“My Trace colleague Jennifer Mascia pulled some numbers from the Small Arms Survey, which gauges gun stockpiles in the hands of civilians, law enforcement, and militaries around the world,” The Trace’s email blaster writes. “She found that with an estimated 270 million firearms owned by everyday Americans, civilians own 70 times more weapons than all police and military services combined.” Boldly played sir! Only . . .

police are civilians. Mind you, it’s a common mistake made by statists agitating for civilian disarmament. They view cops as uber-civilians or, as some in these parts like to say, “the only ones.” Which puts them at odds with Black Lives Matter and other left-leaning allies, for whom police vilification is a necessary evil.

Anyway, winning!

Obviously, The Trace doesn’t see it that way. They link to their previous contention that the large number of firearms in non-LEO civilian hands has more to do with “super-owners” than a growing overall number of American gun owners. The enormous and ongoing increase in Americans with [unconstitutional] concealed carry permits puts paid to that theory.

And one more thing . . .

Alexander Historical Auctions emailed their catalogue this am, which includes a cheerful little item: THE PRIMER FOR THE GASSING OF JEWS: “STERILIZATION, DECONTAMINATION AND DISINFECTION”. It’s the official German guide to safe, efficient mass murder. If The Trace and its ilk don’t think that American gun ownership is a bulwark against state-sponsored mass murder, they’re wrong. Never again. Cold dead hands. Etc.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

101 COMMENTS

  2. “Quantity has a quality all its own.” The Revolution doesn’t need mags or clips, they just need to New York reload.

  3. civilians own 70 times more weapons than all police and military services combined

    I have only one word in response: YAY!

    • Nothing to get too excited about. Do civilians own or have access to Apaches, F-16s, A-10s, JDAMs, MOABS, etc.? Heck, even mortars, grenade launchers, fragmentation grenades, LAW rockets, mini-guns, etc?

      It’s not always about quantity sometimes it’s quality…

      • Yeah, because they’re going to be all about bombing the same neighborhoods where their families and friends live.

        There’s also an upper limit to the force they dare to use because they have to draw supplies from somewhere, and killing all the workers puts a crimp in that.

      • The question of: Do the people have tanks and planes? How long can a plane stay up or a tanker stay buttoned up? How can a hunter change into a sniper? Do the math folks!

        • The 90% of the military and police that won’t come after civilians will bring their tanks and planes with them. The ones that don’t, well we know where their families live. Just for additional information, California, yes that California, has more civilian firearms than China has in total.

      • Incorrect it is ALWAYS about Quantity when you are talking abou Warfare. Quality helps, but quantity rules.
        Remember you never can hold a territory without boots on the ground.
        No amount of Apache’s or drones or anything else will do the Job.
        If the American Military or any other military was ever in doubt of this fact, it was a hard learned lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan.
        Now back to those boots on the ground, when they are out gunned 100+ to 1, guess who wins?

    • It is even worse/better. Up until the end of the 19th century many cops did not carry sidearms and if they did it was one the officer personally owned. If you are not historically challenged alot of the “sky is falling” “or it will fall” can be seen for the B.S. that it is.

    • Yep, the last one I saw pegged it at 300,000,000 – 350,000,000 about one gun per person as our pop is about 325 million.

        • Might want to check those numbers, unless you’re talking about worldwide and not just US.

          There may be more than 400 million guns in the US. No way 660 million, though.

        • I read another blog recently that put the 300milliion number much higher as well. Can’t remember which blog it was. Basically, they noted that people have been using the 300million number for a looooonggg time with no attempt at update. The author used NICS numbers over several years to infer the increase, noting that one background check isn’t always for one gun and also noting guns that have been destroyed or were subject to multiple NICS checks. Either way, it’s likely that 300million number is low. Don’t tell anyone else though.

    • NICS background checks have been in existence for 19 years, only. Since 1998, there have been 275 million checks. I suspect the amount of multiple firearms balances out the number of recirculated (used) firearms transferred. That mean, there’s been close to 270 million new firearms entering buyers’ hands just in the last 19 years. Good estimates say there were 150 million firearms already in circulation before that. That would mean the more realistic number is closer to 425 million firearms in private civilian hands. I don’t know why folks continue to overlook this. I suppose the anti gunner fascists believe that the lower the number, the easier it is to convince people that it’s not such a big deal to “scoop them all up”.

