handgun Glock semiautomatic

A new survey shows a small percentage of Americans owns most of the guns in the U.S.

(Marvin Fong, Plain Dealer file photo)

SAN FRANCISCO, California -- A new survey shows just 3 percent of Americans own about 50 percent of the 265 million guns in the U.S., reports say.

This group of 7.7 million "super-owners" has between eight and 140 guns each, according to an unpublished Harvard/Northeastern survey. The Guardian obtained a copy of the report and published its results Monday.

The number of guns in the U.S. has increased by 70 million since 1994, but the percentage of Americans who own a gun has decreased during that same time from 25 percent to 22 percent.

Researchers conducted an anonymous online survey of 4,000 people in the U.S. about how many guns they own, where they keep them and why they own them, CBS San Francisco reports.

The most-often cited reason for owning a firearm is protection from other people, according to the Washington Post. It's a shift from the 1990s, when most gun owners said they used them for hunting and target-shooting.

"When I look at our survey, what I see is a population that is living in fear," said Deb Azrael, a Harvard researcher and one of the study's lead authors. "They are buying handguns to protect themselves against bad guys, they store their guns ready-to-use because of bad guys, and they believe that their guns make them safer."

Most super-owners are collectors, firearms instructors, gunsmiths, competitive shooters and doomsday survivalists.

The Post reports that researchers are not surprised that a small number of people own most of the firearms, saying similar patterns are seen with other consumer goods.

Bryce Towsley, a Vermont-based gun writer and the author of "Prepper Guns," tells the Guardian he's concerned the survey will be used for political purposes.

"They're going to say, 'OK, there's a small minority of people who have all the guns - we're going to go after them,'" Towsley said.

Azrael tells the Guardian she's more interested in the 50 percent of owners with only one or two guns, saying changing their attitudes about weapons could help reduce suicides in the U.S. About 20,000 of the more than 30,000 gun deaths annually in the U.S. are suicides.

"I don't know anybody who thinks or talks seriously about confiscating guns," Azrael tells the Guardian. "From a public health perspective - you don't seize cigarettes. ...

"You do try to make good science available. You do try to help people think about the risks and benefits of the behavior they choose to undertake."