I'm not going to debate but I can share some resources:
All you can do is your own research:
Kleck, G., Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. New York, Aldine De Gruyter, 1991. ISBN 0-202-30419-1.
Kleck, G., Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control. New York, Aldine De Gruyter, 1997. ISBN 0-202-30569.
Lott, J. R., More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998. ISBN 0-226-49363-6.
Kopel, D. B., The Samurai, The Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? New York, Prometheus Books, 1992. ISBN 0-87975-756-6.
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The 15 leading causes of death in 2009 were:
1.
Diseases of heart (heart disease)
2.
Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
3.
Chronic lower respiratory diseases
4.
Cerebrovascular diseases (stroke)
5.
Accidents (unintentional injuries)
6.
Alzheimer’s disease
7.
Diabetes mellitus (diabetes)
8.
Influenza and pneumonia
9.
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (kidney disease)
10.
Intentional self-harm (suicide)
11.
Septicemia
12.
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis
13.
Essential hypertension and hypertensive renal disease (hypertension)
14.
Parkinson’s disease
15.
Assault (homicide)
Suicide was the only leading cause of death showing a significant increase.
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As gun ownership has increased dramatically, gun-related violent crimes have gradually decreased over the past six years in the state of Virginia, according to a new analysis.
Read more:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/26/report-in-virginia-more-guns-less-crime/#ixzz2FA63BHje
From 2006 to 2011, the total number of guns purchased in Virginia increased 73 percent, while the total number of gun-related violent crimes decreased 24 percent over that period. And when adjusted for population growth, the number of crimes further decreases to more than 27 percent, with 79 gun-related offenses per 100,000 in 2006 dropping to 57 by 2011.
Read more:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/26/report-in-virginia-more-guns-less-crime/#ixzz2FA6Dy8BU
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http://rkba.org/research/wright/armed-criminal.summary.html
The Nature of the Criminal Firearms Market
Three-quarters of the sample said they had owned one or more firearms at some time in their lives. Seventy-nine percent of these -- more than 1,000 -- said they owned at least one handgun. The handgun owners responded to a number of detailed questions about the methods and sources they used to acquire their most recent handguns. Their answers provide previously unavailable details describing the nature of the criminal gun market. The principal results:
(1) Legitimate firearms retailers play only a minor role as direct sources of handguns for adult felony offenders.
Only about one-sixth of the gun-owning felons obtained their most recent handguns through a customary retail transaction involving a licensed firearms dealer. The remainder -- five out of six -- obtained them via informal, off-the-record transactions involving friends and associates, family members, and various black market outlets. The means of acquisition from these informal sources included cash purchase, swaps and trades, borrowing and renting, and often theft. The criminal handgun market is overwhelmingly dominated by informal transactions and theft as mechanisms of supply.
The off-the-record nature of the market is further illustrated in the responses to a series of questions concerning the ease with which these men felt they could arm themselves upon release from prison. (As convicted felons, of course, all these men are legally prohibited from acquiring guns upon release, under provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968.) Most of the sample (gun owners and nonowners alike) thought it would be "no trouble at all" to acquire a gun upon release; about 80 percent felt they could obtain a suitable handgun in a few days or less. When asked where they would go for guns, their sources were friends, the street, and various black market sources.
These results suggest certain policy implications. Policies attempting to regulate handgun acquisition at the point of retail sale may be effective in preventing some types of criminals from acquiring firearms (e.g., juveniles or nonfelony offenders), but they are likely to have little effect on the most serious handgun-owning felons represented in this sample. Hardcore felons of the sort studied in this research rarely use customary retail channels to obtain handguns.
(2) Gun theft plays a critical role in connecting the adult felony offender to his firearms supply.
Half the men in the total sample had stolen at least one gun at some time in their lives (as shown in Figure 1). Many had stolen more than one. A few, particularly the more predatory felons, had stolen guns in extremely large numbers. At least 40 percent and perhaps has many as 70 percent of the most recent handguns owned by this sample were stolen weapons. These percentages include not only the guns that the felons stole themselves (32 percent), but also guns that the felons knew or believed to have been stolen prior to their acquisition of them.
