The vast majority of death and injuries, by guns, is done with illegal guns; gang violence. Instead of using science standards to infer the correct course of action, what appears to be happening is legal guns are the only data presented by media, in an attempt to stack the data set.
Agreed. This is done primarily by conservatives; they attempt to use gun violence to push their agendas. The NRA, for example, has used recent shootings to push for more gun sales. This enriches the group they lobby for - the gun industry. No regard is given to actual science. Instead every data point is spun to try to present the case that the solution to the gun problems is more guns.
One of the reasons that conservatives are so in favor of guns is that they tend to use threats and violence to solve their problems. Recently several prominent republicans have threatened armed revolution if they don't get their way; one outspoken NRA supporter said he was "going to start killing people" if he did not like the results of the gun discussion. It is difficult (to say the least) to have a rational discussion with people if their response is "if you don't agree with me I'm going to start killing people."
This isn't surprising; conservatives are, on the whole, less educated and less intelligent than liberals. From Lazar Stankov, of Singapore’s National Institute of Education:
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Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated … At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, vocabulary, and analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education … and performance on mathematics and reading assessments.
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When they cannot express themselves intelligently, they fall back on threats of violence. The better armed they are, the more credible the threat of violence. Thus conservatives have a real fear that if they don't have enough guns, no one will take them seriously.
The irony, of course, is that while they readily threaten armed revolution to achieve their political agendas, they also can't be bothered to get off their couches and vote. They tend to prefer threats over the democratic process. And while this might work in a street gang, it tends not to work in more advanced systems of government.