An estimated 6 million American adults carried a loaded handgun with them daily in 2019, double the number who said they carried a gun every day in 2015, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The new estimates highlight a decades-long shift in American gun ownership, with increasing percentages of gun owners saying they own firearms for self-defense, not hunting or recreation, and choosing to carry a gun with them when they go out in public, said ​​Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, and the study’s lead author.

A landmark supreme court case this summer overturned a New York law that placed strict limits on public gun-carrying, ruling, for the first time, that Americans have a constitutional right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.

While recent surveys show that nearly a third of American adults say they personally own a gun, the percentage who choose to regularly carry a firearm in public is smaller, with about a third of […]