The Gender Gun Gap Closing Up Nicely, but There Are Issues

Guns are often perceived by many, including some gun people, as a masculine thing. Weapons tended to be the domain of the man, historically, so I kind of get it. However, guns are different because they are equalizers. Anyone can use one effectively, and that makes it ideal for women who want to protect themselves.

Plus, frankly, everything else you can lawfully do with a gun is a lot of fun, too, and women like to have fun, just like we guys do.

But, because of that perception, most of the gun community is still male. However, the number of women joining our ranks is growing.

Americans own guns for various reasons and in numbers that vary from state to state. One thing that data shows is that gun ownership by gender is changing in ways most didn’t expect.

• Female gun ownership increased by 5-15% since 1980, while male gun ownership decreased by 11%.
• Between 39 and 43% of U.S. men (65-71 million) reported owning firearms in 2025.
• Between 17 and 25% of U.S. women (29-43 million) reported owning firearms in 2025.
• In 2025, 77% of male and female gun owners cited personal protection as a reason for owning guns.

Related Studies: Firearm Ownership in America by Year, How Many Americans Want Stricter Gun Laws?, Gun Ownership by Political Party

Ammo.com is a reputable resource. View all sources used in this article HERE.

Methodology

Ammo.com sources information from reputable publications. Due to reporting limitations and the Fifth Amendment, firearm ownership data are largely gathered from self-reporting surveys and NICS background checks. We used various surveys and studies to analyze gun ownership trends to provide the most accurate data available.

Gun Ownership by Gender by Year

Recent surveys indicate that 32% of Americans (approximately 107.5 million) personally own firearms. In 2025, an average of 39% of men and 19% of women claimed gun ownership in self-reporting surveys.^{(1, 2, 4, 5, 14, 15)}

Gun Ownership Among Men in the U.S.

A smaller percentage of men owned firearms in 2025 than in previous years.

In 1980, 50% of men (about 55 million) owned firearms. Surveys show that male gun ownership dropped to 40-43% in the early 2000s through early 2010s. More recent surveys estimate male firearm ownership at 39% to 43%.

Male gun ownership declined by 7 to 11% between 1980 and 2025. It has stagnated between 39% and 43% for the past two decades, with a 2025 YouGov survey showing ownership at 28%.^{(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 14, 15)}

Gun Ownership Among Women in the U.S.

Women report owning guns at much higher rates in 2025 than they did in 1980.

In 1980, only 10% of women reported owning a firearm. Female gun ownership increased to 15% during the 2000s and 2010s. It rose again between 2020 and 2025 by 5 to 10%, with up to 25% of women now claiming personal gun ownership on surveys.^{(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 14, 15)}

The author of this, Cassandra McBride, has a bio that looks like a lot of ours. She grew up around guns, hunting, and shooting, so this is probably as honest a look at this sort of thing as we’re likely to find.

Which is dope.

So what we’ve got is a decline in male gun ownership, down from about 50 percent in the 1980s, as we see an increase in female gun ownership. That closes the gap a good bit.

It’s a good news/bad news sort of thing, though, because while the increase in women owning guns is inherently a good thing, the decline in men owning guns isn’t. Gun owners are far more likely to be gun voters, so the more people who own firearms, the more likely it is that gun control will fail to take hold.

Women are still more likely to favor gun control, with the percentages suggesting that at least some of these gun-owning women still want gun control to some degree or another. These are unlikely to favor a total gun ban, of course, but there’s a lot of ground between what we have now and a total ban. We don’t want to give another inch on gun control because they’ll never be satisfied.

For me, seeing the gap narrow is great, but I’m genuinely worried.

This is part of the whole issue I have with “in common use” for what’s protected by the Second Amendment versus what’s not. As the numbers decline among men, unless a similar number increases among women, what we’ll have is guns being less and less common in general. It doesn’t take much to imagine a court figuring that nothing is in common anymore, so nothing is covered by the Second Amendment.

I can make the argument against that, of course, so I have little doubt that the Second Amendment attorneys of whatever that day might be can do so and far better than I can, but it’s still troubling.

We need to figure out how to encourage more men to buy guns, a lot more women to buy guns, and do a much better job of countering the anti-gun left’s gun control media efforts that have done a remarkable job of spinning terribly flawed studies and arguments as irrefutable facts.

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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