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# Gun Facts

Gun Control Policy Information

## Posts

### [The Gun Facts Blog](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/)

**Published:** September 16, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**



---

### [Oregon Observations](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/oregon-observations/)

**Published:** October 5, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Now that the dust has settled, it is time to make a rational review of the mass murder committed at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. The bullet points (unintentional bad pun) are:

- Interesting covariance in murder profiles
- Continued lack of full disclosure hampers finding a solution
- Initial actions to find a solution
- A trend in corrupting definitions, aided anti-gun politicians

## What We Know

Though the official investigation is not available as I type, we know a few interesting and disturbing tidbits about the murderer.

**History of mental illness:** This came as no surprise to anyone. Various news reports [1](#note-3458-1 "Oregon shooter: New details emerge about Chris Harper-Mercer, The Oregonian, October 2, 2015")have confirmed that the murderer attended a “nonprofit school … geared for special education students with a range of issues from learning disabilities, health problems and autism or Asperger’s Disorder.” His mother’s online posts confirm this. [2](#note-3458-2 "Official: Ore. gunman ranted about lack of girlfriend, USA Today, October 6, 2015") Other news stories [3](#note-3458-3 "Official: Oregon gunman left angry note glorifying mass killers, USA Today, October 3, 2015") quote people describing the murderer’s odd behavior patterns. The Army booted him from boot camp after a month (and given how recruit-hungry they are, it is curious that they dismissed him). Current privacy laws (more on the “*current”* bit later) will likely prevent us from knowing if he had definable condition that might have been worth worrying about.

**Medications:** Medical literature is rife with studies showing unpredictable violent behavior resulting from certain classes of medications used to treat mental disorders (an entire web site is devoted to just [SSRIs and violence](http://ssristories.org/)). Recall that the Columbine killers planned on purposefully enduring a cold-turkey withdraw from their meds (which the autopsy indicates they did not) in order to ramp-up their rage for their killing spree, something of an induced mental illness. Though nothing has yet been released (and may never be released) concerning the murderer’s meds, that one of his screen names was “lithium love” makes me wonder. [4](#note-3458-4 "Oregon shooter: New details emerge about Chris Harper-Mercer, The Oregonian, October 2, 2015")

**Studied mass murders:** The murderer apparently studied, if not glorified, public killings and mass murder. [5](#note-3458-5 "Survivor: Gunman spared 'lucky one' to give police message, Sacramento Bee, October 3, 2015") He even noted that “the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.”

**Guns that were not his:** Though not completely confirmed, it appears his single mother owned and kept guns in the house despite her son’s mental health history.

**Alienation:** Though only leaked in dribs by officers, the murderer’s exit letter spoke of being unfulfilled and alienated. [6](#note-3458-6 "Oregon college gunman committed suicide and had amassed 14 firearms, officials say, L.A. Times, October 3, 2015") The alienation was complete enough that the murderer said he would be “welcomed in Hell and embraced by the devil.”

*\[Editor: Do note that the list of items above were shared with the Sandy Hook murderer. Also, the murderer spoke of sexual frustration, which echoes the videos left by the Santa Barbara knife/car/gun killer\]*

## Common Causes and Crusades

Many of the other details were predictable, namely:

- All guns were legally obtained after background checks.
- Nothing in the current mental health regime would have put the murderer into a tracking system.
- Many self-serving politicians immediately proffered legislation that could not have prevented the shooting (the murderer fired only handguns – having stashed a rifle someone on campus – yet the call to renew the “assault weapon” ban was instantaneous).

In the face of this insanity, sane people would ask “what is the root cause” or “what is the actual disease” (as opposed to the symptoms). In a country that has at least one privately owned gun for every man, woman and hermaphrodite, we see little routine gun violence outside of inner cities. Even mass murders like the one at Umpqua Community College are [statistically rare](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/mass-shootings/). By definition, guns or gun availability are not determinant variables. If guns or access to them were a determinant variable to either homicides or mass murder, then every neighborhood covering all races and every economic stratum would experience these tragedies.

But they don’t.

So if gun availability is not a root cause, then we look elsewhere. In terms of mass public shootings, we see a strongly associated connection with mental health disorders (and likely similar statistics for non-gun mass murders, though to my knowledge nobody has tallied the mental health backgrounds of these people). When Mother Jones (traditionally a big fan of gun control) tallied American mass murders, they discovered at a minimum 62% of the murderers had known mental health histories (since Mother Jones scraped their analysis from news reports, and since privacy laws routinely disallow disclosure of any medical records, the percentage is likely much higher).

We can then stipulate that guns or their availability are not a determinant variable, but mental illness likely is. Thus we must examine this as a cure to the disease and not a treatment of a symptom.

*\[Editor: Though tied to gang violence, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta notes how deploying “interrupters” can be used to reduce violence and homicides and how if may be applicable to mass murder as well.* [7](#note-3458-7 "The epidemic of gun violence is treatable, CNN.com, October 5, 2015")*\]*

## Modest Mental Health Proposals

To fix a problem, you must understand the problem. At this point we do not understand it. To learn, there are a few things that can be done, though the results will not be immediate:

- **MENTAL HEALTH RECORDS:** Legislation could and should allow all patient records of murders (mass or otherwise) to be made public, including their pharmacological history (add blood samples to measure their last medication level). This begins the process of aggregating knowledge.
- **CENTRAL REPOSITORY:** The federal government should spend the tiny sum required to consolidate this information, along with criminological research into mass murderers within a publicly accessible repository with the intent of opening the raw research data to all researchers.
- **SPONSOR DEEP INTERVIEWS:** One missing puzzle piece is knowing what drives a person over the edge, from alienated and angry to actually committing murder. Again, a tiny amount of money for deep interviews with everyone who knew a murderer in the years before their crime. This analysis also goes into the public repository.
- **ANALYSIS:** With complete, succinct and easily available histories of mass murderers, let criminologist, psychologists and sociologist review the data and begin finding covariance and trigger actions.

## What Isn’t Appropriate

Frankly, Barack Obama was inappropriate.

It is a matter of prescribed practice of the gun control industry to get in front of cameras as soon as possible – before any information is known – to promote gun control legislation. [8](#note-3458-8 "Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging, OMP, KNP Communications, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, 2012") To see the President of the United States running the field using the gun control industry’s playbook is inappropriate, bordering on disgusting.

Equally vile was the chorus of politicians who in less than 24 hours promoted their personal gun control wish lists [9](#note-3458-9 "Democratic Lawmakers Urge Gun Control After Oregon Shooting, Time, October 2, 2015") without any consideration of the efficacy of their laws. Of course with no real details available in the first 24 hours, no lawmaker could know … which is the point.

Also inappropriate is the intentional mangling of the definition of a “[mass public shooting](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/mass-shootings/)” or a “[school shooting](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/only-scattered-school-shootings/)”. These have specific criminology definitions, which appear to be too rigid for gun control advocates. Some have included instances in which one person was killed as a “mass murder” and others have included gang shootings near a school campus, where neither the shooter nor victim were students, as a “school shooting”. Redefining established criminology definitions is, in a word, lying … and it needs to stop.

Most importantly is that we know the likely core behind mass public shootings. Just a brief glance at the ones that catch our attention the most include:

**Columbine:** Induced psychotropic medication withdraw psychosis.

**VA Tech:** Murderer came a hairs breath away from being involuntarily confined.

**Arora:** Major wakadoodle … thought he was the Joker in a Batman adventure.

**Sandy Hook:** History of Asperger’s, medications, fantasizing over mass murders.

**Lafayette:** Family of murderer confirms years-long mental health issues.

**Seal Beach:** Civilian post-traumatic stress disorder.

**Tucson:** Derangement that made the Aurora shooter look sane by comparison.

**Isla Vista:** Long-term mental disorders, medications, alienation.

**Umpqua:** History of mental issues, assumed medications, fascination with mass murderer fame.

Notes:

1. *Oregon shooter: New details emerge about Chris Harper-Mercer*, The Oregonian, October 2, 2015 [↩](#return-note-3458-1)
2. *Official: Ore. gunman ranted about lack of girlfriend*, USA Today, October 6, 2015 [↩](#return-note-3458-2)
3. *Official: Oregon gunman left angry note glorifying mass killers*, USA Today, October 3, 2015 [↩](#return-note-3458-3)
4. *Oregon shooter: New details emerge about Chris Harper-Mercer*, The Oregonian, October 2, 2015 [↩](#return-note-3458-4)
5. Survivor: Gunman spared 'lucky one' to give police message, Sacramento Bee, October 3, 2015 [↩](#return-note-3458-5)
6. Oregon college gunman committed suicide and had amassed 14 firearms, officials say, L.A. Times, October 3, 2015 [↩](#return-note-3458-6)
7. The epidemic of gun violence is treatable, CNN.com, October 5, 2015 [↩](#return-note-3458-7)
8. *Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging*, OMP, KNP Communications, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, 2012 [↩](#return-note-3458-8)
9. *Democratic Lawmakers Urge Gun Control After Oregon Shooting*, Time, October 2, 2015 [↩](#return-note-3458-9)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass public shooting, mental health

---

### [Las Vegas Perspectives](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/las-vegas-perspectives/)

**Published:** October 4, 2017
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

As any good researcher would, I waited a few days for most of the relevant information about the Route 91 Massacre to emerge. I await the police report before making too many conclusions. But enough is now known to see some old and new issues with this [mass public shooting](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/mass-shootings/).

## Summary of the important Route 91 Massacre

- Highly unusual and well planned event
- Body count due primarily to the “cattle pen” situation
- Unusual firearm/accessory involved
- Possible mental health and medication complication

### Highly unusual and well planned event

The killer (I decline to repeat his name) thought this attack through very well. This is an important variable for two reasons.

First, he planned a scenario not only for maximum carnage but also to forestall his own capture or “death by cop”. When anyone puts a lot of thought into such, odds of preventing mass murder go way down.

Second, the approach to the killings was sadly quite brilliant. If the goal was to kill as many people as possible, with the highest probability of success, the venue and staging could hardly be better. In the history of mass public shooting, it was quite a feat.

