A majority of American households include at least one gun owner, according to a new survey that also shows a sharp increase in the number of firearm owners over the past decade.
The NBC News national poll found that 52% of Americans say they or someone in their household owns a firearm, the highest share since the outlet first surveyed the question in 1999.
In 2019, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found 46% of Americans said they or someone in their household owned a gun, while 42% said the same in 2013.
“In the last ten years, we’ve grown [10 points] in gun ownership. That’s a very stunning number,” Public Opinion Strategies pollster Micah Roberts told the outlet.
“By and large, things don’t change that dramatically that quickly when it comes to something as fundamental as whether you own a gun,” Roberts added.
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Gun ownership falls roughly along party lines, with 66% of Republicans, 45% of independents and 41% of Democrats saying they or someone in their household possesses a firearm.
Those numbers have all risen over the past two decades, as a 2004 NBC poll found 57% of Republican respondents, 41% of independent respondents and 33% of Democratic respondents said their household had a gun owner.
The survey also shows that gun ownership has nearly doubled among black voters, with 41% now saying their household had a firearm owner compared with 24% in August 2019.
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Rates of gun ownership among white voters have increased from 53% to 56% over the same period.
Poll participants were almost evenly split on the issue of gun control, with 48% saying they are more concerned the government is not regulating access to firearms enough and 47% worrying authorities will go too far in gun restrictions.
That split has been consistent over the past decade that the poll has been conducted.
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President Biden established a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention in September, placing Vice President Kamala Harris at its head to push forward with his administration’s gun control priorities.
Those include calls to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, initiate universal background checks for firearm sales, enhance red flag laws and eliminate legal immunity for gun manufacturers, among others.
Biden, 81, signed the bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law last year following the killing of 21 schoolchildren in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
The law mandated background checks for gun purchasers under 21 years old and provided funding for violence prevention and school-based mental health programs.
The NBC survey was conducted Nov.10-14 by Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, and Hart Research, a Democratic polling firm.
The poll counted 1,000 registered voters as respondents, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.1 percentage points.
