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Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware
- ap22213 13y agoAs with most things, follow the money. Who benefits the most when the public is frightened of gun violence (and also being told to arm themselves)? Similarly, war deaths (as a portion of total death) have been decreasing incredibly. Yet, globally we keep increasing our spending on military. And, the public is frightened of war. Some would say that the spending on military has been the major deterrent to war. But, studies show the decrease is more related to rises in democracy and global trade.
- dmix 13y agoAlso ALL violent crime is down 50% since 1993. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa98FHuaU0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa98FHuaU0 Fear is a powerful weapon. The media and politicians know this and selectively choose which crime stats to promote. Emotional outrage > rational analysis when it comes to selling pageviews and building political support. That is nothing new. Fortunately the internet is helping to temper that imbalance.
- damoncali 13y agoIt's also down absolutely. Not just the rate.
- tbrownaw 13y agoWell yeah, the size of the population would have to be changing pretty rapidly for that not to be the case.
- cpursley 13y ago'Fear is a powerful weapon' - exactly. The media and bureaucrats want you to be afraid of your own shadow, when in fact you should be afraid of McDonalds and not wearing your seatbelt.
- k_kelly 13y agoI don't eat McDonalds and I wear my safety belt. Other people having guns is not something I can control though, hence the justified need to control who can be given them. I don't worry about my freedom to gun people down, it's not a freedom I really want.
- rgraham 13y agoFirstly, I don't think anyone is advocating for their freedom to 'gun people down.' More importantly, I don't think your interest in particular freedoms should arbitrate which ones others receive. I can understand that you don't wish to exercise your 2nd amendment rights. No one is force-handing you a gun. Freedoms are about choices for people. "I don't want this freedom, so no one should have it," is misguided. Plenty of others are minimally interested in freedoms you enjoy. Support freedom.
- dyno12345 13y agoI want the freedom to have claymore mines and hand grenades.
- hga 13y agoA point I've made in a previous discussion is that we clearly draw a line between directed and undirected weapons, and therefore claymores and grenades are verboten, but something like 250,000 full auto guns are legally in the hands of US citizens.
- dyno12345 13y agoClaymores are directed. You have to point it in a particular direction and manually pull a trigger. I don't see how it's less deadly to a crowd than a belt-fed automatic rifle
- Terretta 13y ago> selectively choose which crime stats to promote For example, FBI homicide stats last year show 350 killed by rifles of any kind, assault or otherwise, while 750 killed by hammers. I keep waiting for the groundswell of public support for hammer control.
- jgj 13y agohammers don't kill people; contractors kill people
- damoncali 13y agoI've seen estimates of death by auto-erotic asphyxiation to be in the 500-1,000 per year in the US. Whatever will they ban to stop that?
- DougWebb 13y agoIt's tough to kill at a distance with a hammer, unlike a rifle. I suppose that's why people fear rifles more, but honestly I think the hammer killer is more frightening. If someone decides to randomly put a bullet through my head from half a mile away, I'll never even hear it coming. But if someone decides to crush my skull with a hammer, I'm going to be around long enough to know that I'm going to die in a really stupid and wasteful manner.
- kbenson 13y agoAren't you also around long enough to try to do something about it? That seems important to me.
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- longone 13y agoI don't know if politicians are in on this, bit of a conspiracy that I don't want to get into. However, crime and murder sell. My mother loves to watch the 10 O'Clock news every night but luckily she reads the paper and surfs the web, otherwise I think she might lose her mind. Those nightly news programs are awful. If I only watched local or even cable news and used them as my source for staying in touch with the world I'd think we were living in a complete hell hole. I live in a major city with several local news channels and they are all the same. Just murder and crime and usually some human interest piece at the very end of the broadcast. They report the worst of the worst.
- greedo 13y agoMany would be better off not watching any news or reading any newspapers. Even relying on the Internet makes things tough since there's a firehose of data, and this leads to confirmation bias having a huge affect.
- longone 13y agoYes, I agree with that. Although I have to say that I think reading the news is far better than ever watching it. When you read it you can take your time with it and selectively choose what articles you want to read rather than having a bunch of crap thrown at you at a high pace.
- greedo 13y agoAgreed. Unfortunately, we've proven remarkably vulnerable to video/film as a persuasive medium.