      • Why? Seriously?
        Haven’t you heard that more guns in the hands of regular people will result in countless murders, blood running in the streets (if you haven’t, you’ve just not been paying attention).
        To the Dems, guns mean death, pure and simple. More guns, more death. That history does not bear this out just doesn’t mean anything to them (and from the way they’ve been treating history lately, that should be very obvious).
        Thus the very sarcastic, “it’s amazing we aren’t all dead already”.
        As the saying goes, with well over 400 million guns, and (conservatively) billions of rounds of ammo, if we were really a problem, you’d know it by now. Because you’d be dead.

        I don’t know why I bother filling out the info right, it’s a useless gesture. I get no email feedback, still.

    • No, Stu is right. Sort of.
      It goes like this: The gun bigot’s argument is We The People cannot be trusted with guns because… because we’ll all go nuts and shoot everyone around us. Right?
      (pregnant pause)
      So with enough guns in the US alone to arm nearly every man and woman – why are we not having to swim through blood every day on the way to work?
      Yes, of course. Not every American has a gun at all – but as I like to remind those bigots – MILLIONS of us do… and we never harm anyone.
      So if that simple argument can be proven wrong so easily, what else are they wrong about?

  8. But they have tanks. A10’s. Nukes. Small arms are fine, but they have big arms. And seemingly endless supplies of ammo.

    Good thing they’re on our side.

    • No one has seemingly endless supplies of ammo. Even the US military in “this day and age” can fuck that up. I know this personally from when I was in Iraq. Due to a complete bureaucratic, higher ranking, ignorant fuck up, our entire COP had only enough ammo for each soldier to have ONE combat load for an entire month. This wasnt a group of Fobitts, This was an infantry battalion in a combat zone. We literally ended up having to ration and rotate ammo loads for patrols. If the enemy had been able to launch a real organized attack during this time, it would’ve been a massacre.

    • I mostly am concerned with drones.

      And space.

      If you own space, you own everything underneath it, and since Bill Clinton gave multi-stage-to-orbit technology to the POS chi-coms thru LORAL, and Obamutherfer abdicated space so that NASA could (instead) find ways to “encourage muslims” to “do” spacey-like things, we should all do a little more ‘looking up’.

    • So? I’m a Tanker. I understand the limits of my combat platform. She’s damned good, but bigger doesn’t always equal better. Don’t forget that black-pajama-wearing cave-dwellers have kept the most powerful military in human history from victory for almost 20 years and the Hadj is nowhere near as well-armed as our POTG.

      • That’s only been possible because of our politically correct rules of engagement. Same with Vietnam. Unleash the full power of the US military, without restrictions or regard for “civilian” casualties and our “outreach” in Afghanistan would’ve been over in 12 months. He’ll, we have the capacity to depopulate the entire country by 12 noon today.

  9. “civilians own 70 times more weapons than all police and military services combined”

    This is a problem…why? We are not servants of the sate (although it seems the Feds think differently), the fed is a creature of the States and of the People. Says so right int he Constitution. first line even. It is like a game of “Who’s the Boss?” Are we subjects of the government, or free men? If the latter, then the government has no say in the matter. says the Second Amendment. Pretty simple really. (Yes, yes, I know that the Cvil War changed all that and guaranteed the supremacy of the Fed over the States. Quite a coup.)

    • Mark N.,

      We may not be subjects of the federal government, but I can assure you that we are de facto subjects of the state in which we live.

      • NOPE, government, wherever the fv<k you find it on this planet, is still inly made up of your stupid ahole neighbors who needed a job.

        They all slepp somewhere.

  11. THE QUESTION REMAINS HOWEVER AS TO WHETHER OR NOT THERE ARE AMONG THIS NUMBER SUFFICIENT STALWARD PATRIOTS THAT WILL STAND UP AGAINST THE MULTITUDE OF LUCIFER’S LEGION OF DEMENTED DEMONCRST-SOCIALIST-LIBERAL-COMMUNIST-DEDICATED-DISCIPLES !!!!!!!

    • We don’t all have to stand bro. A few of us could even stand off a pace an go-prone. Not me, some of us have to push in and lob the 40MM.

