Other factors may help explain the fall of gun crime since the early 1990s including reductions in lead levels, the end of the crack epidemic, advances in medicine that allow more gunshot victims to survive their wounds, and a declining rate of gun ownership.

The implicit argument made by conservative media is that there is a causal link between reports of booming gun sales in recent years and the overall decline of gun homicide over the past 20 years. But this claim misunderstands how gun ownership has changed during this time period. According to the General Social Survey, household firearm ownership has fallen from 43 percent in the 1990s to 35 percent in the 2000s. Overall household ownership is down from 50 percent in the 1970s. As Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, explained to The New York Times, "There are all these claims that gun ownership is going through the roof. But I suspect the increase in gun sales has been limited mostly to current gun owners. The most reputable surveys show a decline over time in the share of households with guns."

Significantly, numerous studies have proven that gun availability is linked to gun violence. According to a review conducted by David Hemenway of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, "Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide."

Conservatives who trumpet the BJS study are also ignoring that it indicated a decline in gun homicides, not that the problem of gun violence has been solved. In fact, the level of gun violence in the United States remains at epidemic levels. According to an analysis of data by PolitiFact, around 86,000 people are shot -- including both fatally or nonfatally -- each year due to crime or gun-related accidents. Approximately 18,000 more Americans die in gun suicides. Overall, firearm-related deaths are rising and set to outpace motor vehicle fatalities by 2015.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/08/conservative-media-misread-data-to-declare-gun/193961