- navait 13y agoFortunately, we have HM to reassure ourselves we are so much smarter than everyone else.
- hga 13y agoThe saying is "if it bleeds, it leads." Because of course people are interested in this. And it doesn't have to be a stereotypical, cowelled people meeting in caves conspiracy. Instead it's an "auto-conspiracy", simply a large group of like minded people doing things in the same direction. Not even a "conspiracy" in the usual "it's secret" sense, many if not most gun grabbers are open about what they're doing enough of the time and often about their intended end goals. That's one of the things that's driving the "counter-revolution", the gun grabbers have let their masks slip so much, have expressed so much hatred towards gun owners, that they and many many people who were just thinking about buying a gun have been buying everything useful in sight. E.g. Illinois FOID card applications have quadrupled; that's a absolutely solid metric of people who haven't legally owned a gun up to now.
- thomasjames 13y agoYeah, it was called the crack epidemic.
- kunai 13y ago> Emotional outrage > rational analysis Incredibly true, I'm afraid. In fact, I'd also add advertising > rational analysis indoctrination > rational analysis political bias > rational analysis gratification > rational analysis These all seem to be qualities we see in the "mass public." Whether it's consumerism, mercurial emotion, or a "save the children" mentality to politics, no one has common sense or the capacity to rationally analyze anything anymore, which is extremely sad. I'd have to attribute this to the general attitude of ignorance that seems to infect and grow and devastate minds. When I was in 3rd grade, I asked my teacher why the sun was an inexhaustible resource even when it would eventually collapse and implode, and she said, "Well, it's not going to collapse in our lifetime." Again, cultivating an attitude of "Just take everything for granted and don't overthink and introspect at all," which, fortunately, I wasn't a victim of. This attitude leads to political ignorance, emotion > reason, consumerism, and also effective advertising. If it weren't true, The "Learning" Channel, MTV, VH1, Fox News, and MSNBC would not exist today. But they do.
- learc83 13y agoIf you live outside of a high crime area, and you aren't involved in criminal activity the chances, of being shot are drastically reduced below the average.
- CapitalistCartr 13y agoI have many foreign friends, and most are surprised to learn I've never seen a gun used in a violent crime. They have a hard time seeing past Hollywood and the press's portrayal of America. Of course, they don't live here.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- numo16 13y agoAgreed. I live in Flint, MI (#1 in violent crime, 2 years running) and have yet to personally see any violent crime first hand, and I live just north of the worst part of the city.
- pwenzel 13y agoOthers may be unaware of the shift in suicide rates by firearm: "The sharp decline in the U.S. gun homicide rate, combined with a slower decrease in the gun suicide rate, means that gun suicides now account for six-in-ten firearms deaths, the highest share since at least 1981."
- jstalin 13y agoLooks like the suicide rate has been on the decline since the 1950s as well: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779940.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779940.html
- codeulike 13y agoBut what about "Suicide Rates Rise Sharply in U.S. (nytimes.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5647015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5647015
- ceejayoz 13y ago"Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades." So, gun crime's falling significantly slower than crime in general, which may account for the public perception.
- learc83 13y ago>"Violent non-fatal crime victimization Why are you comparing violent non-fatal crime, to gun homicides?
- CapitalistCartr 13y agoHe answered your question in his second line, " . . . gun crime's falling significantly lower than crime in general." Yes, he's comparing violent non-fatal crime to gun homicides. He's making a comparison of gun homicides to general crime, and the rate of change.
- learc83 13y agoHis second line started with "So". Meaning that it was derived from the fact in the first line. The second line doesn't follow from the first as it is implied. You can't get "gun crime is falling more slowly than crime in general" from that statistic, because "general crime" includes homicides which were removed from that statistic. It is entirely possible that if you add in homicides that overall crime is decreasing faster.
- rajat 13y agoSince you're comparing gun crimes to all crimes, doesn't that mean that non-gun crime rates are also falling lower than crime in general (includes with or without firearms)? Public perception is being driven by a media with an anti-gun agenda.
