US citizens own 40% of all guns in world - more than next 25 top-ranked countries combined, study suggests
American citizens now own 40 per cent of all guns in the world - more than the next 25 top-ranked gun ownership countries combined - with the number only set to grow, according to new research.
According to a decade-long survey released by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, not only do Americans own the highest number of guns per capita, but also between 2006 and 2017, US gun owners acquired some 122 million new guns. That represented more than half of the 207 million new civilian-owned firearms around the world during that time.
“The biggest force pushing up gun ownership around the world is civilian ownership in the United States,” said Aaron Karp, one of the authors of the report.
Of the more than one billion firearms in the world, American citizens hold 393 million, for a population of roughly 326 million. According to the report, that is a gun ownership of 121 firearms per 100 civilians. The next highest rates are 53 in Yemen, 39 in Montenegro and Serbia, and 35 in Canada.
Japan and Indonesia on the other hand have reported rates of less than one firearm per 100 civilians.
“Ordinary American people buy approximately 14 million new and imported guns every year,” Mr Karp told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York.
Connect With Us