Total Number of Guns in the US

Their are a lot, and its impossible to put numbers on them because so many are under the radar.

I would guess that 300m-400m is probably a good range to start, maybe a lot higher.

Since nobody knows for sure, I guess we need a national firearms registration system, huh?

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=501441&highlight=NICS

Here is the link you may have been refering to. Has the NICS stats in it. I'll have to update it with more recent info......

Sturm Ruger Annual Report Data

This is just a small part of the puzzle but interesting nonetheless. Sturm Ruger and Smith and Wesson are publically traded and have to make annual reports to the SEC. Below in bold is an excerpt from Ruger's annual report for 2009 including units ordered. Note that their volume almost doubled from 2007 to 2009 (485,000 units to 958,000 units). We all know what happened in late 2008 to cause the tremendous increase in demand.

The full 2009 annual report can be found at: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/100224/rgr10-k.html

Results of Operations - 2009

Product Demand
Incoming unit orders in 2009 increased 23% from 2008, and 98% from 2007. The extraordinary retail demand that began in the latter months of 2008 caused independent distributors to place very large orders for our products in 2009, particularly during the first half of the year when orders from distributors substantially exceeded their sales of our products to retailers. This resulted in the Company having an abnormally large backlog of unshipped distributor orders throughout 2009.

The Company has temporarily placed less emphasis on incoming orders as a proxy for market demand. Instead, the Company is using the following estimate of sell-through of our products from distributors to retailers as a proxy for actual market demand and as a metric for planning production. Note, however, that we believe a portion of the 2009 sell-through from distributors to retailers resulted in an inventory build at retail rather than sales from retailers to consumers.

Only 300 million? Sounds like we need to buy more of them.

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You do your part, I'll do mine.

The current numbers suggest that, on average, each gun owner in the US has 4 firearms. If we can get each gun owner to the average number of guns that THR members have, we'll be doing alot better.

If every gun owner in the US had as many as some people on this board, we'd be in the double digit billions

Tennessee does not allow THCP holders to bypass the TICS check for each background check for the gun sale approval (and it's the Tennessee ICS not the National ICS for approval on a 4473 transaction).

Most federal surveys (DOJ NIJ) show that over half of all firearms transactions are private sales/transfers of used guns. All new gun sales go through a dealer with a 4473. Used guns acquired by dealers as trade-ins for new guns, consignment to dealers for sale of antiques, estate inventory, etc, will go through a dealer with a 4473 on resale. But most legal used gun transactions are person-to-person and therefore uncountable.

War trophies brought back in duffel bags; military guns smuggled in with drug shipments; guns stolen, bribed or extorted from police or military; underground manufacture; all extralegal transactions cannot be counted, yet are substantial numbers.

But most legal used gun transactions are person-to-person and therefore uncountable.

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I don't see where it matters as from the gov't point of view, the guns were already in private hands if you are talking about numbers.

The US Population rose from about 226.4 million in July 1980 to 307.0 million in July 2009. I think we are just keeping up with population growth in terms of total guns in civilian hands. We all know that the guns are relatively concentrated in a lot fewer hands than the numbers hint at.

But most legal used gun transactions are person-to-person and therefore uncountable.

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As 22-rimfire says, those don't add to the total number in citizens' hands, so they don't really "count." Of course, that means that a fairly significant number (maybe 30%?) of the NICS checks will be for used guns transferred through a dealer for whatever reason as well, further lowering the "real" number.

War trophies brought back in duffel bags; military guns smuggled in with drug shipments; guns stolen, bribed or extorted from police or military; underground manufacture; all extralegal transactions cannot be counted, yet are substantial numbers.

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This can't possibly be over 1% of the total, and probably far, FAR lower. IMHO.

If you think about what a typical number of owned guns are per adult, a typical number might be 1-handgun, 1-22 rifle, 1-shotgun, and 1 centerfire rifle for 4 total. We all know that many have far more than that. So with 300 million firearms in private hands, that would suggest that only 75 milion Americans own firearms or about 25% of the population. Seems low. If you estimate that children under 18 reflect 25% of the total population and their firearm ownership numbers are small, then 75 million Americans would reflect about 1/3 (33%) of the adult population own firearms. Does that percentage make sense or should there be more guns in circulation? Seems about right from my experience.....

Some numbers taken off of nra-ila.org:

General Information

Privately owned firearms in the U.S.: Approaching 300 million, including nearly 100 million handguns. The number of firearms rises over 4 million annually.

Gun owners in the U.S.: 70-80 million; 40-45 million own handguns

American households that have firearms: 40-45%

Hunting licenses sold annually: 14.5 million

NRA State Associations and Local Clubs: 12,900

NRA Target Shooting Tournaments annually: 10,000

NRA Certified Instructors: 63,000

Number of Individuals Attending an NRA Firearm Course Annually: Over 800,000

NRA Law Enforcement Firearm Instructors: 11,000

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I hope there are far more than the government thinks.

Rural people will probably have more guns per capital then city dwellers. And if I was guesing, I would say that there are a lot more guns per capital in the southern states then the northern states.

How about all the guns lost forever in tragic boating accidents . That alone must account for a few million at least .

I though that all of the guns in this country were smuggled to Mexico