Posted: 5/7/2013 1:04:39 PM EDT
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-gun-crimes-pew-report-20130507,0,3022693.story
By Emily Alpert May 7, 2013, 12:46 p.m. Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show. Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center. In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium. The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Wednesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found. The bureau also looked into non-fatal violent crimes. Few victims of such crimes -- less than 1% -- reported using a firearm to defend themselves. Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased. It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up. The mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely watched by Americans last year, Pew found. Crime has also been a growing focus for national newscasts and morning network shows in the past five years but has become less common on local television news. “It’s hard to know what’s going on there,” said D’Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center. Women, people of color and the elderly were more likely to believe that gun crime was up than men, younger adults or white people. The center plans to examine crime issues more closely later this year. Though violence has dropped, the United States still has a higher murder rate than most other developed countries, though not the highest in the world, the Pew study noted. A Swiss research group, the Small Arms Survey, says that the U.S. has more guns per capita than any other country. Experts debate why overall crime has fallen, attributing the drop to all manner of causes, such as the withering of the crack cocaine market and surging incarceration rates. Some researchers have even linked dropping crime to reduced lead in gasoline, pointing out that lead can cause increased aggression and impulsive behavior in exposed children. The victims of gun killings are overwhelmingly male and disproportionately black, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Compared with other parts of the country, the South had the highest rates of gun violence, including both murders and other violent gun crimes. ALSO: 3 Cleveland kidnapped victims leave hospital |
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Well known among the informed.
The rest of the population; not so much. And then there's those that refuse to be informed, 
The perfect example of how the 24/7 mainstream media drives the narrative. We have a gun violence epidemic, because We showed it to you on TV, therefore it must be true. Choose your own crime statistics |
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And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Summary Contrary to common perceptions, today both property and violent crimes (with the exception of homicides) are more widespread in Europe than in the US, while the opposite was true thirty years ago. We label this fact as the "reversal of misfortunes". We investigate what accounts for the reversal by studying the causal impact of demographic changes, incarceration, abortion, unemployment and immigration on crime. For this we use time series data (1970-2008) from seven European countries and the U.S. We find that the demographic structure of the population and the incarceration rate are important determinants of crime. http://www2.dse.unibo.it/zanella/papers/crime-EP.pdf |
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Well known among the informed. This. The Brooklyn precinct I worked in is 1 square mile. They used to have over 70 homicides a year in the early '90s. Now they have less than 15 a year. I still find that absolutely amazing. Yeah, me too. The county I live in has 1000 Square miles and I think the last murder we had was about 4 years ago. Of course with the population figured in I think we still have a murder rate per 100,000 that surpasses Detroit! 
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I am definitely glad that the overall statistics are down, but looking at the info provided in the figures, you see a significant shift downwards, starting in 1995, the first full year that the AWB was in effect.
I do NOT support an AWB; during the recent Fein-swine attempt, I upgraded my NRA membership to a life membership and contacted my senators and congressman multiple times. I'm just concerned that to an uninformed person, the reduction in Homicides in Figure 1 drops (admittedly starting in 1993, so curious what previous years look like)from 1994-2000, with a slight uptick until 2006, and then a slight downtick. For figure 2, nonfatal firearm victimizations, drops significantly starting in 1995, all the way through 2004, then ticks up in 2005/2006. I know that rifles are not commonly used in these types of stats and that handguns make up a much larger percentage, and that handguns were not significantly impacted by the AWB of 1994, so trying to correlate the AWB to these stats is really mixing apples and oranges, but please help educate me to better support my position in favor of firearms (and specifically my AR15) ownership. This is one fo the arguments I like to use (then we need to ban semi-automatic cars and trucks, semi-automatic baseball bats and clubs, etc). I understand that trying to argue the point with liberals based on data is a miserable, excruciating pain, but I'd like to be able to point to some data to support my position. Can you help me better understand any other trends here that have influenced these numbers? |
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I am definitely glad that the overall statistics are down, but looking at the info provided in the figures, you see a significant shift downwards, starting in 1995, the first full year that the AWB was in effect. I do NOT support an AWB; during the recent Fein-swine attempt, I upgraded my NRA membership to a life membership and contacted my senators and congressman multiple times. I'm just concerned that to an uninformed person, the reduction in Homicides in Figure 1 drops (admittedly starting in 1993, so curious what previous years look like)from 1994-2000, with a slight uptick until 2006, and then a slight downtick. For figure 2, nonfatal firearm victimizations, drops significantly starting in 1995, all the way through 2004, then ticks up in 2005/2006. I know that rifles are not commonly used in these types of stats and that handguns make up a much larger percentage, and that handguns were not significantly impacted by the AWB of 1994, so trying to correlate the AWB to these stats is really mixing apples and oranges, but please help educate me to better support my position in favor of firearms (and specifically my AR15) ownership. This is one fo the arguments I like to use (then we need to ban semi-automatic cars and trucks, semi-automatic baseball bats and clubs, etc). I understand that trying to argue the point with liberals based on data is a miserable, excruciating pain, but I'd like to be able to point to some data to support my position. Can you help me better understand any other trends here that have influenced these numbers? Overall violent crime began dropping late in 1993, well before the AWB. The fact that the violent crime rate (and even property crime) has continued dropping since the sunset proves that gun legislation had nothing at all to do with it. The crime rate changes based on a lot of things, not just sparkly things that make gun grabbers nervous. The quickest way to make them go away is to show them that while they claim to be all about minorities and equality, the fact that they're pushing for something that would do nothing at all for the vast majority of homicide victims proves they're only in it to make themselves feel safe. BJS also did a study called "Firearms Use By Offenders" that showed almost 80% of criminals got their guns from an illegal source or as a loaner from a friend or family member. Magazine bans and assault weapons bans will not do anything to stop that, but it'll sure make soccer moms feel safe. |
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Well known among the informed. This. The Brooklyn precinct I worked in is 1 square mile. They used to have over 70 homicides a year in the early '90s. Now they have less than 15 a year. I still find that absolutely amazing. Yeah, me too. The county I live in has 1000 Square miles and I think the last murder we had was about 4 years ago. Actually, the 70+ a year I can see. It's the 15 a year that blows my mind. That same square mile did over 2400 robberies, over 1300 felony assaults, and more than 1000 burglaries in my first year on the job. |
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The article starts at 1993. The same year the Brady Bill was enacted. Coincidence? Not really. 10 states passed concealed carry laws in 1993-1994. With more following right behind. With the '94 AWB manufacturers spent their time creating smaller handguns that accepted smaller magazines. Couple that with liberalized concealed carry laws spreading across the nation and you have a perfect storm of crime reduction. More people can carry and there are more options to carry. This is a terrible environment in which to be a criminal. This has been borne out by the intervening years. More people are armed, more people are carrying and violent crime has plunged. |