Three thoughts….
1) When I transferred to DC about 8 years ago, I checked the violent crime statistics in various areas before deciding where to live. I noted that at the time in DC, where guns were essentially banned, the murder rate (on average, it varies a lot by neighborhood) was 21 per 100,000. If it was not the highest in the nation at the time, it was in the running. Across the eastern border in two adjacent counties in MD, where guns are allowed but where concealed carry permits are almost impossible to obtain, the murder rate was 14 per 100,000. Across the river in northern VA, where the population has strong liberal leanings but where state law allows concealed carry on a shall issue basis and where open carry is legal, the murder rate fell to 7 per 100,000.
Establishing actual causation is difficult due to a variety of confounding factors and differences, but it's reasonable to assume that allowing liberal concealed carry and open carry does not increase crime and probably decreases it.
2) Five years later, after I transferred to NC, but still worked in DC two days a week, i was getting my NC concealed carry application notarized in a bank in DC. I expected some liberal BS, but instead the manager i was working with expressed a great deal of excitement and envy at the concept of concealed carry. He noted that in his Columbia Heights neighborhood armed criminals go there to prey on what they know is a disarmed group of victims. He felt concealed carry was the only effective way to defend yourself given the realities that criminals are armed and police response times are at best going to be several minutes too late. Various news reports in any given month show similar patterns with criminals preying on unarmed citizens in nice neighborhoods in addition to the crime you see in the neighborhoods most people avoid.
3) In NC currently, I just moved to a new house and I've noted the neighborhood is very "conservative", as in very religious with "our church family" references and 3 ministers living on the circle of about 20 houses we're located. Most of the people here are very conservative, in a moral sense, but they are not what you'd call "pro-gun" and I probably look a little on the potentially violent side to them.
The reality is that I'm a lot more socially liberal than my neighbors as I don't give a **** whether two men or two women want to get married as it has zero impact on me or my wife, I support pro choice after spending a few years investigating child abuse and sex abuse and I believe in odd little bits and pieces such as equal pay for equal work by men and women and I think there's a need to protect the public interest and at times curb the excess corporate profit taking that's a) buying politicians right and left, b) killing the middle class in American, and c) selling off public resources (such as water) for corporate profit rather than serving the public. That last line probably makes me a flaming liberal by most gun forum definitions as it's not supporting rampant, unrestrained capitalism. (If you like unrestrained capitalism, you really ought to move to China.)
The point here is that it's gets really old reading comments that try to paint the picture as a simple "conservatives" versus "liberals" argument. It highlights the reality that most people who throw those terms around don't really understand them and certainly don't make distinctions between religious, social, political and economic forms of conservatism and liberalism. Most people fall somewhere in the middle along those four dimensions of "conservative" versus "liberal" and most people probably fall on both sides of center when all four are considered - whether they admit it or not.
The problem with this lumping of "liberal" and "conservative" values into one side or the other of the gun control argument is that it's simply not correct. It alienates the moderate and more "liberal" leaning gun owners and shooters (and there are a lot of them - they are usually the ones who are not participating in the rabid "liberal" bashing BS sessions at the range)
Worse, this kind of polarization, particularly when accompanied by well intended but clearly misled spouting of political right wing dogma, makes gun owners appear to be less intelligent or at least less thoughtful and insightful than the average citizen, paints them as being a little scary and does not win people to our cause, or convey the concept that most of us are pretty normal, reasonable, and responsible people. Instead it conveys the impression that we are dogmatic defenders of our God given right to carry firearms (something the Bible is actually silent on, and in fact it's decidedly in the "turn the other cheek" camp, which does not support the concept of concealed carry - just ask my neighbors) and who value our right to carry arms, and do stupid **** like carry our AR-15s in Starbucks, Chipolte or Target, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes the average family of four feel.
So for the good of all of us, stop with the polarized "us" versus "them" propaganda and stop trying to paint all gun owners as rabid right wing conservatives, because we're not. All it does is divide us internally, and separate us as a group from the average non gun owner who has not been steeped in any form of gun or shooting culture, but also has no real axe to grind either. Those are the swing voters who will be swayed by one side or the other and who will ultimately determine the fate of our "God given" second amendment rights. Our best approach is for the more extreme among us to start acting like normal people, and for the rest of us to a) start curbing the rants from the right wing extremist minority when we see and hear them, and b) start speaking out on the issue from a more "normal person who owns and shoots firearms" perspective to send the message that the overage gun owner and shooter is just an average, responsible citizen who happens to own and shoot firearms.
Looks like things are changing in DC. 