- lmm 13y agoNo, because he compared percentages. If gun crime has fallen by 50% and overall crime by 72%, that means non-gun crime has fallen by more than 72%, i.e. much faster than gun crime. Or to put it another way, more crime is being committed with guns than before. Reality's well-known liberal bias strikes again.
- jstalin 13y agoThe drop is all the more remarkable considering that there are at least 168,000,000 more guns in circulation in the US now than when gun homicide peaked in 1993.[1] [1]: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/1998_2013_state_program_to_date_purpose_ids-033113.pdf https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/1998_2013_sta...
- DougWebb 13y agoPossible cause and effect? That's one of the claims of the folks who promote private gun ownership.
- jstalin 13y agoWhile I'm a gun supporter, I think the decline in overall crime has more to do with the reduction in environmental lead: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
- DougWebb 13y agoInteresting theory... but to really evaluate it you'd have to consider all environmental changes that could impact mental behavior. The usage rates of various legal and illicit drugs shift over time, as does the content of our food supply. It'd be a tough analysis, but I'd bet it would produce some interesting results.
- mitchty 13y agoActually I forget where I read it but there is a hypothesis going around that the overall crime reduction has to do more with liberalization of things like birth control and access to abortion options. At work at the moment and don't have time to pull up the details until tonight, but the examples given say of romania where none of the above is legally available still has a high crime rate. The general gist of things are that having to keep around kids a parent doesn't want tends to lead to bad outcomes for the children in life. Its much more complex than that and obviously we can't run randomized trials across multiple generations to validate things (not that it would even be ethical), but its interesting nonetheless.
- cpursley 13y agoEnd the drug war and it drops even more if you don't count suicides (since that's not really a homicide) and you're only left with the occasional nutter with a gun(s).
- balloot 13y agoIn a totally and completely unrelated fact, the rate of gun ownership is also down 30% since the 1980's. It's almost as if the two may have a relationship, but that certainly cannot be the case because the NRA has spent a jillion dollars telling me otherwise!
- spindritf 13y ago> It's almost as if the two may have a relationship Negative correlation would be my guess[1]. Where do I get my NRA check for telling you that? [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=10129 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=10129
- benihana 13y agoThe article seems to disagree with you: >The number of firearms available for sale to or possessed by U.S. civilians (about 310 million in 2009, according to the Congressional Research Service) has grown in recent years, and the 2009 per capita rate of one person per gun had roughly doubled since 1968. It is not clear, though, how many U.S. households own guns or whether that share has changed over time.
- jeffdavis 13y agoThat's interesting, because someone else pointed out a large increase in the total number of guns. Can you provide a link for that figure?
- bluedino 13y agoLess people may own guns, but the people who own them own more per person than they used to. That said, most guns used in homicides aren't used by the/a registered owner.
- zerohm 13y agoSo there are more guns in circulation, but distributed amongst fewer people? This doesn't surprise me.
- hga 13y agoAll of those statistics that I've seen, claiming that rates of ownership are down, are based on surveys. What do you think are common reactions from gun owners when a nosy stranger calls them on the phone and asks if they own a gun? Might it have correlations with the Zeitgeist created by the gun grabbers, especially when they dance on the blood of victims like with Newtown? I haven't run the numbers myself, but someone's claimed that if you mash these all together, the post-Newtown "admits to owning a firearm" + the number known to be outstanding (we have solid figures on legal production and imports) and the population, the average gun owner owns about $100K worth of firearms. See also solid evidence like Illinois FOID application rates as I mentioned elsewhere in this topic. By definition those are from people who haven't previously legally owned guns, and they've quadrupled since Newtown.
- grimtrigger 13y agoPlease keep the politics out of HN. Edit: Referring to some of the comments in this thread, not the article.
- CapitalistCartr 13y agoYou've been around here long enough to know HN is full of political issues and has been for years.
- mrchucklepants 13y agoI fail to see how review and discussion of statistical information equates to politics. Facts are not political.
- davidw 13y agoYou really can't see that? Do you think there's the odd chance the ensuing discussion might - just might - deviate from the discussion of some numbers? My inclination is that we will see yet another reenactment of a famous internet flame war.
- mrchucklepants 13y agoIt is possible, and likely will happen. However, the OP is completely relevant.
