Just three percent of adults own half of America’s guns

The Guardian reports that, based on a study from Harvard and Northwestern, 3% of Americans own nearly half of the guns in the United States.

Gun “super-owners” are on the rise in America. The survey bucked traditional questionnaires by asking “how many guns do you own”, not “is there a gun in the house?”

Almost half of the estimated 265 million guns are owned by just 3% of American adults, according to an unpublished survey by Harvard and Northeastern universities.

The survey, considered to be one of the best glimpses into American gun ownership in more than 20 years, says there are more than 70 million new guns in American homes but that ownership still declined from 25 percent to 22 percent since 1994.

These so-called “super-owners”, who account for roughly 7.7 million people, own anywhere from eight to 140 guns each.

Fruitful ground for the NRA. Thirty-two percent of American men saying they owned a gun compared to 12 percent of American women. So researchers have to rely on estimates from surveys and polls.

The finding that the overwhelming majority of firearms are owned by a small number of adults isn’t particularly surprising.

The researchers from Harvard and Northeastern universities didn’t immediately respond to Newsweek’s request for the results, some of which were published by The Guardian and The Trace on Monday. Cook’s report is widely regarded as the last of its kind to offer such comprehensive data on and analysis of gun ownership – until now. Americans who owned a mix of handguns and long guns were also found to be less diverse than Americans who own only handguns.

The still-unpublished survey does not make any connections between gun ownership and public health concerns. They will be publishing their full study results in an academic journal next year.