With the anti-gun lobby in full spin mode – totally supported by the always-dizzy mainstream media – it’s well near impossible to get the facts about gun violence in America, so let’s check a few shall we?
For instance, have you seen this story [Washington Post 12-19-12] on the network news: Homicide rates have dropped steadily in U.S.?

The national homicide rate for 2011 was 4.8 per 100,000 citizens — less than half of what it was in the early years of the Great Depression, when it peaked before falling precipitously before World War II. The peak in modern times of 10.2 was in 1980, as recorded by national criminal statistics…
 
… And, no matter what your favorite politician says about gun control or the lack of it, the homicide rate has been near stagnant or falling for 21 consecutive years — even as images of violence have proliferated, even as the stock market has soared and crashed, as political upheavals have come and gone, as drugs have waxed and waned, even as the number of high-profile mass killings like the one in Newtown has risen.

 
The data indicates that there’s something much more than guns behind these multiple victim shootings, why are they the only type of homicides up significantly?
But hey, why take the time to analyze the trend? After all, as Chicago’s mayor once famously opined;
“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
~ Rahm Emanuel ~
 

 
Real facts and figures about guns and gun-related crime are available in several articles at The Patriot Post. Here’s a particularly informative one: Sensible Gun Control Policy? The Assault Weapons Ban: Fact v Fiction ~

The 2011 FBI data shows that there were 323 murders committed with rifles of any kind. However, guns defined as “assault weapons” by the federal government are not defined in any subcategory because they are used in crimes so infrequently — less than 0.5% (one-half of one percent) of all murders with guns in 2011, according to best estimates.
 
By comparison, 496 murders were committed with hammers and clubs, and 1,694 murders were perpetrated with knives. Notably, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that drunk drivers are responsible for nearly 10,000 deaths each year in the U.S. — far more than the number of deaths involving guns of any kind in 2011. (Should there be federal background checks every time someone orders a beer or glass of Chardonnay?)
 
Additionally, according to the demographic and geographic profile of most violent crimes, the vast majority of perpetrators who murder with guns are associated with gangs and/or drug cartels, which thrive on urban welfare plantations. (The violent culture spawned on those plantations is, of course, the direct result of social and cultural degradation institutionalized by socialist Democrat welfare state policies.)

 
Because extensive gun control is the dream of every progressive politician, whenever a tragedy like Newtown occurs they can’t wait to start passing new legislation. And in typical knee-jerk liberal fashion, they shamelessly appeal to emotion rather than calling for any thoughtful analysis. Facts be damned.