The Numerically Significant Answer

"Gun owners who say they belong to the NRA tend to own more guns, on average, than gun owners who don’t belong to the NRA: About half (52%) say they own five or more guns, compared with 24% of non-NRA members (38% of nonmembers say they own only one gun). NRA members also hunt and shoot with more frequency than gun owners who aren’t NRA members: 50% say they go hunting often or sometimes, compared with 30% of nonmembers; 66% of NRA members go shooting often or sometimes, versus 49% of nonmembers."

Pew Research Center

National Rifle Association protestations aside, along with the great number of Americans who support the 'right to bear arms' enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, while guns may not kill, people do as they claim, the easy access to and great proliferation of guns owned by citizens is indeed responsible for the reputation the United States has earned as the killing capital of the world -- by guns, wielded by people who own them. A lot of people. A lot of guns.

A body of research exists -- and it is growing -- affirming that though Americans are not inherently violent, their accessibility to firearms results in deadly-violent incidents of unsurprising consistency and frequency of occurrences. Comprised of 4.4 percent of the global population, Americans own 42 percent of the guns circulating in the world, with over 300-million guns in the United States, averaging to one for every man, woman and child in the population.

Research shows that 31 percent of mass shooting gunmen worldwide were American, according to a 2014 study by the University of Alabama's Adam Lankford. Yemen alone among other nations has a higher rate of mass shootings among nations with over ten million people. After the United States, Yemen qualifies as the world's second largest gun ownership nation. A massively poor, undeveloped nation in comparison to the world's premier leadership nation, advanced in technology, research and commerce. 

In his research, Dr. Lankford found confirmation that the rate of gun ownership correlates unfailingly with the number of mass shootings experienced. And nor can any of this be attributed to mental health, since Americans are no more plagued with mental  health issues than any other country. Health care spending in mental health is comparable with other wealthy nations, with a 2015 study estimating 4 percent of American gun deaths attributable to mental health issues.

The gun homicide rate in America in 2009 was 33 per million in comparison to Canada's 5 per million and the  United Kingdom's 0.7 per million, numbers corresponding to differences in gun ownership. A 1999 study by Franklin Zimring and Gordon Hawkins of the University of California concluded that the U.S. is no more prone to crime than other developed countries. But U.S. crime distinguishes itself by being infinitely more lethal.

Gun-related deaths in 2013 included 21,175 suicides, 11,208 homicides and 505 deaths inadvertently caused by accidental discharge. Guns in the hands of curious and innocent children have proven to be disastrously lethal; in some instances killing other children, and in others their own parents. Accessibility is the key. In comparison, only 13 deaths attributable to guns were registered in that same year in Japan, smaller population by two-thirds aside.

The second-highest gun ownership rate of any developed country is in Switzerland where the gun homicide rate in 2004 was 7.7 per million people; a high enough number, totally reflecting the number of weapons circulating in society, yet still well under the U.S. rate. Switzerland has more stringent gun laws, with a higher bar set to secure and maintain a license and for selling guns as well as types that can be possessed by Swiss citizens.

That people have an inherent right to own guns is shared with the United States by Guatemala and Mexico, with resulting lax regulations for gun ownership. Relatively unregulated gun ownership is deemed to be a value whose cost to society in gun-related deaths is a worthwhile exchange. "In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the U.S. gun control debate", wrote British journalist Dan Hodges, of the 2012 attack where 20 children and six adults were shot to death at a Connecticut elementary school.

"Once America decided killing children was bearable, it [the debate] was over."

At least 23 weapons were found in the Las Vegas hotel suite of the gunman who targeted an outdoor concert on Sunday night, killing 59 people, including himself, and injuring more than 500 others. Authorities found 19 more firearms, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, in the home of the gunman, Stephen Paddock     A federal law enforcement official said the guns Stephen Paddock used to carry out the shooting in Las Vegas included AR-15-style rifles. Credit John Moore/Getty Images

De-Weaponizing Palestinians

"We want to get to the point where there will not be a single weapon in the West Bank. Our logic is simple, the illegal weapons industry is one of the enablers of attacks."
"There's a lot of money in making guns. Maybe it's for the money; maybe it's ideological."
"I don't care. Guns kill."
(anonymous) senior Israeli commander

Washington Post photo by William Booth     Israeli forces raid a metal-working shop they say was used to manufacture crude submachine guns in the Palestinian town of Azzun in the Israeli-occupied West Bank early on the morning of Oct. 10,

"There has been an increase in security operations in and around the West Bank area to try and find factories where the weapons are made.” 
"[Palestinians have used them ['Carlos' guns] in a number of terrorist attacks over the past few months."
"[In February, Palestinian attackers used a ‘Carlo’ to kill a young policewoman in Jerusalem]."
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld

In Tel Aviv in June two Palestinians dressed innocuously like businessmen in jackets and ties opened fire at a trendy open-air food and shopping mall. The Arab gunmen managed to kill four Israelis as a special package deal in celebration of Ramadan. Another six Israelis were wounded, four of them critically. And although Hamas didn't take credit for the atrocity, they expressed their pride and approval in glowing terms.

Security camera video illuminated what had occurred. The terrorists were equipped with what has been named Carlo-style submachine guns, weapons that are more or less homemade by metalworking shops in the West Bank where machinists work on the manufacture of the guns, producing barrels, receivers and additional components to complete the production of a Carlo, named after the Swedish Carl Gustav m/45.

Two attackers are now in custody, say police  AFP

The surveillance footage highlighted the slaughter as it transpired, and showed one of the guns losing its ammunition clip, with the attacker hurrying to recover his bullets while the second weapon held by the companion assailant jammed. The terrorist tosses his jammed weapon off on the ground in disgust. As faulty as these machine guns are, they are deadly, and it is in the obvious interests of security and safety that Israeli police and military focus on removing them from action.

For one thing, lacking firearms in the West Bank results in Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians and soldiers resulteting through the use of knives, and family vehicles driven to ram into pedestrians with the intention of maiming and better yet, killing. These methods, however, are less efficient at murder than the use of guns. And for the most part the young Palestinian men and women who venture to kill with knives are more often shot dead themselves at the scene, or wounded and taken into custody.

A member of the Palestinian security forces displays weapons at a police station in the West Bank city of Nablus , that the police found on August 21, 2016, during an ongoing house to house search operation for gunmen who are on the police search list. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

With the freer availability of guns that would obviously change dramatically. At the present time a homemade version of a submachine gun has a selling price of around $500. These weapons are often used by Palestinians for the purpose of self-defence when facing clan feuds, and alternately by criminals in defence of their territory. However, with those weapons in hand and more readily accessed, it is clear enough that the epidemic of attacks would be more successful in killing Israelis were attackers to be armed with guns.

As it is, the Israeli military has recognized an increase in gun attacks, with 22 major assaults with the use of firearms in the past year. The most recent one occurred in Jerusalem with the assailant in possession of an M-16-style weapon, not a crude Carlo. He managed to shoot six Israelis, killing a 60-year-old woman, and a 30-year-old Israeli policeman, and was himself killed by return fire. This was a Palestinian living in Israel, with all the perquisites of any other resident available to him.

His exploit and his 'martyrdom' have been celebrated by his family, his mother and his daughter among them, as a wonderful gift to the Palestinians, restoring their pride in the killing of two Israelis. The Palestinian Authority, known to incite Palestinians to regard the surrender of their lives to martyrdom in the great cause of 'resistance', that killing Israelis is a courageous act, has resulted in Palestinians eager to act on the honourable course of action, the killing of Jews.

In the space of the last year Israeli forces have been busy confiscating weapons and closing up workshops; 350 of the former and 35 of the latter. Because Palestinian ownership of guns is illegal, the West Bank stands out as uniquely deprived of cheap AK-47s and surplus M-16, so readily available elsewhere in the Middle East. Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are awash with AK-47s. The Palestinian Authority's preventive security forces have supplied Israeli authorities with intelligence relating to guns and those who manufacture them in the West Bank.

Several days ago, Israeli soldiers invaded the machine shop in Azzun, West Bank, to discover gun barrels and bullets, half-completed. Drill presses and lathes were dragged out of the shop by a crane and hauled off by the military. The shop's doors were welded shut, and the owner, Nazar Odey, who was later interrogated by the military, will no longer be able to retool brake drums, as advertised, having chosen the sideline of gun manufacturing.

The cost of the Carlo, despite its crude assemblage of various ill-fitting parts, is on the rise, going up to $1,000 to obtain. Reasonable for someone intent on acquiring one, in comparison to the $5,000 cost of a military-grade weapon from abroad like an M-16. Nazar Odey's neighbours professed surprise that the quiet, middle-aged man they were familiar with would risk his livelihood to produce guns.

The conclusion was that though he was not political, he was greedy, and selling a gun for $500 was a hefty bit of earnings, all the more so if he managed to produce ten or twenty of them.

