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U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.
About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said. "There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said.
India had the world's second-largest civilian gun arsenal, with an estimated 46 million firearms outside law enforcement and the military, though this represented just four guns per 100 people there. China, ranked third with 40 million privately held guns, had 3 firearms per 100 people.
Germany, France, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil and Russia were next in the ranking of country's overall civilian gun arsenals.
The ratio of murders as a result of guns in America, contrasting the high U.S. average (11,127 per year with a population of 303 million) to other "First World" countries such as Germany (381 over 82 million citizens), France (255 over 64 million citizens), Canada (165 over 10 million citizens), the UK (68 over 50 million citizens) and Japan (only 39 gun murders with a population of 127 million people).