Americans have broad exposure to guns, whether they personally own one or not. About seven-in-ten say they have fired a gun at some point and 42% currently live in a gun-owning household.
National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Beneath the long-term trend, though, are big differences by decade: Violence plunged through the 1990s, but has declined less dramatically since 2000.