--- title: Gun Ownership United States Violence: States With The Most Guns description: Overall, one-third of American adults own a gun. Health researchers say this information could help inform how to reduce gun violence. canonical: https://time.com/3940167/gun-ownership-states-health/ author: Justin Worland article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-06-30T15:45:09.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:41:19.847Z article:section: Health og:title: Here's Where You're Most Likely to Own a Gun in the U.S. og:description: U.S. citizens own more than 270 million guns og:url: https://time.com/3940167/gun-ownership-states-health/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's Where You're Most Likely to Own a Gun in the U.S. twitter:description: U.S. citizens own more than 270 million guns twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Here's Where You're Most Likely to Own a Gun in the U.S. > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=b3aa6b61-a444-4023-bf9a-eb37ef72dc7f&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2014-08-13. Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola_  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Jun 30, 2015 3:45 PM UTC  by [Justin Worland](https://time.com/author/justin-worland/)  ## Justin Worland Senior Correspondent Jun 30, 2015 3:45 PM UTC Americans love their guns. U.S. citizens own more than 270 million of them, nearly 9 for every 10 Americans. No other country even comes close to matching that rate. Now, a new [study](http://ip.bmj.com/lookup/doi/10.1136/injuryprev-2015-041586) in the journal _Injury Prevention_ shows just how much gun culture varies within the U.S. In Alaska, the state with the highest rate of gun ownership, more than 60% of residents own a gun. In Delaware, the state with the lowest rate, 5% of residents own a gun. Overall, one-third of American adults own a gun. Public health researchers say this information could help inform how to reduce gun violence. “When you look at different states, you see a wide variation in these rates, and it mirrors the gun death rate,” said Bindu Balesan, an assistant professor at Columbia University’s public health school. Idaho, West Virginia, Wyoming and Montana round out the list of states with top gun ownership, following Alaska. Delaware, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire are the only states where fewer than 15% of residents own guns, according to the research. **Read More:** [Gun Fatality Rates Vary Wildly By State, Study Finds](http://time.com/3399144/firearms-deaths-states/) The study also found a strong correlation between gun ownership and living in a so-called social gun culture. In such gun cultures, friends and family tend to own firearms and community members may attend gun-themed social events. Nearly 8% of respondents even said that their social life with family members involves guns. The correlation may suggest a way to reduce gun deaths and injuries outside of federal government lawmaking, which has proven ineffective, Balesan says. Instead of focusing on big policy changes, public health advocates may want to focus on changing gun culture. ### Portraits of Schoolkids Learning Firearm Safety in Rural Indiana, 1956  Caption from LIFE. Wide-eyed fascination is displayed by boys as Rankin holds his revolver with the cylinder opened to show them there are no shells in it. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. In safety class instructor Rod Rankin is bombarded by Hobart, Ind., boys with questions about gun display and cartridge case in his belt. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Drawing bolt on 12-gauge shotgun, Johnny Cherela, 7, grimaces as he follows Rankin's instructions to check the chamber to see if gun is loaded. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Cringing class holds breath and ears as Rankin aims 30-30 rifle at can of water in demonstration to impress kids with the destructive power of guns. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. Careening can splashes water through air as bullet hits it from 18 feet away. Later one of the awed boys told his mother how 'strong' the gun was. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images  Gun safety instruction, Indiana, 1956. Grey Villet—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images “We need to think about strategies for social change like we did with tobacco,” she said. Gun violence remains a leading cause of death and injury in the U.S. More than 30,000 people are killed in a firearm-related incident each year, according to the [CDC](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm). And while a third of those deaths are the result of homicide, many more are a result of suicide and accidents. More than 200,000 people are injured each year. But treating gun violence as a public health issue is going to be an uphill battle, even without relying on the federal government for new laws. Research dollars, for instance, are nearly impossible to come by, Balesan said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a huge source of money for health research, [hasn’t given out funding](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2015/01/14/why-the-cdc-still-isnt-researching-gun-violence-despite-the-ban-being-lifted-two-years-ago/) for gun violence studies and others are similarly reluctant to touch such a controversial issue. ## Transcript This Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. This is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The bugs have evolved. The outbreak has gotten bigger. We are only as strong as the weakest link, and we have learned from Ebola that West Africa was a very weak link. [ MUSIC ] There's small clinics, these are like one room places where sick people might go in their house with maybe an auxiliary nurse as some one who has a little bit of medical training, but defiantly not the same standards that we would have here in the US. We're facing 3 main threats. The first is the threat of new organisms. It was coming and spreading in different places. The second is drug- resistant bacteria, and the third are intentionally created organisms. What we do in an outbreak response is continuously see how can we make it better. The exercises we've gone through both, re- evaluating our own protocols but also understanding what the public and governmental responses are has really helped us understand. How to take care of these patients in the larger context of our healthcare systems. And, those who are in the building, I would urge you to come down to either the ops team room, or the, When designing a unit that is designed to accept patients with serious communicable diseases, like Ebola, there are ways to design a unit so that it's function. Functional. Any hospital that can isolate a patient in a single patient room with a bathroom and can follow our infection control recommendations is capable of safely caring for a patient with Ebola. And we've tried to encourage every single hospital in the country to have an antibiotic stewardship program to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. There is a concern about fatigue as we go on that, the CDC other groups have sort of ramping up now to try to surge resources into the area. What we're also realizing is, we need to be able to maintain that surge for many months to keep the pressure on to completely control the outbreak. Time will tell in the next few weeks if we can start to see those numbers going in the right direction. Fewer new cases each day or each week. The single most important thing to understand about protecting Americans from Ebola is that can best be done by stopping it at the source in Africa. Its normal to be scared of something as deadly as Ebola and for the general public I really hope we can never let our fear undermine our compassion. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3940167/gun-ownership-states-health/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3940167/gun-ownership-states-health/"},"headline":"Here's Where You're Most Likely to Own a Gun in the U.S.","datePublished":"2015-06-30T15:45:09.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:41:19.847Z","description":"U.S. citizens own more than 270 million guns","url":"https://time.com/3940167/gun-ownership-states-health/","keywords":["Public Health"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Justin Worland","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/justin-worland/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/public-health/","name":"Public Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3940167/gun-ownership-states-health/","name":"Here's Where You're Most Likely to Own a Gun in the U.S."}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","description":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G194AmTC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-13T23:41:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3940167/gun-ownership-states-health/","duration":"PT2M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3940167/gun-ownership-states-health/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```