Is there a link between the sheer number of guns available and gun violence.

[Justsumguy]

2. I don't see how those charts help prove your point.

Last edited Wed Jun 23, 2021, 06:13 AM - Edit history (1)

The “sharp spike” beginning in 2014 is starting at the all time low of the era the chart represents, and shows a jump up to a number that is right around the average for the time period.

The “sheer number of guns available” isn’t what the charts indicate. They show guns imported to the US and how many were made in the US, which would, I assume correlate with the total number of guns sold per year. I’m just going to talk about the imported gun chart since I don’t think combining the 2 will make any difference in my point and only make the math harder. Looks like total guns imported in 86 was about 750k. 87 was 1.1 milllion, then 88 was 1.2m or so. Would the guns sold in 86 still be available to be used for murder in 87 and 88? 99%+ would be, so you would need to add together all those years in the chart, plus what was available before 86 to find available guns. Wouldn’t the total # of (imported) guns available be closer to 60 million, plus what was available before the time period of the chart? A chart showing the number of guns available by adding the number sold each year to the ones already in circulation would look a lot different. If the total # of guns effects gun violence, why has the murder rate dropped?

If there was a direct relation to # of available guns to gun violence, it seems to me we would have 10 times the problem we do now.