    • Some of us realize why the government (federal, state or local) will never go house to house to confiscate guns.
      To those who don’t: the government would shortly run out of people willing to do the house to house thing, because so many would simply die trying.
      Remember during Viet Nam when B-52 pilots absolutely refused to fly missions, even under threat of severe punishment? Why did they do that? Simply because the White House, in a monumentally stupid effort to micro-manage a war remotely against the advice of all military advisors, told the AF to fly in such a way that the planes were being shot down in large numbers when they simply didn’t need to be. Different tactics would have been far less costly, and do much more damage to the enemy.
      Civilian LEOs aren’t as motivated as military pilots, so it would take far less to incite a mutiny.
      Use the military? Specifically illegal, and even if done, would require out-of-state NG units, increasing costs, and even then, the NG people would know what they were being ordered to do was illegal, and the orders would not have to be followed. As with the B-52 pilots, no court martial would touch that.

  12. I count it as a point of pride to be better armed as I go about my day than the average cop.

  13. This will put a little spring in my step, knowing that somewhere, I’m making a pint-sized billionaire lose some sleep.

  14. I’d feel better if I had some top shelf NVGs, a SAW, or maybe some claymores. Of course, we have tannerite and AR-10s so it balances out.

  15. As I have written to my Representatives, civilians are the last line of defense.

    It may not seem like a possibilty now but circumstances change.

  18. We squabble among ourselves like any family. But on 9/11 we were all Americans.
    In Texas right now, nobody cares about color, political leanings, religion, whatever. People from all 50 states are helping our fellow Americans.
    That, my friends, meets my understanding of a well regulated militia.

  19. Bearing Arms says 600 million firearms and 25 trillion rounds of ammo in the hands of legal citizens.

    Says I….I’m not surrendering anything. Pass any law. Attempt any confiscation. Come and take.

    Molon labe

  20. “Civilians Own 70 times More Guns Than U.S. Police and Military Combined”

    Ain’t America great?

    I love this country 🤠

  21. Those numbers are extremely questionable. Consider: current figures on US military size show we have 1.43 million active duty servicemembers and 818,000 reserves. Is The Trace really contending that the military doesn’t have enough small arms to equip every servicemember and reservist (2.248 million) or any spares or mothballed weapons?

    Only if they’re complete idiots, which is entirely possible.

    Now think about whether soldiers enter combat with only one weapon. No. Maybe some officers might, but if they want a long gun, one is available. Soldiers should really count double.

    Now active police forces in 2008 included 1.1 million people. Is there a serious contention that there are unarmed police in the US? No, of course not. In fact, the vast majority of police departments require their officers to have their primary service weapon and a backup weapon, so they should really count double.

    So, we have almost 3.4 million police, military and military reserves, most of whom carry or have immediately available a secondary firearm or backup. The base number for police and military should be at least 6.8 million firearms and candidly, it’s fair to round that to 7 million because there are additional armed federal agents who aren’t strictly police (IRS, Agriculture, Commerce, Education… there is an appallingly long list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_law_enforcement_in_the_United_States ) and there are a lot of older weapons stored on bases around the world that Mr. Obama refused to allow to be returned to the US.

    The number for calculations should be no less than 7 million firearms in the hands of federal, state and local police and military servicemembers. That number entirely excludes spares, special purpose weapons, and everything that doesn’t qualify as a small arm.

    So, assuming the 270 million guns in civilian hands number is somehow more reliable than the Trace’s other numbers, there are only around 38x more weapons in civilian hands than in the hands of the named entities. And I’m still perfectly fine with that, but let’s at least try to be honest about things. The federal government and its support structure doesn’t lack for firearms.

    • I was deployed with a helo squadron. 150+ people on Det. Our “armory” was manned by 2 individuals. They were responsible for approx 2 dozen firearms. Those were only issued when we had to go across the border. I’m currently on a base with several thousand people attached to it. The only weapons on that station are for the base security(mostly contract guys). I’d be amazed if the military could give any weapon to half of the force. There’s a very small percentage of military personnel that are actually “war fighters”.

      • I was on a fast attack submarine in the navy back in the eighties and we only had a couple of dozen 45’s a handful of shotguns and M-14’s and we never got much practice. We always had plenty of Tomahawks, Subrocs, and Mark 48’s and we knew what to do with them.

    • Ummm, no. Sorry Cadeyrn, but the ratio of front line armed troops to rear echelon/support is at least 16 to one if not higher. The Marines probably have a higher proportion of armed troops to over all Manning, (every marine a rifleman first), but not by much.

  22. TRUTH About GUNS so needs a like button!

    P.S. I think its closer to 100 to 1. If it’s not we should by some more.