- bjterry 13y agoReal facts aren't political, and all facts taken together aren't political. But statistics are often biased or flat out incorrect because of political ends, and the selective dissemination of statistics is political.
- Prophasi 13y agoI'd argue this is up to the folks commenting rather than the OP, which is a link to some polling that produced a bunch of data points. It can be strictly analytical without blowing up into petty arguments. Not that it will.
- spwestwood 13y agoSuperFreakonomics attributed the dramatic drop in crime in the 1990s to Roe vs Wade. http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-who-should-you-believe/ http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-wh...
- jeffdavis 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio... A number of people disagree with that conclusion based on seemingly reasonable scientific arguments.
- nathan_long 13y agoFurthermore, if it's meant to be an argument for abortion, it really has no effect on the pro-life position. If you start with the understanding that a baby in the womb is a human, this arguments sounds like "it's good that we have legal murder because it prevents illegal murder".
- emc 13y agoThat's mostly likely a factor but 100% of the story. The decrease of lead in soil is another. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
- TheBindingVoid 13y agoSomeone link this to gaming, please.
- zerohm 13y agoThat study was done by Pew Pew Research.
- crazy1van 13y agoThe focus on "gun violence" or "gun homicides" instead of just violence or homicides strikes me as very strange.
- jeffdavis 13y agoIf you try to talk about violence, people are going to ask whether it is higher or lower than before. The fact that it is lower eliminates fear and sensationalism and the conversation dries up to little more than local police budget issues. But if you talk about gun violence, people will generally have an opinion regardless of the facts, and won't tend to ask questions. That's why everyone has a strong opinion but few know that it's actually a declining problem.
- Spooky23 13y agoA big part of the perception problem is that gangs have spread out or have left the larger urban environments in favor of smaller cities and suburbs with no resources. So people see gang activity in places like Albany, NY or Springfield, MA or some suburb in Tennessee and hear about 15 year old gang members carrying handguns. They associate that real social problem with the tools that they are carrying. That combined with pandering politicians and advocacy group funded PR efforts that land gun related incidents on the TV everyday leads to the present situation.
- bluedino 13y agoYet, cities like Chicago and Flint are setting new records for homicide rates, and the % of those committed by guns is at an all-time high.
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- yoster 13y agoA lot of gangs in Chicago compared to let's say boondocks, Ohio....
- pessimizer 13y agoYou made this up, loosely based on the number of news stories that you've seen lately. Chicago's homicide rate is half of what it was in 1993.
- ebbv 13y agoOf course it is. All violent crime is down. That has nothing to do with the fact that kids are still accidentally getting shot. I propose a new law; if a child (under 18) is found in possession of a gun the gun owner is fined $50,000. If the gun's ownership cannot be established, the parents or legal guardians are fined $50,000 instead. People might be a little more serious about locking up their guns and not letting their kids play with them. Dumb parents never seemed to be scared of their kids accidentally shooting each other but and one of them dies, maybe they'd be scared of them accidentally shooting each other and owing $50,000.
- oinksoft 13y agoI'm not sure you understand how common a diversion target practice (even shooting tin cans) and small-game hunting is for rural American youths.
- Lexarius 13y agoThe Boy Scouts even have separate Rifle Shooting and Shotgun Shooting merit badges.
- ebbv 13y agoYes and I got both of them. But giving them up is a small price to pay for fewer dead kids.
- jeffdavis 13y agoI don't see a rational weighing of costs and benefits here. In particular, you should examine the risk of other activities that you consider acceptable for children, like swimming or going on a car trip to visit relatives in another state. And you should also consider how many lives would reasonably be saved by your law, which might not work out as perfectly as you think.
- pdeuchler 13y agoSimilar policies have worked brilliantly with alcohol and tobacco, or so I hear.
- platz 13y agoJust a sanity check: "Researchers have studied the decline in firearm crime and violent crime for many years, and though there are theories to explain the decline, there is no consensus among those who study the issue as to why it happened."
- dclowd9901 13y agoIf I had to guess, I'd say it's because it's harder to get away with a gun crime now than it used to be. TV shows like CSI probably have more to do with the decline in gun violence than any other environmental factors.
- platz 13y agoAssuming deterrence is the most significant factor in the decline. Additionally, I'm not sure the gang-bangers are watching CSI.
