It's a topic that seems to come up every time there's a mass shooting. Many people seem to think that a "gun buyback" program, such as the one implemented in Australia in 1996, would be a reasonable thing to do in the United States of America. I disagree. Many people are calling for "common sense gun control", demanding more strict laws regarding firearm ownership. I do not share this sentiment, and I'll allow the statistics to make my argument for me.
The most recent year I could find correlating data for is 2017. According to Small Arms Survey, there were ~393,347,000 civilian owned guns in the USA in 2017. According to the CDC, the total number of deaths from firearms in 2017 was 39,773. Homicide accounted for 36.6% of those 39,773 (=14,557). That means there were 27,021 firearms owned per every ONE homicide. If you include suicide, accidents, justified use, etc. It's 1 death per 9,889 firearms. They would literally have to confiscate 9,889 guns to prevent 1 death (on average), and that's assuming that all the would-be murderers turn in their guns at the same rate as law abiding citizens - good luck with that. To prevent 100 gun deaths, they would essentially have to take over one million firearms (100 deaths x 10k guns) - again, assuming all armed criminals turned in their guns at the same rate as law abiding citizens. 1 million firearms would only be ~.25% of the total civilian owned.
To put these numbers into perspective a little bit - there were 272,480,899 motor vehicles registered in the USA in 2017. 37,133 people lost their lives in motor vehicle crashes in 2017. That means for every 7,337 cars registered there was 1 death. Despite guns being "designed to kill", and cars being jam packed full of safety features designed to save your life, the object to death ratio is still higher for cars.
From cdc.gov: "Although definitions of defensive gun use vary, it is generally defined as the use of a firearm to protect and defend one’s self, family, others, and/or property against crime or victimization. Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to the design of studies. The report Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence indicates a range of 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year."
60,000 defensive uses per year (on the low estimate) VS 39,773 firearm deaths (on the high estimate). Just for fun, let's selectively use statistics to make my argument look better like the media does - 2.5 million defensive uses vs 14k homicides. That implies that you're 178 times more likely to use a firearm defensively than you are to get killed by somebody with one. You're more likely to die in a car crash or use a firearm defensively than you are to get killed by someone with a gun.
Passing more strict gun laws might sound like it would result in less "gun violence", but statistics show otherwise. Reducing the rate of firearm ownership does not necessarily mean less gun violence either.
For example, West Virginia has constitutional carry laws, which means there is no permit or licensing requirements to carry a concealed weapon. They have some of the most relaxed gun laws in the USA. The rate of firearm ownership in WV is .585% (5th highest rate by state). California is arguably one of the hardest states to get a permit to carry. It has the 8th lowest rate of firearm ownership by state at only 0.283%. They're known for having some of the most strict gun laws in the USA. According to gunviolencearchive.org, there were only 7 incidents for all of WV, and 210 in California. According to census.gov, populations were 39,237,836 in CA, 1,782,959 in WV. That's 1 incident per 186,846 people in CA, and 1 incident per 254,708 people in WV. This implies that mass shootings happen 1.3 times more often in CA than WV, despite West Virginia having double the rate of firearm ownership and much more relaxed gun laws.
You are your own first line of defense. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_California (http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov)
https://code.wvlegislature.gov/61-7-4/
https://code.wvlegislature.gov/61-7-7/
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/mass-shooting
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gun-ownership-by-state
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf (pages 12-13)
http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/Weapons_and_Markets/Tools/Firearms_holdings/SAS-BP-Civilian-held-firearms-annexe.pdf (page 7)
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2017/mv1.cfm
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812603
