How many in US have been threatened with a gun? Poll finds alarmingly high number

One day after a mass shooting left five dead and nine injured at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, a newly released poll highlights the prevalence of gun violence in America.

The poll, conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit that does health policy research and polling, found that 21%, or roughly one in five adults in the U.S., say they have been threatened with a firearm.

About the same share of people, 19%, said that a family member had been “killed by a gun (including death by suicide)”, according to the poll.

And about one in six respondents, 17%, said that they had witnessed a shooting.

“Smaller shares have personally shot a gun in self-defense (4%) or been injured in a shooting (4%),” KFF said. “In total, about half (54%) of all U.S. adults say they or a family member have ever had one of these experiences.”

The poll was conducted March 14-23 and included 1,271 U.S. adults, according to KFF. The overall results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Responses differed when broken down by race. Roughly one-third of Black adults said a family member had been killed by a gun, double the share of white adults who said the same, according to the poll. Among Hispanic respondents, 18% said “they have had a family member who has been killed by a gun.”

The margin of error for the samples of Black, white and Hispanic respondents was plus or minus 9, 5 and 8 percentage points, respectively.

Large shares of respondents said they live in fear and make lifestyle changes to decrease their chances of being shot.

About one-third of Hispanic and Black adults said that they worry “almost every day” or “every day” about the safety of themselves and their loved ones with respect to guns. One in ten white adults said the same.

Eighty-four percent of respondents said that they have “taken at least one precaution to protect themselves or their families from the possibility of gun violence,” the poll found. About one-third said this included avoiding crowded areas such as festivals and clubs.

Additionally, 41% of adults said they live in a household with a firearm. Nearly half of them, 44%, said that a gun in their home is kept in an unlocked location, and more than one-third said that a gun is kept loaded.

More guns are owned by civilians in the United States than in any other country, another study found. Though less than 5% of the world population lives in America, its civilians own nearly 40% of the firearms in the world, according to a 2018 report from the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey.

There were 44,339 gun violence deaths in 2022, according to the non-profit Gun Violence Archive. Of those, 20,090 were suicides, and 20,249 were homicides, accidental or the result of defensive use.

Mass shooting fatalities make up a small number of gun-related deaths, according to the Pew Research Center, though there has been a steep increase in “active shooter incidents” over the past 20 years.

Thirty-one percent of the world’s mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 occurred on American soil, according to a study published in 2016 in the peer-reviewed journal Violence and Victims.

This story was originally published April 11, 2023 at 1:07 PM with the headline "How many in US have been threatened with a gun? Poll finds alarmingly high number."