- CodeCube 13y agoSome have suggested that the decline in crime in the 90's was due to abortion - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_ef...
- malyk 13y agoIt's probably a combination of things, but the correlation to the banning of lead seems to be the highest of any other single reason. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
- stevewilhelm 13y agoOne of the factors in reducing gun homicide is we have gotten better since 1993 at keeping people alive after they have been shot. I am interested in the change per capita of gun shot victims as a whole.
- pygy_ 13y agoIt appears that gun homicide rate increased under Bush Sr. (~5.6 => 7.0) and Jr.(3.8 => 4.0), and declined under Reagan(6.6 => 5.6), Clinton (7.0 => 3.8) and Obama (4.0 =>3.6). Numbers are in death/100,000 people, (+/-0.1 because they were read from the graph[0]). A t-test on the yearly rate of change, yields a p-value of 0.002. (in Excel =T.TEST(A1:A12, B1:B14,1,3)). Did the Bush have a peculiar approach regarding crime fighting? [0] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/05/SDT-2013-05-gun-crime-1-2.png http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/05/SDT-2013-05-gun...
- mattsfrey 13y agoNobody seems to mention the reason I think accounts for a good deal of the drop, which is simply the perception that you're going to get caught is much higher. Up until the mid 90's there wasn't even DNA analysis. The world was a much simpler place, no cameras everywhere, cell phones, internet, and a myriad of other ways to be tracked. The rise of technology in law enforcement coupled with the non stop blasting of crime shows depicting criminals getting caught (e.g. CSI) has greatly increased the perception that you will not get away with murder. Today most sane people at least view it as something extremely risky and hard to get away with. Even to the destitute gun crime is not a very attractive option these days, whereas 20+ years ago it wasn't nearly as big a deal. Of course there's a handful of other factors, but I think the perceived likelihood of being caught is probably the most significant.
- jttam 13y agoMy theory is that the advent of a popular internet itself deters people from violence. No science to back it up, of course. But people spend more time watching TV and using the internet; it leaves less time to be outside getting physically rowdy with others and creating these heated moments.
- nijk 13y agoIt would be really cool of this post discussion talked about technical causes and solutions for the impedance mismatch between reality and perception and masuremep, and not rehashing the arguments about guns.
- squozzer 13y agoI wonder if the increase in available distractions, such as video games, has something to do with it. And I don't know the name of the theory, but stats don't really relate well to certain events, such as taking a bullet. If took_a_bullet = false, then are you really thinking about the odds? If took_a_bullet = true, then you've got bigger problems than becoming a statistic.
- buster 13y agoWell.. that's not to say a rate of 3.2 is a good rate. The U.S. still is far above most western countries, which typically have something like 0.x or even 0.0x homicides per 100.000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ap22213 13y agoInteresting data. Thanks. And, wow, look at US's suicide rate.
- jstalin 13y agoThat's only the suicide rate by those who use a gun. Compare actual overall suicide rates and the US is pretty average and very close to the rate in the UK, Canada, France, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...
- edtechdev 13y agoWell back in 1993, almost 49% of households had a gun. Today the number is 32%. That alone is a 35% drop in gun ownership. There are so many other factors that could play a role here. And none of them negate the need for common sense gun regulations and re-funding research on both gun and non-gun violence.
- learc83 13y agoHousehold says nothing about the number of guns or the gun availability. Your granddad's rusty shotgun sitting your closet counts as the entire household "owning" a gun. The average household size is smaller today than it was in 1993, meaning that it's possible that more individuals actually own guns.
- hga 13y agoSee https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5675330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5675330; you're talking about the number of households that admit to owning a gun, not the real number. That's somewhere around the middle of the nationwide sweep of shall issue concealed carry regimes, now totalling 42 states and 2/3rds of the population. Such an astounding political development---there were 2-3 states when Florida opened the floodgates in 1987---wouldn't seem to correlate with lower ownership rates. As for this so called research, would you be talking about the output of people like Dr. Mark Rosenberg, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the CDC in 1994 when he said objective was to make people see firearms as “dirty, deadly—and banned.” Any wonder the NRA and gun owners in general were able to get the Congress to ban such "research"? And aren't you a bit disturbed by the violations of the rule of law of Obama ignoring these laws?
