U.S. States with the Most Gun Ownership

Texas also has a very large population so that certainly dilutes the gun ownership.

That explains Hawaii

I'm sorry, but I live in Texas, and my entire neighborhood owns guns. Change my mind.

yeah someone who has kazakhstan in their name is a texan, the non urban areas have more guns too.

New Mexico is pretty solidly blue

In general, Democrats (blue) own fewer guns and support more restrictions on gun ownership.

Clarkie96 - I believe it's more the other way around. If you like guns you tend to political parties on the right. It seems that way in the U.S. anyway.

First of all, you haven't even been to Alaska, so you don't really know what it's like there. Much less than 61 percent of people live in the wilderness. Most live in the Anchorage metro area. Police are good at coming quick. It would be okay if more people had a gun there than other states. But it's not about Alaska. It's about the world. You don't need a gun to protect against wildlife or much else. A knife works. I'm fine with everyone having a knife. In fact, everyone probably should have a knife. Protecting yourself is fine, but having a gun could cause chaos. It doesn't often, but a gun is simply not something you need.

Actually @samiamco has, as you can see by his map. You are obviously a liberal, otherwise there would be no explanation. I can think of many professions that would require guns. For example, most farmers do, anyone with a hunting license does. How would we have crossed the Atlantic and colonized the country if not for armed weapons, sticks and spears won't do the trick, and before the Industrial Revolution, all we had was ranching, hunting, and fishing as a food source. By no means does this mean that people are walking around wielding handguns as well, this could very well be rifles and shotguns, both of which are used primarily for target practice and hunting. In a place like Alaska, in which infrastructure is particularly low, there is a need for guns, for example food sources could run low, and waterlines/electrical lines could freeze, resorting to melee weapons wouldn't do natives any good, humans' stalking/tracking skills are far too uneducated/unknowing for those skills.

Tschutzer is correct. Those of us who live in rural areas need them for protection. My parents' home was burglarized and at the time they thought the burglar was still in the house, between them and the door. They called us and my husband headed over with a gun while I called the sheriff's office. There was only one deputy on duty at night and he was at the other end of the county, 30 miles away. It took him 40 minutes to arrive. Another time a pack of coyotes chased my dog onto the roof and was trying to kill her. A man in our area was breaking into people's homes, tying them up, and stealing their cars and valuables. At one home a woman shot him and wounded him, preventing him from hurting her and making it easier for the deputies to catch him. He came down our driveway but turned around when I turned on the light. I was glad I had a gun. I could go on at the number of times we needed our guns for protection, not to mention the need to thin the overpopulated deer and fill the freezer

@ander, although it is true to some extent that when I and probably many other people comment about guns we mainly have cities in mind, I would dispute that people in rural areas necessarily need them. I know people in rural areas who get on fine without guns. To be fair, my idea of what qualifies as rural is probably different to what you mean by rural, as in the UK (except for some remote parts of Scotland) you are never very far from a fairly large town. Depending on their circumstances, it may be reasonable for some people to have guns. Perhaps that includes you. But I don't know that it includes anywhere near these numbers of people, even in Alaska given that about three-quarters of the population lives in cities (and given that there is almost nothing there outside of the cities, this isn't very surprising).

But seriously what's the need of a gun in West Virginia?

There are Mountain Lions and Black Bears there Neil. West Virginia has had a fatal bear attack before. The counties with the most of these animals are republican by a solid 30 points. That probably explains it.

But here's the thing - 54.2% of West Virginians don't live in a place with even a comprehensible rate of bear and mountain lion attack. I agree with you about the Republicans though.

Not all parts of Chicago are bad.

You Chicago hater. I'm not so mad about what you're saying expect that you're shaming my city. Anyway, I know no one who has ever been criminally injured or who owns a gun. I don't have any friends who are evil psycho killers or have guns. If someone has a good reason to have a gun, like you hunt for a living, fine. Have one gun. You wouldn't be a psycho killer. And it is the person who has it that matters. But if only hunters had guns, think how much better we would be? And if there was something, like an animal, you needed to defend against, you could use something else. Knives work. But guns can cause chaos. Often they don't, but it's not worth the risk, and they simply aren't needed.

You are right...not all parts of Chicago are bad. But much like NYC in the 80s, Chicago is suffering from an image problem resulting from a handful of high crime areas dragging the rest of the city down. The city could benefit from a change in leadership. NYC did something crazy in the 80s and elected a "republican" mayor in Rudy Giuliani who did some things that were unpopular at the time, but ended up getting results. Now NYC is no longer on that list of most dangerous cities and a lot of that is thanks to Rudy. Chicago could benefit from a similar change at the top.

just cus 1 person has seen nothing that bad doesnt mean its not. Its ok to shame your own city, we all know chicago is one of the most dangerous places in the us

As of 2022 Chicago is ranked 20th for US cities with highest violent crime rates. This is behind Anchorage (15th), Albuquerque (10th), and Little Rock (5th)

hear! hear!

