Gun Violence article

Jan 2009
360
0
Seattle
I ran across this while cruising around.

Article

Gun violence in America has fallen dramatically over the past two decades, and the number of murders committed with a firearm is down too, though guns are still by far the leading type of crime weapon, according to a new report from the Justice Department.

As for where crime guns came from, the study notes that less than two percent of convicted inmates reported buying their weapons at gun shows or flea markets. The highest number, 40 percent, said the guns came from a family member or a friend. About 37 percent said the weapons were stolen or obtained from an illegal source. The rest say the guns were bought at a retail store or pawn shop.

Murders committed with a gun dropped 39 percent to 11,101 in 2011, from a high of 18,253 in 1993, according to the report.

Other crimes committed with guns were down even more sharply — from 1.53 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011, a drop of 70 percent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Around 70 percent of murders were committed with a firearm, and of those, the vast majority involved a handgun -- fluctuating between 70-80 percent.

The report is strictly factual and offers no analysis about the reasons for the decline in gun violence.
 
Jan 2010
371
0
Sherwood, OR
While this seems like good news, I still get annoyed by the term "gun violence". The gun is not violent! This is a made-up category, subset of the larger, more important big-picture of total violent crime. Those are the numbers that we should be looking at.
 
Jan 2009
1,318
1
Kirkland, WA
Yeah, I've seen similar data on the FBI's site. Although you CAN dig in a bit further and see which demographics are involved. For instance, on the FBI's site you can see that the vast majority of murders happen in densely populated centers. You can further drill down into other demographics.
 
Jan 2009
1,318
1
Kirkland, WA
While this seems like good news, I still get annoyed by the term "gun violence". The gun is not violent! This is a made-up category, subset of the larger, more important big-picture of total violent crime. Those are the numbers that we should be looking at.
It's simply a matter of grammatical structure (which of course is "made-up", but not malevolent). It IS gun violence. Just as there are other types of violence...

What strikes me is that no agency is claiming responsibility for this massive decline in crime statistics. It's just insane. I mean, I get that a proponent of "Assault Rifle" bans wouldn't tout it -- as it demonstrates the statistics were going down before the Clinton ban, continued going down during it, and have gone down more since it lapsed -- the ban having zero effect on an otherwise down-trending statistic.

But geeze, this could be spun in the news for our law enforcement, public responsibility/accountability, education efforts, gang crime reduction, gun rights, gentrification efforts, etc. Yet it seems like NO ONE is taking responsibility.

It'd be like watching the national debt decline by 40% and NO ONE bringing it up. Just bizarre...
 
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