Looking back, this thread may be attempting to bite off too much, but I'm still game. As I re-read my last post, I realized that all of the problems I listed - and many more besides - are as multi-faceted as the gun violence issue. Using that as a template, though, is helpful: each problem should be broken down into its constituent parts to be analyzed and addressed.

Gun/violence. There are, obviously, two components, although there are numerous potential sub-components - what kinds of guns, what kinds of violence - and how they are related. Further, for example, is a crime being accomplished through the use of a gun (e.g., armed robbery), or is the gun the crime itself (brandishing, purchasing without authority)?

Starting with the second half: America Is Having a Violence Wave, Not a Crime Wave (Atlantic): As violent crime rose in 2020, property crime continued a years-long decline. "A historic rise in homicides in 2020—and continued bloodshed in 2021—has incited fears that after years of plummeting crime rates, the U.S. could be headed back to the bad old days, when a crime wave gripped the country from the 1970s to the 1990s.

But the FBI’s “Uniform Crime Report” for 2020, released Monday, suggests something stranger: Perhaps America is in the midst of what is specifically a violence wave, not a broad crime wave. Even as violent crime rose, led by significant jumps in murders and aggravated assaults, property crime continued a years-long decline.

“There was no crime wave—there was a tsunami of lethal violence, and that’s it,” Philip Cook, a crime expert at Duke University, wrote to me in an email."

This suggests that the sudden and dramatic increase in 2020-21 may be a blip, not a trend. It could be related to the pandemic, and/or the toxic influence of Trumpism.

Similarly, with the first half, it appears that the fascination with AR-15s is influenced by current events, but that the sale of rifles, in general, is continuing to decline. Tallying America’s fascination with AR-15-style rifles (Phillip Bump, WaPo).

"About every nine seconds in 2020, a rifle was either manufactured in or imported to the United States. It was the equivalent of a new rifle for every 100 U.S. residents. And, remarkably, it was a slower year than normal.

The massacre of 21 people at an elementary school in Texas this week — 19 of them schoolchildren attending class — has again prompted discussion of the country’s fixation on firearms. That means talking about rifles, particularly the AR-15 variants that have so often been used in mass shooting events. The weapon used in Uvalde was an AR-15 variant; so was the one used in Buffalo less than two weeks before. More than 30 people were killed in those two incidents.

As it turns out, a national focus on AR-15-style weapons is perhaps unexpectedly a key driver of sales of the weapons." (Emphases mine)

The number of households with firearms continues to decline, but the number of overall weapons continues to increase. The share of such weapons which are AR-15s fluctuates wildly, largely based on current events.