An often unspoken strength of American gun rights is how little we know about the American gun owner. The NRA has long, and very successfully, advocated for privacy. This is because gun-owner lists in many parts of the world have led to confiscation. We don’t need the government knowing who chooses to utilize this right. Indeed, as California’s officials have illustrated, we don’t want officials who don’t trust U.S. citizens with their freedom to discriminate against armed citizens or to try to publicly shame them. We also don’t want criminals to be able to look at a list of who is armed—well, non-gun owners should particularly want this not to happen.
All of these and other reasons make surveys of gun ownership—if such studies are honestly undertaken (hardly a given)—interesting and, in a way, important, as implied political strength does influence how politicians vote.
With that in mind, here are 10 things about American gun ownership that are interesting to know.
1. The most-popular guns in America are semi-automatic: According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), gun manufacturers produced over 13.4 million firearms domestically in 2022, which was down slightly from the pandemic high of 13.8 million firearms in 2021, considerably more than 2020’s 11 million and nearly double the 7 million produced in 2019. By just crunching the number of pistols (semi-automatics) that were made for sale in America or that were imported into the U.S., it is clear that this action type is the most popular, representing more than 53% of all manufactured and imported firearms in 2020, for example. (The ATF’s report on imports currently only provides data through 2020.)
2. Most guns sold in America are made in America: This statistic can be determined by using the ATF’s published data on guns manufactured in America (minus exports) and the number of guns imported into America in any given year. The percentage fluctuates with the market, but well over half of the guns sold in America are made in America in any given year.
3. As of 2022, there were 52,910 “Type 1” Federal Firearm Licensees in the U.S.: This number is from the ATF. It basically accounts for the number of licenses the ATF has issued to gun stores and gunsmiths to work on and sell non-NFA firearms (suppressors are still NFA-regulated devices). There are other types of licenses issued by the ATF. The ambiguity in this licensing scheme has made various claims possible; for example, the gun-control group Everytown claims there are 78,000 gun stores in the U.S. which they claim is “more than the number of McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and Wendy’s locations combined.” If only that were true.
4. American citizens own over 393 million guns: This isn’t really a statistic. It is, at best, a guess. It is from the Small Arms Survey, a government-funded and very ideological group that uses “statistics” to propagate its preferred policies. This internationally funded organization used, or attempted to use, this statistic to shame the U.S., but most armed citizens in this country no doubt thought cool when they saw this statistical claim.
5. The state with the most FFLs is Texas: No surprise here, and not all FFLs are gun stores, but with over 10,000 as of 2020, according to the ATF, the Lone Star State had the most.
6. Excise taxes on guns and ammo pay for conservation: Being a taxpayer used to be something citizens boasted about—not because they wanted to pay more, but because they were contributing. This sentiment has become more complicated as government has grown and as the tax code has ballooned to about 75,000 pages (including guidelines), but it is worth knowing that gun-and-ammo makers and consumers pay a lot of excise taxes that are earmarked for conservation programs, public shooting facilities and more. Section 4181 of the Internal Revenue Code imposes a 10% excise tax on the manufacturer’s price for pistols and revolvers and an 11% tax on other firearms, cartridges and shells. This added up to over $1 billion in 2022 alone.
7. The number of crimes armed citizens stop is likely over 1.6 million per year: Surveys have put this number much higher and somewhat lower, but this is the latest research from William English, an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, who supervised the 2021 National Firearms Survey. Data from the survey of 54,000 American adults estimated that citizens use their guns defensively about 1.67 million times annually; and, indeed, the survey found that “in most defensive incidents (81.9%) no shot was fired.”
8. The votes for Second Amendment freedom often don’t match the “polls”: It is important to note that elections are better indicators of public sentiment than the polls. Gallup, for example, keeps pushing the “fact” that a majority of the voting public wants more gun control. But when a “universal” background-checks measure, which was supposedly polling with overwhelming support, was put before the voters of Maine in 2016, it failed. In 2024, the Harris-Walz ticket claimed it was on the side of public opinion in supporting various forms of gun control. In the end, voters elected the unabashedly pro-gun candidate Donald Trump, as well as pro-freedom majorities in both houses of Congress.
9. The number of gun owners (including many new gun owners) in the U.S. exceeds 100 million: Like the number of guns, we can’t and don’t want to know a more-precise number. We often print that there are over 100 million gun owners in America and this is a safe statistic that’s based on gun sales, surveys and more. But it is hardly precise and is likely a low estimate.
10. More than half of the states now enjoy some type of constitutional carry: As this was going to print, a total of 29 states had some form of constitutional carry on the books. These laws are designed to get bureaucrats out of the way of our freedom, as the Second Amendment protects our right to keep and bear arms from government infringement.
