Total number of guns in the U.S. (Civilian and Gov.)

[Sarge25]

I thought some of you all would find this interesting because I did. If you go to http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states click on the tab that says gun numbers. This will show civilian numbers and gov numbers.

Civilian numbers total: 270,000,000 guns

Government
Military: 3,054,553 guns
Law enforcement: 1,150,000 guns

These are the same numbers that the government officials, employees, and BATFE officers that are not elected and have power to influence legislation are faced with. If they have a liberal mindset and view private ownership of guns as a problem then they are probably terrified of this number, as they should be. The difference is 265,795,447 guns or roughly a ratio of 64:1 guns that the gov. has must remain in place as a form of checks and balances. If this number was reversed say through decades of anti-gun legislation, confiscation, and mandatory turn ins then the government no longer has this checks and balances system to regulate them. Then the rise of a charismatic politician (such as the one who took power in Germany in the 30s) could theoretically be unlimited in the legislation they could enact if the Constitution were to be ignored. This person would have very little in their way to becoming a dictator if the military backed them. I am not promoting armed revolt or anything against our current government, I only feel the current status of gun ownership must not be effected through bad legislation.

Most of you are fully aware of this, but this may provided some numbers to use in conversations with people who are anti private gun ownership or are on the fence.

 

[TwoForFlinching]

Wow, that seems a little skewed

 

[Sarge25]

Yeah their numbers were much more skewed than I would have thought also. The source was Aaron Karp from Cambridge University who did a study in 2007. He may or may not be reliable but being from a well know University I think his study carries some weight and is worth looking into.

 

[HarryBear]

How would they know with all the "private" transactions?
Unless........ There is a little microchip in the chamber that none of us will ever find....

 

[fustigate]

Seems like it would be fairly easy to estimate (and given that the civilian number is rounded to only two significant figures, it's quite an estimate). Take the number of firearms manufactured (or, closer, shipped) + imported - military contracts - LEO purchases.

 

[bettingpython]

Why because the Military Number seems so low? Not really. Why would the U.S. Military have a gross over abundance of firearms?

There are storage and inventory issues, why mess with an asset that you just don't need.

As of 30 September 2010, 1,430,895 people were on active duty in the military, with an additional 848,000 people in the seven reserve components

Of those numbers how many are actually issued firearms and carry them on a daily basis? I also suspect that nothing larger than handguns and rifles are factored into that number. 3 million seems reasonable.

270 million is easily believable as well. Correlate that to a turn in/registration percentage lets say they get an 85% success rate, at that point you would still have 40,000,000 firearms unaccounted for in the hands of civilians, and that is likely to be largely comprised of evil black guns in the rifle/shotgun/handgun category.

I won't lie if registration happens I'll march right down and fill out the paperwork on grandpa's single action .22 revolver, the 30.30 Winchester 94 and the 6 shot Keltec and Ruger LCP we carry all the time, the Marlin model 60 and the cricket bolt action. . . read into that what you want.

 

[bettingpython]

How would they know with all the "private" transactions?
Unless........ There is a little microchip in the chamber that none of us will ever find....

The whole microchip thing is way overblown active transmitters require a power source, since we haven't perfected perpetual atomic batteries the closest I could see would be a kinetic generator that would charge and turn on a low power transmitter for a short while. Or are referring to passive NFC chips that have to come within a few inches of a scanner to be detected?

That's why I don't worry about hidden "chips" too much. The technology to do Hollywood style scenarios isn't there yet.

As far as actually knowing they can do a pretty good rough estimate based upon sales records.

 

[Hump66]

I bet this doesn't count people who have/do manufacture their own weapons without the .gov knowing.

 

[SoonerP226]

Wow, that seems a little skewed

Yeah, the gov't does have too many guns, doesn't it?

 

[SoonerP226]

That's why I don't worry about hidden "chips" too much. The technology to do Hollywood style scenarios isn't there yet.

Hollyweird certainly overdoes it, but RFID chips can be read at distances of over ten feet, and they don't need an internal power source (their transmitters are "powered" by the reader). I still wouldn't worry about it, though; it's not like the readers that can see that far are tiny, and they're not magic--they still need more or less line of sight to get any distance at all.