It would seem it’s Virginia. There’s some speculation as to why that is. Of course, if you ever go to the National Firearms Museum at NRA Headquarters in Fairfax, they have an enviable collection. I wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t single handedly helping contribute to Virginia’s first place finish. There aren’t that many full auto firearms out there, so it’s not inconceivable if a museum that had hundreds of samples is located within a single state, it’s going to bump that state’s numbers up not insignificantly.
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Florida comes second and I am not one of them… darn it!
Shame there are all of those transferable pieces sitting in a museum.
The number includes registration to gov’t agencies, or which there are a great deal in the Mid-Atlantic. My local sheriff’s office has more than a dozen of which I am aware, and our county is a heck of a lot more rural than most NoVa agencies. And in the federales and you get huge numbers. Even the Department of Education feels it needs full-auto guns. Go figure.
Also, there is a pretty solid gun culture here. I saw some graphics that showed Maryland was one of the largest buyers of suppressors and other NFA items. Most people I know here that are into guns are either owners, or soon-to-be-owners of NFA gear. I hear machine guns some weekends near my house.
It might also have to do with the fact that a few of the highest income zip codes (I think the top 8 or 10) in the country are in Virginia. Meaning lots of people who can afford them. And as opposed to those zip codes where you also see large numbers of billionaires and hundreds of millionaires – I’m thinking New York City and California and New Jersey – Virginia’s gun laws are . . . well, not in violation of the US constitution.
Actually, it was richest counties that I was thinking of.
According to Wikipedia, we have the top three (Loudon, Fairfax and Arlington), seven and eight (Prince William and Fauquier). Numbers Five and 10 are also in the DC area – but they are in Maryland which isn’t known to be fun friendly.
Maryland has no restrictions on possession of NFA including machine guns. The Maryland State Police will even sign off CLEO for every person who passes a standard background check. You go to them, get the background check, and they sign the CLEO. The only true registry we have is for machine guns, though everyone knows the MSP keeps a database of 4473s.
Maryland sucks for possession in public, for sure. Our handgun-roster is nothing but a short speed-bump (all guns make it) and our banned guns are now all a short list of C&R guns. We have a ten-day wait for some stuff, but it can be overcome by sending a notarized letter to the state police asking them to call you a collector (not even an ATF collector).
Maryland folks haven’t let real gun control pass here in a long time. The real work is undoing the legacy we have. We have been winning more than losing.
When I moved from CA to MD, I thought, “finally, a place I can own guns and not worry about it!”
Keep in mind perspective. I was coming from CA!
We got work to do, but I have seen folks call Maryland the least worse of the worst. Fix the carry/possession issues and we are better than most gun-friendly states.
Even more astounding is the fact that that California(!) has the third-highest registration of machine guns.
California state law outlaws private ownership of machine guns — except in the entertainment industry. Virtually all of California’s 28,774 registered machine guns are owned by movie prop houses such as Independent Studio Services.
I didn’t think about movie prop houses, but yeah that Kalifornia was 3rd was a big surprise to me.