Results of a Pew Research released in late July confirm a trend retailers and manufacturers have reported for years, although evidence until now was largely anecdotal. Thanks to the number-crunchers at one of the nation’s leading research organizations, we now have figures that prove more law-abiding citizens in urban and suburban areas of the nation are exercising their Second Amendment rights than ever before.
When Pew Research conducted a similar survey in 2017, it found 19 percent of adults living in urban areas owned a firearm. Among suburbanites the figure came in at 28 percent and 47 percent of those living in rural regions owned at least one gun.
Results in 2023 rose across the board. They stood at 20, 30 and 48, respectively—up by 1, 2 and 1 percentage point each.
The increases sound insignificant, until you apply them against total populations. Using figures from another Pew Research study—this one in 2016—98 million Americans were urbanites, 175 million had their homes in the suburbs and 46 million chose the rural life.
It would be a glaring error to apply some basic math and jump to the conclusion that the one percent increase in urban areas comes to 980,000 more gun owners there. In all fairness, we also can’t conclude another 3,500,000 people in the suburbs have exercised their Second Amendment rights or 460,000 in the countryside.
An adjustment is required to compensate for the fact that the Pew Research numbers include children. To arrive at a more accurate look at the shifting market, we’ll employ the U.S. Census Bureau estimate (from 2020) that 77.9 percent of all U.S. citizens are adults.
Using that figure, it comes to 763,420 more firearm owners in urban regions in the nation and another 2,726,500 in the ‘burbs. New rural gun ownership pales by comparison after calculation at 358,340.
Regardless, it adds up to a gain of nearly 3.5 million new gun owners who live in cities and suburbs. That kind of shift, in less than a decade, makes it obvious why we’ve seen a major shift in manufacturer marketing approach and a record-setting pace of gun range expansion.
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