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Most rifles would be passed down from father to son as gifts and no written record of them would ever appear. Probate records are not a good source.

If you read about pioneer life in Ohio and elsewhere, they clearly say every cabin had one or more guns that were used primarily for hunting but also for defense. To say they weren't armed is nonsense.

We have records to establish that one of my ancestors in 17th century Quebec was one of several apprentices to an armorer; we have the rifles still in the family that ancestors who served in two different NY Regiments in the Civil War owned. We have rifles and pistols in the family that belonged to all the ancestors we know about on my family's Yankee side and wife's family's Rebel side. Now what the sociological meaning of this could be, I won't speculate, but we have material evidence in both my family and my wife's going back well over two centuries of regular ownership of firearms. On my French Canadian side we have documentary, though no material, evidence, taking it back 350 years in a family which were just plain folks. To the present generation, we simply all have been shooters from our teenage years onward, and I can scarcely imagine it will end here, although there are a few of the younger ones who live in urban locations and don't shoot much because it is a more expensive and less accessible pastime than it is for the rest of us who live in or nearer the country.