The Nightstar Zoo

I only have a few minutes to post this right now, but: do any of you know of any study correlating the effects of gun ownership as a function of population, especially population density? It occurs to me that both the gun rights and gun control advocates might be right - depending on the location. It is probably not an accident that most gun rights advocates are rural and exurban, while most gun control advocates are urban (and suburban, but that's a bit different - the whole purpose of suburbs in US society is to be a 'safe space' for the middle class to raise their children in womb-like safety... though given that many of those children end up, well, like me, one can question if such a severe over-protection is really a good thing).

My thought is that as the population density rises, the anonymity of the individual increases, even in their own local community - and anyone who has been on Uselessnet for any length of time knows that anonymity can cause a sense of disconnection from the consequences of one's actions. Also, the more people around you, the more possible points of conflict - which, when involving two individuals who see themselves as just 'faces in the crowd', even when around people who actually know them by name, the combination can be explosive.

Any thoughts on this?

A quick search pulled up <i>Firearms and Community Feelings of Safety</i> in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. While it doesn't directly address the subject, it did break down the research by population region. Also, it was a random sample, not as easy as it sounds in social research.

However, thae raw data was not included in the published paper. The paper's content does not seem to support the theory however.

An OCLC search pulled up several promising abstracts, but I'd have to put in Interlibrary Loan Requests to read them, and that's a real pain here.