FORECASTS & TRENDS E-LETTER
by Gary D. Halbert
July 18, 2023

Gun Ownership Is Significantly Under-Reported In The U.S.

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Americans Don’t Like To Admit They Own Firearms

2. Why Americans Are Reluctant To Admit They Own Guns

3. Is The Undercounting of Firearms Really A Big Problem?

4. More Recent Statistics & My Personal Firearms Position

Americans Don’t Like To Admit They Own Firearms

Believe it or not, people are reluctant to tell others about their potentially controversial activities. As societies go, we Americans love our privacy. And why not?

Yet this reluctance to disclose can (and does) lead to under-reporting of these activities, which frustrates researchers who keep track of such information. Academics are frustrated that privacy-minded respondents impair their understanding of the world we live in, but that’s just how it is and has been throughout our nation’s history.

There is currently no requirement that federally licensed gun dealers report sales or the identities of purchasers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, so we don’t have complete data on individual purchases. Ditto for private firearm sales at gun shows and other venues gun dealers frequent.

Recent years have seen a surge in gun sales, spurred by rioting, social disorder and political turmoil. Given that many of these gun buyers are first-time owners, it's apparent that firearm ownership is becoming more widespread among Americans who might have resisted the idea in the past.

A growing number of Americans consider the right to bear arms sacred, seeing guns as key to their identities, individual freedoms and safety. Some keep guns for protection, hunting and/or sport.

In 2022, about 45% of US households had at least one gun in their possession, according to surveys by Gallup and others. Gallup also found that nearly one-third of all US adults own a firearm.

The number of guns in private American hands was almost 400 million (393 million) in 2018, according to the closely followed Small Arms Survey.

Yet while gun ownership is growing, here’s what I want to focus on today. Rutgers University researchers and others say gun ownership is something many Americans refuse to reveal, especially when questioned by people they don't know – including researchers and pollsters.

Surprise, surprise, right? Not really, as I will discuss below. In any event, it is widely agreed that gun ownership in the US is significantly under-reported. That’s what we’ll talk about today. I think you’ll agree it makes for an interesting conversation.

Why Americans Are Reluctant To Admit They Own Guns

According to polls by Gallup, Pew Research and others, many gun owners are hesitant to admit they own firearms. According to most polls, this includes members of all races and across economic and financial demographics.

The reluctance to admit gun ownership is especially true among women and minorities, newly among the ranks of gun owners amidst the social chaos of recent years, according to researchers.

"Some individuals are falsely denying firearm ownership, resulting in research not accurately capturing the experiences of all firearm owners in the U.S.," warns Allison Bond with Rutgers University's New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center.

Ms. Bond and others are very concerned about the mis-reporting of firearms ownership for a variety of reasons, including this one: "More concerningly, these individuals are not being reached with secure firearm storage messaging and firearm safety resources, which may result in them storing their firearms in an unsecure manner, which in turn increases the risk for firearm injury and death."

While Ms. Bond cites the problem of dishonesty among survey respondents as posing a danger to those surveyed since they don't receive proper firearm safety information, her deeper concern is with the validity of research into firearms culture and policy in a country where experts don't have anywhere near as good a handle on the prevalence of gun ownership as they had believed.

Bond and her fellow authors go on to warn: "The implications of false denials of firearms ownership are substantial. First, such practices would result in an underestimation of firearms ownership rates and diminish our capacity to test the association between firearm access and various firearm violence-related outcomes.

They continue: “Furthermore, such practices would skew our understanding of the demographics of firearm ownership, such that we would overemphasize the characteristics of those more apt to disclose.

Third, the mere existence of a large group of individuals who falsely deny firearm ownership highlights that intervention aimed at promoting firearm safety (e.g., secure firearm storage) may fail to reach communities in need."

Is The Undercounting of Firearms Really A Big Problem?

Bond and her researchers surveyed over 3,500 Americans in an effort to estimate what percentage of gun owners decline to admit that they possess firearms. They tallied the number of respondents who confirmed they own firearms and the number who said they do not own firearms.

