ABSTRACT
Gun control supporters often wonder how the National Rifle Association and other gun owner organizations can possibly oppose some of the more modest and apparently inoffensive regulations. The National Crime Victimization Survey, a survey of a large national sample of households, generates estimates of nonfatal gunshot woundings connected with assaults that are far too low even compared just to the number known to police. One of the more obvious difficulties in making broadly targeted gun controls work is that the share of the total gun stock involved in crime is small. The state-level associations that are most supportive of the guns-cause-violence thesis are those pertaining to homicide. Gun control is less likely to have much effect on crime committed by criminals with the strongest and most persistent motivation to commit crimes, such as drug dealers, emotionally disturbed mass murderers, professional hit men, terrorists, or political assassins.