### “Cattle pen” situation

Most “successful” mass public shootings, as defined by killing large number of people, occur in what I am today naming “cattle pen” scenarios (being a former cowboy, the analogy is inescapable). People trapped in a confined space allow a shooter:

- Shoot and hit targets without the need for accuracy
- Allow for multiple hits on any one victim
- Disallow victims to escape

The [shootings at Virginia Tech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting) (VT) and the [Aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting), Colorado movie theater are good case studies, but also illustrate why Las Vegas was different. At VT, the killer intentionally trapped students in by chaining doors closed, then selected specific classrooms that allowed only one exit, which none dared run toward since the shooter was firing from there. In Aurora, there were more escape options, but for many those were effectively blocked in the panic.

Here is why the Route 91 Massacre was different:

SQUARE FOOTAGE PER PERSON: 2 (average)
CONCERT AREA: 15 acres
CONCERT GOERS: 22,000
VENUE CAPACITY: 21,780 (assuming two sqft per person)
ROOM TO MOVE: 0

The Las Vegas killer did not need to be physically close. He did not need to be a good shot. Any bullet fired at the crowd was going to hit someone. His only goal was to fire as often as he could, and he was *guaranteed* a high body count since nobody could move much less scramble out the exits or climb the fences around the venue.

This bit is more important than the weapons used, the accessories on the guns, or any other factor. The killer had an unobstructed line of fire on 22,000 people who could not budge. A similar scenario played out at the Pulse Nightclub shooting where [320 people were in a room with a capacity for 300](https://www.clickorlando.com/news/pulse-orlando-shooting/city-releases-records-in-orlando-nightclub-shooting). In Orlando and Las Vegas, we had very specific “cattle pen” situations.

![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Route-91-Massacre-shooters-target-area-photo-400x340.jpg)![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/bump-stocks-vegas-hotel-400x345.png)As important perhaps was the lack of any viable cover. As the photograph shows, there were very few places to which 22,000 people could. At VT, at Aurora, even at Sandy Hook, people could hind behind chairs and podiums. In Las Vegas, there was literally nowhere to hide … even if you could rapidly move through 22,000 other people.

SIDE NOTE: Having visited Las Vegas on business many times, I have feared it to be a high-priority terrorist target. The [FBI and DHS agreed](http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/03/fbi-and-dhs-las-vegas/) long before the Route 91 Massacre.

### Unusual firearm/accessory involved

As of this writing, police have not *confirmed* that the rifles used for the Route 91 Massacre were augmented with “[bump stocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_fire#Bump_stock)“. But given the rapid fire sounds heard on video taken at the concert, and that 12 of the recovered rifles had them, odds are this played into the body count statistics.

Initial police reports suggest that the killer fired for a solid eleven minutes. Even given reload times, catching ones breath, checking the spy cameras staged to warn of police approaching, bump stock equipped rifles could easily unleash over a thousand rounds (assume four rounds \[though one maker [claimed 14 rounds per second was possible](http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2013/01/07/slide_fire_this_simple_legal_add_on_lets_an_ar_15_fire_900_rounds_per_minute.html)\] per second over eleven minutes would be 2,640 rounds … then reduce for reloads, panic attacks, malfunctions, etc.).

I’ll await the full police investigation, but I am willing to wager that most of the deaths occurred in the first minute, when the crowd was elbow-to-elbow. This may be more of a factor than the rate of fire, though the number of expended rounds certainly affected the casualty count.

### Possible mental health and medication complication

It is premature to draw any conclusions, but some reports indicate that the killer was on or [withdrawing from anti-anxiety medications](http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/10/04/what-is-diazepam-uses-for-anti-anxiety-med-reportedly-prescribed-to-las-vegas-gunman.html).

Many medications prescribed for mental health conditions have unusual side effects. In fact, the Columbine High School killers claimed they were purposefully going to do a cold-turkey withdraw (though the autopsy indicates they did not) from one class of medications to amp-up their rage, that withdraw symptom being well known.

The Las Vegas killer had reportedly been on at least one medication with the following withdraw side effects:

- Return of the original anxiety (recurrence).
- Worsening of the original anxiety symptoms (rebound).
- Emergence of apprehension.
- Pessimism.
- Irritability.
- Obsessive rumination.

That’s for withdraw. People still on the drug may also be prone to:

- Confusion, hallucinations, or strange thoughts and behavior.
- Depression and thoughts of suicide.
- Aggression and hostility.

We should wait for toxicology reports to be published and for any evidence of the killers discontinued use of the drug, but this may be an exacerbating factor.

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass public shooting

---

### [Meds and Mass Murder](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/meds-and-mass-murder/)

**Published:** June 20, 2018
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Is national consumption of brain candy contributory to mass public shootings? Looks like it might well be.

## Takeaways

- There exists covariant rise in the per capita number of adverse psychological reactions to prescription psychotropic medications and mass public shootings.
- The rate of adverse medication reactions may be low by an order of magnitude.

## Mental health and mass shootings

The Gun Facts project previously reported on the association between [mental health and mass public shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/). However, the review omitted one interesting issue – the contribution of pharmaceutical psychotropic medications.

psychotropic: affecting mental activity, behavior, or perception

We first became concerned with this topic after the Columbine Massacre. It was reported that one of the two assassins was on Luvox (an antidepressant) because a known side effect was rage, at least via sudden withdraw.

When we started looking for information back then, we quickly became aware that many (perhaps most) psychotropic medications presented adverse reactions both when the patient was taking the medications and when they withdrew from them. From our previous report on mental health, a troubling situation came to light:

- America had closed 2/3rds of their psychiatric beds
- They did so in part because of these new medications, thinking that patients would be self-maintaining outside of institutions
- Since patients are notoriously unreliable, there was likely an increase of at-large patients taking the wrong doses or quitting their medications in an uncontrolled manner

The Gun Facts project decided to see if medications might be an issue, and we found a viable pool of data to explore.

## Manifestations of madness

### **VIOLENT REACTION**

Activation Syndrome
Aggression
Agitation
Anger
Homicidal Ideation
Hostility
Irritability

### **DELUSIONAL REACTION**

Acute Psychosis
Delirium
Delusion
Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder
Hallucination
Hallucination, Auditory
Hallucination, Visual
Hallucinations, Mixed
Mania
Neuroleptic-Induced Deficit Syndrome
Paranoia
Persecutory Delusion
Psychotic Behavior
Psychotic Disorder
Psychotic Symptom
Schizoaffective Disorder
Schizophrenia
Somatic Delusion

[![Reported adverse reactions to psychotropic medications and mass public shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GUNS-AND-CRIME-Psychotropic-medications-covariance-with-mass-public-shootings-1999-through-1027-400x322.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GUNS-AND-CRIME-Psychotropic-medications-covariance-with-mass-public-shootings-1999-through-1027.png)click for larger, sharable version

Debriefing reports of mass public shooters who survived shows two main areas where their condition and medications might trigger mass violence:

- VIOLENT REACTIONS: Effects of medications that are violent or associated with violent acts
- DELUSIONAL REACTIONS: Effects where the patient disassociates from reality in a way that might trigger violent acts

We happened upon the federal Food and Drug Administration’s Adverse Events Reporting System (FAERS). This is the database into which medical professionals report observed negative reactions to medications. Within all the categories of reaction types was an entire “reaction group” called “psychiatric disorders.” We reviewed the elements within that group, isolated those that were “violent” or “delusional” and started digging for data.

Next, we combed the web and devised a list of the 35 most frequently prescribed psychotropic medications. These fell into several classes – antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and anti-psychotics. That last group is of particular interest because they are commonly prescribed for autism patients, and as noted in our previous mental health report, autism is the #1 mental impairment associated with mass murderers.

For both major groups, we used the FDA website to report the total combined number of adverse reactions (and according to one review [1](#note-4887-1 "School Shootings: Evil or Drug-Induced Behavior?, Dr. Whitaker’s, February 2013"), reports to the FDA are estimated to be only 10% of the actual number). We then calculated the per capita reactions and mass public shootings to see if there was any covariance.

## We kinda saw this coming

We suspected a covariance, but we were rather surprised at how tightly the curve fit.

We looked at mass public shootings and medication data from 1999 through last year. We decided this was rational since we have some evidence that the 1999 Columbine Massacre encouraged copycat shootings. Evaluating data before 1999 would invite pre- and post-Columbine national mindsets, whereas everything post-1998 would not.

Aside from a drop in mass public shootings for a few years after Columbine, we see something close to a lockstep acceleration of both types of adverse reactions and mass public shootings. Granted, there are other variables and correlation does not mean causation. But the covariance does mean this topic has to be front-and-center in public discussions and academic research into these drugs.

For the “number nuts,” the R2 for both the delusional and violence reactions based against mass public shootings are above 0.7. If we include all years from 1999 through 2017, the R2 for delusional reactions is still 0.7, though violent reactions slip to 0.6.

## Warnings and summary

First, a few grains of salt:

- **RAW DATA:** If the FDA’s assumptions about only 10% of adverse reaction being reported is true, we may have some source data inaccuracy. But given that over 13,000 adverse violence and delusion reactions *were* reported, odds are the raw data is more than sufficiently accurate.
- **CAUSATION:** We cannot assume that there is a causation just because there is correlation. But this shows the need for full disclosure of medical records of all mass public shooters. With such additional data, we can examine the core concern with greater accuracy.
- **CONSUMPTION:** Finding records on the number of people taking these medications has been fruitless (and if you do have a good source for such data, ***we want to hear from you***). The analysis would be improved by adding consumption rates along with reaction rates.
- **POPULATION STATS:** The Census Bureau is amazingly frustrating. Mass shooting databases show the cutoff age for the assassins to be 15 years old. We wanted to use population stats for 15 years and older; but (a) this was not easily doable from the Census Bureau’s cluster &^%&\*^ website, and (b) their “contact us” link autogenerated a “go away” response. Your tax dollars not at work.

Primarily, add this info to your talking points and if you have family members taking this stuff, watch your back.

*Special thanks to the Gun Facts research volunteers who helped in the data gathering for this project.*

Notes:

1. *School Shootings: Evil or Drug-Induced Behavior?*, Dr. Whitaker’s, February 2013 [↩](#return-note-4887-1)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** anti-psychotics, antidepressants, mass public shootings, medications, mood stabilizers, psychotropic

---

### [Mental Mass Contrast](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-mass-contrast/)

**Published:** November 13, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

It is well established that most mass public shooters (MPS) have mental health problems. The question is whether they are more prone to instability than the public and by how much.

