Is American Gun Ownership an Addiction?

In terms of personal firearms, Americans are the most heavily armed people on earth. They own nearly twice as many guns per person as the next most heavily armed nation, Serbia, and more than twice as many guns per person as war-torn Yemen. They own nearly 100 times as many firearms per person as people in Poland or South Korea, and 1000 times as many firearms per person as Tunisians.

On average, there are 40 million more firearms than people in the USA. Does this mean that Americans are addicted to guns?

American Doctors and Healthcare Professionals Get Riled Up on Guns

There is not a lot of debate over the question of whether gun violence is a significant health problem in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2013, the most recent year for which complete data are available, guns (other than BB and pellet guns) were involved in:

• 505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm.
• 11,208 homicides.
• 21,175 suicides and
• 84,258 injuries.

Handguns are used in murders about 15 times as often as rifles. Gun violence is most common in poor areas in cities. "Mass shootings," involving four or more victims, garner headlines, but only about 10 percent of all gun-related deaths occur in events in which four or more people are shot. Nonetheless, a "mass shooting" occurs somewhere in the US nearly every day, usually in a poor urban area. Violence outside of inner cities is more likely to make the news. Numbers of mass shootings seem to increase with news coverage, although it's not easy to determine whether the number of killings drives the news coverage or the news coverage inspires would-be killers.

Who Owns Guns in the USA?

Although there are hundreds of millions of guns in the United States, there aren't hundreds of millions of gun owners. The General Social Survey found that in 2014 only 32 percent of American households own a gun (although 3 percent of families surveyed declined to answer the question). Fully 62 percent of Americans surveyed confirm that they don't own a gun. The number of households that have guns in the USA has actually been declining since 1977, when 50 percent of families told surveyors that they had guns and only 0.1 percent of families declined to answer the question.

The reason the number of families that own guns is on the decline in the United States seems to be that far fewer people hunt than did in prior generations. In 1977, almost 32 percent of families identified at least one member as a hunter. In 2014, the number of families with hunters had declined to 15 percent.

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Although most gun violence occurs in inner cities, urban centers have the lowest rates of gun ownership. In 2014, 55 percent of rural families owned a gun, but only 12 percent of the urban poor. Families with incomes over $90,000 per year were two-and-one-half times more likely to own a gun than families with incomes under $25,000 per year. 

The most telling statistic, however, is that 80 percent of gun owners are men, and they on, average, 8.2 guns each. Are these gun owners addicted to owning guns?

An Objective Test For Gun Addiction

When someone is addicted to a drug, such as alcohol, nicotine, or opiates, there are standardized, objective tests for diagnosis:

• The addictive substance has to be available for experimentation. If it's not available, addiction is impossible.
• The initial use of the substance is pleasurable, and subsequent uses reinforce that pleasure.
• The user becomes tolerant of more and more of the substance.
• The user becomes either dependent on the substance, that is, will undergo withdrawal if it is not available, or habituated to the substance, makes its use a part of a daily routine.
• There are withdrawal symptoms if the drug is taken away.
• There is physical dependence on the drug for normal functioning.
• Use of the substance is continued even in the face of obvious harm.
• The use of the substance is surrounded by rationalization and denial.

A gun isn't a chemical you put into your body, so physical dependence is not possible. However, there are other eerie similarities between addiction and gun ownership in the US.

• Are guns available in the USA? Absolutely, with very few exceptions.
• Is there positive reinforcement for using guns? There's immediate positive reinforcement for being a good shot if you are using a gun on a skeet range or for target practice. Some users just like to hear the bang-bang-bang pow-pow-pow of their firearms.
• Do gun owners build up tolerance for guns? In 1994, the average gun-owning family had four weapons. In 2014, the number was eight, and the National Rifle Association strenuously objects to any suggestion that gun ownership should be limited.
• Are there withdrawal symptoms when gun owners lose their guns? We actually haven't seen that happen yet.
• Is there weapon-seeking behavior? Absolutely. Is there habituation? Yes. Is there rationalization and denial? Big check.

There do seem to be significant parallels between gun ownership and drug addiction, but should anyone really care? After all, is it NRA members who out in inner cities committing crimes? Doesn't gun ownership make living in perilous times safer?

The answer seems to be, not always:

• A Philadelphia study found that people who carried a concealed firearm who were the victims in holdups were 4.2 times more like to be shot than those who did not.
• A woman in an abusive relationship is 5 times more likely to be killed if the abuser has access to a gun.
• In Texas, holders of concealed carry permits were 4.8 times more likely to be arrested for threatening someone with a firearm than those did not have a concealed carry permit. (To be fair, the concealed carry permit makes tracking down the accused much easier.)

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Of course, there is no shortage of academic studies that are less than insightful. A study about California handgun purchases that was published in the British Medical Journal reported that nearly everyone who committed suicide with a handgun owned a handgun. There has even been a study that found that all bullet wounds involved firearms.

The bottom line is, however, that American gun owners tend to be "gun nuts." Addiction to firearms is real. Just as prohibition of other addictive substances has not worked, however, it's doubtful that banning firearms will cure the disease.