Reply #72: Except for the ones who DON'T "threaten or kill their spouses, co-workers, etc." [View All]

[Euromutt]

Even by the most conservative estimates, there are 35 million households in the United States. Even assuming there's a single gun owner in each household, at current homicide rates, it would take well over 2,000 years for every current gun owner in American to each kill one person other than themselves. Very simply, over 99% of gun owners will never use a firearm to inflict unlawful violence on another person.

The notion that even a significant amount, let alone a majority, of homicides are committed by people "who would have been considered law-abiding up to the moment they pulled the trigger" is a fiction. In reality, 75-80% of homicides are committed by persons with prior felony convictions as adult, another 10-15% are committed by people who turn out to have prior histories of violence.

If you factor out those homicides in which the perpetrator and/or the victim are young, black, urban males, the American homicide rate would actually be fairly unremarkable. What's so special about young, black, urban males? They're the demographic most likely, due to socio-economic factors, to be tempted into the illegal drug trade, where they quickly learn that the most effective form of "conflict resolution" is to kill the other guy.