The answer is ***upwards of nine times as unstable****.*

## Major Take-aways

- Depending on the subtopic, MPSs are 1.4 to 9.0 times more likely to have mental health problems.
- Most commonly, they have “thought disorders” – a characteristic of psychotic mental illness – at nine times the rate of the general public.

## The Violence Project and Their Book

![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Table-of-mental-disorders-found-in-mass-public-shooters-400x703.jpg)

We have discussed the [Violence Project](https://www.theviolenceproject.org/) and mental health [before](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-breakdown-of-mass-shooters/). They study MPS due to significant funding (for which we are green with jealously) and unprecedented access to uncommon data. They have produced the most comprehensive database on MPS available. The Gun Facts project will continue to maintain our [mass public shooting database](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/mass-public-shooting-database/) because we track important variables that the Violence Project does not.

They have a [book](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419752952/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=gunfacinfo-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1419752952&linkId=591bea9048e46c3ad0bf7f036749cff9) out that is a solid distillation of the findings, though we warn the reader that some statements they make are not great analysis. They appear to purposefully distance themselves from conceptual landmines and potential controversy. This does not weaken the value of their book, but it raises BS detectors and doubt about some of their conclusions.

Most notable, their database provides the deepest dive into the backgrounds of shooters, including a rather complex set of information on their mental health or lack thereof. Many more details are provided, such as this handy breakdown of mass public shooter mental issues.

But the authors erred in their prose when, like so many others, they belabored the point that though mental illness is common among mass public shooters, mass public shootings are rare among the total population of people with mental health issues.

To which we say, “So what?” Proper analysis begins with defining the population under study (e.g., mass shooters) and then explores the commonalities. To reframe the discussion away from the study population is to “look down the wrong end of the telescope.” Sure, you’ll see something, but it will be a distorted image that will lead you astray.

This perspective problem leads to the question, “Is mental illness more prevalent in mass shooters than the general public, and if so, by how much?” The Violence Project does address this question, but we decided to make the information a bit more usable.

## The Core Data and Public Comparison

What we see is rather stark and frightening.

**General Population****Mass Public Shooters****Multiple****Previous Counseling**9% 129%3.2**Psychiatric Medications**16% 123%1.4**Previous Hospitalization**4% 420%5.0**Thought Disorders**3% 227%9.0**Mood Disorders**10% 316%1.6**Autism**1% 56%6.0**Any Mental Health History**26% 659%2.3- 1: Mental Health Treatment Among Adults: United States, 2019; Terlizzi, Zablotsky; CDC – NOTE: 19% had received some form of treatment, but not specifically psychiatric counseling
- 2: *Thought Disorders and the Non‐Psychiatric Provider*; Bryan; 2019 WNA Northwoods Clinical Practice Update
- 3: *Any Mood Disorder*; Nation Institute of Mental health; 2001-2003
- 4: *Hospital Stays Related to Mental Health, 2006*; Saba, Levit, Elixhauser; Agency for Healthcare research and Quality; – rate derived by dividing admissions by population, so possibly *overstated*
- 5: *Prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in a total population sample*; Kim, Leventhal, Koh, Fombonne, Laska, Lim, Cheon, Kim, Lee, Song, Grinker; National Institute of Health; 2011
- 6: *Statistics related to mental health disorders*; John Hopkins Medicine

The big item is “thought disorders,” which the American Psychological Association defines as “a cognitive disturbance that affects … thought content, including poverty of ideas, neologisms, paralogia, word salad, and delusions. A thought disorder is considered by some to be the most important mark of schizophrenia, but it is also associated with mood disorders, dementia, mania…”

Mass public shooters have thought disorders nine times as frequently as the general public.

[![Mental health variables in mass homicides and shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/mental-health-variables-in-mass-homicides-shootings.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/mental-health-variables-in-mass-homicides-shootings.jpg)The second most exaggerated mental health disorder among mass shooters was being on the autism spectrum, with mass shooters being six times more likely to be autistic than the world at large. As we discovered in [one academic survey of literature](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/), being on the spectrum is the single most common mental impairment of mass murders and serial killers.

Most troublesome, from the public policy perspective, is that mass public shooters had previous psychiatric hospitalization rates five times higher than the public in general, but their potential for causing great harm was either \[a\] not identified while hospitalized, or \[b\] treated in a blasé way using medications, which mass public shooters swallowed at a slightly higher rate than the rest of us.

What is not known is whether mass public shooters stayed on their meds. A person with thought disorders is likely to be far less reliable than your oddball cousin in taking their medications faithfully. Multiply this danger by the fact that “cold turkey” withdraw from many/most psychotropic medications can produce dangerous states of mania and agitation, along with delusions, hallucinations, and more.

## Psychiatric Malpractice

While we are berating the mental health industry, let’s note that mass public shooters were more than three times as likely to have had previous mental health counseling than the masses. An argument has been proffered that people “on the edge” of committing these horrendous crimes are not getting treatment. But with 3X the rate for counseling and 5X the rate for hospitalization, this argument is at best weak if not outright false. Mass shooters are getting treated, but they are also getting released into the wild, possibly without adequate supervision and with drugs that if incorrectly taken may amplify dangers.

[![Psychiatric Beds and Mass Public Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Psychiatric-Beds-and-Mass-Public-Shootings-400x286.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Psychiatric-Beds-and-Mass-Public-Shootings.jpg)What we have is a *failing mental health system*.

Since the early 1990s, before the Columbine Massacre, the number of psychiatric beds has been cut by about 30%. Instead of prescribing confined treatment, the industry has turned to drugs. This, of course, is not the only contributing factor, but it cannot be ignored, and the psychiatric community should not ignore it either.

## UPDATE: Psychosis

A 2022 paper concluded that 31% of mass public shooting perpetrators experienced psychosis that played a role in their murders [1](#note-6645-1 "Psychosis and mass shootings: A systematic examination using publicly available data; Peterson, Densley, Knapp, Higgins, Jensen; 2022") whereas less than 3% of the general public ever develops a psychosis in their lifetime [2](#note-6645-2 ""Psychosis & Psychotic Disorder Statistics", The Recovery Village reporting on National Institute of Mental health statistics, website 2023")

Notes:

1. Psychosis and mass shootings: A systematic examination using publicly available data; Peterson, Densley, Knapp, Higgins, Jensen; 2022 [↩](#return-note-6645-1)
2. "Psychosis & Psychotic Disorder Statistics", The Recovery Village reporting on National Institute of Mental health statistics, website 2023 [↩](#return-note-6645-2)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass public shootings, mental health

---

### [“Safe Storage" Realities](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/safe-storage-realities/)

**Published:** July 30, 2026
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

“Safe Storage” laws *appear* to have a measurable effect—but it’s small, focused in one area, may have been a side effect of something completely unrelated, and in the big picture is not a game changer.

## Take-aways

- Compared to states that never enacted safe storage laws, there is a measurable additional decline in teenage firearm suicides.
- But there were also drops in other forms of teenage suicide.
- Most of these instances, though, are covariant with a strong increase in prescribing psychotropic medications, particularly SSRIs, to teenagers during the same period, which may have reduced suicidal ideation.

## The goal for safe storage laws

Safe storage laws were conceived to try to protect unsupervised young people from doing stupid things with guns. The two stupid things that young people did with guns were to accidentally shoot themselves or somebody else, or to commit suicide.

1989: Florida
1990: Connecticut, Iowa
1991: Maryland, Nevada, Virginia
1992: California, Hawaii, New Jersey, Wisconsin
1993: Minnesota, North Carolina
1994: Delaware
1995: Rhode Island, Texas
1998: Massachusetts
2000: Illinois, New Hampshire
2009: District of Columbia[![Accidental Child deaths, Firearm and Drowning, 1999 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Accidental-Child-deaths-Firearm-and-Drowning-1999-thru-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Accidental-Child-deaths-Firearm-and-Drowning-1999-thru-2019.png)[![Accidental Child Deaths Per State Per Year, 1999 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Accidental-Child-Deaths-Per-State-Per-Year-1999-thru-2019-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Accidental-Child-Deaths-Per-State-Per-Year-1999-thru-2019.png)From the late 1980s onward, 19 states passed such laws. There are variations in these laws but they all rest on the premise that if you have a gun and you have a reasonable expectation of a child or a teenager being in your home, you’re supposed to secure your firearm in such a way that they allegedly cannot get to it.

We say *allegedly* because kids are pretty inventive and they’ve proven that they can get into at least some of the more inexpensive gun lock-boxes by picking the combination or jimmying the lock.

That aside, we have interesting natural experiments here given the staggered pacing of enactment of “safe storage” laws in these states. In this research we compared those states against 24 other states that never passed any form of safe storage laws.

But even entering into this study we already knew about some realities, and thus knew in advance some of the problems that we faced.

The first among these is that for children, suicides are functionally non-existent and the rate of accidental deaths with firearms is consistently about one child per state per year over time.

That is why among children, firearms are not the leading cause of death. They are not even the leading cause of unintentional deaths. They are, in fact, only the 10th leading cause of unintentional deaths, and that is barely below being killed by Mother Nature.

To give you an idea from a different perspective, when we asked the Centers for Disease Control to dump out the accidental firearm death rates and counts by state for individual years, a mere 0.1% of all of the data points had data large enough that the CDC would share it. All the rest were set to zero or suppressed for privacy reasons.

This makes for a statistical measurement impossibility. When the rate of deaths is this low, the effects of any law would be uniquely unmeasurable. Hence, we will not be evaluating the effect of these laws on children because, statistically speaking, they could not possibly have a measurable impact.

Teens are a little bit different.

Becoming a teenager brings on a lot of changes. Most of these are nominal, inconvenient to parents, and at worst mildly criminal. But among the changes are increased degrees of risk-taking and the development of new mental orders and disorders. Because of this, teenagers who find a gun and who are not well trained in gun safety will occasionally do stupid things with a gun, such as pointing it at somebody while believing that the safety is on or that the gun is unloaded, when it is neither.

More sadly, though, some teenagers start to develop mental disorders—from mild depression all the way up through psychosis. With these disorders occasionally comes suicidal ideation. Suicidal ideation paired with any means for committing suicide, including guns, unfortunately results in some teens killing themselves.

