19 Million Americans Have Seriously Thought About Shooting Someone, National Survey Suggests

Research shows that owning a gun and political affiliation has no link to harboring the violent thoughts.

About 19.3 million American adults, roughly the combined populations of New York City and Los Angeles, have at some point seriously thought about shooting another person. That’s the stunning extrapolation from a new national survey published in JAMA Network Open, an effort to put a number on this poorly understood group and frame it as a focus for gun violence prevention.

Conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, the study found that about 7.3% of adults reported having those thoughts at some point in their lifetime. Another 3.3%, an estimated 8.5 million people, said they had thought about it in just the past year. Those are not passing frustrations or fleeting anger. Researchers asked specifically about serious thoughts of shooting another person.

Beyond thoughts alone, a meaningful number of people reported taking concrete steps toward carrying out violence. An estimated 4 million adults said they had thought about getting a gun specifically to shoot someone. Roughly 1.5 million reported having actually brought a gun to a location with the intention of shooting someone. For some respondents, those thoughts were paired with concrete steps toward action.

Who Thinks About Shooting Others?

Between late May and early September 2025, researchers fielded the National Firearms, Alcohol, Cannabis, and Suicide survey to 7,034 adults across the country. Participants were recruited through mailed invitations and text messages and completed the survey online. Respondents averaged about 48 years old, and the sample was roughly evenly split between men and women. Researchers applied statistical adjustments so the results would reflect the broader U.S. population, accounting for age, sex, race and ethnicity, income, education, political party, region, and urban or rural status.

The demographic patterns line up with what past research has found about firearm violence. Men were more likely than women to report both lifetime and past-year thoughts of shooting someone, at about 9% versus 5.7%. Younger adults reported these thoughts more often than older adults. Black respondents had higher rates than white respondents, and people in urban areas reported higher rates than those in rural communities. Living in the Midwest was linked to higher odds of past-year thoughts compared to the West, and people with lower levels of education had higher odds than those with graduate degrees.

Perhaps most surprising was what was not linked to these thoughts in the survey. Gun ownership showed no meaningful connection. People who owned guns were no more likely to think about shooting someone than people who did not. Political affiliation also showed no link; Republicans, Democrats, and Independents reported similar rates. Income, while showing some association at the lowest levels for past-year thoughts, was not a strong factor overall.

Who Are the Targets?

Among those who reported seriously thinking about shooting someone, the most common target was “an enemy,” cited by 51% of that group. The second most common, at about 25%, was a stranger, described in the survey as someone involved in a random conflict or people in a public space. That category stands out because it includes strangers and public encounters, though the study doesn’t examine how those thoughts relate to mass shootings.

Some targets pointed toward politically motivated violence. About 13.6% of those with shooting-related thoughts named a government employee or official, and 6.6% named police or military personnel. Others directed their thoughts closer to home: roughly 10% thought about shooting a family member, about 9.5% thought about a former romantic partner, and about 8.6% thought about a current spouse or partner. Coworkers, bosses, classmates, friends, and acquaintances also appeared on the list.

A Window for Gun Violence Prevention

One of the study’s most revealing findings involves what people did when they had these thoughts. Among the 516 people who reported ever thinking about shooting someone, about 20.5% told another person. Scaled nationally, that translates to an estimated 4 million people who disclosed their violent thoughts to someone else. Researchers describe this disclosure as “a point of intervention,” particularly in states with so-called red flag laws that allow for the temporary removal of firearms from people considered a danger.

On the other side, only about 6.7% of those with shooting thoughts gave their gun to someone else for safekeeping during a crisis, an estimated 1.3 million people. Another 20.5% said they hadn’t done so but would consider it in the future. Meanwhile, 44.3% said they would not consider giving up their gun, and about 28.5% reported they didn’t own or have access to a gun in the first place.

That last figure matters. Nearly three in ten people who thought about shooting someone didn’t have a gun, which means prevention strategies can’t focus solely on existing gun owners. Researchers note that interventions at the point of gun sale, similar to approaches developed to prevent suicide, could help reach people who might seek out a weapon to act on violent thoughts.

In 2023, there were more than 116,000 emergency department visits for gun-related assaults and over 16,000 firearm-related homicides among U.S. adults. The survey data suggest that the population of people who have seriously considered committing gun violence is far larger than the number who actually do. The study doesn’t track what happens after these thoughts, but serious violence remains far rarer than these reported experiences. What the data make clear is that the warning signs may appear much earlier than the moment of violence.

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