Nearly half of the world's civilian guns belong to Americans

The world is often befuddled by America's firearm fanaticism, perhaps because U.S. civilians own nearly as many guns as every other nation combined.

Of the world's 857 million civilian-owned guns, Americans own about 393 million, The Trace and Vice reported Monday.

While there's no official count of American-owned guns, the Small Arms Survey released data this month that showed that 46 percent of guns owned by private citizens are in the United States. That's a 42 percent from a decade ago, when 270 million of the world's 650 million firearms were U.S.-owned.

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That estimate includes both legally and illegally owned guns, reports Vice, which is part of the reason that different studies have led to different estimates on global gun ownership. Experts estimate that 3 percent of all gun owners account for about half of the civilian stockpile; these are the hobbyists and aficionados who own an average of 17 guns each. Read more at The Trace and Vice.