National Shooting Sports Foundation: Americans Own over 500 Million Firearms

On Thursday, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) reported that the number of firearms “in civilian possession” topped 500 million by the end of 2023.
The NSSF gathered information from “reports such as ATF Firearms Commerce in the United States, ATF AFMER and Congressional Research Service and including the collective ATF AFMER reports up to the 2023 edition.”
They noted, “The estimated total number of firearms in civilian possession from 1990–2023 is 506.1 million.”
On January 12, 2024, Breitbart News pointed to a previous NSSF report showing there were an estimated 473.2 million firearms in U.S. civilian hands by the end of 2021.
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The figures released Thursday mean the number of guns owned by Americans jumped by over 30 million between the end of 2021 and the end of 2023.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins.