Contrary to popular perception, most homicides do not occur as the result of an attack by a stranger but stem from an argument between people who know each other and are often related. For firearm homicides in 1998, where the victim-offender relationship could be identified, more than half of the victims were either related to (seven percent), intimately acquainted with (15 percent), or knew (48 percent) their killers. Only 30 percent were killed by strangers. Of female victims, where the victim-offender relationship was known, 50 percent were killed by their husbands or boyfriends.

A gun is far more likely to be used in a suicide, murder, or unintentional shooting than to kill a criminal. Using federal government figures, for every time a citizen used a firearm in 1997 in a justifiable homicide, 139 lives were ended in firearm murders, suicides, and unintentional shootings.

From 1987 to 1996, nearly 2,200 American children 14 years of age and younger died from unintentional shootings. An estimated 10 times that number were treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms each year for nonfatal unintentional gunshot wounds.

The 1997 CDC study "Rates of Homicide, Suicide, and Firearm-Related Death Among Children—26 Industrialized Countries" revealed that for unintentional firearm-related deaths for children under age 15, the rate in the United States was nine times higher than in the other 25 industrialized countries combined.

A 1997 study that examined the risk factors for violent death for women in the home found that when there were one or more guns in the home the risk of suicide among women increased nearly five times and the risk of homicide increased more than three times. The increased risk of homicide associated with firearms was attributable to homicides at the hands of a spouse, intimate acquaintance, or close relative.

In 1997, for every one time that a woman used a handgun to kill an intimate acquaintance in self-defense, 97 women were murdered by an intimate acquaintance using a handgun.

Having a gun in the home makes it three times more likely that you or someone you care about will be murdered by a family member or intimate partner.

A firearm in the home may be a key factor in the escalation of nonfatal spouse abuse to homicide. In a study of family and intimate assaults for the city of Atlanta, Georgia in 1984, firearm-associated family and intimate assaults were 12 times more likely to result in death than non-firearm associated assaults between family and intimates.

It is estimated that in 1992 the cost of gunshot wounds exceeded $126 billion. The injury cost per bullet sold in the United States exceeded $25.