US gun violence stats
Very much a work in progress!
Outline
How does the US compare to other countries?
Gun ownership
34%
47%
Gallup estimate (2012)
Pew estimate (2012)
How many Americans own guns?
Who owns? who carries?
There are approximately 44 million gun owners in the United States.6This means that 25 percent of all adults, and 40 percent of American households, own at least one firearm. These owners possess 192 million firearms, of which 65 million are handguns. Among legal gun owners, the reasons given for owning or carrying a weapon include hunting, sports-related activities, and home protection. Among those who own handguns, 75 percent reported in a national survey that self-protection is the primary reason for owning a firearm.7
In 1997, 14 percent, or 1 in 7 male juveniles, reported carrying a gun outside the home in the previous 30-day period.9 In the inner city, the problem is more severe. One study involving 800 inner-city high school students reported that 22 percent said they carried weapons.10An even greater number of convicted juvenile offenders reported carrying guns -- 88 percent, according to another study.11
[break the previous up into bar graphs for different demographics?]
Gun deaths
Per capita
homicide:
US vs. peer countries
note: get better graph
(guns only some segments)
Per capita accidental
gun death:
US vs. peer countries
do abbr version with some peer countries
show actual numbers above bars
467,321
US victims of a crime committed with a firearm in 2011
(0.15% of US population)
$516 M
Direct costs to US taxpayers of gun violence injuries in one year (2010)
Homicides and non-fatal crimes involving guns are down since 1990.
This seems to be due to the overall crime rate decreasing; the proportion of gun crimes has remained consistent.
The rate of homicides involving a firearm decreased by 49% from 1992 to 2011, while the percentage of homicide victims killed by a firearm (67%) remained stable.
From here we’ll focus on deaths, �which are easiest to get stats on.
1.3%
of US deaths are due to firearms
The percent is much higher for young adults:
22%
of US deaths 15-24 are due to firearms
[race]
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[other]
From 2002 to 2011, the average homicide rate for males was 3.6 times higher than the rate for females. The average homicide rate for blacks was 6.3 times higher than the rate for whites.
A quarter of robberies of commercial premises in the U.S. are committed with guns.[68] Fatalities are three times as likely in robberies committed with guns than where other, or no, weapons are used,[68][69][70] with similar patterns in cases of family violence.[71]Criminologist Philip J. Cook hypothesized that if guns were less available, criminals might commit the same crime, but with less-lethal weapons.[72] He finds that the level of gun ownership in the 50 largest U.S. cities correlates with the rate of robberies committed with guns, but not with overall robbery rates.[73][74] A significant number of homicides are the consequence of an unintended escalation of another crime in which firearms are present, with no initial intent to kill.[70][75] Overall robbery and assault rates in the U.S. are comparable to those in other developed countries, such as Australia and Finland, with much lower levels of gun ownership.[72][75]
In 2010, gun violence cost U.S. taxpayers approximately $516 million in direct hospital costs.[12]
Types
of gun deaths
Murder circumstances
reported
to FBI
types of homicides
fix this turn into pie chart
TO FIX: ****
is this percent of shooters or deaths or injuries?
Mass shootings increasing recently
does it happen elsewhere too?
Whether US has most depends how you count
3%
of US firearm deaths were shootings by police
10%
of those shot were unarmed
first show the unadjusted per capita for white & black, sex, age
…. then : but what if police are arresting these groups at much different rates?
THESE ARE TINY TINY NUMBERS!!!!!!
omit?? do chi squared???
okay, but do we think it’s fair that more men are shot unarmed? if so, why do we think men are more of a threat? because they commit more violent crimes? carry more guns? let’s adjust for that...