Both unintentional and suicidal deaths are much more numerically robust in the CDC data and they allow us to at least dig into whether safe storage laws affect outcomes for them.

## Teenagers, guns, unintentional deaths and suicides

[![Teen Unintentional Firearm Deaths Rates Change with _Safe Storage_ Laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Teen-Unintentional-Firearm-Deaths-Rates-Change-with-_Safe-Storage_-Laws-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Teen-Unintentional-Firearm-Deaths-Rates-Change-with-_Safe-Storage_-Laws.png)When it comes to stupid teenagers doing stupid things with guns, safe storage laws (not controlling for other variables) appear to have minimal measurable effect. It’s worth noting that in the control states (states that never enacted safe storage laws), accidental gun deaths of teenagers also declined when compared to states that did have safe storage laws (treatment). But the rate of change in treatment states was larger.

Rates and the number of reduced deaths, however, are different things. Despite having some large population states participating in safe storage laws, the total number of reduced deaths was pretty small. “Only” 126 accidental deaths were possibly prevented by safe storage laws; though with numbers that small this becomes questionable. In the 24 control states, 701 fewer teens accidentally died from bullets in the same study periods. [1](#note-8643-1 "We'll note that for both the treatment and control states, there was a tiny number of CDC suppressed cells but not enough to radically distort this comparison.")

This is due mainly to the states not having many teenage gun deaths to begin with. For all 19 treatment states for the five years before they enacted their laws (95 “state years”) a mere 549 teens unintentionally got shot. That’s roughly 29 per state over five years or less than six per year. In 1999, the midpoint of all the years in this study, there were 20,084,602 teenagers. This means that only about 0.001% of teenagers in a given year would be accidentally killed with a firearm.

But those are the unintentional deaths. It’s the intentional deaths via suicide that are concerning, though the data and a huge non-gun anomaly will make reckoning a bit tricky.

For suicides, we’re going to present two charts. The first one is a bit misleading and the second one shows you why.

[![Change in Teen Suicide Rates Around _Safe Storage_ Laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Change-in-Teen-Suicide-Rates-Around-_Safe-Storage_-Laws-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Change-in-Teen-Suicide-Rates-Around-_Safe-Storage_-Laws.png)[![Change in Teen Suicide Deaths Around _Safe Storage_ Laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Change-in-Teen-Suicide-Deaths-Around-_Safe-Storage_-Laws-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Change-in-Teen-Suicide-Deaths-Around-_Safe-Storage_-Laws.png)The rate of change for teenage suicides using firearms was small when compared to the rate of change for teenage suicides using poisoning during the same periods. More interestingly in the treatment states, the states that passed safe-storage laws, the firearms suicide rate dropped faster than for control states, but at the same time the suicide rate using poisoning fell faster in the control states.

\[Special note: The poisoning decline looks more dramatic than it is. The number of poisoning deaths is low so the rate of decline for even a handful of teenagers not using this means to commit suicide is very large. And two states — Ohio and Pennsylvania — Had unusually high teenage poisoning suicide deaths in the years before the safe storage gun laws but not afterwards and these really distorted the measurements.\]

Both these and some very high-level numbers show that over the span of our study teenage suicide rates were falling in general. Thus, some of the decline in firearms suicide rates has to be attributable to an effect outside of the availability of a gun.

This becomes a bit more obvious when we look at the raw numbers of teenagers who committed suicide by various means during the study period. The rate of decline in firearm suicides looks marginally better in the states that have passed safe storage laws. On a state-averaged basis the firearm suicide totals in states that never passed a safe storage law fell more aggressively. In fact, the only category where teen suicides were less favorable to control states was where suffocation was involved. As far as we know, there were no plastic bag restriction laws anywhere.

### Psychotropic medications and teen suicides

While looking for confounding variables, we came across reports about the change in attitudes for prescribing psychotropic medication to teenagers during the study era.

This topic is controversial, to say the least.

Some teens suffer from mild to serious depression, and depression is a key determinant variable for suicidal ideation. If more teens were prescribed more psychotropic medications, in theory there would be fewer teenage suicides regardless of the means.

[![Teen Suicide Rate and SSRI Usage Rate, 1984 thru 2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Teen-Suicide-Rate-and-SSRI-Usage-Rate-1984-thru-2014-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Teen-Suicide-Rate-and-SSRI-Usage-Rate-1984-thru-2014.png)That appears to be a compelling factor.

Though there is no consistent annual measurement of how many teens are prescribed psychotropic medications, there have been a series of measurements specifically about SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) being prescribed to teenagers. [2](#note-8643-2 "Olfson M, Marcus SC, Weissman MM, Jensen PS. National Trends in the Use of Psychotropic Medications by Children. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 2002; Vitiello B, Zuvekas SH, Norquist GS. National Estimates of Antidepressant Medication Use Among U.S. Children, 1997-2002. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 2006.; Vitiello B, Zuvekas SH, Norquist GS. National Estimates of Antidepressant Medication Use Among U.S. Children, 1997-2002. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 2006.; Lu CY et al., 'Changes in antidepressant use by young people and suicidal behavior after FDA warnings and media coverage', BMJ 2014;348:g3596") Though not solidly conclusive by any statistical measure, we do see some covariance in the increased use of these medications and a long-term decrease in teen suicide rates.

Additionally, when the FDA issued some black box warnings in the early 21st century, which may have encouraged some parents or teenagers to stop taking such medications, we see an upward creep in teen suicides.

The key point here is that the drop in suicide rates is covariant with the drop in firearm suicide rates, which is, in many instances, covariant with the passage of safe storage laws. The small gains allegedly made with these laws may not be attributable to these laws at all. They may be primarily or even completely associated with social changes and changes in mental health interventions within an at-risk population.

## Safe storage walls may be ineffective

At best we can say that safe storage laws may have created a small decrease in teenage firearm misuse, be it for accidents or suicides. But the decrease in the actual number of lives saved, even if this were accurate, is minimal.

Due to the confounding covariance with increased use of psychotropic medications for at-risk teenagers, the alleged gains of safe storage laws might be anywhere from overstated to completely fictional.

Notes:

1. We'll note that for both the treatment and control states, there was a tiny number of CDC suppressed cells but not enough to radically distort this comparison. [↩](#return-note-8643-1)
2. Olfson M, Marcus SC, Weissman MM, Jensen PS. National Trends in the Use of Psychotropic Medications by Children. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 2002; Vitiello B, Zuvekas SH, Norquist GS. National Estimates of Antidepressant Medication Use Among U.S. Children, 1997-2002. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 2006.; Vitiello B, Zuvekas SH, Norquist GS. National Estimates of Antidepressant Medication Use Among U.S. Children, 1997-2002. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 2006.; Lu CY et al., 'Changes in antidepressant use by young people and suicidal behavior after FDA warnings and media coverage', BMJ 2014;348:g3596 [↩](#return-note-8643-2)

**Categories:** Uncategorized

---

### [London Ain’t Chicago](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/london-aint-chicago/)

**Published:** April 18, 2026
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Gangs are violent. Hence, the degree of violence any area has is a function of how many people are in gangs and what their attitudes are toward violence.

## Take-aways

- Street gang participation rates in Chicago are at least 80 times that of London
- As in the United States, about half or more of gun homicides are gang-related in London

## Participation Rates and Culture

We have noted in other places that street gang participation rates in the United States are astronomically high compared to any other location around the world.

Since the United States gets compared to the United Kingdom too often in regard to guns and violence, looking at just those cases in isolation gives some perspective. The problem is that the United States is huge and culturally varied and thus a bit of a tough comparison. Comparing London, which has meaningful reporting on their gang participation rates, with a well-known U.S. city makes for an interesting contrast.

For now, we’re going to focus on the number of people who are in gangs and table the discussion of culture—though culture is important. In the United States street gangs have a kill-first mentality and will commit murders over the most trivial of offenses. It’s different in the UK where some street gangs consider shooting somebody to be a sign of dishonor. [1](#note-8573-1 "Youth gangs in the UK: context, evolution and violence - Aldridge, Medina, Ralphs - 2016") They have guns in gangs in the UK, but even the small number of gang members often choose not to use them, except perhaps for intimidation.

## The Differences

[![Street Gang Members and Population, London and Chicago, 2009 and 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Street-Gang-Members-and-Population-London-and-Chicago-2009-and-2018-400x273.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Street-Gang-Members-and-Population-London-and-Chicago-2009-and-2018.png)[![Street Gang Participation Rates, Chicago and London, 2009 and 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Street-Gang-Participation-Rates-Chicago-and-London-2009-and-2018-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Street-Gang-Participation-Rates-Chicago-and-London-2009-and-2018.png)The first thing that you notice is that London has a population more than three times that of Chicago. Most of the time the larger the city, the larger the gang presence. But as we can see in this first chart, for both an older set of estimates and a newer set, London has a much bigger population but only a fraction of the number of street gang members as Chicago.

Whereas London has three times the number of human beings living there, Chicago has fifty times the number of street gang members.

But in terms of street gang participation rates, London appears to be trying to catch up.

Between the two different estimate years, 2009 against 2018, or nearly a decade apart, the difference in gang participation rates has closed a bit. Gang participation rates in London are about double where they were before, but London is still a piker compared to Chicago. In 2009 the gang participation rate in Chicago was 143 times that of London (not 143%, 143 times). By 2018 that gap had closed to a mere 80 times the rate.

But that’s still 80X. Chicago appears to be manufacturing street gang members in bulk.

## Access and Carry

All this noted, understand that gang participation rates so ridiculously out of line with another are likely the primary drivers for the difference in homicide rates. We also have to note that street gang members in London do have access to guns but not as often, and they don’t treat them as a daily accessory.

Per one study [2](#note-8573-2 "Possession and use of illegal guns among offenders in England and Wales; Bennett, Holloway; 2004") which is a little old, gang members in the UK in general, though more frequently in London, have access to a gun at rate between 25% and 50%. (In other words, at most only half the gang members have access to guns, despite there reportedly being upward of four million unregistered and illegally possessed guns throughout the UK.)

