Mr. Rawles,
Bill from Ohio writes: “Most people buy guns and they never shoot them, in fact, last time I heard a statistic regarding firearms usage in the United States, the national average of rounds fired per gun was seven – and that is over the entire lifetime of the owner!” There are about 250 million firearms in the US and about 10 billion rounds of ammunition sold per year. That’s an average of 40 rounds per gun per year. On average, each US resident fires about 2,400 rounds of ammunition in a 72-year lifetime. Assuming a 40-year lifetime for a gun, that’s roughly 1,600 rounds per firearm.
So “seven” is off by more than two orders of magnitude. It should have been obvious that this figure was seriously unrealistic. – PNG
JWR Replies: You are correct that Bill from Ohio’s figure of an average of seven rounds was erroneously low. However, there are several qualifiers that I would add to your analysis of the 8 to 10 billion small arms cartridges produced in the US each year:
First, there are serious shooters and there are casual shooters. The serious variety (“target shooters”) consume far more ammunition than most others, who fire very few cartridges through their guns.
Second, more ammunition is produced each year than is fired. This is purely anecdotal evidence, but I personally know several SurvivalBlog readers that only fire 20 to 50 rounds of centerfire per year and perhaps two or three times as many rimfire cartridges, yet they have 30,000+ rounds (including rimfire ammo) stored in their basements.
Third, not all ammunition is produced for the civilian market. The military Lake City Arsenal, for example, produces nearly 1.5 billion round per year, and only a tiny percentage of that is eventually fired by civilians.
Fourth, not all ammunition is produced for the domestic market. I recently saw a statistic of $3.1 billion worth of ammunition commercially exported by the US in 2005—not counting foreign military sales (FMS) programs. Assuming an average of 28 cents per cartridge, that equates to close to one billion rounds (perhaps 1/8th of US annual production) in exports. Offsetting that of course are ammunition imports, but US exports of ammunition far exceed imports.
Fifth, I believe that the oft-cited estimate of 250 million guns in the US is a low estimate. I think that the actual figure is closer to 400 million.
Together, all of these factors radically push down the number of rounds fired in centerfire guns that are purchased by casual shooters. There are quite a few guns sold that never get fired at all. These are the so-called “desk drawer” guns and “safe queen” guns. It is surprising to see how many guns described as “new in box”, “like new in box”, or “test fired only” that are advertised on the secondary market. (The listings at GunBroker.com and GunsAmerica.com are indicative.) Granted, there is no logical support for Bill from Ohio’s figure, but I would assert that it was not off by nearly as large a margin as you suggest.