Reccomended reading:

If you're interested in the second amendment issue, here's a couple of things you may want to read through.

Before I link you to anything, head the following:
Politically inspired organizations are notorious for distorting the truth. Both the Brady campaign and the NRA publish their own cherry picked fact sheets which aren't wrong, but which often do not give a good representation of the actual data. This is why you should always read through the cited sources.
A governmental, law enforcement source should always be considered better than those of a lobbying organization, the latter you should always try to verify.

Be extremely weary of causal relationships. Fact sheets are more than happy to say: crime did this because this bill passed ... WRONG!
It's nigh impossible to lay the merit of a statistical tendency by a single cause. When crime rises or goes down, there is a myriad of potential causes, and it's almost impossible to take all of them into consideration. Instead, try to look for patterns. If a law has come into effect in several locations, and you can see the same things happening in these different places, only then can you start to tie these consequences to the pretended source.

A general observation:
The empirical data supporting the "pro gun ownership" side of the debate vastly outnumbers that of the other side. Don't accept quantity as proof, dig into the reason why there are so many "fact sheets" supporting the PRO2A notion. Is it because of the NRA massive financial capabilities? The vast amount of gun owners who are concerned with their rights? Is one side more politically active than the other, or just plain right? Take as many factors as possible into consideration and make your own moral decisions!

Government statistics databases
Use these sites to check as much of the "facts" you get anywhere!

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/welcome.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/

Guncite: A site that's collected a great deal of information (empirical and emotional) concerning gun ownership, criminal use, and political activist groups (both sides). Their are entire pages of links to both gun control proponents and gun rights activist organizations.
http://www.guncite.com/

Gunfacts: strictly PRO2A facts, they can be right on the money or cherry picked, regardless, this should be required reading to anybody who claims to be an expert on gun violence. A lot of effort is paid to showing where the Brady campaign "lies" to people. Somebody should make an equivalent for th other side too :p

http://www.gunfacts.info/

Political lobbying:
They sure like to shape the truth! Neither of them give you easy access to good information these days, but they're great to get your feet wet with what's cooking these days.

http://www.nra.org/
http://www.bradycampaign.org/

Self defense: a human right.
This is an all inclusive site about civilian gun ownership. You may not agree with the author on all points, but he does give you a GREAT picture of the real world, and of why gun owners are convinced why they're right. I can't prove him wrong, nor do I intend to, this is a masterpiece when it comes to conveying your believes.

http://www.a-human-right.com/introduction.html


(TBC)