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The Best of Our Gun Debate: The State-by-State Breakdown

After the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, sparked a national debate over gun control, we wanted our readers to weigh in. Why do you own a gun? Why don’t you? We got almost 1,300 responses in three days—769 from gun owners and 524 from non-gun owners.

Readers from all 50 states wrote in. Here are their responses, organized by state. Click any state to sort the responses.

Plus, for our analysis of the most common words and phrases used in the responses, click here. 

by Michael Keller