While nearly two-thirds of whites feel that way, a little more than half of blacks do. Whites are more likely to think handguns serve a worthwhile purpose. More than half of whites say having a gun in a home makes the people who live there safer, but blacks split evenly on that question. People of both races are equally likely to own a handgun, however, with about 30 percent of whites and blacks having them. These differing attitudes may be explained by the fact that whites are more likely to have grown up in a culture where there were guns around the house, usually owned for hunting.
Whites are more than twice as likely as blacks, for example, to own a rifle or shotgun.
More than half of whites were given their first gun by a parent or other relative, but one-fifth of blacks got their first firearm that way.