Finding a city in which household gun ownership rate is high and the crime rate is atypically low should not be difficult -- any city in Wyoming will do. Can you find a city with similarly low crime rate and similar demographics where the rate of household gun ownership is significantly lower? If so, you will next need to consider gun control laws in the two cities. Doing this so your findings are valid -- you've controlled for all known relevant factors -- will not be easy. Correlation is a necessary but insufficient condition to prove cause and effect. Can you find a city with a high rate of household gun ownership and a correspondingly high rate of crime? I suspect you can. You might try New Orleans, for example. I strongly suspect you are on a fools errand here. Why do I think that? It's because my unreliable intuition tells me that most crooks have not studied household gun ownership statistics, and they don't know ahead of time whether a home owner has a gun or not. My intuition tells me that a crook is far more likely to have taken account of whether someone is home than he/she is of household gun ownership statistics. And probably equally likely to have made note of whether there appears to be a surveillance/alarm system. My intuition tells me that affluent home owners are more likely to have operative surveillance/alarm systems than less affluent home owners. I trust your observations have taken that factor into account. But remember, my intuition is as unreliable as yours. Careful studies of gun crime statistics and statistics bearing on the effectiveness of gun control measures do exist. They are surprisingly numerous in fact, especially considering how often their findings are misquoted or ignored by the gun lobby, politicians, the public and the media. I suspect that ignorance of these many studies is nowhere greater than right here in these ET forums! https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/
Sadly, it is just an anecdote. Although we all wish it was as simple as every home having a loaded gun on the coffee table and our national crime rate would plummet toward zero.
By definition if any town or city is number 1 in low crime in many years.... and there are demographic peers then those peers will have much higher crime rates. Why?
I wish this were true, because then the answer might be as simple as everyone putting a loaded 45 on their coffee tables. But no, sorry to report the peers will not have statistically higher crime rates. They will have similar low crime rates. Check out , for one of many, many peers, White Rock New Mexico. You'll feel equally safe there. While you're at it, check out the false positive problem for rare events here. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/
I don't have the data. My point however is that towns with similar demographics likely will have a similarly low crime rate. It's is a pretty rare demographic however. I'm not sure what NC town would be comparable. Asheville maybe?
So White Rock New Mexico (which is NOT a demographic peer of Cary NC due to its small size) but does not have strict gun control laws is a very safe town. How very expected.
But while smaller, similar in demographic, would you say? And there are many many similar examples. As the population gets larger we could expect the demographic base to widen somewhat. I won't convince you. And that does not matter. But Having a loaded 45 on your coffee table is not the reason Cary has a low crime rate. I want to give you a reasonable way out of this impasse. You said, I am paraphrasing, peers with much higher crime rates. I know you did not mean that. You meant peers with higher, but similar, low crime rate. But unfortunately this statistic, by itself, can not be support for "the loaded 45 on the coffee table" hypothesis.