ABSTRACT
The single most important factor that sets human violence apart from aggression among lower animals is arguably man's greater technological capacity to inflict harm. The United States has a high level of violence, it has a large number of guns, and very high shares of its homicides are committed with guns. The best available evidence on the impact of gun ownership on violent crime rates was generated by a study by Gary Kleck and E. Britt Patterson. An attack could be the throwing of a punch, swinging of a club, thrusting of a knife, or firing of a gun. The principal possible effects of weapons on whether an aggressor attacks can be conceptualized as facilitation, triggering, inhibition, and redundancy. The main difference is that among criminals the ratio of aggressive to defensive uses is presumably higher than among noncriminals, making it more likely that the net effect of criminal gun possession is violence-increasing.
