More Guns, Fewer Gun Owners

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While there are more guns in American homes than ever before, there are fewer homes with guns in them.

What that means is that while the percent of Americans who owns guns has declined from about 50% to about 30% of the population over the course of the last 35 years, those who do own guns are now more likely to own more than one.

What's driving the decline in the percent of Americans that own guns?

• Immigration: Recent immigrants to the U.S. rarely come from gun cultures, generally live in urban areas, and rarely hunt.



• Urbanization and Suburbanization: The great move to urbanization that started in the 1920, and the trend to suburbanization that started in the 1950s, continues apace, and with it a decline in gun ownership among those who are more likely to entertain themselves at the movies than by plinking cans and rabbits along the railroad track.



• Changing Culture: We live in a Ninetendo and NetFlicks world in which time is at a premium and instant gratification is only a mouse or remote control away. Fewer young people are willing to spend money, time and energy outdoors, more and more have only a vague sense of where meat comes from, increasing numbers are vegetarian, and if any skills are in evidence at all, they are more likely to be in photoshop than marksmanship.



• The Loss of the Draft: Back when we had the draft and massive mobilizations for World Wars, more Americans were trained in how to own a gun and many came home with the civilan equivalents of Army rifles and pistols (if not their actual Army rifles and pistols). Today's Army is smaller in numbers, and today warriors are less likely to be fighting with weapons that could be used for deer hunting or home defense.

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To be clear, America has no shortage of guns.   In 2007, there were approximately 294 million guns in the U.S., including 106 million handguns, 105 million rifles, and 83 million shotguns. Since then, the number of guns in American hands has only increased.

Gun owners are, by and large, a very safe and law-abiding lot. In a country with over 294 million guns in circulation, only about 10,000 Americans a year are murdered with firearms, a number lower than the rate of suicide by gun.

So what's going on with all those guns if there are more of them than ever before and fewer and fewer are being used in the field and at ranges?

The short answer is that they are sitting around in closets, gun safes, and nighstands collecting dust.

These are guns as cultural touchstones and fetish, a role which weapons of every kind have shouldered well since man first knapped flint two million years ago.

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