AKA Monet, thank you so much for responding, you bring up a couple of excellent points I would like to address. You are absolutely correct that violence with guns is very ugly, but so is violence without gun, in fact more so. A gunshot victim is 'clean' (with the notable exception of a head wound though a series of blows from a baseball bat has much the same effect) compared with someone dying in a violent auto accident or being beaten and kicked to death. Gunshot deaths are much quicker and cleaner than someone bleeding out from a stab wound or arrow. Guns do offer a measure of protection not available to someone with a sword or bow and arrow. The old, weak, or infirmed find a firearm the great equalizer, they would be unable to successfully defend themselves with older weapons. The firearm also gives the advantage of being able to maintain a 'stand off' distance while defending oneself, older type weapons require the 'up close and personal' approach which most people are not trained for nor are they willing to train for. I know of one gentleman who is unable to afford to live in a nice area, he lives alone, he is blind and confined to a wheelchair. His choice of a defensive weapon is a .44 mag revolver which is loaded with blanks. Harmless to people in the surrounding apts., but quite lethal at contact distance out to a couple of feet. As far as the 'heavy artillery' comment goes that has a very specific meaning and not an at issue here as they fall under control of the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA '34) and are considered destructive devices. Legal to own, but not suitable for personal self defense as they are all crew served weapons. If you mean to refer to a handgun I have no problem understanding why Americans are arming themselves. I have been the intended victim of two violent encounters both of which were stopped by the introduction of my personal defense firearm. Fortunately I have not had to shoot anyone, but I have accounted for two of the estimated 2.5 million unreported self defense uses of a firearm to thwart a crime that occurs every year. So yes, I understand completely why some people choose to go armed.
I would happily discuss the problem of guns as it relates to the black community. I apologize in advance for not using the term African Americans if 'black' is offensive, as I have a personal aversion to the term African American as I find it to be generally grossly inacurate. I know, work, have worked with, and met a number of black people and African Americans. Only a couple of the African Americans that I have met were black, both born in Nigeria and now American citizens, and one person who was classifed as 'colored' under apartheid in South Africa. Besides them every true African American I have ever met is white, largely from South Africa or Egypt. Gun control is horrible racist. The very term 'Saturday Night Special' is an extract from a 'niggertown Saturday night'. An excellent article, The Racist Roots of Gun Control', was published in the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy in 1995. It can be found here if you are interested:
http://www.ggnra.org/cramer/racism.htm
The idea is that since blacks were not citizens and could not vote they were not protected by the Second Amendment to own firearms either.
Homicide, in general, is a serious problem plaguing the black community. The U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Statistics shows that the homicide victimization rates of whites has been in steady decline for the last 20 years. Over the same 20 years the black rate has been 4 to 8 times that of whites and has been in decline for the last 6 years. Blacks were also 7 times more likely to COMMIT murder than whites in 1999 and 10 times more likely than whites in 1991-1993. The drug related murder rate for blacks was more than double that for whites. I was unaware of this information until I came from Austin, Tx (low black population) and began working in Indianapolis, In (20%+ black). In Austin we had fewer than 50 murders, in Indy it was about 190 in 1999 (most of them black), yet both areas have about the same population. Yes, Indy is a little bigger, but not 4 times bigger. This info is all contained on the govt website here:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm