The US is home to 88 guns for every 100 people and sees mass shootings more than 11 times as often as any other developed country

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Not only is the United States the runaway world leader for gun ownership – it also suffers mass shootings at more than 11 times the rate of any other developed country, according to a 2014 study published in the International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Here are key statistics pertaining to gun ownership and gun violence in the United States, following the attack at a music festival Sunday night in Las Vegas, the country’s deadliest mass shooting.



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88 guns for every 100 people

This is the gun ownership rate in the United States, the highest by far in the world, according to the UN office on drugs and crime through its annual crime survey for 2012. The No 2 country, Yemen, has 54.8 per 100 people.

Up to half

This is the proportion of civilian-owned guns worldwide held in the United States. With less than 5% of the world’s population, the United States is home to roughly 35–50% of the world’s civilian-owned guns, according to the Small Arms Survey from 2007.

More than 30,000

The number of Americans killed with guns each year. About two-thirds of those are suicides.

More than 100,000

The number of people shot each year in the United States, according to a study published in the journal Health Affairs.

25 times

Americans overall are “25 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in other developed countries”, gun control advocates say.

70%

Proportion of gun murders in the United States in which a handgun is the weapon, according to FBI statistics.

71%

Increase in number of handguns owned in the United States since 1994.

38%

Increase in total number of guns owned in the United States since 1994.

3%

Proportion of people who own half of the country’s guns, according to an unpublished Harvard/Northeastern University survey result summary. Anchoring this group are America’s gun super-owners – an estimated 7.7 million Americans who own between eight and 140 guns.

$2.8bn



Total hospital expenses to treat US gunshot victims annually, according to the study. If lost wages and hospital expenses are considered together, the authors said, the annual cost of shootings in the US could be as high as $45bn.

More than $1m

Amount of his own money that one doctor spent to fund gun violence prevention research after political pressure from the National Rifle Association targeted federal funding for public health research on guns.

73%

Proportion of firearm murders among all murders in 2016 – the highest ever on record in the United States, according to FBI statistics. While murders in the United States are well down from historic highs, gun murders represent a greater share of the overall total.

400,000

The number of guns stolen in the United States per year, according to an unpublished Harvard/Northeastern survey result summary. That’s compared with 230,000 a year in a recent estimate from the National Crime Victimization Survey.

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32%

The proportion of US men who said they personally owned a gun in 2015, down from 42% in 1994, according to the Harvard/Northeastern study.

12%

The proportion of US women who said they personally owned a gun in 2015, up from 9% in 1994.

127

The number of US cities and towns accountable for half of America’s gun homicides in 2015, according to a geographic analysis by the Guardian.

Less than a quarter

The share of the country’s population in those 127 cities and towns. Read further in the Guardian report Want to fix gun violence in America? Go local.