Ask The Trace: How Many Guns Are Circulating in the U.S.?
Conversations about America’s gun violence crisis often become debates over the facts. In the eight years we've spent covering this issue, we've learned how complicated it is. Through our Ask The Trace series, our team of journalists has answered dozens of questions from readers about guns and gun violence. Now, we’re bringing our expertise to LinkedIn, a platform where people like you come to close their personal and professional knowledge gaps. Click the subscribe button above to join our community of readers exploring the complexities of guns and gun violence in America.
I’m Jennifer Mascia, senior news writer and founding staffer at The Trace. For the last decade, I’ve been chronicling the nation’s changing relationship with guns — attempts to regulate their access, the danger they pose in the wrong hands, and the ripple effects of that trauma on communities across the country. Over the years, two things have become evident: Gun manufacturing has soared to unprecedented levels, and so have gun deaths.
My colleague Chip Brownlee and I set out earlier this year to examine the relationship between gun sales and gun violence. According to the CDC, 2021 saw the most gun deaths in a single year: 48,830. I dug through firearm manufacturing figures, which gun companies are required to report to the ATF, and found that 2021 set a record for gun production, as well: More than 22 million firearms hit the domestic market that year.
When I charted gun production alongside annual gun deaths going back to 1968, the result was stunning: As gunmakers ramped up production, gun deaths rose too.
领英推荐
Correlation does not imply causation. Just because gun production and gun deaths appear to rise and and fall in tandem doesn’t prove that one is affecting the other. But the visualization aligns with what researchers have been saying for years: More guns = more gun deaths. Read more in the full story on TheTrace.org.
More from Ask The Trace:
Owner of Mark Kraft Firearms Consulting and Training
1 年The one factor they failed to include is the 2/3 reduction in the number of licensed gun dealers that resulted from the enactment of the Brady Law. In 1993 and early 1994 there were nearly 300,000 licensed gun dealers (more dealers than McDonalds) many of whom were kitchen table dealers, some of whom kept no records. Brady restricted ATF from issuing or renewing licenses for dealers who had set up shop in neighborhoods not zones for businesses, as well as other restrictions. Inn the next few years the number of FFL's dropped to below 100,000. Same years crime dropped off precipitously. What a coincidence.