But the interesting thing is, the percentage of gun owners and non-gun owners did not add up to 100%. This and other observations led Bond and her associates to conclude that many firearms owners refuse to admit they have guns, especially when asked by strangers such as researchers and pollsters.

Without going into details as to their methodology, Bond and her team estimate that as many as 1,036 of respondents – or nearly one third of the 3,500 surveyed – may have lied about whether they own guns. In other words, they own guns but refused to admit it to the researchers.

Bond and her team suggest a variety of reasons why many Americans refuse to admit they are gun owners, especially to strangers, all of which I would agree are valid factors.

But the one factor which stands out to me the most is this: Most Americans who own guns, generally speaking, are PRIVATE PEOPLE. They don’t want the government and anti-gun groups to know they own firearms.

And really, who can blame them?

The mainstream media has tried for years to paint gun owners as right-wing extremists who they say are at least partly responsible for the increase in crime and violence in this country today.

While some non-gun owners agree with this characterization, it has not stopped the growing desire for gun ownership in America in recent years. As the chart above illustrates, nearly half (45%) of US households have at least one firearm in their homes.

Whether you own guns or not should be a private matter, in my opinion, unless you choose otherwise.

While the Rutgers researchers and others frame the problem of dishonesty among survey respondents as posing a danger since they don't receive proper firearm safety information, its deeper concern is the fact that there are millions more guns in this country than are currently reported.

"The implications of false denials of firearms ownership are substantial," claim the authors. "First, such practices would result in an underestimation of firearms ownership rates and diminish our capacity to test the association between firearm access and various firearm violence-related outcomes.

"It may be that a percentage of firearm owners are concerned that their information will be leaked and the government will take their firearms, or that researchers who are from universities that are typically seen as liberal and anti-firearm access will paint firearm owners in a bad light."

More Recent Statistics & My Personal Firearms Position

Here are some more recent statistics on gun ownership from the latest National Firearms Survey:

"An estimated 2.9% of U.S. adults (7.5 million) became new gun owners from 1 January 2019 to 26 April 2021. Most (5.4 million) had lived in homes without guns," according to its 2021 survey.

Interestingly, "Approximately half of all new gun owners were female (50% in 2019 and 47% in 2020 to 2021), 21% were Black in 2019–2021 and 20% were Hispanic (20% in 2019 and 19% in 2020–2021)."

With gun ownership becoming increasingly common beyond the traditional ranks of white suburban-to-rural men, there are big implications for politics and policy. New gun owners will certainly resist proposals to strip them of self-defense tools they believe they acquired out of necessity.

Until recently, many gun opponents tried to paint firearm ownership as a fading fetish among a disappearing class of Americans. They were wrong, of course.

Basically, the gun-ownership landscape is growing and changing, as always. But newer owners are even more reticent than established ones about revealing their existence to researchers and government officials.

After decades of spirited debate, arbitrary crackdowns and draconian enforcement actions, who can blame them?

The bottom line is: There is no federal gun registry. Some individual states require you to register firearms when you purchase them, but these laws vary widely by state. So, if you’re thinking about buying a gun, whether at a firearms dealer or at a gun show, you should check your state law to see the reporting requirements.

Finally, on a personal level, I readily admit that I am a firearms owner. I have hunting rifles, shotguns and pistols. I became a hunter at a young age and have actively hunted deer, game birds and varmints growing up and all my adult life, although less in recent years. I taught my children how to handle firearms and have given them some of my guns.

I am not a member of any firearms associations, but I am a big supporter of the right to own and bear arms. I’ll have more to say about firearms and gun ownership trends in future issues of Forecasts & Trends, but I’ll leave it there for today.

Very best regards,

Gary D. Halbert

SPECIAL ARTICLES

More Guns Than People in the U.S.

How the Gun Landscape Has Changed in the Last Decade

Understanding the Recent Trends in Violent Crime

Gary's Between the Lines column:
U.S. Military Goes “Woke” & Now Faces A Recruiting Crisis

 

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