Make gun owners the new PARIAH

[Nuclear Unicorn]

132. A "messy purse." How -- stereotypical

Self-defense is a human right and no amount of number massaging is going to change that.

But here's a study from Clinton's NIJ --

A somewhat more conservative NSPOF estimate is
shown in the column of exhibit 7 that reflects the
application of the criteria used by Kleck and Gertz
to identify "genuine" defensive gun uses.
Respondents were excluded on the basis of the most
recent DGU description for any of the following
reasons: the respondent did not see a perpetrator;
the respondent could not state a specific crime
that was involved in the incident; or the
respondent did not actually display the gun or
mention it to the perpetrator.

Applying those restrictions leaves 19 NSPOF
respondents (0.8 percent of the sample),
representing 1.5 million defensive users. This
estimate is directly comparable to the well-known
estimate of Kleck and Gertz, shown in the last
column of exhibit 7. While the NSPOF estimate is
smaller, it is statistically plausible that the
difference is due to sampling error. Inclusion of
multiple DGUs reported by half of the 19 NSPOF
respondents increases the estimate to 4.7 million
DGUs.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/165476.txt

1.5 million defensive users annually. Of course, when this government study was performed there were only half as many guns owned as there are today and gun crime is actually decreasing.

I've seen others cite stats that 4/5 of gun crimes are committed by criminals with prior records. As they are a far smaller sub-set of the problem you wish to confront it seems that dealing with them would make more logistical sense to deal with them rather than trying to criminalize 80 million people and pushing tens of millions into the waiting arms of the GOP.