Sebastián Hidalgo for Vox

Did you know that one in 20 American adults bought a gun for the first time during the pandemic?

For the last several months, whenever someone asked what I was working on, I couldn't help but respond with that question. 

Earlier this spring, I spent several weeks talking to experts and digging through the available data about gun ownership in the United States. I learned from one recent survey of new first-time gun buyers that 50 percent were women, 20 percent were Black, and 20 percent were Hispanic — a pronounced shift from previous gun owners, who are mostly white men. 

What drove so many people to decide they needed a gun for the first time? And what would be the implications of so many additional people deciding they needed to arm themselves, in a country already awash in guns?

Sebastián Hidalgo for Vox

To really understand what was motivating people to buy their first guns, I traveled to Chicago, a city experiencing a notable rise in gun ownership, and spent a weekend attending a concealed carry course on the South Side. In the evenings, I met with a separate group of women, most of them gun owners, to hear about their experiences with firearms. 

What emerged was a picture of a city — and country — that was still reeling from the major breakdown of institutions during the pandemic. The United States experienced a precipitous rise in gun violence in 2020 and 2021, but the danger wasn't shared equally. It was highly concentrated in specific neighborhoods that were already struggling with violent crime, exacerbating what the sociologist Patrick Sharkey refers to as "the rigid geography of violence.” The sharpest increase in gun deaths was experienced by Black boys and men ages 10–44.

In Chicago, I met so many parents — especially moms — who spoke to me about feeling the need to protect themselves and their children as the violence grew. 

A sense that everyone else had a gun clearly drove some people to get guns for protection. “Everybody’s got a gun, so it’s only right to have one,” one of the students in the concealed carry class told me. 

On an instinctive level, I understood it. I grew up in a gun-owning home. But I’ve also spent years interviewing experts and reading research about the personal and societal dangers that come with having so many guns — a major reason why the US gun homicide rate is 28 times higher than that of other high-income countries.

As I spoke to researchers, I realized that these new gun owners were just one part of the story. Millions of guns, legal and not, flooded the US during the pandemic. We don’t know exactly how many. At the same time, more Americans are getting their concealed carry licenses so they can bring their guns in public. 

This has real implications for many aspects of our society, particularly policing and crime. The number of guns stolen from cars has tripled in the last decade — probably an outcome, one expert told me, of more people buying guns and leaving them in their cars. The time from a gun being purchased to ending up on the street has fallen substantially in the last few years, too. And ghost guns — homemade guns that aren’t traceable — have started appearing at crime scenes at a startling rate.

Owning a gun comes with real risks for individuals, families, and society writ large. But people don’t make decisions based solely on research. They’re also responding to the realities of where they live, and doing what they believe they need to feel secure. “We haven’t helped people feel safe enough. We need to step up and do more to help people feel like they don't need a gun,” Rep. Robin Kelly, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Chicago’s South Side and suburbs, told me.

Sebastián Hidalgo for Vox

There are no easy answers. The United States stands alone when it comes to firearm ownership, in part because of its history, but also because decades of lawmaking have led it to the point that most people who want a gun, and want to carry it in public, can do so without difficulty (legally or not). 

The rise in the number of new gun-owning households, says John Roman, who published one important survey of first-time gun buyers during the pandemic, “really changes all kinds of policy and political calculations.”

I wrote about this fundamental shift in America’s relationship with guns in a new piece out today. In the coming months, I will continue to explore the way the pandemic surge in guns and gun violence has affected aspects of American life, including policing, child safety, and more.

Writing about guns is controversial. Some people hate guns and don’t want to hear about why someone might want to arm themselves. Others refuse to acknowledge that guns are dangerous — the old saw that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” 

It’s easy, and tempting, to ignore data that doesn’t fit our preconceived beliefs. But the reality is that guns make routine violence much more deadly.

Understanding why millions of Americans chose to bring guns into their homes these last few years is critically important for what it tells us about our recent past and for grappling with how this new reality will impact policy and public health in the future.  

Have you noticed an influx of guns in your community since 2020? If so, I’d like to hear about your experiences. Email me at marin.cogan@voxmedia.com

—Marin Cogan, senior correspondent 

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

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Today's edition was produced and edited by Caroline Houck. I hope you had a great weekend, and will have an even better week — see you here tomorrow!

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