Global survey finds U.S. citizens hold 46 percent of all firearms in civilian hands

Few are probably interested in changing our national motto, “In God We Trust,” again.
After all, it’s stood the test of more than 60 years after being officially adopted in 1956.
Before that, the unofficial national motto was “E. Pluribus Unum” (Out of Many, One).
However, a new United Nations Report, the “Small Arms Survey,” got us to thinking. maybe our motto should be “In Guns We Trust.”
This survey found that there are more than 1 billion firearms in the world today among a global population of 7.5 billion people.
The vast majority of those firearms are not holstered by law enforcement or slung over the shoulders of soldiers.
Instead, some 857 million legal and illicit firearms are in civilian hands — the majority unlicensed.
Bet you’ll never guess where many of those firearms in civilian hands are located? OK, that’s too easy.
Of course, the answer is the United States. But we doubt you can guess how many or what percentage of such firearms are in America?
The survey says 393 million of the civilian-held firearms, 46 percent, are in the United States, which is “more than those held by civilians in the other top 25 countries combined.”
Depending on where you stand on firearms, that survey’s findings are either a reason for comfort or distress.
And here we always thought we were the land of the free and the home of the brave because of the rule of law or our military. In light of this survey, it would appear the reason for that probably has more to do with our rate of civilian firearms per 100 residents.
At the top of this global heap are Americans, who own 121 firearms for every 100 residents. The only nation near that rate is Yemen, at 53 firearms per 100 residents.
Yemen has been locked in a brutal civil war for about three years, which makes a firearm a prerequisite for seeing another sunrise.
Surprisingly, the survey found no direct correlation at the global level between firearm ownership and violence.
That could be a result of the world’s most populous nations, though ranking among the top largest estimated number of civilian-held firearms, owning only fractions of the U.S. numbers. Furthermore, those nations apply many more restrictions on ownership of firearms.
Civilians in India, China and Russia owned 71.1 million, 49.7 million and 17.6 million, respectively.
“The key to the United States, of course, is its unique gun culture,” the report’s author, said.
In this land of abundance, it’s no surprise that too much of everything is just enough, including firearms.
But given enough guns, one cannot help but think we’ll end up shooting ourselves.