Pew Research Center Poll
A recent post described the disparity between the rate of actual gun violence and that of perceived gun violence. With actual ownership up, and actual gun violence down since 1968, the opposite of what the public believes. The disparity is due to campaigns of gun control activists promoting the idea that guns cause crime.
A Gallup poll of gun ownership shows that among white Americans, one in three own guns, almost twice the rate as non-white Americans. However, data on gun crimes from the Department of Justice for these groups shows the rate of gun violence among non-whites is several times higher. Also gun ownership among older adults, (>29 years old) is three times that of younger people yet the younger group is responsible for twice the rate of gun violent crimes.
What we find with these surveys is that segments of the population with higher proportion of gun ownership have a lower rate of gun related crimes than other segments. This is consistent with most studies showing that higher rates of legal gun ownership correlates with lower gun related crimes, mainly because 40% of gun crimes are committed with illegal guns according to the Justice Department.
It should be obvious that tougher gun control laws, and restricting the use of legal guns has little to no effect on the use of illegal guns. An overwhelming majority of gun owners are law abiding and tougher gun control will have no effect on crime among law abiding owners. By focusing on gun control to solve the problem of gun violence we ignore the real problem of income disparity and joblessness, because guns do not cause the crimes.
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