Originally Posted by scardog

A lot of our gun crime is due to gang violence. Our culture is a gun culture, and it was with guns we won our independence. If you took out the gang violence, police shootings, and suicides, our gun deaths drop dramatically. One of statements anti-gunners make is that you are more likely to shoot someone you know with your gun. This is a little statistical trick they use, by including gang shootings. Since you are in a gang, you know the gang you are shooting against.

http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-13-00.html

Got this little nugget from the CATO institue.
States that allow registered citizens to carry concealed weapons have lower crime rates than those that don't.

True. The 31 states that have "shall issue" laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed weapons have, on average, a 24 percent lower violent crime rate, a 19 percent lower murder rate and a 39 percent lower robbery rate than states that forbid concealed weapons. In fact, the nine states with the lowest violent crime rates are all right-to-carry states. Remarkably, guns are used for self-defense more than 2 million times a year, three to five times the estimated number of violent crimes committed with guns.