One in three of America's adults own guns: study

Nearly one third adults of the United States own at least one gun, a new study said amid new calls for tighter gun control policies in the country after a white gunman shot down nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.

According to the study by the journal Injury Prevention released late Monday, about 29 percent of Americans said they owned at least one gun of the estimated 300 million firearms in private hands in the United States.

The rates of gun ownership vary from state to state, with the lowest rate in Delaware, at about 5 percent, and the highest in Alaska, at nearly 62 percent, said the study.

Researchers also found that states with higher rates of gun ownership, a result of looser gun-control policies, were subject to higher rates of gun death.

The study came at a time when debates over tightening gun control policies in the U.S. were reignited after the Charleston church massacre on June 17.

In a sharp speech after the incident, U.S. President Barack Obama said the country has to reckon with the fact that rampant gun violence only happens in the United States.

"This type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency," said Obama in the latest of his 15 speeches about mass shootings in his presidency.

Following the 2012 school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, which claimed 28 lives, including 20 children, the Obama administration initiated but failed to push stronger gun control laws.

The laws, whose sections included expanded background checks and bans on assault weapons, were stymied in Congress after staunch opposition from Republican lawmakers and gun-rights groups. Endite