America's Complex Relationship with Guns: An In-Depth Look at the Attitudes and Experiences of U.S. Adults
"As a nation, the U.S. has a deep and enduring connection to guns. Integrated into the fabric of American society since the country’s earliest days, guns remain a point of pride for many Americans. Whether for hunting, sport shooting or personal protection, most gun owners count the right to bear arms as central to their freedom. At the same time, the results of gun-related violence have shaken the nation, and debates over gun policy remain sharply polarized.
 

A new Pew Research Center survey attempts to better understand the complex relationship Americans have with guns and how that relationship intersects with their policy views."

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Gun Proliferation Fuels Homicide Rates in the Americas

Poor and middle-income nations of Latin America and the Caribbean are the most homicide-prone countries in the world, according to an analysis of a new United Nations report on violence. And because of lax gun laws, it found, far more homicides are committed with firearms in the Americas than in any other part of the world.

The analysis of the Global Status Report on Violence Prevention 2014, published last week by the Pan American Health Organization, reported that the highest homicide rates were in Honduras, Venezuela, Jamaica and Belize, with the Honduran rate — 104 killings per 100,000 population — nearly double that of the next deadliest countries. By contrast, the lowest homicide rates in the Americas were in Canada, Antigua and Barbuda, and Chile. Canada’s was less than two per 100,000 population, while others were below five. The homicide rate in the United States was 5.3 per 100,000.

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Does "Right-to-Carry" Lead to More Crime?
"So-called 'right-to-carry' gun laws are associated with higher rates of aggravated assault, rape, robbery and murder, according to a recently released Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University study.

For decades, gun rights supporters and foes have debated whether laws that allow more people to have guns create an environment where less crime is committed.

All 50 states have laws allowing certain concealed weapons in public.

Researchers expanded on a 2004 National Research Council study that covered county-level crime data between 1977 and 2000, adding in six additional years of county information and state-level data from 1979-2010.

'Our analysis of admittedly imperfect gun aggravated assaults provides suggestive evidence that RTC laws may be associated with large increases in this crime, perhaps increasing such gun assaults by almost 33 percent,' researchers wrote.

The study also found that homicide rates increased in eight states that adopted right-to-carry laws between 1999 and 2010."

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Congressman’s U.S. Senate Campaign Is Giving Away An Assault Rifle

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) has made a career out of appealing to a certain sense of conservative grievance. He once labeled the Civil War the “War of Yankee Aggression.” He offered legislation to defund a key prong of the Voting Rights Act (a goal that the Roberts Court was happy to achieve for him). And he’s warned that a “socialistic elite” that includes President Obama and congressional Democratic leaders are looking for an excuse to declare martial law — “[t]hey’re trying to develop an environment where they can take over,” in Broun’s words.

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Mass Shootings Are Becoming More Frequent

After a man opened fire at Los Angeles’s airport a few months ago, friends and coworkers undoubtedly turned to each other shaking their heads: Could this really be happening again, so soon? Are these things getting more frequent, or am I imagining it?

You’re not imagining it, according to a new study obtained by Yahoo! News on Thursday. The report, which is set for release in a Federal Bureau of Investigations bulletin next week, finds that mass shootings have indeed become more common. They have spiked from five a year between 2000 and 2008 to 16 a year from 2009 to 2012.

The report also sheds some light on who is committing mass shootings, and how: 94 percent of gunmen are men, though they range significantly in age. Forty percent of mass shootings happen at businesses, while 29 percent take place at schools. Fifty-nine percent of the time, the gunmen use handguns, and 26 percent of the time rifles.

They claim, on average, two lives.

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