Like other theft, gun theft appears to be an "opportunity" crime: most gun thieves (76 percent) stole guns when they came across them, not because they were looking specifically for a gun to steal. The purpose of most gun thefts (70 percent) was to sell or trade the gun to someone else, rather than to obtain one for personal use. Still most of those who had ever stolen guns kept at least one of them for personal use, usually because the stolen gun was a better quality weapon than the gun they were carrying at that time.
Most gun thefts (84 percent) occurred in private residences, but thefts from "high-volume" sources (retailers, wholesalers, shippers, and manufacturers) were also widely reported. These high-volume thefts may in fact account for a larger share of the total volume of stolen guns, due to the potentially greater number of guns stolen per theft.
The ideal gun control policy would be one that directly affects the illicit user but leaves the legitimate user pretty much alone. Formulating such a policy, however, presupposes a sharp distinction between the licit and the illicit markets, a distinction seriously eroded by the heavy volume of gun thefts from legitimate owners. The survey data suggests that a successful policy for controlling criminal access to firearms must necessarily address the problem of gun theft, perhaps including measures for informing legitimate owners about the extent and seriousness of gun theft and about procedures for adequately securing their firearms.
* Controls imposed at the point of retail sale would not be effective in preventing the acquisition of guns by serious adult felons because these felons rarely obtain their guns through customary retail outlets.
* Since theft of guns is a predominant means by which felons procure firearms, the 30 to 50 million handguns currently possessed by legitimate private owners represents a potentially rich source for criminal handgun acquisition. An effective criminal gun control policy must therefore, of necessity, confront the issue of firearms theft. At a minimum, there should be programs to educate the gun-owning public about the importance of adequately securing their guns.
* Among the most predatory felons, gun ownership and carrying is seen as essential because they fear what the prospects of an unarmed life on the streets would mean for their physical safety and security. For this group of most serious offenders, enhanced sanctioning policies would be unlikely to pose must threat; for them, the cost of being caught unarmed in a dangerous situation would be many times greater than the cost of a few years in prison.
* For less predatory felons, however, sentence enhancement policies do seem to have an important deterrent effect, since a sizable majority of the felons who do not use guns in crime cite "stiffer penalties" as a very important reason for their decision not to carry firearms.
* Finally, the survey findings suggest that, at least for the serious adult felons included in this sample, certain commonly proposed gun-banning measures could have strongly undesirable consequences, resulting in the substitution of more powerful and more lethal firearms. Gun-banning policies may be responded to differently by other types of offenders, however, and could represent a more effective deterrent to firearms use by juveniles, non-felony offenders, and other types of criminals.
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Mortality
All homicides
Number of deaths: 16,799
Deaths per 100,000 population: 5.5
Cause of death rank: 15
Firearm homicides
Number of deaths: 11,493
Deaths per 100,000 population: 3.7
Source: Deaths: Final Data for 2009, tables 9, 10, 11 Adobe PDF file [PDF - 2.1 MB] Adobe PDF file
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Mortality
All suicides
Number of deaths: 36,909
Deaths per 100,000 population: 12.0
Cause of death rank: 10
Firearm suicides
Number of deaths: 18,735
Deaths per 100,000 population: 6.1
Suffocation suicides
Number of deaths: 9,000
Deaths per 100,000 population: 2.9
Poisoning suicides
Number of deaths: 6,398
Deaths per 100,000 population: 2.1
http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gun-violence/welcome.htm
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http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/guns.cfm
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/offenses/violent_crime/murder_homicide.html
http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/safety/
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-crime-murders-with-firearms
http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gun-violence/welcome.htm
Table 1
Total criminality of offenders by typology of weapons used in crime
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Criminal type Number of Percent of Avg total
offenders total sample criminality score
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Total sample 1,874 100 139
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Unarmed-criminals 725 39 61
Armed-not-with-gun criminals
Improvisers 79 4 101
Knife-criminals 134 7 109
Gun criminals
One-time gun users 257 14 84
Sporadic gun users 257 14 151
Handgun predators 321 17 332
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir-crime-murders-with-firearms