- edtechdev 13y ago"you're talking about the number of households that admit to owning a gun, not the real number" Looks like you either didn't read the short sentence I posted, or didn't think about it before responding, because that doesn't say anything against the evidence that there is lower gun ownership today than there was 20 years ago, only that the actual percentage back then AND now is likely higher than surveys suggest, but there is still a strong trend downward in gun ownership. And for this "so called research", I'm talking about the NIH and CDC research into gun violence that was cut off under pressure by the NRA in 1996: http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/02/gun-violence.aspx http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/02/gun-violence.as... Research for example that showed that owning a gun increases the likelihood of harm done to or by a family member or acquaintance.
- wahsd 13y agoSome may call me crazy, but I have a hunch that the decline in gun homicide, and crime in general, is related to gaming. There is frequently a claim that it's the FPS and other violent games that trigger mass shootings. Although I believe that there is an negative effect, I also believe that that negative effect is essentially all but negated by other outcome positive effects of gaming. I feel like there might be net positive outcomes related to those who would in the past have been the types who felt the need to enforce their ego through violence, posturing, and domination. Additionally, because those types of people / kids would then also not have come in contact with "mentors" who would groom them, there could also be a cycle-interrupting process going on here.
- platz 13y agoMight be related to pornography as well.
- yoster 13y ago93' was gangster. I was a teenager around then and a lot of people were gangbanging at the time. Most of those people realized that they didn't want to go to prison for murder.
- Millennium 13y agoOf course they're unaware. It's harder to keep fear alive when information like this gets out. Both sides know this. But each side is convinced that it benefits more from a fearful populace than an unafraid populace, and that the reverse is true for its opposition. And so the fearmongering continues.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agodmix is right - here in the UK the UK Peace Index [1] (a rather hippie name for respected peer reviewed sociology) shows massive drops across the board for violent crime. [1] http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/UK-Peace-Index-2013-IEP-Report.pdf http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/U...
- hga 13y agoThat's not what the national crime survey says! And I think the police statistics as well (those can and are often fudged).
- tokenadult 13y agoThe article "In Medical Triumph, Homicides Fall Despite Soaring Gun Violence" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324712504578131360684277812.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732471250457813... from December 8, 2012 provides some perspective on falling absolute numbers (and thus a falling rate) of gunshot deaths. "Crime experts who attribute the drop in killings to better policing or an aging population fail to square the image of a more tranquil nation with this statistic: The reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half. . . . . "After a steady decline through the 1990s, the annual number of homicides zigzagged before resuming a decline in 2007, falling from 16,929 that year to an estimated 14,722 in 2010, according to FBI crime data. "At the same time, medical data and other surveys in the U.S. show a rising number of serious injuries from assaults with guns and knives. The estimated number of people wounded seriously enough by gunshots to require a hospital stay, rather than treatment and release, rose 47% to 30,759 in 2011 from 20,844 in 2001, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program. The CDC estimates showed the number of people injured in serious stabbings rose to 23,550 from 22,047 over the same period." Emergency medicine for gunshot victims has improved enormously in the last twenty years, and many people who are shot by criminals now survive for a lifetime of permanent disability rather dying on the street. A crime can only be classified as a "homicide" by the uniform statistical methods if someone dies, but a crime can still be very serious and harmful to the victim if it involves a gunshot by a criminal.
- jsonne 13y agoIs it possible that the rise from 2001 to 2011 has to do with the recession rather than a general upward trend? Would it be possible to see statistics from 2001 to say 2007 instead? Or even better the last 20 years.
- jeffdavis 13y agoThere's a graph of "non-fatal violent firearm crime" right in the article. It looks flat to me between 2001 and 2011. Are both true somehow? Those facts seem to be in conflict.
