GunsAmericans Bought 1.6 Million Guns Last Month. Who Were the Buyers?

By Tom Kutsch

Published 5 June 2021

Americans bought 1.6 million guns last month – an impressive number, but only the 14th highest on record, and still down 18 percent from May 2020. What has remained far more opaque is who exactly was doing the buying last year. This week, we started to have a more definitive answer.

Americans bought 1.6 million guns last month.

For those not familiar with the state of guns in America, that stat might seem shocking. But in a country that already has more firearms than people, and is in the middle of a historic gun sales boom, that number is merely business as usual.

Indeed, while last month’s haul was the 14th highest on record, per my colleague Daniel Nass’s analysis of FBI background check data, it was still down 18 percent from May 2020. Gun buying has spiked semi-regularly over the years, particularly after high-profile mass shootings and elections. But there’s never been a surge like what happened last year after the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, which first became obvious last March.

What has remained far more opaque is who exactly was doing the buying last year. This week, we started to have a more definitive answer. 

Approximately 3.8 million Americans became first-time gun owners last year, according to preliminary findings from a landmark survey of 19,000 people. First-time buyers accounted for 23 percent of all purchasers, up slightly from 17 percent in 2019. The study was led by public health researchers Deborah Azrael and Matthew Miller of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, who have meticulously followed gun ownership habits in America and helmed a landmark profile of gun owners and their attitudes in 2016.

The preliminary findings, which the authors presented in a panel this week, unearthed some other new trends that deepen our understanding of gun ownership in 2021. Fifty-one percent of new owners reported the responsible storage habits of keeping their guns locked and unloaded. That compares with 29 percent of current owners who follow these practices. The survey also confirmed shifting demographics in the new wave of gun owners. While overall gun owners are still more likely to be white (73 percent last year), there were more Black and Hispanic buyers among the first-timers than in the past. 

Overall, the gun-buying surge has also pushed up the share of American households who owned guns to 39 percent, according to the General Social Survey, a wide-ranging public opinion poll from the NORC at the University of Chicago. That is up seven percentage points from 2016.

Tom Kutsch is The Trace newsletter editor. This story is published courtesy of The Trace.