  23. Oh man you took my comment with my throttled phone. 100 to ONE. I like those odds😆

  24. What I heard is that the number 270 million comes from only 1 computer system at the ATF, there are at least 2 more systems so that means the actual number of weapons should be over 600 million.

  27. While I don’t doubt the ratio is at least 70-1, my reaction is, “Yeah, so?” I presume that she’s trying to make the point that there’s way too many guns owned by private citizens, but again, “Yeah, so

    In the last week or so, a post arguing for a public health approach to guns would lead to increased regulation/limited ownership.
    Hidden within the public health approach is an underlying presumption that tolerates things which cause harm provided it has sufficient social utility. Thus, medical malpractice is tolerated to some degree because medicine isn’t perfect and neither are people. Guns are presumed to have no social utility and thus should be highly regulated.

    This brings me to the point of my rant. It’s the lack of “Spock-like” logic and deductive reasoning that’s troubling in anti-gun arguments. They refuse to recognize any reason for having a gun following logic of “Guns are bad, therefore only bad people have guns.”

    • In rhetorical terms, the entire anti-gun argument is a giant exercise in begging the question.

      (What was the question? Doesn’t matter. Let’s assume the answer is to reduce gun ownership and get rid of guns.)

    • Funny, seems like rice farmers and goat herders have done just fine against the “US” military with little more than “small arms”.

  30. Families do not throw away guns. The gun your great great grandpa bought in 1870 is still in the family somewhere, unless it was confiscated in a crime. Now, it may work and it may not, but chances are that it can be fixed to work. I have bought a few C&R weapons that look like they have never been shot, and maybe were not. These guns are quite available.
    As there is no reason to throw any of these away, how many guns do you truely think are in american hands?

  31. The feds have only been keeping tabs on the number of guns in civilian hands for a couple decades now. All but one of my firearms are older than that. Given the fact that guns tend to last forever, the number of guns in private hands is probably impossible to peg. 660 million might be the case

    • “The feds have only been keeping tabs on the number of guns in civilian hands for a couple decades now.”

      I think that should read more like this: The feds have only been keeping tabs on guns sold or transferred through FFLs for a few decades now.
      The Philippines is good for a couple thousand per year, untraceable (no serial numbers); other illegal imports (do we really think only drugs come in illegally?) must be factored in. (All those “untraceable” guns used in crimes come from somewhere.) Plus, of course, anyone who knows how to work with his/her hands can go to Lowes and buy everything needed to make a gun.

  32. If I have 270 million guns and you ban 100 million of them. How many guns do I have? 270 million, your move, JBT.

  35. I have to call BS on this. We’ve been told for nearly 25 years that there were 300 million firearms in the hands of American civilians. Washington Examiner reported that during Obama’s stint as golfer in chief Americans purchased 141.5 million firearms or nearly 50,000 guns a day. That’s enough guns to outfit 4 to 6 Army divisions a week. Closer estimates of the amount of civilian owned firearms (By people who much more than your average non-gun owning reporters) at 700 million and perhaps as much as one trillion rounds of ammunition.

  36. “If The Trace and its ilk don’t think that American gun ownership is a bulwark against state-sponsored mass murder, they’re wrong. Never again. Cold dead hands. Etc.”

    I am hoping the national guard will be on the side of the people. They might have fewer guns, but they have other, bigger, weapons.

  37. The number of arms in conflict is irrelevant….
    There is no more effective weapon in armed conflict than the Scout Sniper.
    III/0317

  38. Well there’s one bit wrong with the numbers from Small Arms Survey, a lot of firearms in the hands of police and military forces in developed nations are not owned by the military or police. They are leased from manufacturers on a temporary basis.

    I frequently shop through “police retired” pistols, as while they often show significant external ‘holster wear’ the mechanics themselves are often in excellent condition. I initially thought that this was police departments selling off retired pistols to gain revenue; several sellers corrected me, many with data. Police retired weapons are returned to the manufacturer, who then divide them into lots based on various quality markers, and sell the lots in bulk to select wholesalers who distribute to dealers who then go through their sellers.

  39. Let’s see…seventy to one…that seems about right. But like Pastor Dave says, if you actually know how many guns you have, then you don’t have enough. Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition! Never let the liberals try to beat your swords into plowshares, by claiming that the meek will inherit the Earth.

Comments are closed.