[how biased is this compared with rates of violent offenders? by demographic]
police killed mostly killed by guns
[To incorporate: Violence In Blue]
Gangs are more likely to recruit adolescents who own firearms, and gang members (who are twice as likely to own guns for protection than nongang members) are more likely to carry guns outside their homes.24The risk of being killed is 60 times greater among young gang members than in the general population25 and in some cities, far higher. For example, the St. Louis youth gang homicide rate is 1,000 times higher than the U.S. homicide rate.26
In 1997, 14 percent, or 1 in 7 male juveniles, reported carrying a gun outside the home in the previous 30-day period.9 In the inner city, the problem is more severe. One study involving 800 inner-city high school students reported that 22 percent said they carried weapons.10An even greater number of convicted juvenile offenders reported carrying guns -- 88 percent, according to another study.11
http://homicide.latimes.com/post/gang-related-controversial-term-varying-definitions/
Locally, in areas patrolled by the Sheriff's Department, 60% of the killings in 2014 were gang-related, down from 69% from last year, according to the department.
The LAPD classified 55% of this year's homicides as gang-related. Figures for 2013 were not immediately available.
The term "gang-related" is controversial, a longtime gang-intervention worker said, because in some communities, you can be seen as being a gang member simply for living in the neighborhood.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-defilippis/do-we-have-a-gang-problem_b_5071639.html
So, do we have a gang problem or a gun problem? Data collected by the National Gang Center, the government agency responsible for cataloging gang violence, makes clear that it's the latter. There were 1,824 gang-related killings in 2011. This total includes deaths by means other than a gun. The Bureau of Justice Statistics finds this number to be even lower, identifying a little more than 1,000 gang-related homicides in 2008. In comparison, there were 11,101 homicides and 19,766 suicides committed with firearms in 2011.
According to the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the number of gangs and gang members has been on the rise for some time now, increasing by more than one-third in the past decade. Between 2010 and 2011, for example, there was a 3 percent increase in the number of gangs, but an 8 percent decrease in gang-related homicides. If gang violence was truly driving the gun homicide rate, we should not see gang membership and gun homicide rates moving in opposite directions.
The most recent Centers for Disease Control study on this subject lends further credence to our claim. It examined five cities that met the criterion for having a high prevalence of gang homicides: Los Angeles, California; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Long Beach, California; Oakland, California; and Newark, New Jersey. In these cities, a total of 856 gang and 2,077 non-gang homicides were identified and included in the analyses. So, even when examining cities with the largest gang problems, gang homicides only accounted for 29 percent of the total for the period under consideration (2003-2008). For the nation as a whole it would be much smaller.
That same CDC study, however, also refutes LaPierre's claim that the drug trade is fueling gun-violence, saying, "the proportion of gang homicides resulting from drug trade/use or with other crimes in progress was consistently low in the five cities, ranging from zero to 25 percent."
Gun-related homicide is most prevalent among gangs and during the commission of felony crimes. In 1980, the percentage of homicides caused by firearms during arguments was about the same as from gang involvement (about 70 percent), but by 1993, nearly all gang-related homicides involved guns (95 percent), whereas the percentage of gun homicides related to arguments remained relatively constant. The percentage of gang-related homicides caused by guns fell slightly to 92 percent in 2008, but the percentage of homicides caused by firearms during the commission of a felony rose from about 60 percent to about 74 percent from 1980 to 2005.[5]
It turns out that big, scary military rifles don’t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.
In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle, F.B.I. data shows.
The continuing focus on assault weapons stems from the media’s obsessive focus on mass shootings, which disproportionately involve weapons like the AR-15, a civilian version of the military M16 rifle. This, in turn, obscures some grim truths about who is really dying from gunshots.
Annually, 5,000 to 6,000 black men are murdered with guns. Black men amount to only 6 percent of the population. Yet of the 30 Americans on average shot to death each day, half are black males.
The ban did reduce the number of assault weapons recovered by local police, to 1 percent from roughly 2 percent.
“Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement,” a Department of Justice-funded evaluation concluded.
Still, the majority of Americans continued to support a ban on assault weapons.
One reason: The use of these weapons may be rare over all, but they’re used frequently in the gun violence that gets the most media coverage, mass shootings.
The criminologist James Alan Fox at Northeastern University estimates that there have been an average of 100 victims killed each year in mass shootings over the past three decades. That’s less than 1 percent of gun homicide victims.
But these acts of violence in schools and movie theaters have come to define the problem of gun violence in America.
Most Americans do not know that gun homicides have decreased by 49 percent since 1993 as violent crime also fell, though rates of gun homicide in the United States are still much higher than those in other developed nations. A Pew survey conducted after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., found that 56 percent of Americans believed wrongly that the rate of gun crime was higher than it was 20 years ago.
