I hate to pop your cherry... but guns, play little to no role in crime stats. I would be willing to bet that I could make a corollary between violent crime and the number of strawberry milk shakes sold.
While I will submit that you can make statistics read any way you want them, the Crime Report is very specific in how a crime is committed as to type of crime to what type of weapon. Also just as Fatman mentions, the Brady Campaign to Disarm America uses those same numbers to say that violent crime IS directly tied to the number of firearms. Just because the greater report is contradictory to what Brady has said is irrelevant. They take the 1% of “assault weapons” and xx% of crime committed with handguns and uses that to say that crime is due to the weapon. They totally ignore, for the moment, that 12% are knives and 6% are bodily harm. No it isn’t a cause and effect relationship; but the Brady people want the general public to think so.
What the numbers DON’T say is the number of violent crimes that are not committed due to the possibility of a weapon being present. Those statistics are not reported because we can’t know 100% the target selection criteria of a criminal. There is documented evidence that criminals have and do break off possible crimes when presented with less than favorable conditions, including the presence or possible presence of a firearm. That is why most burglaries are during the daylight hours while homeowners are at work. Nobody is there to defend the property.