A new study ranks Georgia No. 36 for retail gun sales per person in America in 2018.  There were 42.2 sales per 100,000 people last year, marking a 34.4% increase since 2009.

Despite being in-between mass shootings, guns remain among the most divisive issues in American culture and much of it is geographical.

To understand the divide, Security.org today released a study titled Gun Country: Where In The U.S. Are Guns Most Popular based on the most recent background check data released by the FBI through 2018.

Below are key national findings:

• 10 States with Highest Gun Sales Per Person: Montana (141.9 per 100,000 people), Alaska (140.1), South Dakota (121.9), West Virginia (129.9), Wyoming (113.7), Oregon (103), New Hampshire (100.1), North Dakota (99.2), Oklahoma (97.4) and Tennessee (95.4).
• 10 States with Lowest Gun Sales Per Person: C. (5.8 per 100,000 people), New Jersey (13.5), Massachusetts (16.6), New York (18.8), Nebraska (21.6), North Carolina (22.2), Iowa (22.3), Rhode Island (25.5), California (26) and Maryland (26.4).
• Gun Sales by Region: West (84.4 per 100,000 people), Mid-West (62.8), South (60.1), North East (51.3)

According to the study, fewer than 1 in 3 Americans report personally owning a gun. Those numbers plummet when you look at people other than white men — 17% of women say they own a gun, and 15% of Hispanics report being gun owners.

Retail Gun Sales

How many guns are sold in the United States each year? Seems like a pretty straightforward question, but the truth is that nobody really knows for sure, the study revealed. This unknown is due to state and federal laws making it so that some but not all gun purchases are done through licensed retailers are required to run background checks on customers. These dealers don’t report if those customers ended up purchasing a gun and, if so, how many and what kind. There’s also the matter of gun purchases made from sources other than licensed retailers; it’s estimated that about 13% of those who have bought a gun did so through friends or online.

Researchers of gun ownership have created a formula for estimating gun purchases in a given year using background check data reported by the FBI. For the purposes of this study, we’ve used that formula, and you can read the full details in our methodology section at the bottom of this page, but it’s important to note that our analysis excludes Hawaii because the state’s data is limited.

According to the study’s analysis, about 12.6 million guns were purchased through federally licensed gun dealers in 2018. That represents a decline from 2017, and if trends hold through the remainder of 2019, sales will decline even further this year.

Further analysis revealed that no state broke the 1 million-gun mark in 2018, but Texas came close.

California, the largest state, ranks No. 3 by sheer volume, and a major drop-off is seen between fourth-place Pennsylvania and No. 5 Ohio. The District of Columbia, with some of the strictest gun laws in the country, had far and away the lowest number of gun sales, while Texas and Florida combined to account for nearly 15% of all retail gun purchases.

Three quarters of murders today involve a gun, and guns represent the largest share of weapons used in armed robberies, accounting also for more than 1 in 4 aggravated assaults.

For the entire study, click here.