More than 20 years of research funded by the Justice Department has found that programs to target high-risk people or places, rather than targeting certain kinds of guns, can reduce gun violence.
Effective measures for treating
Where do US guns come from?
Stolen guns
Approximately 37,500 gun sales, including 17,800 handgun sales, are completed every day in the United States. The increasing number of gun owners has elevated the danger of guns being acquired illegally through robberies and burglaries. In 1994, more than a quarter-million households experienced the theft of one or more firearms; nearly 600,000 guns were stolen during these burglaries.8
The number of youth who report that they carry weapons is significant. In 1997, 14 percent, or 1 in 7 male juveniles, reported carrying a gun outside the home in the previous 30-day period.9 In the inner city, the problem is more severe. One study involving 800 inner-city high school students reported that 22 percent said they carried weapons.10An even greater number of convicted juvenile offenders reported carrying guns -- 88 percent, according to another study.11
Proposal | Max impact on gun deaths | Notes |
Assault weapons ban | < 1% of gun deaths (< 100 people / year) | favorable public opinion? but NRA doesn’t like? |
No fly list ban | 47,000 people on list as of 2013 (most of whom presumably would not try to buy a gun and would not kill someone with it) | downsides: no way to appeal no fly list? (though that’s a problem of NoFL) |
Gun bounty/buyback program | | |
Mental health treatment & referral improvements | | |
Better background checks -- share data between states | | |
Police body cams | < 3%? | |
Police in communities | < 3%? | |
Gang interventions | | |
Tighter gun trafficking regulation | | |
Gun safety campaign; better locks | | |
Training for “active shooter” situations | < 1% | |
No fly list ban
Potential impact on gun deaths:
Potential impact on XX:
Assault weapons ban
Potential impact on gun deaths: mostly just mass shootings? which is < 100 people/year? which is < 1% of gun homicides? (still a good thing obvs)
Potential impact on XX:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/sunday-review/the-assault-weapon-myth.html?_r=0
This politically defined category of guns — a selection of rifles, shotguns and handguns with “military-style” features — only figured in about 2 percent of gun crimes nationwide before the ban.
The ban did reduce the number of assault weapons recovered by local police, to 1 percent from roughly 2 percent.
“Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement,” a Department of Justice-funded evaluation concluded.
The criminologist James Alan Fox at Northeastern University estimates that there have been an average of 100 victims killed each year in mass shootings over the past three decades. That’s less than 1 percent of gun homicide victims.
Gun bounty/buyback
Potential impact on gun deaths:
Potential impact on XX:
Mental health improvements
Potential impact on gun deaths:
Potential impact on XX:
Better background checks
Potential impact on gun deaths:
Potential impact on XX:
Police body cams
Potential impact on gun deaths:
Potential impact on XX:
Police in communities
Potential impact on gun deaths:
Potential impact on XX:
Gang interventions
Potential impact on gun deaths:
Potential impact on XX:
[other proposals]
APPENDIX
Gun deaths down proportional to overall murder rates in past decade
The rate of homicides involving a firearm decreased by 49% from 1992 to 2011, while the percentage of homicide victims killed by a firearm (67%) remained stable.
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, 467,321 persons were victims of a crime committed with a firearm in 2011.[1] In the same year, data collected by the FBI show that firearms were used in 68 percent of murders, 41 percent of robbery offenses and 21 percent of aggravated assaults nationwide.[2]
Most homicides in the United States are committed with firearms, especially handguns.[3]
Homicides committed with firearms peaked in 1993 at 17,075, after which the figure steadily fell, reaching a low of 10,117 in 1999. Gun-related homicides increased slightly after that, to a high of 11,547 in 2006, before falling again to 10,869 in 2008.[4]
Per capita gun death: US vs. all countries
Correlation of gun laws and crime
Amount of violence
(unnormalized)
Per capita
gun homicide:
US vs. all countries
Per capita
gun homicide:
US vs. peer countries
Per capita
gun homicide:
US vs. peer countries
Per capita accidental
gun death:
US vs. peer countries