Staked out next to the parking lot at the National Rifle Association’s biggest get-together of the year, I asked NRA members to explain what, exactly, the liberal media was getting wrong about the gun debate.



We were outside the Louisville convention center because the NRA had refused media credentials to the Guardian for its four-day event, which it said had attracted more than 80,000 people.

Approaching the most ardent second amendment advocates in America one by one, it’s clear that not everyone conforms to the implacable stereotype embodied by NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, whose dogmatic stance and hectoring tone define an organization that claims more than five million members.

Let the record show: calm, reasonable, friendly Americans also believe in gun rights.

I asked the NRA members: when I have to cover the next mass shooting – and there will be another mass shooting – what would it look like to do that fairly?

I heard a lot of suggestions: don’t treat us like rednecks. (I saw only two men wearing overalls among a crowd of thousands.) Don’t confuse a civilian semi-automatic rifle with an actual military gun. Don’t say: “I support the second amendment, but ...” That makes you what gun nuts call a “butter”.

The most common complaint I heard was that while the American media constantly covers gun violence and gun massacres, it rarely covers self-defensive gun use.

“You always hear it in the news if something goes wrong, but you don’t hear about all the things that go right,” said John Correia, a NRA member who runs Active Self Protection, an Arizona-based self-defense training company.

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“I think a lot of gun owners feel demonized.”



The NRA members have a point. This week, the Guardian is exploring the terrible toll of gun violence in the US, and why the gun debate has become a vicious cycle of debate and inaction. Each year, more than 30,000 Americans are killed with guns. Add in people violently injured with guns, and the total is nearly 100,000. Look at justice department survey data on broader gun use in crime, including incidents where offenders simply have or display a firearm, and the count of firearm crime is even higher: close to 500,000 total firearm victimizations a year.

But these numbers have to be put in context. The number of self-defensive gun uses each year is fiercely debated, and the estimates vary widely. But there are roughly 300 million guns in civilian hands. Set 30,000 gun deaths, or even 500,000 gun victimizations, against 300 million. As incomplete and imprecise as much gun data is, the bigger picture is clear: most guns are not being used in crimes. Most gun owners are not committing crimes.

Even David Hemenway, a leading public health researcher who is skeptical of how many good things are done with guns, concedes this point.

“The large majority of gun owners aren’t going to do anything good or bad for public health with their guns this year,” he said.



If you want to understand why gun rights advocates might not support new laws, or why the status quo might seem acceptable to some Americans, this is an essential bigger picture to grasp. There are millions of gun-owning Americans who use their guns safely, whose friends use their guns safely, whose children never access a gun when they are not supposed to.

The constant coverage of America’s most shocking acts of violence may make it seem like this gun-filled country is the wild west. That’s just not true.

Gun advocates also have a point when they argue that the general public does not have a very accurate sense of overall gun violence trends. A Pew survey after the Newtown shootings asked Americans if gun crime in the country had gone up or down over the last 20 years. The majority of Americans, 56%, said they believed gun crime was higher than 20 years before.

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The reality was that America had become much safer over the previous 20 years. Even as the total number of guns in the civilian hands crept upwards, gun violence dropped sharply as the crack epidemic receded, for reasons that are still not fully understood. The country’s gun murder rate was down 49% since its peak in 1993.

The percentage of Americans who had an accurate understanding of this most basic gun violence trend: 12%.

If you come to the NRA annual meeting expecting danger and risk and the thrill of the forbidden, you will be disappointed. In between the dire political speeches about the power elites and felons getting their voting rights back and how Hillary Clinton will destroy the second amendment, there are sessions on the history of the second world war and how to train your puppy.

When I asked NRA members if they’ve ever had to use their gun to defend themselves, I heard no stories of dramatic shootouts or heroic interventions. Instead, each story was one of restraint: they felt threatened, they displayed a gun, and their potential attacker ran away.



But breaking the stalemate of the gun debate also requires acknowledging how wide a political gap there is between general public opinion in America and the small, fiercely committed membership of the NRA – and how different those world views can be.

When Senate Republicans voted down a measure to require criminal background checks on all guns sales earlier this week, the votes sparked outrage and incomprehension. How could anyone oppose background checks? In the documentary Under the Gun, news anchor Katie Couric had assembled a group of gun rights supporters to ask them that question.

“If there are no background checks for gun purchasers, how do you prevent felons or terrorists from purchasing a gun?” she said.

The question was followed by silence and footage of the gun rights supporters looking away. The moment seemed to back up the liberal orthodoxy on gun control: there are some gun laws that are such common sense that even fierce gun rights supporters have no reason to oppose them.

After the film premiered, one of the gun rights advocates in the room leaked a separate audio recording of Couric’s interview. In fact, the gun rights advocates had had plenty of skeptical responses to Couric’s question about background checks. The film’s director had simply edited them out. Couric later apologized for making gun rights advocates “appear to be speechless”.

At the NRA convention, I asked Correia, the Arizona-based self-defense expert, if he supported universal background checks.

“Absolutely not, unequivocally no,” he said. “It won’t make a difference. Go back and look at the mass murders in America, and what you find is you’ll find guns that number one, were stolen, or two, were legally purchased. So to say, ‘Oh, wait a minute, if we add, you know, more bureaucracy to law abiding folks it will prevent crime. I don’t think that’s the case.”

Correia is right that many mass shooters could not have been stopped by background checks, including the shooter at Sandy Hook and the Orlando shooter last week.

But there’s reason to believe at least some other shooters would have been stopped with tougher gun laws. Is there evidence on gun control laws that might convince a skeptic like Correia? What about policies focused on the people, not the guns?