We suspect that this number is very low because of the radical changes in international trade and logistics since 2004, when this study was published. The availability of guns has been going up [3](#note-8573-3 "Gun crime in London; London Assembly;2018") and there are more than a few reports coming out of the UK of a cottage industry in converting starter pistols to functioning weapons. [4](#note-8573-4 "Inside the case of a 15-year-old caught with a machete and pistol; The Times of London, 2026")

What is very interesting, though, is that these sundry studies have concluded that gangs account for nearly half of all offences where a lethal gun is fired. Among academic research using American police reports, the high end of their estimates (which are low due to astonishingly low homicide clearance rates) is about 50% for gangs. In other words, London gangs that have guns commit about the same percentage of gun homicides as their American counterparts.

## Thinning the Herd

It’s been clearly established, from every angle and from every data source, that in the United States gangs are the principal, if not overwhelming, source of gun violence. Using a different methodology, we at Gun Facts concluded that as much as [85% of gun homicides might be street gang-related or nexus](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/).

Reducing street gang participation rates, whether in the United States or in the UK, would lower gun homicides. Why this solution isn’t a priority in major metro areas in the United States is sadly comical.

Notes:

1. Youth gangs in the UK: context, evolution and violence - Aldridge, Medina, Ralphs - 2016 [↩](#return-note-8573-1)
2. *Possession and use of illegal guns among offenders in England and Wales*; Bennett, Holloway; 2004 [↩](#return-note-8573-2)
3. *Gun crime in London*; London Assembly;2018 [↩](#return-note-8573-3)
4. *Inside the case of a 15-year-old caught with a machete and pistol*; The Times of London, 2026 [↩](#return-note-8573-4)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** chicago, gangs, london, street gangs

---

### [Two Phase Crime Control](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/two-phase-crime-control/)

**Published:** May 15, 2026
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Getting tough on criminals works in terms of reducing violence.

We saw two waves of such in the late 20th century, and their combined stories tell us many interesting things, including why some of the numbers look a little odd.

## Take-aways

- Two waves of tough-on-crime laws suppressed gun violence but in different ways.
- The first wave made reductions via the second wave look less effective than they otherwise would have appeared.
- Federal initiatives to get all states to enact certain tough-on-crime laws helped more crime-lenient states catch up to more restrictive states in terms of reducing violent crime.

## The issue and the reaction

Violent crime in America started a steady and steep upward climb in the 1970s and 1980s and into the first few years of the 1990s.

And Americans got damn sick of it all.

In response to seemingly out-of-control crime, states and even the federal government began looking at the data and noticed a few disturbing facts.

- Habitual criminals committed a disproportionately large share of crimes.
- Judges were not sending criminals to jail for the amount of time that laws required.
- Teenagers who committed heinous crimes, such as murder, were often released into the wild, once they turned eighteen, and resumed committing heinous crimes.
- The criminal use of guns tended to go hand in hand with other violent crimes

In response/reaction to these realities, states began passing a variety of “tough on crime” laws. This included everything from “truth in sentencing” laws that forced judges to follow legislated sentencing guidelines, mandatory minimum sentences, and extended sentences for using guns in the commission of crimes.

This had an effect but not enough of one for the general public’s taste.

Despite the longer sentences, the issue of habitual criminals and teenage thuggery continued to be a statistical reality. Hence, in 1993 citizens dropped some tough-on-crime nukes. They aggressively passed habitual offender laws and started treating juvenile gangsters as adults.

But this trend was not universal across all states; and mostly the states that did pass those post-1992 criminality nukes were the same states that had passed previous tough-on-crime laws.

The question then is how much of an impact did the pre- and post-1992 legislative response to violent crime actually reduce violent crime, particularly gun homicides?

## The pre-1992 ramp up

[![Firearm Homicide Rate 1968 thru 1998](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-1968-thru-1998-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-1968-thru-1998.png)For years, we have noted the rapid decline in firearm homicide rates that occurred during the era of passing habitual offender laws starting in 1993.

But that did not explain why the firearm homicide rate started to level off before 1993.

States had started enacting get-tough-on-crime laws as violent crime began to surge in the late 1980s. Among the laws rapidly being enacted in the 1980s to fight violent crime were:

- Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
- Determinate Sentencing / Sentencing Guidelines
- Parole Abolition or Severe Restriction For Violent Crimes
- Firearm Sentencing Enhancement For Other Crimes
- Truth in Sentencing (imposing legislated sentences in court and parole)

After grinding some numbers [1](#note-8583-1 "To test whether tough-on-crime laws passed in the 1980s were associated with lower gun homicide rates, we compared states that had adopted these laws against states that had not, year by year from 1980 through 1992, while controlling for preexisting differences between states and national trends affecting all states simultaneously.") we concluded two different, yet complementary things.

- States that enacted mandatory minimum sentencing laws averaged 0.663 fewer gun homicides per 100,000 people compared to states that did not (after controlling for state and year differences). That is significant when you consider that the average firearm homicide rate in those states was 4.89 in 1985, which translates to a 13% reduction.
- Adding more tough-on-crime laws after that increases the effectiveness but at a diminishing rate of returns. For example, once states added truth-in-sentencing and sentencing guidelines, the additional reduction is only another 0.34 gun homicides for a 100,000 population.

A strong case can be made that “get tough on crime” laws caused a rapidly rising gun homicide rate to level off even before three-strike laws were enacted. Do understand, it takes a little time for minimum sentencing laws, truth-in-sentencing laws, and other get-tough-on-crime laws to peel enough violent criminals off the street for the effect to show. But it did show, and this possibly created some confusion when the next phase of get-tough-on-crime laws started.

## The post-1992 phase

The unanswerable question is, if the preexisting get-tough-on-crime laws had been left in place with no additions, would a decline in gun homicide rates as well as other violent crimes have started on their own?

We’ll never know, because starting in 1993 people in America had had more than enough of rising violence rates. Within four short years 24 states, with more than half of the country’s population, passed habitual offender laws and started to treat teenage violent criminals as adults, removing youthful parole and perhaps keeping them from escalating and amplifying their modes of violence.

States that entered 1993 with more preexisting tough-on-crime laws had significantly lower gun homicide rates throughout the study window. That’s a testament itself but it causes confusion because the rate of decline due of habitual offender laws (aka three-strike laws) would be muted compared to other states that did not enact similar habitual offender laws. They had less room to fall.

[![Tough-On-Crime Law Penetration](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Tough-On-Crime-Law-Penetration-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Tough-On-Crime-Law-Penetration.png)Regardless of that differential, habitual offender laws did have a statistically measurable impact. The situation is clouded by the fact that every state that enacted habitual offender laws had already, or enacted at the same time as habitual offender laws, Adult Time for Adult Crime (ATAC).

Which gets to a juicy bit of speculation. ATAC laws were so broadly enacted (all 50 states), and so quickly, that the effects are inseparable from the national crime decline—which is not necessarily proof of cause and effect. But it is impossibly hard to ignore.

Then we get to 1994 and when the federal government caused even the laggards to start incarcerating more violent people.

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act [2](#note-8583-2 "Key provisions used in this analysis: Title II (Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Grants, §§20101–20109) and Title I (Public Safety and Policing, §§10001–10003, establishing the COPS program).") of 1994 was, at that point, the largest federal crime legislation enacted in US history. Congress bribed the states with over $30 billion to do a number of things including abiding by the terms of the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Grants Program. Consequently, the majority of states (30) adopted Truth in Sentencing laws that put violent offenders in the pokey for at least 85 percent of their sentences. It also put $30 billion into state and local law enforcement agency budgets to hire community policing officers, increasing police presence.

It worked. Eight states had truth-in-sentencing laws before the 1994 federal legislation, and by the turn of the century it was 30.

But like the entire get-tough-on-crime spree, we saw other jumps in this era. Passing habitual offender law were 24 more states that add to the previous seven. And all 50 states enacted minimum mandatory sentences, firearm sentencing enhancements, and juveniles-as-adults laws.

Let’s not dismiss the habitual offender laws just yet. States that enacted HOL laws showed average *homicides and non-negligent manslaughter* sentences that were 2.25 years longer after enactment. Less than two and a half years may not sound like a lot, but that’s for all homicides and manslaughters, and not just those that triggered a second or third strike penalty. And keep in mind that states that had past habitual offender laws had, by and large, already enacted other get-tough-on-crime laws, such as truth-in-sentencing. The incremental added value of habitual offender laws was less than it would have been if it had been the only corrective measure.

But that’s also the average of all states that did pass habitual offender laws. The application in those states was not consistent. Among the heavy hitters were Washington State, which saw increased average sentences of 3.89 years (30.6%), Pennsylvania 4.01 (21.7%), Nevada 4.39 (17.9%), Arkansas 3.60 (19.7%), and Tennessee 2.72 (14.7%). But eight states showed decreases, with Virginia (−6.38 years, −27.8%) and North Carolina (−3.36, −16.0%) dragging the average back down substantially.

## What does this all mean?

[![Firearm Homicide Rates and Tough on Crime Laws in States That Eventually Adopted Habitual Offender Laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Firearm-Homicide-Rates-and-Tough-on-Crime-Laws-in-States-That-Eventually-Adopted-Habitual-Offender-Laws-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Firearm-Homicide-Rates-and-Tough-on-Crime-Laws-in-States-That-Eventually-Adopted-Habitual-Offender-Laws.png)[![Firearm Homicide Rates and Tough on Crime Laws in States That Did Not Adopt Habitual Offender Laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Firearm-Homicide-Rates-and-Tough-on-Crime-Laws-in-States-That-Did-Not-Adopt-Habitual-Offender-Laws-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Firearm-Homicide-Rates-and-Tough-on-Crime-Laws-in-States-That-Did-Not-Adopt-Habitual-Offender-Laws.png)[![Change in Sentencing Lengths by Sentence Brackets](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Change-in-Sentencing-Lengths-by-Sentence-Brackets-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Change-in-Sentencing-Lengths-by-Sentence-Brackets.png)Let’s stitch some of this together.

Before 1993 among the get-tough-on-crime laws, mandatory minimum sentencing had a significant effect on firearm homicide rates, reducing those rates by over 0.6 people per 100,000.

After 1993, expanding truth-in-sentencing laws had a statistically significant effect for all the states that did not previously pass much in the way of get-tough-on-crime laws.

Right off the bat we see that expansion having a definitive and significant effect on sentences for violent crimes and making sure that those sentences were served effectively.

