The tragic shooting in Aurora, Colo., has renewed the gun debate in this nation, both among lobbying groups and politicians, according to CNN. Guns and gun violence have now been brought to the forefront in national politics. There are strong feelings on each side of the debate, and plenty of statistics to examine in the discussion. Here is a closer look at the gun debate in the United States, by the numbers.
* 270 Million The number of guns owned by civilians in the United States, according to CNN. The U.S. has the highest gun ownership rate per capita in the world.
* 88 The number of guns owned per 100 residents in the U.S. Sixty percent of all homicides in the country were gun-related, according to The Guardian. Switzerland ranks a distant third to the U.S. in gun ownership, with an average of 45.7 guns per 100 citizens, and a gun-related homicide rate of 72 percent. Finland averages 45.2 guns per 100 citizens, but guns only account for 20 percent of all homicides there.
* 55 The percentage of Americans polled who identify as Republican who claim to have at least one gun in their home, according to a 2011 Gallup poll. Forty percent of those who identified as Democrat claimed to own at least one gun.
* 47 percent of all people polled stated that they had a gun in their home or somewhere on their property. Gun ownership rates have hit the highest level since 1993.
* 100,000 The number of Americans shot or killed with a gun each year, according to the Brady Campaign.
* 232 The number of justifiable homicides where the gun owner was acting in self-defense in 2010, according to the FBI. Of these, 170 were attributed to handguns and 34 to rifles and shotguns.
* 1,257 California's number of gun-related murders in 2010. The state had a total of 1,811 murders, meaning that 69 percent of all homicides in the state were gun-related.
* 750,000 The number of gun owners the National Rifle Association trains every year. They offer courses in how to use handguns, rifles, and shotguns, how to reload a weapon, and how to use a weapon for personal protection, according to their website.
* $2.9 million The amount that the NRA spent on lobbying for gun rights in 2011, according to OpenSecrets. Mitt Romney, Eric Cantor, and John Boehner have received political contributions from the group.