Homemade guns, body armor and other equipment seized by IDF troops in the Palestinian village of al-Dik in an overnight raid on May 25, 2016. (IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

American Gun Values

"We are a gun society and we recognize that, but we should be writing gun laws that make us safer."
"Do you want every incident on your street to escalate to acts of gun violence?"
Leonard Papania, police chief, Gulfport, Misissippi

"What is alarming to the police is that they have no power to ascertain the potential criminal background of an armed individual until a crime is committed, and by then it is too late."
Ladd Everitt, spokesman, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence

"Gloom-and-doom predictions of Wild West scenarios in states with strong gun rights have proven time and again to be nothing more than scare tactics."
Jennifer Baker, spokeswoman, National Rifle Association

"We're advocating the safety for our police officers, but on the other side, you have the N.R.A. and other special interest groups that say, 'If you'll do this, we'll endorse you and make you look good."
"We don't have anything to offer them other than good advice."
Ken Winter, executive director, Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police

"It is absolutely ludicrous to me that we require people to go take a test to get a driver's license, but we are allowing people to carry a deadly weapon on their person without any procedures regulating it."
Michael Sauschuck, police chief, Portland, Maine

Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi signed a law in April allowing people to carry guns inside places of worship. Law enforcement officials in the state said they had been mostly unsuccessful in their attempts to negotiate the language in the legislation. Credit Clay Chandler/Mississippi's Governor's Office, via Associated Press

Difficult as it is to imagine, the most powerful nation on Earth which takes pride in its democratic and moral code, reluctantly taking on its role as universal sheriff to an unstable world, where its population values a constitution that enshrines the right to carry firearms, and there are, correspondingly, more firearms in the country per capita than any other place on the globe, and where more people are killed by guns, including children than any other place in the world, is busy freeing up gun availability.

Every time a mass shooting occurs, particularly those that victimize children when gunmen enter a school and imperil the lives of schoolchildren and their teachers, a mass agony of public outcry calls "enough!", and a brief fling with remorse stating that gun laws must be tightened has its day. But only a day, it seems, before the 'sanity' of cultural values returns and all goes back to normal. Normal in the United States appears to be easy access to gunpower. And the sanctimonious statement that guns don't kill, people do.

So guns in some states now appear in bars, in airports, in day-care centers and sports arenas. Guns are tucked into handbags and backpacks. And curious children, from two-year-old infants to ten-year-olds manage to discover where these killing machines are kept and to play with them. In the process killing themselves or their siblings, or their adult family members. Exceedingly small coffins at funerals tend to make people weep. But not work against the freedom to own guns and exorcise that laissez-faire attitude about them.

Lawmakers of a conservative bent, reflecting their constituents' wishes busy themselves by taking legislative steps to ensure that gun regulations are expanding the freedom for owners to carry their weapons wherever they go. Unconcealed, and with a brave attitude of entitlement. The police have always, in this general environment of entitlement, been fairly complacent. They too, of course, are gun owners, not only on the job but in their private lives.

Except, suddenly they're stepping out of line, protesting, expressing unease, and a wish for greater awareness of the dangers posed in a society for which there are no safeguards, only the freedom to possess and to display. Mississippi signed a new law in April to create exceptions to concealed-carry permit rules. West Virginia and Idaho have approved laws permitting people to carry concealed handguns without a permit or firearm training. And oh yes, without background checks.

Texas residents have been given the right to carry handguns openly. People with permits may carry concealed firearms onto public college campuses. In Maine and Texas, police officers have been exposed to people showing off their weapons near schools and libraries. Their attitudes those of challenging anyone to question their new rights. Gun rights advocates and police have traditionally been allies in the national gun debate.

Craig Martin, a police sergeant in Ann Arbor, Mich., asked to see John McIntosh’s concealed-pistol license before he entered a school board meeting last year. Credit Melanie Maxwell/The Ann Arbor News, via Associated Press

Now, however, police departments insist gun owners be required to receive training. Furthermore, that people with histories of violence be blocked from owning weapons. "Constitutional carry laws" eliminate the police role in issuing permits or questioning people who are armed openly, and this has succeeded in disrupting that traditional alliance. In Mississippi, law enforcement officials learned of the new law when it was being passed.

National Rifle Association members in the state had been sent fliers accusing law enforcement of siding with billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, famously one of the country's most voluble advocate of gun control. Maine enacted a law in 2015 allowing people to carry concealed weapons without a permit or training. Republican Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia proved the exception by vetoing a bill passed by his Republican-controlled Legislature to permit gun owners 21 and older to carry a concealed handgun on college and university campuses, permit-free.

"From the early days of our nation and state, colleges have been treated as sanctuaries of learning where firearms have not been allowed. To depart from such time-honoured protections should require overwhelming justification", he stated. The campus police chiefs of the University System of Georgia distinguished themselves by supporting the existing laws, rejecting the proposed bill.