With the recent shooting in Orlando, the perennial debate over gun ownership has begun again, revolving primarily around the perception of an epidemic of mass-shootings. I know most of these events are on the wrong side of this sub's 20-year rule, but I'm interested in learning more about how gun ownership in America has changed over the years. Guns have always been present in the American civilian population, but I imagine that the prevalence of ownership, the kinds of guns owned, and the culture surrounding them has changed drastically between, say, 1900 and 1996.
Has there been a general trend in the prevalence of gun ownership? When did semi-automatic pistols and rifles become commonplace for civilians to own, as opposed to, say, revolvers and bolt-action rifles? How have the arguments of gun-rights advocates changed over time (e.g. self-defense vs protection from the govt, etc)?
Obviously, I've got a lot of questions, and any information about the long-term history of this issue would be extremely helpful.
This is a pretty controversial subject, and studies on it aren't helped by a lack of hard data before the 1970s and 1980s.
In general, however, the number of guns has gone up, while the number of gun owners has gone down. Fewer people are owning more guns.
We can look at Gallup's long-term series of polls about gun ownership for evidence of this (there are many other, similar polls that provide data that differs in precise detail but not the trend. In July 1959, for example, 49 percent of respondents said they had a gun in their home. In the latest poll, conducted in October last year, that figure was 41 percent.
The NORC at the University of Chicago has, at regular intervals since 1972, conducted its "General Social Survey," which asks Americans a variety of questions and tracks the changes over time. The survey was conducted every year until 1990, when it switched to a biennial basis. The newest survey is being conducted this year. The survey contains many questions about guns. In 2014, NORC published a study entitled "Trends in Gun Ownership in the United States, 1972-2014".
This study found "that 31.0% of households reported having a firearm in 2014, essentially tying with 2010 for the lowest level of gun ownership in the last 40-some years. This is a decline of about 17 percentage points from the peak ownership years in 1977-1980."
If a respondent indicated there was a gun in the home, the survey asked (in 25 of the 30 years the survey has been conducted) whether there was at least one (and these were asked in separate questions) shotgun, rifle, or pistol in the home. Pistols included both revolvers and semiautomatic handguns.
What the results showed was a faster decline in the number of shotguns and rifles than the number of pistols.
Why?
As the United States has urbanized over the 20th century, fewer Americans are going hunting, and more Americans are seeking pistols for personal protection or recreation. Since 1955, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has conducted a "National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation". The survey takes place every five years and is published the following year. The latest survey has not yet been published, but I expect it sometime this year. In any event the 2011 data is the latest available.
According to the 1955 survey, 10 percent of the American population 12 years and older hunted. This proportion rose to 11.2 percent in 1960 but fell to 8.4 percent by 1985. The survey changed somewhat starting in 1990, and started to be restricted to respondents 16 years and older. By the 2010 survey, only 6 percent of Americans reported hunting.
This decline matches the trend recorded by the General Social Survey. In 1977, the survey found that 31.6 percent of respondents said they hunted, their spouse hunted, or both did. By 2014, that rate had fallen to 15.4 percent.
If hunting is on the decline, why has the number of guns gone up?
Well, let's look at figures from the department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which keeps that data. The 2015 "Firearms Commerce in the United States" report includes the number of firearms manufactured, imported and exported in/to/from the United States between 1986 and 2013.
The ATF report doesn't account for firearms sold on the secondary market, but it's a good guideline for trends in firearms sales. What you see are big spikes in sales and imports right around the time of the 1992 election of Bill Clinton, the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, and the 2008 election of Barack Obama.
This is venturing into 20-year territory, but I think it's important to explain. Another moderator can check me and I'll edit if necessary.
In 1986, there were approximately 3 million firearms manufactured in the United States. This rose to 4.4 million by 1989 but fell to 3.6 million by 1991. Then we start to see a surge again, all the way to 5 million in 1993 and 5.1 million in 1994. Exports remained relatively constant during this period, rising only 30,000 between 1991 and 1993, and actually declining between 1993 and 1994, meaning most of that new production was destined for the domestic market. Similarly, firearms imports surged between 1991 and 1994. In 1991, only 720,000 firearms were imported to the United States. By the next year, that figure had risen to 2.8 million. In 1993, it was over 3 million.
Then, as suddenly as imports and production had surged, they fell. By 1996, the time of Clinton's second election, only 882,000 firearms were imported. Production was down to 3.8 million.
Production figures stayed low, while import figures began a steady rise, due to Americans' growing fondness for foreign firearms. (Before the 1980s, the United States imported almost no firearms.) In 2008, and again in 2012, we see surges in both production and importation. In 2008, 2.6 million firearms were imported. That rose to 4.8 million by 2012. Production-wise, the United States produced 4.5 million firearms in 2008, and production kept rising -- steeply. It hit 8.6 million in 2012 and 10.8 million in 2013.
The United States now produces more firearms than ever before, and in 2013 alone manufactured one firearm for every 32 Americans.
I am underqualified to give a detailed answer, but I'll give three books I've read (all by academics) and try to summarize a little bit about each (in accordance with my understanding of the rules):
Gunfight by Adam Winkler. Winkler gives a pretty good history of interpretation of the Second Amendment, while simultaneously weaving in a lot of the history around how the NRA and others have made their arguments. The backdrop of his book is the story of how Heller came to be decided, leading to the official SCOTUS ruling that there is an individual right to firearm ownership under the Second Amendment. It also explains the so-called "Revolt in Cincinnati" in 1977, when the more politically-inclined wing of the NRA took over leadership of the organization and pushed it from its focus as a hobbyist organization to more of a pro-gun rights organization. Edit: please read /u/Bodark43's comment, where he provides a little more background on the political shift.
Negroes and the Gun by Nicholas Johnson discusses the history of firearm ownership and their defensive use among American blacks, up through the Civil Rights movement. You get a look at the Deacons for Defense with Medgar Evers, individuals fighting back against the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction, and the like.
We Will Shoot Back by Akinyele Umoja. Similar in theme to the Johnson book, it discusses armed black self-defense in the specific context of the Mississippi freedom movement. It's a bit more narrowly-focused than Johnson's book regarding location, but also discusses more about non-gun self-defense. Umoja is more clearly left-leaning politically than Johnson, I'd say.
All three of these books were super helpful for me and I'm planning on going back through the Winkler book again now that I've read Heller.