It’s puzzling that so many Americans are choosing to arm themselves at a time when the FBI tells us violent crime and property crime have been falling dramatically for two decades.

John Burnett, NPR

“It’s puzzling that so many homeowners are choosing to maintain fire extinguishers at a time when the data tells us fire incidents have been falling dramatically” would sound about the same. Also, this has been the trend for three decades, since the early 1990s.

There is no correlation between homocide and gun ownership. Tools don’t do anything by themselves and their presence can not make you more or less safe. BJ Campbell has a tremendous article on this that thoroughly looks at the numbers and analyzes how a series of less-thorough reports got this wrong.

Everybody’s Lying About the Link Between Gun Ownership and Homicide
There is no clear correlation whatsoever between gun ownership rate and gun homicide rate. Not within the USA. Not regionally. Not internationally. Not among peaceful societies. Not among violent ones. Gun ownership doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t make us less safe. A bivariate correlation simply isn’t there. It is blatantly not-there. It is so tremendously not-there that the “not-there-ness” of it alone should be a huge news story.

Gun Murder Rate is not correlated with firearm ownership rate in the United States, on a state by state basis. Firearm Homicide Rate is not correlated with guns per capita globally. It’s not correlated with guns per capita among peaceful countries, nor among violent countries, nor among European countries.

BJ Campbell

More:
https://opensourcedefense.org/blog/gun-rights-are-winning-and-nobody-has-realized-it

https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/here-are-8-stubborn-facts-gun-violence-america