Between 2006 and 2017, the United States sold more guns that anywhere else in the world. A new decade-long study conducted by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva revealed that of the 207 million reported gun sales during that time, Americans accounted for 122 million of them. While this represents more than half, the study also concluded that Americans own 40 percent of all guns accounted for in the world.
“Ordinary American people buy approximately 14 million new and imported guns every year,” Aaron Karp, author of the report, said at a news conference at UN headquarters in New York. “The biggest force pushing up gun ownership around the world is civilian ownership in the United States.”
According to the study, there are roughly one billion firearms in the world with the U.S. being home to 393 million of those guns. With the population of the U.S. at roughly 326 million people, there are about 121 firearms per 100 civilians. Not one country came close to America’s numbers with 53 in Yemen, 39 in Montenegro and Serbia and 35 in Canada, Popular Resistance reported.
The study concluded that the U.S. is “pushing up gun ownership around the world.”
And Karp blames the trend, which is set to grow, on “lenient gun ownership laws in the U.S.,” Popular Resistance reported.
“Why are they buying them?,” Karp said. “That’s another debate. Above all, they are buying them probably because they can. The American market is extraordinarily permissive.”
Through the conducted study, Karp determined that the majority of Americans’ gun were unregistered. Registration data for civilian-owned firearms was “available in 133 countries and territories, as well as through surveys conducted in 56 countries.
“In most places in America you just walk into a store and buy a gun,” Karp said.
Currently, there are only eight states with a firearm registry, including California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland (handguns, not long guns), Michigan (long guns, not handguns), New Jersey (handguns, not long guns), New York (handguns, not long guns), and the District of Columbia.
“The biggest force pushing up gun ownership around the world is civilian ownership in the United States,” Karp said.
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