But after 1993 we also saw a huge jump in the number of states treating juvenile violent criminals like adults, culminating in all states doing so by 1996. Habitual offender laws didn’t apply to juveniles before then, but they did now. Some jurisdictions went even further, counting juvenile adjudications as strikes if the offense would have constituted a felony had it been committed by an adult (California courts determined that juvenile convictions can count as strike offenses under Proposition 184).

## But the results would have been better …

A funny thing happened on the way to prison…

When the nation greatly expanded truth-in-sentencing laws along with habitual offender laws. In a lot of places, the length of these sentences became shorter, not longer.

On the surface it looks like a hell of a paradox. But it can be explained by judges and prosecutors and perhaps a lack of funding in states for their legal systems.

Before truth-in-sentencing in habitual offender laws, judges would often sentence violent criminals to the maximum extent of the law, knowing that parole boards would radically shorten the sentence. For example they would put somebody away for 25 years, knowing that the parole board would release them after eight.

After truth-in-sentencing and habitual offender laws became predominant, judges stopped issuing lengthy sentences, knowing that convicts would serve at least 85% of their sentence under truth-in-sentencing laws or would be receiving the same treatment via habitual offender laws. (Under normal circumstances, inmates can reduce their sentences by earning credits for good behavior and program participation. Habitual offender statutes frequently carve out an exception, ensuring that a person sentenced as a repeat offender serves at or close to the full minimum term. But this is inconsistent from state to state.)

Right or wrong, prosecutors have broad discretion in charging decisions, including charging people under habitual offender laws. A prosecutor can decline to file a second or third strike charge even when the defendant has qualifying prior convictions. Prosecutors might do this because they believe the mandatory sentence is disproportionate to the current offense, because they want to use the strike threat as leverage in plea negotiations, *or simply because their office has an informal policy against applying the law to certain offense types*.

In short, prosecutors often decide who will go to prison for a long period of time, regardless of the will of the voters.

It gets even a little stranger. Though many states initially stripped judges of any discretion under habitual offender laws, the courts pushed back. For example, a case in California (People v. Romero) ended up with the California Supreme Court declaring that trial courts have discretion to dismiss or strike prior strike allegations in Three Strikes cases, either on the court’s own motion or on motion of the prosecutor (even over the prosecutor’s objection).

Stated more bluntly, trial judges can creatively thumb their noses at three-strike law requirements.

That’s providing that it goes that far. Many offenses that qualify as second or third strikes can be charged as either felonies or misdemeanors at the prosecutor’s discretion (“wobblers”). A prosecutor who wants to avoid a mandatory strike sentence on a sympathetic defendant can simply *charge the qualifying offense as a misdemeanor*, which removes it from strike eligibility entirely. If done routinely a repeat felonious offender might never come under the edicts of a habitual offender law.

### The California Conundrum

California entered 1980 with four tough-on-crime laws already in place — mandatory minimum sentences, determinate sentencing / sentencing guidelines, parole abolition or severe restriction, and adult time for adult crime — all enacted in 1976–1977, years before anyone else. By the start of the 1993-1996 habitual offender law spree, California had already done more than any other state to get tough on crime.

But unlike other proactive states, their gun homicide rate skyrocketed.

Despite having more pre-existing laws than almost any state in the country, California’s gun homicide rate was rising throughout the first phase — from 6.7 in 1982 all the way up to 9.8 in 1992. Every other proactive state was declining or flat.

And since they made up 23% of the population of all of the proactive states, this artificially depressed the effectiveness of that group of states in terms of lowering gun homicide rates.

But they bounced back starting in 1994. First, they passed their habitual offender law, a three strikes variant. Next, they enacted a series of parole tightening measures, dramatically expanded use of parole revocations for technical violations, and strengthened the 10-20-Life firearm enhancement (10 years for using a firearm in a crime even if not discharged, 20 years for discharging the firearm, 25 to life if the bullet hits somebody).

The cumulative effect was staggering. California’s prison population jumped 30% in five years after the 1994 Three Strikes law, growing by almost net 50,000 inmates (39%) when it peaked in 2007. According to the Assembly Analyst Office report on the first decade of the three strikes law, over 80,000 people had been processed for second- or third-strike charges.

So just in case you haven’t been creating your own scorecard, here’s the basic chronological process with its various mishaps and outcomes:

- A variety of tough-on-crime laws were started in the 1980s and they effectively suppressed a national rise in gun homicides. 
    - Because of this, states that had added these tough-on-crime laws and later added habitual offender laws started with lower gun homicide rates and had less distance for those crime rates to fall.
- In the 1990s many states passed habitual offender laws and, thanks to federal government funding, a bunch of states also passed truth-in-sentencing laws (as well as treating juvenile violent perpetrators as adults). 
    - But as for habitual offender laws, they were mainly enacted by states who had already gotten tough on crime.
- Sentencing lengths were artificially high before 1993, especially in states that had not passed tough-on-crime laws, because judges wanted to extend sentences to compensate for early parole.
- Once truth-in-sentencing laws were more widespread, prosecutors in habitual offender law states often plea bargained or reduced charges in order to avoid lengthy and costly trials, which in turn shifted sentencing lengths down into lower brackets.

And thus, sentencing lengths did not radically go up. Total time served did not radically go up either; but the worst of the worst did get the toughest sentences, and that helped.

## The Summary:

America doesn’t like violent crime and starting in the late 1980s they did something about it.

It occurred in two waves, pre- and post-1993. The laws passed leading up to 1993 had an effect, and so did the laws passed after 1993, but for different reasons.

Among the get-tough-on-crime laws passed in either of those phases, we see these solution sets:

- Have a significantly long sentence for violent crime.
- Make inmates serve their entire sentence.
- Make repeat offenders serve longer sentences.
- Make juvenile violent crime subject to adult charges.

And we also saw that states who started taking action in the 1980s put a lid on the growing violent crime epidemic; whereas states that did not suffered greatly, with soaring firearm homicide rates, until they too realized that prisons exist for a reason and started putting the reasons behind bars.

### Methodologies

Pre-1993 estimates were produced using two-way fixed effects OLS regression with state and year fixed effects and state-clustered standard errors, applied to an unbalanced panel of 46 states across 1980–1992. Treatment variables represent cumulative law adoption indicators for seven tough-on-crime policy categories, tested both individually and as theory-driven subsets.

### Data sources

**OUTCOME VARIABLE:**

CDC WONDER, National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Compressed Mortality File.

National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Statistics of the United States, annual volumes. National firearm homicide rates 1960–1980. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

**INCARCERATION DATA:**

Bureau of Justice Statistics. National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP), 1991–2017. ICPSR Study Numbers 37951 and 39234. Individual-level records of prison admissions, releases, offense type, and sentence length used to measure incarceration rates and actual time served for violent crimes.

**CONFOUNDING VARIABLES:**

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS). State-level annual unemployment rates, 1991–2006.

U.S. Census Bureau. Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) Program. State-level poverty rates, 1991–2006.

KIDS COUNT Data Center. Nonmarital birth rates by state and year, 1991–2006. datacenter.kidscount.org.

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, Current Population Survey: Version 11.0 \[dataset\]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2023.

Used to construct: (1) gang-age population share (ages 15–29) and (2) percent of adults ages 20–25 without a high school diploma, 1991–2006.

FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted / Police Employee Data. Police Officers per 1,000 population by agency and population group, 1991–2006.

**SENTENCING LAW ADOPTION DATA:**

Bureau of Justice Assistance. 1996 National Survey of State Sentencing Structures. NCJ 169270. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, September 1998.

Ditton, Paula M. and Wilson, Doris James. Truth in Sentencing in State Prisons. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. NCJ 170032.

Clark, John, Austin, James, and Henry, D. Alan. “Three Strikes and You’re Out”: A Review of State Legislation. National Institute of Justice Research in Brief. NCJ 165369. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, September 1997.

Marvell, Thomas B. and Moody, Carlisle E. The Impact of Enhanced Prison Terms for Felonies Committed with Guns. Criminology, 33(2), 247–281, 1995. Used for state-level firearm sentencing enhancement enactment years.

Bureau of Justice Statistics. Trends in State Parole, 1990–2000. NCJ 184735. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, October 2001.

Snyder, Howard N. and Sickmund, Melissa. Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1999 National Report. NCJ 178257. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1999.

Redding, Richard E. Juvenile Transfer Laws: An Effective Deterrent to Delinquency? OJJDP Juvenile Justice Bulletin. NCJ 220595. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, August 2010.

Morelli, M., Edelman, P., and Willoughby, S. Survey of Mandatory Sentencing in the U.S. NCJ 80919. Washington, DC: National Criminal Justice Reference Service, 1981.

**FEDERAL LEGISLATION REFERENCE:**

Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Public Law 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796. 103rd Congress. Signed September 13, 1994.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. Truth in Sentencing: Availability of Federal Grants Influenced Laws in Some States. GAO/GGD-98-42. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, February 4, 1998. Confirms that financial incentives in the 1994 Act directly influenced state TIS adoption decisions.

Bureau of Justice Assistance. Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Formula Grant Program: Report to Congress. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance, February 2012.

Notes:

1. To test whether tough-on-crime laws passed in the 1980s were associated with lower gun homicide rates, we compared states that had adopted these laws against states that had not, year by year from 1980 through 1992, while controlling for preexisting differences between states and national trends affecting all states simultaneously. [↩](#return-note-8583-1)
2. Key provisions used in this analysis: Title II (Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Grants, §§20101–20109) and Title I (Public Safety and Policing, §§10001–10003, establishing the COPS program). [↩](#return-note-8583-2)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** Firearm Homicide Rates, Habitual Offender Laws, tough on crime.

---

### [Gangs, Guns and the Internet](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gangs-guns-and-the-internet/)

**Published:** May 30, 2026
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Did the internet help promote gang lifestyle and migrate it from the city to the suburbs and further into rural areas?

The data says it likely did.

## Take-aways

- Two phases of the internet rollout contributed to rising gang-like activity in both rural areas and fringe metro cities.
- It also pushed gang behaviors into suburbs but not to the same degree.

## Whispers from the Feds and Detectives

Over the years we’ve heard whispers from police detectives claiming that between YouTube and cell phones, street gang culture had migrated from the inner cities of major metros, all the way out to the suburbs and perhaps beyond.

