Women and Handguns: Evidence From National Surveys, 1973-1991

Media reports consistently point to a substantial increase in handgun ownership among American women during the 1980s and have attributed the rise to crime fears. As well, they have suggested that the profile of women gun owners has been changing in recent years; women handgun owners now are alleged to be more urban, more middle class, and more professional than in prior years. To examine these claims, findings from available literature and data from the General Social Surveys (GSS), 1973-1991, are used to analyze the trends, patterns, and predictors of female (and male) handgun ownership in the United States throughout the past two decades. Results indicate that the proportion of women - and men - owning guns was effectively constant throughout the years in question; women′s gun ownership is no more closely related to fear of crime or experiences with crime than is men′s, and, for women, the relation between fear of crime and gun ownership has not changed in recent years; and the demographic predictors of female gun ownership differ little from those of males. In short, the female gun owner has not come to approximate the portraiture of the upscale, affluent, single "woman about town" depicted in the popular literature. Our attempt to explain this finding rests in part on our belief that the media have been misled by problematic interpretation of gun industry data on ownership trends.