- Prophasi 13y agoMost gun stats blithely show aggregate rates of gun ownership and gun-related homicides, and the public reacts in fear; who wants to live in a country like that? But criminal-on-criminal violence is a disproportionate share. Are we supposed to think that the presence of guns is what drives the violence, or is it possibly that you've got millions of young men with no jobs and nothing constructive to do, with parents who don't care to bring them up right (or who can't control them), running drugs and fighting turf wars, cooking up ways to make bank? There's an argument that for some people, access to guns creates an opportunity; but there's a lot more at work here than that. There's a social rot underneath it all -- and I'd venture that gun violence in the US is a symptom of the rot rather than guns being a cause. It seems remarkably dangerous to me to demonize the mechanism by which someone murders another person in the name of progress; politicians feel like they're accomplishing something, even though we still have a bunch of people willing to kill someone, if only they had the means. There's significant collective cognitive dissonance in American society on this topic, I think.
- schoper 13y agoWhatever drives violent crime in the U.S. does not seem to be the presence or absence of guns. The white murder rate in America is about the same as it is in Europe/Canada, etc. The black murder rate is about the same as it is in parts of Africa. (Something like 10x the white rate.) First look here to get a rough idea of the murder rate in different parts of the globe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona... Take a look here for the murder rate in different American states: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state#MRord http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-... Notice how this is a very similar list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African-American_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African-... With some corrections for urbanization, the correlation is even more extreme. Also see the discussion and figures here: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/hispanic.htm http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/hispanic.htm
- quantumstate 13y agoYour Wikipedia link shows that the US murder rate is 4.8, the rates for Western, Southern and Northern Europe are 1.0, 1.4 and 1.5 respectively. Eastern Europe has a higher rate of 6.4. If you are looking at economic similarity Western, Northern and some of Southern Europe are comparable to the US. So the murder rates are very different.
- RyanMcGreal 13y agoPlease, please do yourself a favour and read Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined - a breathtaking tour-de-force backed by strong, robust, varied evidence.
- grey-area 13y agoHomicide rates in the US are still significantly higher than other developed nations, so there's a long way to go: US 4.8 per 100,000 in 2012 UK 1.2 France 1.1 Germany 0.8 Japan 0.4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona... I wonder why this paper doesn't use the statistics from 2012, which show an uptick to 4.8?
- joshuahedlund 13y agoIt's unfair to compare the best state-sized countries with the entire United States, which has several states 7+ but also several 2 and under. It would be better to compare the US to the closer-sized Europe, which is 3.5. Still a legitimate difference, but not nearly as stark.
- quantumstate 13y agoWhy are you comparing based on size? Surely it is sensible to try and compare economically similar. Western and Northern Europe is probably the best comparison, with a combined population of something like 280 Million, not too far from the US. The murder rates are 1.0 and 1.5 respectively, far lower than the US. The whole of Europe includes Eastern Europe which is much less similar to the US and has a higher murder rate.
- grey-area 13y agoThe figures are adjusted for population, so I don't see why size would affect the figures, and as the other poster said comparing recently joined Eastern European states with the US is not very useful as they are at a very different stage of development. If you break it down by states almost every US state has statistics far worse than Western Europe, to which they should be fairly comparable. There are lots of variables here, including varying gun ownership, gun control, and states like Switzerland show you can have ownership without high rates of killing (though they restrict ammo), but widespread private ownership for self-defence in the US does seem to correlate with high rates of homicide (inc. suicide), and other countries with tighter restrictions and a different attitude to guns have far lower rates of death associated with firearms.
- brianbreslin 13y agoI didn't read the article, but am going to make a commentary anyway. I take from this declining violent crime stat, that we still have a long way to go in eradicating violent crimes (both gun and non gun related). /soapbox
- joyeuse6701 13y agoI'm surprised no one here has made mention of the correlation between led in the atmosphere and violent crime. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...
- mixmastamyk 13y agoThere are a few theories (I've not seen mentioned here) as to why crime is down so much. Not certain how valid they are but are food for thought. Some external reasons crime may be down: - The ban on lead in gasoline and other products, the contamination of which tended to create dumber and more impulsive people. - The legalization of abortion, resulting in fewer unwanted, unsupervised children.
- tayllargardner 13y agoIf gun homicide is truly down 49% then why so much controversy over wether or not they should be allowed and what not. This will constantly be an ongoing battle for years to come over gun control. Why blame the gun for random acts of violence when violence is truly uncontrolable. Before there were guns people still committed horrendous crimes. It's the corrupted mind not the weapon.
- lifeguard 13y agoThere are still over 90 people killed by accident EVERY DAY in the USA.