Photo: Houston Gun Show at George R Brown Convention Center Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/glasgows/
Americans own 40 percent of the world’s firearms, despite making up only four percent of the global population.
Worldwide, there are more than one billion firearms – with 85 percent of the weapons in the hands of civilians, and the remainder in the armor of law enforcement and the military.
The latest edition of Small Arms Survey reveals that of the 857 million guns owned by civilians in the world, 393 million are in the United States.
This means the U.S. citizens have more than all of the firearms held by ordinary citizens in the other top 25 countries combined.
The Small Arms Survey is an annual poll brought out by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. The latest edition comes as Americans debate gun control measures in the wake of a spate of gun attacks on schools.
“The biggest force pushing up gun ownership around the world is civilian ownership in the United States,” says Aaron Karp, one of the authors of the report which compiles new data from the last ten years.
“Ordinary American people buy approximately 14 million new and imported guns every year,” Karp told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York.
According to the compilers of the report, Americans have access to powerful firearms that are not available in many other countries due to tighter legislation.
“Why are they buying them? That’s another debate. Above all, they are buying them probably because they can. The American market is extraordinarily permissive,” Karp said.
Gun ownership rates vary across the world, with 121 firearms for every 100 residents in the United States compared to 53 in Yemen, 39 in Montenegro, and 35 in Canada.
China, India and Pakistan, three large populations, also have large numbers of guns.