It certainly seemed that way in 2023, when in the small town of Dadeville, Alabama (population 3,034), there was a mass public shooting with gang-like elements at a Sweet Sixteen party. As in many street gang interactions, gunfire erupted between two groups of people, resulting in innocent folk catching bullets.

But even the federal government noted this trend back in 2012 when the National Gang Center observed it in “suburban counties and smaller cities \[where\] approximately 40 percent of both experienced the emergence of gang problems in the 1990s.”

The National Gang Center saw it numerically through their interviews of law enforcement agencies across the country. But now in this mature age of internet penetration, we have abundant hard data, and it is confirming the theory… mostly.

## Three internet phases and four city clusters

[![CRIME AND GUNS - Firearm Homicides in the U.S. by age, race, urbanization - 2016 - c](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-c-400x324.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-c.png)[![Black Male (ages 14-24) Gun Homicide Rate by City Population Grouping.xlsx](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Male-ages-14-24-Gun-Homicide-Rate-by-City-Population-Grouping.xlsx-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Black-Male-ages-14-24-Gun-Homicide-Rate-by-City-Population-Grouping.xlsx.png)First, our standard note about race: We do not believe that race is a determinant variable in one’s propensity for causing violence.

That said, when it comes to gang-style gun homicides, the largest group to commit and to be killed by such are young black males and largely in major metro areas. The rate of gun homicide for young black males means that it is the most probabilistic model to use to measure the migratory nature of street gang culture and thus street gang-like violence.

Interestingly, there were several different phases of internet access (one being pre-civilian internet) and they rather neatly fit into this review.

There was the pre-internet era, which happened to coincide with the crack cocaine epidemic in the United States. This gives us a wild baseline to try to follow because it was also the era when violent crime was raging out of control throughout the United States.

This was followed by the early internet adoption phase (think dial-up modems) and then the steady rollout of broadband. That preceded the advent of cell phones and later smartphones so that any intercommunication between street gang members, affiliates, or wannabes was possible all the time. Also, any content, such as gang videos posted on YouTube (which were nearly co-variant with the smartphone era) was universally accessible.

In this chart you can see a definitive upswing starting during phase 2 and well into phase 3 of gun homicides of young black males in small-population cities. After drifting downwards during phase 2, we also see the beginning of a lift in the suburbs in phase 3. So, the effect initially appears to be working, but there are demons in the details.

For this analysis we divided cities in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting System into four major tiers. Going from tier one to tier four, they were:

1. The major metro cities where gangs normally operate
2. Fringe metro areas, which are the small cities that surround a major city
3. The suburbs
4. Rural areas

We had a separate look at both the homicide rates for the victims and the rates of gang-related shootings (when that was known) for the perpetrators.

We explored the ratio of the gun homicide rates between the major metro (tier 1) with the fringe metro (tier 2), suburbs (tier 3) and rural cities (tier 4). If the internet was encouraging migration of street gang culture, we would see this ratio get smaller over time. Think of the ratio as a simple comparison. A ratio of 0.50 means the outer area had half the gun homicide rate of major cities. A ratio of 1.0 means they were equal. A ratio above 1.0 means the outer area actually exceeded the major city rate—the trend had not only spread, it had also overtaken its source.

[![Ratios of Gang-Aged Black Perpetrator Gun Homicides between Population Area Groups and Internet Access](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Ratios-of-Gang-Aged-Black-Perpetrator-Gun-Homicides-between-Population-Area-Groups-and-Internet-Access-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Ratios-of-Gang-Aged-Black-Perpetrator-Gun-Homicides-between-Population-Area-Groups-and-Internet-Access.png)In fact, it occasionally flipped. Some of the smaller tiers developed higher gun homicide rates for young black males than the major metro areas did.

During the second wave, the early internet and broadband era (1995–2008), gun violence in the fringe metro areas not only remained high, but the ratio for offenders between that tier and the primary metro cities crossed the 1.0 point. Simultaneously, the suburbs had a meaningful rise as well. Their gang-related offender ratio climbed from 0.31 in 1995 to 0.50 by 2007, a 60% increase in relative risk. This is the period when suburban broadband penetration went from essentially zero to 55%, and it is what caught the attention of the National Gang Center. Not to be left out, the rural areas began stirring, with victim ratios against the major metro cities climbing from 0.35 in 1995 to 0.55 by 2009. And that was still in the mostly pre-smartphone era.

**RATIO OF TIER RATE TO CORE URBAN (T1) RATE BY YEAR AND PHASE****VICTIM RATES****OFFENDER RATES**YearT2/T1T3/T1T4/T1T2/T1T3/T1T4/T1PRE-INTERNET / CRACK ERA (1985-1994)19850.440.150.190.540.180.2719860.460.190.220.590.240.3119870.440.240.210.460.230.2819880.420.190.180.510.230.2319890.490.20.170.560.230.2819900.550.190.230.560.240.2919910.50.180.240.530.20.3419920.510.170.250.640.290.4219930.710.210.260.750.320.4819940.780.250.370.980.390.68Phase avg0.530.20.240.610.260.36Phase chg0.340.10.180.440.210.41EARLY INTERNET / BROADBAND DIFFUSION (1995-2009)19950.730.210.350.860.310.619960.80.270.380.870.350.6619970.740.280.340.860.380.6619980.650.280.330.710.350.6119990.660.260.390.750.370.720000.710.280.330.670.380.7520010.960.330.490.880.380.7720020.810.280.40.780.350.7520030.80.310.530.910.42**1.02**20040.860.310.42**1.03**0.50.9220050.870.310.47**1.04**0.470.7920060.860.370.410.910.470.7920070.890.380.57**1.07**0.5**1.14**20080.760.340.510.960.45**1.17**20090.820.320.550.90.48**1.06**Phase avg0.800.300.430.880.410.84Phase chg0.090.110.180.040.170.46CELLPHONE ND SOCIAL MEDIA ADOPTION ERA (2010-2019)20100.850.340.610.970.52**1.11**20110.790.350.680.890.42**1.26**20120.840.410.550.880.560.7920130.880.440.810.940.56**1.31**20140.90.420.81.070.6**1.13**20150.850.390.820.980.6**1.26**20160.730.370.71**1.13**0.7**1.59**20170.850.420.82**1.06**0.61**1.35**20180.850.430.9**1.14**0.65**1.49**20190.730.430.890.90.62**1.75**Phase avg0.830.40.760.990.58**1.3**Phase chg-0.120.090.28-0.070.10.73NOTES
T1 = Core Urban
T2 = Secondary Urban
T3 = Small City
T4 = Small Town
Source: FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports via UCR/ICPSR 1985-2019It is in the third wave, when smartphone and social media access grew and became universal, that we see the most interesting and disturbing change. For rural areas, the gun homicide rate, in regard to offenders that fit the profile, surged, crossing the 1.0 threshold. In other words, gang-age black males in rural areas were now competing with gang-age black males in urban areas in terms of gun homicides. Suburbs as well were climbing during this period, though not as aggressively.

Distilling all this a bit, for small cities and suburbs, the broadband era was the pivotal moment, not the smartphone era. The offender ratio roughly doubled between 1995 and 2007—from 0.31 to 0.50—and then continued rising more slowly through the smartphone era to 0.62 by 2019. One key aspect is that the rate of change was faster in the broadband period than in the smartphone period for this tier. This makes geographic sense: suburbs got wired earlier during broadband rollout while small towns were still largely offline, so the effect of broadband was greatest in suburbs first.

## Culture is mobile

Human culture has always been mobile. Look at the cultural exchange between ancient Greece and ancient Rome. They positively copied each other’s religions, art, food, drink, and even their libertine excesses.

And they didn’t have the internet.

Street gangs have their own microcultures and they aren’t ashamed of promoting those cultures, be it through music or through videos posted on YouTube. They define the social mores of their culture.

But before the internet, you’d actually have to be able to see and smell a gang member to be infected by his gang’s culture. Now a teenager in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas, can get direct cultural input from Chicago’s Gangster Disciples.

The hard data indicates that the internet very likely did help the spread of gang culture out into surrounding cities, off into the suburbs and even to rural areas. We can’t put that genie back in the bottle, can we? The internet is way too valuable a tool for non-gang members, but we have to accept the fact that as long as it exists and as long as the major urban centers of America fail to hamstring street gangs, gangs will continue to remotely affect and infect young males throughout the country.

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** demographics, gangs, gun homicides, internet

---

### [Domestic Gun Violence Perspectives](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/domestic-gun-violence-perspectives/)

**Published:** June 26, 2026
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

A police detective once joked with us that he was confused at a scene because he couldn’t tell whether there was domestic violence or if the couple were into BDSM.

Cop jokes aside, domestic violence is serious. Gunplay is serious. But we find out that the rate of gunplay in domestic violence is both rare and compartmentalized.

## Takeaways

- Guns are used in less than 3% of all domestic violence incidents.
- That drops to 1.3% if we eliminate merely brandishing a firearm as an act of intimidation.
- The rate of firearms in domestic violence between same-sex couples is nearly four times higher than their percentage of the population would otherwise predict.

## Cause(less) concerns

We don’t take domestic violence lightly. In 2023, the year for which our data was extracted, there were over 877,196 incidents of domestic violence. We say “over” because our data comes from the FBI’s NIBRS data collection system. Even in 2023, 11% of local agencies (including all of Los Angeles) had failed to file their crime reports with the FBI. That was a damn sight better than the year 2021, when NIBRS was launched and about 40% of agencies failed to respond.

[![Domestic Violence Weapons, % of Instances, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-Weapons-of-Instances-2023-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-Weapons-of-Instances-2023.png)[![Domestic Violence Offenses, % of Instances, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-Offenses-of-Instances-2023-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-Offenses-of-Instances-2023.png)[![Domestic Violence Events by Violence Type Involving Firearms, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-Events-by-Violence-Type-Involving-Firearms-2023-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-Events-by-Violence-Type-Involving-Firearms-2023.png)[![Domestic Violence Events Involving Firearms, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-Events-Involving-Firearms-2023-400x393.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-Events-Involving-Firearms-2023.png)[![Domestic Violence with Firearms by Age and Race, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-with-Firearms-by-Age-and-Race-2023-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-with-Firearms-by-Age-and-Race-2023.png)[![Domestic Violence with Firearms by Age and Relationship, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-with-Firearms-by-Age-and-Relationship-2023-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-with-Firearms-by-Age-and-Relationship-2023.png)[![Domestic Violence with Firearms by Same_Opposite Sex Partners, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-with-Firearms-by-Same_Opposite-Sex-Partners-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Domestic-Violence-with-Firearms-by-Same_Opposite-Sex-Partners-2023.png)And we don’t take gun violence lightly either. But gunplay and domestic violence incidents accounted for only 2.9% of the weapons used. [1](#note-8624-1 "We have excluded the crime category of "intimidation" so that we can focus on actual bodily harm, which is materially different than just scaring somebody. We also omitted the category of drugs as a weapon type because untangling that, as a precursor to violence or even possibly victims making false claims when they have recreationally taken drugs, gets too complex to unwind.")

