Gun Control & RKBA

Other factors may help explain the fall of gun crime since the early 1990s including reductions in lead levels, the end of the crack epidemic, advances in medicine that allow more gunshot victims to survive their wounds, and a declining rate of gun ownership.

The implicit argument made by conservative media is that there is a causal link between reports of booming gun sales in recent years and the overall decline of gun homicide over the past 20 years. But this claim misunderstands how gun ownership has changed during this time period. According to the General Social Survey, household firearm ownership has fallen from 43 percent in the 1990s to 35 percent in the 2000s. Overall household ownership is down from 50 percent in the 1970s. As Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, explained to The New York Times, "There are all these claims that gun ownership is going through the roof. But I suspect the increase in gun sales has been limited mostly to current gun owners. The most reputable surveys show a decline over time in the share of households with guns."

Significantly, numerous studies have proven that gun availability is linked to gun violence. According to a review conducted by David Hemenway of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, ...{DH - 'Nuff said - he was the one who put out that interesting "study" saying more cops get killed in high gun owner states, but left out 3 of 4 states on each control group}

Conservatives who trumpet the BJS study are also ignoring that it indicated a decline in gun homicides {Or NOT*}, not that the problem of gun violence has been solved. In fact, the level of gun violence in the United States remains at epidemic levels. According to an analysis of data by PolitiFact, around 86,000 people are shot -- including both fatally or nonfatally -- each year due to crime or gun-related accidents. Approximately 18,000 more Americans die in gun suicides. Overall, firearm-related deaths are rising and set to outpace motor vehicle fatalities by 2015.

"Between 1993 and 2000, the gun homicide rate dropped by nearly half, from 7.0 homicides to 3.8 homicides per 100,000 people. Since then, the gun homicide rate has remained relatively flat. From 2009 to 2014, the most recent year data are available, the number of gun homicides has hovered around 11,000 and 12,000 per year"
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"The rate of nonfatal gun victimizations declined in a similar way to the gun death rate, with a large drop in the 1990s – 63% between 1993 and 2000. The decline since then has been more uneven. In 2014, there were 174.8 nonfatal violent gun victimizations per 100,000 people ages 12 and older."
...
"while the gun suicide rate has declined overall since 1993, in recent years it has risen, from 6.3 per 100,000 people in 2010 to 6.7 in 2014."