The United States is home to more than 65,000 licensed gun dealers. Their numbers are bigger than the nation's 13,000 Starbuck's retailers, and it exceeds the combined number of Starbuck's outlets (22,000-plus) and McDonald's (36,000-plus) worldwide.

We wondered: What do all those gun sellers look like on a map?

The data are available for download from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms and include all licensed firearm importers, dealers and pawnbrokers. Excluded from our selection were people who: make or sell devices such as flare guns; manufacture firearms; or collect what the ATF calls "curios and relics."

We calculated the number of dealers per 100,000 residents in each county and produced the shaded map. The final product also offers the option to view one dot for each licensee across the country, although we've limited how close users can zoom in on individual location.

Bear in mind that we found no simple way to evaluate sales volume for each gun seller. Whereas retailers such as Starbuck's presumably strive for relatively uniform revenue levels per location, it's likely that many gun dealers are very small in number of customers served.

While gun sellers are numerous in much of the country, big variations stand out.

Residents of southern California on a per capita basis have relatively few places to turn locally when purchasing firearms on the legal market. The disparity with some urbanized areas is striking, even in raw numbers of licensed dealers.

A prime example: Gun sellers in the Portland* metropolitan area (493) outnumber gun dealers in the Los Angeles-Orange County metro area (469).

The highest number of gun dealers per capita? Loving County, Texas on the New Mexico border has one gun dealer serving 86 residents. That's 1,162 per 100,000 residents.

A number of Idaho, Montana and Nebraska counties break 400 dealers per 100,000.

At the other end of the list is Kings County, New York -- also known as Brooklyn. Among counties with more than zero licensed dealers, Brooklyn is the least served for guns. ATF data show only eight dealers serving 2.6 million residents, or .3 per 100,000.

You may also be interested in other maps and analyses we've provided on gun ownership, gun deaths and the relationship between the two since Oregon's deadly Oct. 1, 2015 mass shooting at Umpqua Community College.

Spend some time with the map. Give us your take in the comments below. We know this is a volatile topic. Please follow the OregonLive terms of service and look for ways to interact civilly with other readers.

-- Steve Suo

-- Interactive mapping by Mark Friesen, Mark Graves and Dave Cansler

* Portland is defined as Multnomah, Washington, Clark, Clackamas, Yamhill, Columbia and Skamania counties. Los Angeles comprises LA County and Orange County.