TLDR: Public opinion polling has the number of households with guns in America as about 35-45%, depending on the poll. The number may be closer to 60% when this is cleverly investigated.

Turns out people lie on this issue, a lot. They asked people in a poll who said they don't own guns questions that are very highly correlated with gun ownership. The non-savvy respondents in the survey who said yes on all the highly correlated questions almost certainly, statistically speaking, own guns even though they said no in the survey. When you include those people as gun owners, the rate can go as high as 60% of homes.

.....a Rutgers University study published last month in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology indicates that the number of gun owners may be substantially undercounted. According to Rutgers researcher Allison Bond, one reason is because “some individuals are falsely denying firearm ownership, resulting in research not accurately capturing the experiences of all firearm owners in the U.S.” He added, “The implications of false denials of firearms ownership are substantial.” Bond concluded, “It may be that a percentage of firearm owners are concerned that their information will be leaked and the government will take their firearms or that researchers who are from universities that are typically seen as liberal and anti-firearm access will paint firearm owners in a bad light.”

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-023-02515-y

According to J.D. Tuccille (a libertarian stoner from Reason Magazine): “...the problem of dishonesty among survey respondents as pos(es) a danger to those surveyed since they don’t receive proper firearm safety information [say academics]. But [the reasearchers'] deeper concern is with the validity of research into firearms culture and policy in a country where experts don’t have anywhere near as good a handle on the prevalence of gun ownership as they had believed. …

Believe it or not, people are reluctant to tell total strangers about their potentially controversial activities....but such evasion is an inevitable consequence of decades of fiery debate and punitive gun policies.”

video: https://patriotpost.us/alexander/99460?mailing_id=7694