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Wyoming Ranks #2 In Nation For Gun Ownership; Montana Barely Takes Top Spot

A gun store owner in Casper said he was not surprised Wyoming was ranked as No. 2 state in the nation for households that own guns.

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This story first appeared on Cowboy State Daily

By Ellen Fike, Cowboy State Daily

A gun store owner in Casper said he was not surprised Wyoming was ranked as No. 2 state in the nation for households that own guns.

Shawn Wagner of Wagner’s Outdoor Outfitters told Cowboy State Daily he was more surprised Montana managed to barely beat Wyoming out for the title of No. 1.

“I started out in this business while in Montana and learned up on all this good stuff at Big Bear Sports Center,” Wagner said Wednesday. “I’m kind of surprised they’re higher in percentage than us, because they have a fairly liberal crowd in the western part of the state.”

A 2020 report by the Rand Corporation (a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges) showed that Montana topped the nation for households that owned firearms with 66.3%.

Wyoming trailed closely at 66.2%.

As part of the Gun Policy in America initiative, RAND researchers developed annual, state-level estimates of household firearm ownership by combining data from surveys and administrative sources.

First, they used a small-area estimation technique to create state-level ownership estimates for each of 51 nationally representative surveys assessing household firearm ownership rates. They then used structural equation modeling to combine these survey-based estimates with administrative data on firearm suicides, hunting licenses, subscriptions to Guns & Ammo magazine and background checks into the final measure of household firearm ownership.

The resulting measure represented the proportion of adults living in a household with a firearm for each state in each year between 1980 and 2016.

Wagner noted that gun sales at his store have increased significantly since the pandemic started.

“Early on, all the stores were [busy] like that,” he said. “People couldn’t go to work, so they might as well go fishing, camping, shooting or some type of outdoor recreation. So we were busy because of that.”

Then, as the 2020 presidential election neared, gun sales again ticked up due to anxiety about the consequences of the outcome.

Now, Wagner is seeing a significant number of first-time gun owners, particularly women, visiting his store because they want to feel safe, or because they are part of a hunting family and have a new generation heading out to the woods or camps.

“I’d say about three-fourths of our gun sales are hunting related right now,” he said. “Our sales are double what they were before the pandemic. My store is tiny and we’re pushing out $1.5 to $2 million in products per year.”

While gun sales have increased over the last 18 months, Wagner is still seeing an ammunition shortage like he was in May.

“We got in a good size (shipment) of hunting ammo, but it was just for hunting, to the tune of about $25,000 wholesale and within a couple of weeks, it’s gone,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer this could last, but it could be another year.”

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6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. Avatar photo

    Thomas Jones

    September 23, 2021 at 8:37 am

    The rights of the second amendment shall not be infringed upon.

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      Dean Seever

      September 23, 2021 at 9:01 am

      If we had a right to bear arms, police officers who shoot people for merely having a gun would be punished. Do you see that happening? On paper it may say one thing, but in real life when you try to exercise that right in an interaction with the government you will die or go to prison, even if you are 100% following the law.

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    Rob Davidson

    September 23, 2021 at 10:09 am

    If you have a three way mix of hunting, self defense, and recreational shooting, you going to high gun ownership numbers. The rise of the extreme right has others arming up to counter the direct threats to their communities and personal fears.

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      mike duncan

      September 23, 2021 at 1:08 pm

      Extreme right? You mean like Beto in Texas???????????

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      Scott Thomas

      September 23, 2021 at 6:32 pm

      So you really think liberals are arming themselves against the “extreme right”? If you take whatever that was at the Capitol out of the equation, I can’t recall any right-wing riots. However I think everyone has lost count of how many left-wing and anarchist riots there have been. But yeah–its probably the open borders crowd buying guns to protect themselves against people who support the Constitution and law and order.

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        Fred Osborn

        September 24, 2021 at 1:52 pm

        HAHAHA….you are funny. Tin foil hat too tight?

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