Reuters: Nearly one in three Americans owns a gun
Kathryn Doyle for Reuters reports:
Almost a third of American adults own a gun, but the rate varies widely by state and tops out at almost 62 percent of people in Alaska, new survey data show.
Gun ownership was closely tied to “social gun culture,” wherein family and friends also own guns and think less of non-gun owners, researchers found.
“Considering the presence of deeply rooted gun culture and the estimated number of guns in the U.S. to be 310 million, we (suspected) that social gun culture is associated with gun ownership,” said lead author Dr. Bindu Kalesan of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York….
About 29 percent of people nationwide reported owning a gun. Only five percent of people in Delaware and six percent in Rhode Island owned a gun, compared to almost 62 percent in Alaska.
….Universal background checks for purchasing guns and ammunition tend to be the most effective laws in discouraging gun ownership, she said.
Read the full story at Reuters.
