Americans own nearly half world’s guns in civilian hands: survey

NEW YORK, Jun 21 (APP):Americans own 40 percent of the world’s firearms, despite making up only four percent of the global population, according to a new study.
There are more than one billion firearms in the world, but 85 percent of those are in the hands of civilians, with the remainder held by law enforcement and the military, according to the Small Arms Survey.
Of the 857 million guns owned by civilians, 393 million are in the United States – more than all of the firearms held by ordinary citizens in the other top 25 countries combined, the survey found.
The Small Arms Survey is an annual poll produced by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.
“The biggest force pushing up gun ownership around the world is civilian ownership in the United States,” said Aaron Karp, one of the authors of the report which compiles new data from the last ten years.
“Ordinary American people buy approximately 14 million new and imported guns every year,” Karp told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York.
Americans have access to powerful firearms that are not available in many other countries due to tighter legislation.
“Why are they buying them? That’s another debate. Above all, they are buying them probably because they can. The American market is extraordinarily permissive,” he said.
Gun ownership rates vary across the world, with 121 firearms for every 100 residents in the United States compared to 53 in Yemen, 39 in Montenegro, and 35 in Canada.
The survey comes amid a debate about US gun laws that was given fresh impetus by the massacre of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in February.
On May 18, Sabika Sheikh, a Pakistani exchange student at the Santa Fe High School in Texas, was killed along with nine others after a heavily armed fellow student opened fire on his classmates.
More than 30,000 gun-related deaths occur annually in the United States.
The US must take immediate measures to address its gun violence “epidemic,” including banning assault weapons and expanding mental health treatment, according to a study released in April by researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina.