Report Highlights: Although rates of firearm ownership vary widely from state to state, American civilians own more firearms than civilians in any other country.
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Montana has the highest rate of reported household gun ownership at 66.3 per 100 residents.
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Wyoming (66.2 per 100), Alaska (64.5 per 100), Idaho (60.1 per 100), and West Virginia (58.5 per 100) have the highest rates of gun ownership in the U.S.
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Massachusetts and New Jersey have the fewest gun owners at only 14.7 per 100 residents.
Methodology
Gun ownership data in the U.S. are dependent on self-reporting surveys and purchase records, as no firearm registry exists for guns not regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) per the National Firearms Act (NFA). The number of registered firearms in each state was sourced from the ATF’s 2024 Firearms Commerce in the United States report. Machine guns, shotguns, rifles, and weapons classified as “Any Other Weapon” were included. Suppressors and destructive devices were not.
State-level household ownership rates were sourced from the RAND Corporation, which compiled 51 nationally representative surveys conducted between 1980 and 2016. The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains background check records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which provides recent gun sales data. Rates were adjusted to produce more realistic sales totals and may undercount some state-level sales in which concealed-carry permit holders were exempt from federal background checks.
Pew Research Center and Gallup surveys were consulted for national individual ownership rates. Estimates in this report are based on household gun ownership due to data limitations, as comprehensive surveys only cover national firearm prevalence.
Firearm death rates are sourced from the CDC WONDER database, which provides complete data up to 2024. All death rates cited in this report cover 2018 to 2024, as 2025 data are incomplete at the time of writing.
Rates of Gun Ownership by State
According to RAND, Montana had the highest rate of gun ownership, with an estimated 66.3 per 100 adults living in a home with firearms as of 2016. Massachusetts and New Jersey shared the lowest rate, at 14.7 per 100 adults living in a home with firearms.4
More recent 2024 purchasing records indicate that Wyoming and Montana had the most sales (16.1 per 100 and 15.9 per 100, respectively), while Alaska (15.4 per 100), New Hampshire (13.3 per 100), and Oregon (13.2 per 100) led all remaining states in firearm sales. These data may indicate that state-level ownership rankings have shifted slightly.2
| States by Gun Ownership Ranking |
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| Guns Per 100 Resisdents |
| 1. Montana | 66.3 |
|---|---|
| 2. Wyoming | 66.2 |
| 3. Alaska | 64.5 |
| 4. Idaho | 60.1 |
| 5. West Virginia | 58.5 |
| 6. Arkansas | 57.2 |
| 7. Mississippi | 55.8 |
| 8. Alabama | 55.8 |
| 9. South Dakota | 55.3 |
| 10. North Dakota | 55.1 |
| 11. Oklahoma | 54.6 |
| 12. Kentucky | 53.1 |
| 13. Louisiana | 51.7 |
| 14. Tennessee | 51.6 |
| 15. Oregon | 50.5 |
| 16. Vermont | 49.4 |
| 17. South Carolina | 49.2 |
| 18. Georgia | 48.9 |
| 19. Kansas | 48.8 |
| 20. Missouri | 47.3 |
| 21. Nevada | 46.8 |
| 22. Maine | 46.8 |
| 23. Utah | 46.3 |
| 24. Arizona | 46.2 |
| 25. New Mexico | 45.8 |
| 26. North Carolina | 45.7 |
| 27. Texas | 45.3 |
| 28. Wisconsin | 45.2 |
| 29. Nebraska | 45.1 |
| 30. Colorado | 44.8 |
| 31. Indiana | 44.6 |
| 32. Virginia | 43.6 |
| 33. Iowa | 42.8 |
| 34. Minnesota | 42.1 |
| 35. Washington | 41.1 |
| 36. New Hampshire | 40.8 |
| 37. Pennsylvania | 40.7 |
| 38. Michigan | 40.2 |
| 39. Ohio | 40.0 |
| 40. Florida | 35.3 |
| 41. Delaware | 34.4 |
| 42. Maryland | 30.2 |
| 43. California | 28.3 |
| 44. Illinois | 27.8 |
| 45. Connecticut | 23.6 |
| 46. New York | 19.2 |
| 47. Hawaii | 14.9 |
| 48. Rhode Island | 14.8 |
| 49. Massachusetts | 14.7 |
| 50. New Jersey | 14.7 |
Continue reading Gun Ownership by State (2026 Statistics) on Ammo.com
https://ammo.com/articles/gun-ownership-by-state#gun-ownership-by-country