How Will Gun Control Affect The Hood?

The heat is on to limit legal access to assault weapons, but what about illegal ones?

The 20 children that Adam Lanza gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School were killed with a registered .223 assault rifle that Lanza took from his mother's house.

The AR-15 assault rifle, Remington 12-gauge 870 shotgun and two .40-caliber Glock handguns James Holmes used to kill 12 people and injure 52 others in the Aurora, Colo., movie-theater massacre, were all obtained legally.

The seven people that Wade Michael Page killed during a shooting at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin were shot dead with a legally registered 9-mm semi-automatic.

The lesser reported workplace shooting that took five lives in Minnesota? Yep, done with a legal handgun.

The semi-automatic used in a shooting that hospitalized Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords? Legal, too.

So yes, after all of these tragedies, you can understand why the public and media at large is pushing the U.S. government for stricter gun control laws to keep weapons out of the wrong hands. In a perfect world, strict gun laws would prevent mass shootings from happening with such frequency and which, conversely, tend to drive fearful gun lovers to the stores in droves to buy more guns.

[Also Read: Do We Need Guns In Our Schools?]

But what about all of the other guns used to commit murder and mayhem in this country?

Guns like the ones linked to the nearly 500 deaths in the city of Chicago this year? Or the guns that have contributed to cities like New Orleans and Detroit ranking high on national firearm death rates? Guns in cities like Memphis, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Baltimore, where people wake up hearing about someone getting shot and killed every day.

For the most part, these guns are illegal.

While there is no concrete data pinpointing the number of illegal guns on American streets, it is safe to say that there are thousands being used on American streets. A 2011 Gallup poll revealed that 47 percent of Americans said they have a gun in their home. But a figure like that in no way means that the remaining 53 percent of the country does not.