42% of US households own a gun.
120 privately owned guns exist for every 100 Americans.
46% of civilian owned guns globally are from the United States as of 2017.

Some facts on gun violence in the US currently.

10.6 people in the US per 100,000 will die from guns yearly.
321 people are shot everyday.
95.8 people are killed.

54% of these were suicide, putting total gun deaths to 6.4 per 100,000 people in the case of murder/homicide.

Just a comparison, the EU.

449 million people live in the EU.
79.8 million firearms are privately owned there.

17.8 civilian owned guns per 100 people, versus the US at 120.

Comparing crime, the EU also does come out noticeably better.

6,700 people die yearly from guns in the EU.
.9 per 100,000

75% of those gun deaths were suicide, compared to 54% in the US.

For comparison on that, the US has about 12x the gun ownership of the EU, but also has 6.6x the gun ownership.

It should also be mentioned the US has about 4x the percentage of murders/homicides caused by guns, with 79% of murder/homicides in the US being from guns, versus 20% in Europe.

This shows an obvious trend on surface, where guns have some factor in creating increased levels of crime/violence.

Looking at though, the best way to see if banning guns would be meaningful in the US would be looking at a country which had some level of gun bans, which Australia heavily restricting guns in 1996 is a good example.

Australia made an effort to reduce gun ownership after the Port Arthur Massacre.

Gun licenses are down 48%.
Gun ownership per household is down 75%.
3.5 million people still do own guns in Australia.

For crime since 1997, it’s gone down.

1.98 people per 100,000 were dying from homicide in Australia in 1997.
Today, that number is down to .9.

Showing over a 50% decrease in the last 25 years.

This makes a good argument to ban guns, but to be fair, it’s important to also look at the US.

The US had 18,000 gun death homicides in 1993.
Last year, the number was 19,000.

Showing, total deaths, are actually down 22%.

It’s also important to know that number had a low of 11,000 in 2011, which held until an uptick in the mid 2010s.

Which for gun ownership in the US, it has only dropped from 46%, which was the household ownership peak in the 90s to today at 42%.

This makes a case there are ways to lower gun crimes/deaths without doing a ban.

Also, Australia is an example crime can also go down with targeted gun bans, while still having a pretty high gun ownership globally.

Final thoughts, what should we do on guns?

Obvious thing we can’t do is a massive ban on all guns.

42% of homes being armed with a gun.
An extremely deep emotional attachment for many people.
An already very questionable criminal justice system, based on how they handled things such as the war on drugs.

Banning guns in a short term ban would have a lot of consequences and probably not reduce crime enough to justify it.

That being said though, it seems like a smart idea to ban continued manufacturing of AK’s/certain semi automatics.

Visibly the US has a massive gun crime problem which isn’t happening in other countries. Anyone just looking at basic statistics can see that.

We can also look at many countries and see a full ban isn’t needed.

Canada has 34 civilian guns per 100 people.
Switzerland is 27.
New Zealand is 26.
Iceland is 32.
Germany is 20.
France is 20.

Many counties have gun ownership, but more controls and they seem to be working well.

The issue I see is it seems like whenever a tragedy happens, the narrative gets very quickly for a full ban and calls to confiscate guns from people.

This isn’t needed at all and just ensures nothing happens.

The goal here should be some simpler reforms, versus some cultural war which ensures nothing changes in terms of both ownership and deaths.