Is there any state in the union that maintains a majority of residences who are gun owners?
I would imagine Alaska, where a significant portion of the population enjoys outdoor activities such as fishing and hunting, while wolves and Grizzlies live in the same environment. I know a significant portion of thier rural population hunts just for subsistence, so most of them have firearms. I cannot imagine thier city population offsets that by much since a large percentage of them recreate in the woods and often live in Alaska for the outdoor activities.
Montana seems like a place where most would own firearms.
Most rural locations have higher firearm ownership, it is the cities that push down the per capita ownership rates in states. So
if you went to most of the nation, you would find gun ownership more likely than not. Unless you happen to be in a big city.
There is just a lot more people who live in the very dense cities, and legal ownership is far less. Both for extra legal hurdles in many big cities, a greater negative stigma, and fewer recreational opportunities with firearms. The only real use of a firearm in the city is for shooting other people. The areas with the highest crime rates where people would be more inclined to want a gun for that reason also tend to have the highest percentage of prohibited persons.
People who at some time were found guilty of a crime that prohibits them from ownership. For example inner city areas with a high drug problem have a high percentage of the population convicted of some drug crime or another which often prohibits them for life. So even if those people do own firearms, it is not official, is illegal, and is not counted.
If i remember my numbers correctly approximately 10% of America's population are gun owners
I have not heard of the 10% rate before.
From what I understood the official rate was closer to 30% of people, and 40% of households.
Since there is many households were only the man owns firearms, technically only one person owns firearms while both the husband and wife often have access to them.
So in the stereotypical American household that has a firearm, with a husband, wife, and 2.3 children, less than 25% of the household technically owns a firearm. If they have 2 children its 25%, and if its 3 children only 20%.
Even in most households where both the man and woman are considered to own firearms, the children are not. If that is a family with 2.3 children and the children do not have personally owned firearms, then less than 50% of such a household owns firearms.
So already even in a stereotypical family that owns guns less than half the family members own firearms for polling purposes.
In a family with 8 children, with 1 gun owning adult male, you technically have a gun ownership rate of 12.5%. If both the man and woman own firearms, then it is still only a 25% ownership rate.
You combine that with some low inner city rates of
legal ownership, and you start to get much lower official percentages of ownership than represent the reality of life for most of America.
One other thing I think most fail to consider is that even a decent percentage of gun owners when called on the phone and asked by total strangers if they own firearms will reply they do not! That could be well over 10% of the population, not wishing to inform the random person creating a database on the other end of the phone that they have firearms. In surveys collecting data on multiple topics, that is one topic likely to result in more lies and lower official numbers than reality.