The number of Americans carrying handguns on a daily basis doubled between 2015 and 2019 according to a new study, with self-protection found to be a key reason for the increase.
The study, published by the American Journal of Public Health on Nov. 16, is based on a survey of 2,389 U.S. adult handgun owners conducted between July 30 and Aug. 11, 2019. The results of the study showed that roughly 3 in 10 handgun owners carried loaded guns on their person in the previous 30 days of the survey. About 4 in 10 did so every day.
“Extrapolating to the estimated 53 million US adults who owned handguns in 2019, we estimate that about 16 million US adults carried a handgun in the past 30 days (up from 9 million in 2015), and that almost 6 million did so every day (twice the approximately 3 million who did so in 2015),” the study states….