David Jolly smacks down Jack Kingston on CNN just now with a great line.

[jimmy the one]

23. Kingston also made a fool of himself about guns

Jack KINGSTON (R) on cnn last weekend vs david jolly (R): -- if you want to put it on the table you also have to tell me why when gun purchases went up did the crime rate go down? And neither of you have said -- no --
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1802/20/nday.04.html

Kingston went on to say that he hadn't heard of any reason whyfor the crime rate went down other than citing 161 million increase in the national gunstock between early 1990's and 2014 (read today).
As if putting over 150 million more guns in people's hands were the reason for the crime decrease.
We say BS! Kingston is either intentionally lying or is ignorant of the facts, I suspect the latter.

One correlation (reason imo) in the decline of violent crime & total crime from early 1990's to now is that the rate of gun ownership has also been declining. By about 30%, both personal & home gun ownership.
Another point is that the new gun sales went maybe half to existing gun owners:



General Social Survey (GSS) .. data show a substantial decline in the shares of both households and individuals with guns... 1973, 49% reported having a gun or revolver in their home or garage. In 2012, 34% said they had a gun in their home or garage.
.. personal gun ownership in 1980, 29% said a gun in their home personally belonged to them. This stands at 22% in the 2012 GSS survey. http://www.people-press.org/2013/03/12/section-3-gun-ownership-trends-and-demographics/
3) ... The Pew Research Center has tracked gun ownership since 1993, and our surveys largely confirm the General Social Survey trend. In our Dec 1993 survey, 45% reported having a gun in their household; in early 1994, the GSS found 44% saying they had a gun in their home. A Jan 2013 Pew Research Center survey found 33% saying they had a gun, rifle or pistol in their home, as did 34% in the 2012 wave of {GSS}.

According to all 3 polls above, personal & household gun ownership rates fell dramatically during the same 8 yr time period as when violent crime & total crime rates fell dramatically, ~1992 - 2000.
National gunstock increased during that time period as well, also to now, but is demonstrably shown that a solid portion of those guns went to existing gun owners rather than creating any increase in the rate of gun owners.
The clinton crime initiative went into effect in 1994, which also had an affect on declining violent crime rates, but wouldn't've affected 1992, 93, 94.