Exercising a right is fine. But it's not when you have no reason. If you want to have a gun, that's okay, provided that you have a good reason. But most people don't. Most people can protect themselves with a knife, or something else. Also, having multiple guns makes no sense. What's the point? If you're a hunter interested in shooting at different ranges, okay. If you're a show-off who wants multiple guns so you can show them to your friends, that's not good. Most people owning a gun have no intention of using badly. But someone who does could get ahold of it, and chaos would happen. Better to have a knife for protection, and not risk it.

Inalienable rights Guam. Nobody said anything about needing a reason to exercise one of your constitutional rights. A small percentage of the population owns a majority of the guns. They are like tattoos...if you have one, you probably have half a dozen. And as much fun as it is to make fun of the "redneck militia" those aren't the guys committing the gun crimes.

It would be nice if we all had the right to not be surrounded by other people with dangerous lethal weapons, or the right to not fear our children will be shot when they go to school. That would be a right that I would like to exercise.

There are many more testimonies of people who shot themselves with the firearms in their home than there are those of people who successfully murdered someone trying to steal their TV.

Depends how you interpret these "rights". Too much faith is put in the intentions of the "founding fathers" who formulated the constitution (and the second amendment) in a different world.

There is no reason why a normal citizen needs military grade assault weapons. I have no problem with land managers, hunters, target shooters and law enforcement officers having ordinary firearms providing they pass basic training and have secure storage...much like the situation here in Australia.

There will always be a black market and in the US in particular there is a massive stockpile of firearms in private hands so the horse has probably bolted as far as controls are concerned

@AntarcticLegacy, your point about suicide is inaccurate. I read a good book recently ("Talking to Strangers" by Malcolm Gladwell) that outlines why people who kill themselves via gunshot would be less likely to kill themselves in other ways. Won't get into all of the details, but the basic point is that people often choose the easiest and cleanest way to die, and in America, it's by gunshot. If they don't have access to this method, they won't go out and seek other ways to kill themselves because they lack the will to do so. Regardless of your political views, it's objectively true that gun violence correlates with high suicide rates, and keeping guns out of the hands of suicidal people would probably drastically lower these rates.

@kalbahamut did you know that about 96% of mass shootings happen in gun free zones, like schools?

Here's a very eye-opening article about gun restrictions in America versus other countries. Gun laws in America only required a very simple background check, and some people can even get past that. In America, the mindset is basically "you can have a gun if you can afford a gun." No wonder why America has the highest rates of gun ownership in the world... or why we have so many mass shootings. Compare to Australia, which has had very few mass shootings since introducing common sense measures like a ban on semi-automatic rifles, a government buyback program, etc. But even putting mass shootings aside, about 40,000 people die a year from gun violence, including both murders and suicides. For comparison, about 60,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War over about 10 years. That's like having a Vietnam every 1.5 years.

No Western country comes even close to America in terms of firearm-related death rates. And, as I mentioned above, argument that people will find other methods of committing suicide if they don't have access to guns is fallacious at best, and harmful at worst.

Hunting is popular where I live, and I know many responsible adults who would never use guns to harm others. No one is advocating for taking away every single gun in America by force and destroying them. If we could just pass some basic, common sense gun laws, as are present in other country, to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, we can make America significantly more safe and significantly reduce firearm-related deaths without hurting people who have legitimate reason to own/use guns.

Well said.

Guam there is a such thing as jobs you know. people sell guns, are a gunsmith, and working on or with guns is a huge job across the united states. I know this topic was 3 years ago, but I can still talk.

If you go around a gun because you don't feel protected when you go around with a knife, maybe try not having either? In my experience that works pretty well. Although you did say you didn't support handguns in public places so I'm not quite sure I understand the rest of your argument.

Im only 14, so I can'tgo around with guns and knives, but I feel much more protected when going in areas with a gun. I don't support persay, guns being concealed in a library or Wal-Mart, but in other places I would surely approve.

I'm 15. I have never been anywhere with a gun or a knife intended as a means of self-defence, or knowingly been with anyone who has. I would not feel any more protected if I or anyone I was with had a gun, and in fact I would almost certainly feel less protected than with no weapon at all. This fits with where the evidence generally points - people who have guns are no safer than people who don't. The same applies to many other weapons. I don't support the right to bear arms because guns are dangerous weapons that need to be controlled, and do nothing to make anybody safer. They are therefore pointless as a form of self-defence. In the UK no one goes around with a gun, and very few people own them. The country has one of the lowest rates of gun-related crime in the world. I would therefore support no changes to the UK's gun law and think that the USA (where firearms are more of a problem) should probably move towards a more restrictive system.

"I'm 15"... stopped reading.

Seems sensible... or was that too painful to read, nerdalert? 😉

I'm 13,I live in Taiwan,and I haven't seen any guns before!

lol

True, but in areas such as France, there are limited areas to use non-melee guns (rifles and shotguns). I agree, there are forests in France, albeit a small amount compared to that of the US and Canada. However, some people just enjoy the prospect of sharpening their shooting precision and wielding indirectly a tool that has made history in most every country.

Sorry to inform you, but France is huge. There are tons of places where you can use rifles. For an area the size of TX, you must be joking about that :)

All hail anarchy!

That's only because you're a liberal ;)