Kennesaw, GA passed a law over a decade ago requiring all residents to
own a gun. The results were astounding - crime plummeted. How many
other U.S. towns have a similar ordinance to Kennesaw, or otherwise
boast 80% citizenry gun ownership or better, and have similar
low-crime rates?

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Request for Question Clarification by czh-ga on 15 Jun 2005 08:20 PDT

Hello joedu-ga,

I did some preliminary research on your question and my conclusion is
that the idea od mandatory gun ownership was proposed in a few
jurisdictions but was not passed. One of the issues is that some
states have laws that reserve the right to regulate guns to the state
level. Would documenting the negative findings answer your question?

~ czh ~

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Clarification of Question by joedu-ga on 15 Jun 2005 08:47 PDT

Negative findings won't help. I'm trying to determine a correlation
between high incidence in gun ownership and low crime rate in US
localities, similar to what you find throughout Switzerland.

Unfortunately, stats are very hard to come by. Appreciate the effort.

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Request for Question Clarification by czh-ga on 15 Jun 2005 10:32 PDT

Hello joedu-ga,

I'm afraid that the statistics are hard to come by because the
proposition that high gun ownership has a causal relationship with low
crime rates simply doesn't hold up. There is tons of information
available about gun ownership and crime rates in the US. Perhaps you
could clarify the scope and context of your question so that we can
focus the search on something useful for your purposes. Here are a few
links to show you some related statistics.

http://www.swornenemy.org/index.php/new/2005/01/04/u_s_gun_ownership_on_the_decline
U.S. Gun Ownership On The Decline
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050104-045728-3751r.htm
Gallup: 38 percent of U.S. homes armed

Gallup said the percentage of people in the United States reporting
they have a gun in their homes has been near the 40 percent mark since
2000. Gallup has been polling on this subject since 1959. From that
first polling through 1993, an average of 47 percent of respondents
said they had a gun in their homes. Since then, that average has
dropped to about 40 percent.


http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=United+States+Cities+by+Crime+Rate&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1
United States Cities by Crime Rate 
The following are lists of the one-hundred safest and most dangerous
U.S. cities with population 10,000 and above for which crime data for
the specific catagory is available.


http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=2df2hf3ua0fh3?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=John+Lott&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc01b
John Lott 
In his books More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns, he
presents statistical evidence for his claim that allowing adults to
carry concealed weapons has significantly reduced crime in America.

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Clarification of Question by joedu-ga on 16 Jun 2005 04:59 PDT

"I'm afraid that the statistics are hard to come by because the
proposition that high gun ownership has a causal relationship with low
crime rates simply doesn't hold up." That's a qualitative statement.
I'm simply looking for stats. If it didn't hold up, then Kennesaw and
Switzerland would be riddled with crime, but the opposite is true.

Thank you for the links. The stat I'm looking for is just those towns
with high incidence of gun ownership, which from there I can check the
crime stats as you suggested. Are Gun Ownership stats available?

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Request for Question Clarification by czh-ga on 16 Jun 2005 08:27 PDT

<Are Gun Ownership stats available?>

In a nutshell, NO. 

The kind of stats you're looking for are not available. As one of the
links I shared shows, gun ownership in general is declining. Kennesaw
is an aberration. Attempts at passing similar laws emulating them were
made in 2-3 places and went down to defeat. There is no other locality
in the US that requires gun owndership. There is no comprehensive
survey of nationwide gun owndership by city, town, municipality,
county, etc. As I said earlier, gun control laws vary greatly by
location but tend to be regulated by the states which preempts local
action like that taken by Kennesaw.

Good luck on your search.

~ czh ~

It seems that your question may be harder then you realize as there
does not seem to be anywhere to find gun ownership statisics.  You can
lookup crime index statisics for any city with a population over
10,000 on the Fbi's website or by following this link
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/html/web/offreported/02-table08AL-AR.html
  you will have to take your gun ownership stats and combind them
manually, perhaps that might be more work then you were hoping for.
Either way Good luck.

I can't believe I'm the only one to actually persue this question, or
that folks who have never posted their results. Perhaps I could do my
dissertation on the subject. Ha.

Appreciate the help!

I think you will find a much higher corralation with crime and males
ages 19 to 29 and population.

The age and sex of the criminal has nothing to do with lawful gun
ownership, unless you're suggesting I look for towns with a low
incidence of males 19 to 29. I'm looking to compare gun onwership and
crime rates.

I agree age and sex may have nothing to do with lawful gun ownership. 
What I am saying is that corralation isn't necessarily causation.  You
will find that places with a high population density of males age 19
to 29 with respect to the general population will have a higher
incidence of crime. (regardless of lawful gun ownership stats.)

In short stats on lawful gun ownership stats don't mean much.

Joe,

As ScubaJim had said regarding ages of most of those invovled in
criminal activity, corralation isn't necessarily causation.

This also applies to the difference between Switzerland and parts of
the United States regarding violence. These two societies are as
different as two societies in the Western World could be. There could
be a variety of reasons why the level of violence in Switzerland is
lower.

There are several other countries whereas levels of gun ownership are
relatively high - for example Canada, Australia, Sweden or Austria.
None of those countries experiences the same levels of violence as in
the United States. On the other hand, again on the cross-cultural
level, there is no indication whatsoever that very low gun ownership
rates have any causal connection to higher rates of violent crime
(e.g., Japan, whereas with the exception of cases of suicide, is
listed on the bottom of violent crime ranking)).

As politicalguru-ga said,

Switzerland and GA in the USA are completely different places. 

You cannot use the high gun ownership in Switzerland as a reason of
low crime rate (wich is slowly increasing thanks to some nearby
countries.. but that's another story). The high gun ownership in
Switzerland is mainly due to the army allowing (and up until a few
years ago OBLIGING) male citizens to keep their army issued assault
rifle until the end of their military service, around 45 years old I
recall.
I live in Switzerland btw.

good luck with your ressearch