If you're not a criminal, it's actually very unlikely that any of those things will happen. The majority of shootings (more than 60%) are suicides; these are b

If you're not a criminal, it's actually very unlikely that any of those things will happen. The majority of shootings (more than 60%) are suicides; these are both intentional and generally lawful. Evidence suggests that most of the rest (between 20% and 30% of all shootings) are criminal conflict -- a lot of people with criminal records shooting other people with criminal records. Here again, there is a lot more to the story than just owning a gun. Unintentional shootings are fairly unusual, less than 4% of all shooting deaths. This is in part why thinking about guns has to be very different from our thinking when it comes to "safety" issues, like car accidents (95% of traffic deaths are unintentional). The lawful uses of guns are, in fact, much more common than killings. These include hunting and target practice. Most gun owners will never shoot another person but that doesn't mean they don't use their guns.