Do guns in the home deter burglary? Or cause burglary? Or both, in different ways, at different levels? If you'd like to study the topic, here's are some on-line starting points.
1. My article Lawyers, Guns, and Burglars, 43 Arizona Law Review 345 (2001), looks at previous national and international research, and argues that the high rate of defensive gun ownership in the U.S. deters home invasion burglary.
2. In the book Evaluating Gun Policy: Effects on Crime and Violence (Brookings Institution, 2003), Philip J. Cook & Jens Ludwig conduct a county-level study of the U.S., and find higher gun ownership rates associated with a small increase in burglary rates. The chapter (as a NBER working paper) is available here.
3. In the same book, I have a Comment which questions the Cook/Ludwig conclusion.
Although I do not agree with all the policy conclusions in the book, the book does present very interesting research, and among the most sophisticated arguments for gun control to be found anywhere.
The Relationship between Guns and Burglary:
Poor thieves in rural areas need cars for access to victims far more than they do in urban areas. Etc.
One thing that strikes me about your comment is that you treat legal gun ownership and illegal gun ownership as if they are entirely separate phenomena; in other words, the only potential downside of legal gun ownership is that those guns might be stolen and used in a crime, or turned against their owner. But it strikes me that there must be a correlation; if there was no such thing as legal gun ownership in the US, to take the extreme case, surely there would be far fewer illegal guns as well. Many illegal guns begin their life with a lawful purchase, or are hijacked from a lawful gun shipment; indeed, if there had been no demand for legal guns, many of the illegal guns in existence would never have been manufactured in the first place. You can't simply point to a specific lawfully-owned firearm and say "the likelihood of this specific gun being used to commit a crime is very low." The problem is more complex than that.
Doubtless if there was no legal market for guns, there would be fewer guns available to steal. But there would instead be a market for illegal guns. Right now, anyone that illegally manufactures a gun has to be doing it for some reason other than money. If guns were illegal, and those intent on buying guns were criminals, I would not be surprised to see the price of handguns rise quite dramatically. (It's a "cost of doing business" for drug dealers and armed robbers.)
Any real machine shop can make guns very, very easily--and if you are going to break the law anyway, why not making submachine guns? The parts count is a bit less, and illegal makers won't be carrying liability insurance.
There are types of crime that seem to be higher in rural areas, like making meth, etc.
About 17 years ago, when I was still living with my parents, some guy was on the run from the cops and he decided to try and break into our back door. Both my father and I heard him and jumped out of bed. Needless to say, after seeing a few guns pointed at him, that guy decided that being captured by the cops wasn't such a bad thing after all. And yes, I would have shit him if he had gotten in the house before we got to him. Damn right I would have.
As a side note, my father was more pissed that my gun was much better than his than he was to find out I owned one. He went out the next day and bought a new one.
Best typo ever.
my point is simply this: murders and burglaries are only a part of the gun control issue; when discussing their meaning, it's important to remember the broader context.
why would you expect that? I would expect that England has far fewer problems with smuggling from Europe than the US does with Mexico because many of our drugs and illegal aliens come from there.
Bill Clinton and Janet Reno sold the Chinese exclusive rights to import guns illegally (exclusive = prosecution guaranteed to be impeded) into the U.S. in 1993. My by-then retired California Democratic party operative father pointed that out to me in 1995.
Right now, a well-made 9mm handgun costs about $600-$700, and weighs about 2-3 pounds. That's about $200 a pound--and they are legal. If they were illegal, I would expect them to be worth about $1000 a pound. This sounds pretty profitable.
Does low burglary rate imply deterrance is in effect, or is that the natural state for a given area regardless of the gun count?
In high crime areas, people might seek guns; thus crime causes gun ownership rather than gun ownership causing crime. Or even more difficult to impute, is there a viscious cycle with both forces in effect simultaneously.
Sometimes a natural experiment can take place, such as when a state initiates concealed carry. Then a control group can be used either of the same area using prior data for comparison, or a similar area, perhaps in a nearby state, with similar socioeconomic situations at the same time period. These can however be weak experiments because many of the concealed carry permits would not signify new gun ownership, but merely the same gun moving from an illegal to a legal status.
How might I use gun ownership data in making decisions about where to live? The same as knowing number of buildings with bars on the windows; if the locals think security is a big problem, then it's time to look elsewhere.