I've been meaning to try to add to this thread, but I keep running out of time to craft a worthwhile response, but here goes. It's more lobbing grenades into the fray than I'd really like, but oh well:
Really interesting article on gun ownership rates and firearm homicides:
Everybody's lying about the link between gun ownership and homicide. Basically, there is no statistical correlation, either at the state level in the U.S., or internationally. (The whole website has several other very interesting articles on gun issues.
www.freakoutery.com)
Where they did find strong correlation is on race and income inequality. The single biggest predictor for a higher firearm homicide rate was an increase in the black population: "For each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of Black population, firearm homicide rate increased by 5.2%" The second largest was income inequality.
Now, to circle back and touch on Booksmart's point that for the people who live in those dark red counties on the map, high levels of violence and violent crime ARE the reality of life in America: definitely true. Everyone's view of reality is heavily shaded by what happens immediately around them every day, and that's very different in Atlanta or Balitmore than it is in Lawrence, KS or Mountain Home, ID.
But the big push for gun control isn't coming from the actual populations where the violence (gun and otherwise) actually happens. The loudest voices for gun control are almost all rich (or at least well off), white liberals. All lot of them live in those dark red counties, but they don't live in the actual
neighborhoods within those counties where most of the violence happens. Mike Bloomberg is the leading example of this, along with Andrew Cuomo, Chuck Shumer, Dianne Feinstein, and little Bobby Francis. (I'll give Gabby Giffords and Sarah Brady at least some slack. They at least have personal trauma to explain their positions.)
I honestly think that without Bloomberg shovelling money at it, the gun control movement in the U.S. would be almost dead.
And I think the race issue is also the biggest reason why it's so frustratingly difficult to have a rational discussion or debate about how to deal with crimes committed with guns in America. The two sides are having different arguments. The gun control side mostly uses mass shootings - spectacular, but statistically insignificant in the larger data set of firearm crimes - as their justification for their proposed bans/restrictions. The pro-2A side points out that a vastly disproportionate amount of the firearms homicides and non-lethal shootings happen amongst certain easily defined, and largely geographically limited, segments of the population, and if you want to reduce violent crimes that use guns, you should worry about that. And then get called racists.