At the end of 2017, there were approximately 1 billion firearms in over 230 countries around the globe, 84.6 percent of which were held by civilians, 13.1 percent by state militaries, and 2.2 percent by law enforcement agencies - with Americans the dominant owners, according to a study released Monday.

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Of the 857 million guns owned by civilians, the Small Arms Survey says 393.3 million are held in the United States, which is "more than those held by civilians in the other top 25 countries combined."

To clarify - there are more civilian-owned guns in the US than there are people.

And while headlines have proclaimed a slowdown in gunmaker revenues, as @StephenGutkowski noted, the numbers are still astounding - In May alone, American civilians bought somewhere around 2 million firearms.

Table 1: Estimated total civilian-held legal and illicit firearms in the 25 top-ranked countries and territories, 2017

"The key to the United States, of course, is its unique gun culture," the report's author, Aaron Karp, said at a news conference.

"Ordinary American people buy approximately 14 million new and imported guns every year," Karp told a news conference at UN headquarters in New York City.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution preserves the right of the people to keep and bear arms. This enables Americans to have access to powerful and cheap firearms that are not commercially available in other regions around the world due to strict laws.