The United States, compared to other comparable nations, has a high rate of civilian firearms ownership. The existence of a burglary-deterrent effect, based on guns in the home is frequently asserted. However, the empirical support for this assertion is weak. In this chapter, this untested claim that widespread gun ownership deters burglars and diverts them from occupied homes is empirically examined. The paper begins by reviewing existing evidence. The empirical strategy was to explore the effect of gun prevalence on burglary rates and then turn to hot burglary. A simple model was developed demonstrating that the net effect of gun prevalence on residential burglary rates may be positive or negative. The relationship was estimated using data from the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The results provide suggestive evidence that increases in gun ownership may lead to more burglaries. If there is a deterrent effect, it may be flooded by other factors associated with gun prevalence. Guns seem to be an attractive treasure. The cross-sectional analysis of the NCVS and panel-data analysis of the UCR yielded similar findings. A significant finding was that gun prevalence had little effect on the fraction of residential burglaries in which someone was at home and that hot-burglary victimization rate tended to increase with gun prevalence. Tables and appendices