ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the relationships among guns, violence, and gun control. However, to understand these issues it is necessary to first appreciate how common gun ownership is, who owns guns, why they own them, how they get them, and what they use them for. Although a few nations may have shares of their households with guns rivaling those of the United States, this country almost certainly has more firearms in civilian hands than any other nation in the world. The simplest way is to report the reasons people give when they are asked the question. These reasons tend to be utilitarian, reflecting the uses to which gun owners put, or anticipate putting, their guns. The significance of the problem was first demonstrated by Williams and McGrath who found that pistol ownership was positively and significantly related to both fear of crime and prior victimization, whereas general gun ownership was related to neither.
