Another mass shooting.....

[The Grand Nudger]

This one's from a few years back, but it suggests that a significant number of firearms are purchased...(and ostensibly used) for "wildlife population and control" which..in the US, we call hunting.  That's the north american model of wildlife conservation.  All the licenses and stamps and tags.  Even the people who buy guns "for home defense" - a disturbing trend on that count, are paying a surcharge on their guns and all of their ammo and that goes to state and federal Fish and Game.  It's amounted to the single largest source of funding for wildlife conservation in the US, responsible for saving species from extinction and even bringing them off the endangered species list all while preserving their habitat (and so, the habitat of species which aren't hunted).

We're starting to pump more federal and state funding in, lately..though, which is nice....because hunters could only do and afford so much. Think of hunters as civil servants who pay through the nose for the privilege of doing work the government can't/won't pay the labor bill on, let alone buy all the gear. The end result is that we have a network of parks and wildlife refuges second to none. The envy of the world.

Legitimate doesn't even come close, when discussing -that- use of guns. As you said, though, that doesn;t mean that we don;t have issues with their sale and transfer. That issue is a widely recognized issue, not even controversial in the US. Unregulated P2P transfers are on their way out. Licensed firearms dealers are already subject to regulation...but it's loosely enforced. This isn't an oversight, or an accident, it's by design. The ATF was without a department head for four years under Obama, and has been systematically robbed by the NRA and it's cronies in congress of both the funds and the authority required to effectively enforce the law. They're the only kind of cops the government doesn't like...apparently. They're handing out military gear to patrol officers but won't let the ATF keep the same kind of gear off the streets.

A national survey finds that nearly half of gun owners (48%) volunteer that the main reason they own a gun is for protection; just 32% say they have a gun primarily for hunting and even fewer cite other reasons, such as target shooting. In 1999, 49% said they owned a gun mostly for hunting, while just 26% cited protection as the biggest factor.

http://www.people-press.org/2013/03/12/w...top-reason