How many gun owning households?

[clayman]

I'm doing some research into the extent of gun ownership in the UK, and have the following estimate.

 

Further insight and comments on these figures is welcome to try to impove the answer.

 

There are about 75m people in the UK

 

With an average of 3 per household, this means there are about 25m addresses in the UK, residential.

 

There are 650,000 licensed gun owners in the UK

 

An estimate of non section gun owners is double that again, ie about 1,300,000 - this might be an under estimate, any one have any known stats on airgun ownership non-fac??

 

This gives a total of around 2m addresses in the UK with a gun of some sort ( excluding blank firing, de-ac display guns, airsoft etc). If we include an estimate for those too, a total estimate for gun owning households comes in at about 2,500,000 or 10% of all house holds.

 

Taking this a bit further, in any area there is likely to be a weighting in the proportion of households in a residential town or city towards the smaller rural towns - ie a lower proportion of gun owning households in a city, maybe as little as 5% in big cities, and up to 15% in farming localities.

 

Outline figures are therefore:

 

1 house in 20 in inner cities has a gun of some sort.

1 house in 10 in larger county towns

1 house in 5 in rural towns and villages and the outlying country households.

 

This research comes about to get an answer to the comments being raised by bunny huggers as to "Why do we need a gun shop in xxx, who-ever allowed such a thing? There is no need for it"

 

If my stats hold up to scrutiny it would seem the rural town my business is located in of pop 22,000 has 2 - 3,000 gun households - more than enough to justify the existence of a shop servicing the Country Sportsman's needs.

 

If anything I think I may be under-estimating, and other P-W members might like to reflect on these figures and tighten them up if they have further or better information, particularly regarding the rural/urban weighting ratios ( any known links to individual licensing authorities no of certs issued?) and estimates of non-licensed holdings from any referenced sources like NGB's of airgunning / airsoft etc as to numbers of users?

[poontang]

UK (known) population for 2012 is 62.6m.

 

Occupied residential properties approx 21.6m

 

This should give you an idea of population, and the general make up of the rural population. http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/pb13642-rural-digest-2012.pdf

 

Hope this helps.

[ordnance]

I Am not sure about the rest of the UK some figures for N Ireland.

 

We have analysed detailed information provided on each of the 59,585 people living in Northern Ireland who currently hold firearms licences. In each case, we were given each gun owner's age, gender, the police district they live in, the number of weapons they own and the conditions of use on their licence.

We found that almost 60,000 members of the public own over 146,000 firearms with the remaining 7,018 legally-held guns belonging to serving police and prison officers.

[clayman]

Thanks - will wait for some more replies and tighten up figures according, and see what the results look like, although the 75m / 25m household ratio remains about right on the 62m / 21m figure - the ratio remains the same of 1 house hold to 3 pop, and the 62.2 / 21.6 would weight into my figures by about 10% MORE holding households, but still well within the standard deviation for the estimate spread. The biggest change for the calculations will come from better airgun holding info, we know the licensed holding pretty tightly, but my airgunning holders numbers is just an educated guess from the kind of sales for section / non-section we do in the gun shop.

[MiLisCer]

There is a break down somewhere by police force (All 42 of them) it is online - I'll try and find it for you - unless you have already got it?/seen it?

 

Mike

[cockercas]

I posted something a while ago. It had numbers of grants/variations/refusals/revokes and some more for each licencing authority

[cockercas]

http://forums.pigeonwatch.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/206020-just-found-this/page__fromsearch__1. Not sure if this will work. I'm on my phone.

[clayman]

Yes, got those stats via the link and very useful.

 

Although the chart does not give the actual figures I need, they can be extrapolated and the results are:

 

The National average is 2.6%. of households have a sec gun, with upper in North Yorks at 7.6% and bottom in Met London at .6% ( ignoring City of Lon as tiny 7000 residential pop and almost no guns!)

 

So, good Total UK pop figure, good sec figures now.

 

Need more data on Airguns.

Police force area Certs / households London, City of 0.2% Metropolitan Police 0.6% Merseyside 0.7% West Midlands 0.7% Greater Manchester 0.8% West Yorkshire 1.3% South Yorkshire 1.4% South Wales 1.6% Lancashire 1.6% Cleveland 1.7% Nottinghamshire 1.8% Hertfordshire 2.0% Gwent 2.2% Leicestershire 2.2% Surrey 2.6% Northumbria 2.6% Bedfordshire 2.6% Staffordshire 2.7% Cheshire 2.7% Hampshire 2.7% Essex 2.8% Humberside 2.9% Thames Valley 2.9% Kent 2.9% Derbyshire 3.1% Avon and Somerset 3.5% Cambridgeshire 3.6% Northamptonshire 3.7% Sussex 3.7% North Wales 3.8% Warwickshire 3.9% Durham 4.1% Gloucestershire 4.2% Dorset 4.6% Wiltshire 4.7% West Mercia 5.1% Norfolk 5.4% Lincolnshire 5.6% Devon and Cornwall 5.8% Suffolk 6.1% Cumbria 6.9% Dyfed-Powys 7.2% North Yorkshire 7.6% All forces 2.6%

[clayman]

So, this is where the calc is now:

 

There are about 63m people in the UK

 

The average is just under 3 per household, with about 22m addresses in the UK, residential.

 

There are 700,000 licensed gun owners in the UK

 

An estimate of non section gun owners is double that again, ie about 1,400,000 - needs more input to verify

 

This gives a total of around 2.1m addresses in the UK with a gun of some sort ( excluding blank firing, de-ac display guns, airsoft etc).Adding this to the total estimate for gun owning households comes in at about 2,600,000 or 12% of all house holds - ( indeed, still reasonably in line with original estimate)

 

Weighting in the proportion of households in a residential town or city towards the smaller rural towns shows a bigger span than I had estimated - ie a Inner cities < 1% to the most rural areas at 7%+ within the Certficate holding group. Nat average 2.6%

 

If the estimate of non-cert holders is reasonable, then the current figures for all gun households would be:

 

Inner cities <3%; most rural 27%; nat av 12%.

