Firearms Owners' Protection Act (PL 99-308, revised in PL 99-360) banned the transfer or possession of machine guns made after May 19, 1986. The ATF was then flooded with 80,000 applications for licenses to TABLE 2.5 sell or buy automatic firearms before the cut-off date. In 1989 the ATF issued an order permanently banning the importation of forty-three models of semiautomatic…
According to a 1994 survey, the National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms, 35% of American households owned guns, which means that an estimated forty-four million Americans owned nearly two hundred million guns, enough to provide every adult in the United States with one gun at that time. However, only 25% of adults actually owned a gun, because a majority of gun owners possessed tw…
Commentators have hotly debated the question of whether having a gun in the home will more likely result in the death of a criminal intruder or in the death of the homeowner or a family member. Although it is now more than a decade old, one of the most frequently cited studies addressing this topic is "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home" (New England Journal of M…
In "Who Owns Guns? Criminals, Victims, and the Culture of Violence" (American Economic Review, vol. 88, no. 2, May 1998), Edward L. Glaeser and Spencer Glendon reported their findings on the characteristics of gun owners. They concluded that gun owners are most likely to be: TABLE 2.8 Characteristics of gun owners are also collected by the National Opinion Research Center in the…
Participants in the 1997–98 National Gun Policy Survey (Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, 1998) who did not personally own a gun were asked for reasons for why they did not own a firearm. The major reason, given by 35%, was a lack of interest in having a gun. Other reasons included opposition to guns on ethical grounds, having children in the house, and feeli…
There is no way of knowing how many women own guns. Depending on who does the reporting, women are said to be either overwhelmingly in support of gun control or buying guns in record numbers. Reports of women's increasing interest in guns have come from gun manufacturers, the media, and pro-gun lobbying organizations like the NRA and Gun Owners of America. Beginning in the late 1980s, vario…
Some national retailers are getting out of the firearms business. By early 1996 Sears, JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, and Target had all stopped selling firearms because of the lack of profitability, concern over lawsuits, and the difficulties involved in keeping track of the various local, state, and federal laws. Many of the stores removed firearms from their shelves because management believed tha…
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