US: Fewer gun owners, more guns [View all]

[HiPointDem]

A decreasing number of American gun owners own two-thirds of the nation's guns and as many as one-third of the guns on the planet -- even though they account for less than 1% of the world's population, according to a CNN analysis of gun ownership data.

The data, collected by the Injury Prevention Journal, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the General Social Survey and population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, found that the number of U.S. households with guns has declined, but current gun owners are gathering more guns...

A 2007 survey by the U.N's Office on Drugs and Crime found that the United States, which has 5% of the world's population, owns 50% of the world's guns. The number of households owning guns has declined from almost 50% in 1973 to just over 32% in 2010, according to a 2011 study produced by The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center. The number of gun owners has gone down almost 10% over the same period, the report found

The concentration comes, in part, because guns are "marketed by and large to people who already own guns," Lizotte said.

Both studies also found that men were more likely to own guns, though the General Social Survey found that male gun ownership is down almost 20% since 1980. The Violence Policy Center's analysis of the General Social Survey data also found that part of the reason the gun owning population is declining is because those weapons are largely owned by white males, a group whose population is aging.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/31/politics/gun-ownership-declining/index.html