 

 

Outline figures are therefore:

 

1 house in 35 in inner cities has a gun of some sort < 3%

1 house in 8 in larger county towns 12%

1 house in 4 in rural towns and villages and the outlying country households 25%+

[HDAV]

Trying to get planning for a gun shop, do the require more planning than a normal retail shop? ONS website is the place too look, to get accurate weightings is a very specialised area of statistics.

 

 

[Vince Green]

You haven't given enough weight to air weapons IMO. There are many times more air weapons out there than are held on FAC or SGC. Trouble is many are rarely if ever used

Edited December 8, 2012 by Vince Green

[ordnance]

You haven't given enough weight to air weapons IMO. There are many times more air weapons out there than are held on FAC or SGC. Trouble is many are rarely if ever used

 

You need a FAC here for a air rifle.

[clayman]

You haven't given enough weight to air weapons IMO. There are many times more air weapons out there than are held on FAC or SGC. Trouble is many are rarely if ever used

 

Yes, I think that might be the case. At the moment I've set a conservative estimate that works out as 2.7 households with non sectioned guns to every one with. Also, many of the accounted for 700k licence holders will be air-gun owners as well, perhaps 50%? So maybe 350k of airgun owners are already accounted for. For the purposes of demonstrating to an uninformed public the extent of gun ownership in a neighbourhood the figures so far suggested still show how large it is, and its likely to be larger still if some referenced statistics of airgun ownership levels can be obtained.

 

Even on my stats, rural areas are 20%+ gun household ownership and it may well be higher.

[poontang]

I don't think anybody knows the true figure concerning airguns.

 

According to this report: http://news.bbc.co.u...268.stm BASC estimated between 5m - 7m in 2005.

Edited December 9, 2012 by poontang

[lambhat]

You've assumed that all the estimated 2m gun owners live in different houses. There will be lots of instances (to start the ball rolling I'm going to guess 25%) where gun owners share an address.

[clayman]

You've assumed that all the estimated 2m gun owners live in different houses. There will be lots of instances (to start the ball rolling I'm going to guess 25%) where gun owners share an address.

 

Yes, its a valid point, but if the Poontang's BASC estimate of 5-7m owners is right, my estimate in the calcs of 2.6m owners is well under understated.

 

Applying both of those points and some other adjusts now brought up, would produce this:

 

700000 cert holders ( av is 2 guns per cert)

 

6,000,000 airguns ( in the mid of the estimate spread, and assuming thats physical guns not households) = 3,000,000 individuals

 

If 350,000 of those own sectioned guns, we are at 3,350,000 owners, and if 25% are within the same household we are back at 2.5mill households.

 

At the moment, despite putting a series of new adjust both up and down for further parameters, the answer keeps coming back to around the same - around 2.5million households have one or more guns, and the urban / rural ratio on guns is well reported, so long as the % spreads on certs applies generally across all gun types the rural / city weighting ratios are also about right.

 

ps, pootang - your link goes to a 404, so unable to see if the BASC estimate is for physical guns, individuals owning guns, or households.

pps - could get some insight to some estimated ratios, ie how many Cert holders and an airgun as well, and how many households have more than one cert holder at the addr by using a poll within the P-W forums, but unable to locate this feature I have used before - can anyone guide me as to where it is now so these ratios could be tested?

Edited December 9, 2012 by clayman

[poontang]

Yep, it's an old story so link might be out of date.

 

I've done a screenshot for you, with the relevant part...hope it helps.

 

 

[clayman]

Thanks - so that supports the current estimate , ie that if there were, say, 6m airguns, 3.5k owned by cert holders, average no of airguns per owner 2, and 25% of households had more than one gun owner we are still back to a loose figure now of 2.8m household addresses with one or more gun owner and one or more guns.

 

The figures being used also bring out a total no of guns of all types as being around 7.5m within an estimate range of 6.5m to 8.5m total.

 

Using a formula that has as many adjustments as can be reasonably introduced and is a combination of accurate stats and good estimates, the results at the moment would appear to a pretty good result with an error factor of +/- 15%.

 

2.8m households is an average of 8% in any area, with a spread of <3% in cities up to 20%+ in country areas.

 

Unless any-one has further good info on the airgun numbers, I think this exercise has come to a conclusion as given above. Thanks for all the input.

[Vince Green]

Just in my family, I know that 60% of households have an air rifle but that none of them has been fired these past ten years. My brother has one, my brother in law has one and thinks there is still one back at his mothers house. My wife's uncle has one that he used to shoot squirrels with till he was threatened with prosecution by the RSPCA (why? its not illegal).

 

The interesting thing is THEY ALL WOULDN'T RISK USING THEM TODAY BECAUSE THEY THINK IT WOULD ATTRACT ADVERSE ATTENTION. Sad reflection IMO

 

The thing about my wife's uncle is something I didn't know about till this week. apparantly he was told he could go to prison (yes honestly,) by a rspca officer for shooting grey squirrels in his garden some 15 years ago after a complaint from a neighbour. I wish I had known about it then.

 

how many other "Uncle Harrys" have been intimidated by the RSPCA? Good news is he has given his Diana air rifle to my youngest son. If they want to visit me - bring it on, but be warned, I will be recording every conversation. They are not going to Bull+++t me

Edited December 9, 2012 by Vince Green

[HDAV]

Census data out today put population at 56.1 million? http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/census/2011/index.html in England and Wales