 "Photo: Courtesy of MCT Campus")
(U-WIRE) UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The United States has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world at 90 firearms per 100 citizens, a recent survey found.
According to the 2007 Small Arms Survey, released Aug. 28, the United States, with less than 5 percent of the world's population, owns about 35 to 50 percent of the world's civilian-owned guns.
United States civilians are responsible for the ownership of 270 million firearms, out of a total of 650 million civilian-owned firearms worldwide. Civilian ownership accounts for about 75 percent of total firearms owned, the survey reported.
"It's not nine people have one gun, it's probably one person has a lot of guns," said Tania Inowlocki, publications manager of the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland.
Aaron Karp, the author of the study's chapter on civilian firearms, titled "Completing the Count: Civilian Firearms," said the high percentage of gun ownership in the United States is because of the American Industrial Revolution and the Civil War, both of which militarized the public.
The National Rifle Association also transformed gun ownership from hunting and sport to personal security, Karp said, which led to an increase in firearm ownership.
No other country had a civil war at the same time as its industrial revolution or room to allow interest groups to transform society, he said.
Pennsylvania has the second-highest number of hunting licenses in the United States, following Texas, Karp said.
"Pennsylvania is really neat because it's an amazingly bipolar society," he said. "There's very strong interest in gun control in Philadelphia, and then rural interests, which are very strongly gun-rights and pro-hunting."
Chuck Ardo, press secretary for Gov. Ed Rendell, said hunters and people who own long rifles are generally not the problem.
"The problem is with inexpensive handguns," he said.
Jim Johnson, secretary of the Pennsylvania Rifle and Pistol Association, said gun ownership in the United States is good and allows people to defend themselves.
"Without a pistol or gun, then you're at the mercy of anyone who wants to cut your throat," Johnson said, adding that high gun ownership does not cause violence, but prevents it. Albert Rogers, president of the Penn State Rifle Club, said he doesn't see a problem with high levels of gun ownership.
Ardo said the number of homicides reported across the country every day "indicates there are far too many guns in the possession of people who ought not have them."
"I think that the people who believe guns prevent violence haven't been in a major American city in recent history," Ardo said.
Karp said it is hard to understand the relationship between guns and violence, but having more guns probably leads to more gun violence.
"There has been an incredible amount of very sophisticated empirical research, and the results are generally inconclusive," Karp said.
Because of a possible correlation between high levels of gun ownership and gun violence, Rendell supports "common-sense gun control measures" like the policy that limits Pennsylvania citizens to one gun purchase per month, Ardo said.