The reason that gunplay is so infrequent in domestic violence is that most domestic violence is of the lowest levels. Over 82% of all domestic violence instances are simple assaults, which generally mean shoving, punching, kicking without serious outcomes. Just to be abundantly clear, the FBI’s definition of simple assault is “An unlawful physical attack by one person upon another where neither the offender displays a weapon, ***nor the victim suffers obvious severe or aggravated bodily injury*** involving apparent broken bones, loss of teeth, possible internal injury, severe laceration, or loss of consciousness.”

This begins to show how relatively little gun violence, at least in terms of people being injured by bullets, actually occurs—but let’s dive down into just those instances of domestic violence where guns were involved for an even clearer view.

In terms of bloodshed, there is not as much as you would think. Ninety-two percent of all domestic violence events involving a firearm are aggravated assaults. But the FBI’s definition of aggravated assault is amazingly broad. For example, the following two qualifications exist to the FBI’s core definition:

“In addition, this offense usually includes offenses **such as pointing and presenting a firearm, brandishing a firearm**, etc.”

And critically:

“It is not necessary for injury to result from an Aggravated Assault when an offender uses a gun, knife, or other weapon which could cause serious personal injury.”

In that 92% of domestic violence events that involve a firearm, some portion of those only involve brandishing and don’t involve firing the weapon.

The question is: What is the breakdown of those aggravated assaults? Unfortunately, the answer is: We don’t know.

The NIBRS system does not provide data that informs us about how violent these aggravated assaults with a firearm are. However, being a little clever we devised a rubric using the reported injury of the victims and, making some not outlandish assumptions, we were able to narrow that 92% in a meaningful way.

If our assumptions are correct about injuries describing the actual use or non-use of firearms in a domestic violence event, we see that now over 58% of armed domestic violence events are merely brandishing. Combined with the total number of domestic violence events that involve a firearm, that means maybe 1.3% of all domestic violence events involve somebody firing a gun. And given that some people may fire a gun to intimidate or scare somebody or that they just miss, the net carnage level drops even further.

## People committing domestic violence with guns

It is not terribly surprising that people in their twenties tend to be stupid with both guns and domestic partners.

We did not bother to parse out men versus women in this particular chart. We were more interested in whether there were age and race differences in terms of gunplay and domestic violence.

There are.

The rates go up when people are of an age to marry. They climb steeply in the 25-to-34-year-old age group. For whites, they pulled back their partner violence rates slightly in the next age group. But for blacks, gunplay in domestic violence is higher all the way around (based only on their share of domestic violence events, unadjusted for race population ratios) and significantly higher in the 25-to-34-year-old cluster. We’re unsure of what this means but it is interesting.

And when it comes to the type of relationship, some of the patterns we observe with firearm domestic violence are fairly predictable.

We see gunplay concentrated in the early adult years between boyfriends and girlfriends or their exes. But we see a bump in spousal domestic violence involving a gun in the early middle age span. Of minor passing interest is that domestic violence involving a gun is lower among ex-spouses, where you might think post-divorce acrimony would elevate such.

## Domestic violence with guns against sexual orientation

This is going to upset some people.

We decided to see if sexual orientation between domestic partners was very different in terms of gun use in domestic violence. For this query we had to find a data source that measured sexual orientation. We relied on the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey and did a sanity check on surveys done by the Gallup Poll and feel reasonably confident about those estimates, though the numbers are significantly lower than what activists in the LGBTQ+ community claim the percentage of the population to be. And we do accept that a lot of people may not be telling the truth about their sexual orientation when surveyed. Since there’s no way to untangle that, we have to go with the numbers that we found.

And we see something a little disquieting.

Among heterosexuals the ratio of those who commit firearm-related domestic violence falls a little bit short of what their percentage of the population would predict. However, among same-sex couples the ratio is as high as 4.2 times more than the population would suggest based on different age groups. Across all age groups it’s just shy of 4X.

We’ll avoid playing pop psychology as to why this may be, but it was unexpected and might be of interest to social psychologists.

## Domestic bliss or bullets

The good news, if you can call it that, is that gunplay in domestic violence is really small as a percentage of all domestic violence. It gets even smaller when you factor out brandishing of a firearm as a mode of intimidation “violence”. The rate then is so low that it is approaching a fraction of a percent.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are still a lot of people committing violence against their partners regardless of age, sexual orientation, and race. Though it skews differently in some metrics, it’s more important just to get people who allegedly like one another to not harm one another.

Notes:

1. We have excluded the crime category of "intimidation" so that we can focus on actual bodily harm, which is materially different than just scaring somebody. We also omitted the category of drugs as a weapon type because untangling that, as a precursor to violence or even possibly victims making false claims when they have recreationally taken drugs, gets too complex to unwind. [↩](#return-note-8624-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** Domestic violence, firearms

---

### [Medical Care and Gun Deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/medical-care-and-gun-deaths/)

**Published:** March 19, 2026
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

A common meme claims advances in medical treatments drove gun death rates down.

Like many memes, it fails testing.

## Take-aways

- Four major initiatives in emergency treatment have no consistent correlation with gun-homicide/gun-assault ratios

## The Claim and Its Problems

With anything political, bad claims can range from irrelevant to irrational. In other cases, it comes from substandard research blindly echoed by activists.

The latter is what we see at the intersection of gun play and medical treatment.

- Used all types of aggravated assaults, not just firearm assaults, as a measure.
- Did not adjust for expanding citizen/police reporting on assaults.
- Assumes aggravated assault counts are a stable proxy for serious injury.
- Used proxies, such as the number of doctors in an area, for degrees of medical intervention.
- Did not measure actual gunshot treatment/intervention.
- Included the post habitual offender law spree of the early 1990s without evaluating its impact.
- Did not correlate major metro areas advanced crime rates as a factor.
- County-level regressions did not control for demographics and other factors.

We scanned the academic literature and found one specific paper [1](#note-8521-1 "Murder and Medicine; Harris, Thomas, Fisher, Hirsch; 2002") that reported assumed correlations between advancements in medical treatments and a decline in non-suicide gun deaths.

To say the problems with this paper are manifest might be an understatement.

We won’t bore you with *all* the details, though the table on the right shows some of the deadlier sins therein.

Among the cardinal sins is that much of the study’s timespan includes the massive legislative backlash to the violent crime spiral of the 1980s and early 1990s. Recall that 24 states (including California), with more than half of the country’s population passed habitual offender laws between 1993 and 1996. The study we are rejecting went to 1999. By this time large swaths of bad actors were sent to prison for extended periods of time, including life. Between 1993 and 2003, the state of California alone processed more than 80,000 thugs for second and third strikes.

Nationally, homicide rates plunged.

## A Cleaner View

Our acid test study tries to avoid assumptions and irrational proxies.

We look at actual firearm assaults (not all assaults) and non-suicide firearm deaths. We then asked a few AI’s to tally major initiatives to improve medical treatment, both at the emergency medical services (EMS, a.k.a. ambulance or fire-rescue teams) and hospital level, along with the year-range of when the initiative was started and when it was rolled out (sometimes nationally, sometimes only for major metro areas).

Since a *firearm assault* gets reclassified as a *firearm homicide* when the victim dies, we used those variables as a more direct measure. The ratio of gun homicides to gun aggravated assaults is a cleaner measure.

[![Violent Crime and Firearm Assault Rates, 2000 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Violent-Crime-and-Firearm-Assault-Rates-2000-thru-2019-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Violent-Crime-and-Firearm-Assault-Rates-2000-thru-2019.png)[![Firearm Homicides Rate vs Firearm Assaults Rate effect of medical intervention initiatives](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Firearm-Homicides-Rate-vs-Firearm-Assaults-Rate-effect-of-medical-intervention-initiatives-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Firearm-Homicides-Rate-vs-Firearm-Assaults-Rate-effect-of-medical-intervention-initiatives.png)[![Firearm Homicide Rate 1990 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-1990-thru-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-1990-thru-2019.png)To avoid a bit of confusion later on, we have to note an anomaly in firearm assault rates.

Starting in 2016, the rate of firearm aggravated assaults started rising even as overall violent crime was stable or falling. Troubling as a trend, it also complicates analysis of whether medical treatments lowered gun homicide rates.

This chart shows the ratio of gun homicides versus gun assaults. We overlayed each of the major initiatives in medical care that would presumably lower the gun homicide rate by keeping a gun assault victim alive.

Here’s the rub: Any new medical protocol or technology would have a “forever after” effect. When you train EMT teams on how to administer tourniquets specifically for gunshot wounds, that benefit does not recede. Any reduction in firearm assault→homicide rate would not reverse (all other things being equal, which they aren’t).

The expansion of trauma centers in the early 21st century, mainly in major metro areas where most street gang gun violence occurs, show an actual increase in the homicide/assault ratio. This is interesting in an of itself. As we exposed in our [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study, gun violence is heavy concentrated in major metro areas, the ones that principally expanded trauma care. Indeed, the majority (53%) of those counties (Cook, Wayne, Saint Louis, Philly, etc.) expanded their trauma care and yet the homicide/assault ratio went up nationally.

Next, we see a short five-year era where two initiatives (tourniquets via EMS and resuscitation in major metros) coincided with a fall in the homicide/assault ratio. One could assume a causal effect, but the rate started dropping in the first year, and returning the homicide/assault ratio to a nominal pre-intervention level in the second year. Other people might argue (though we don’t) that the downward sweep is a byproduct of the 1990s anti-crime push decline.

What happens next is where the “medical intervention lowers gun homicide rates” argument fails the second time. Adding a third intervention (hemostatic dressings) is followed by a sharp increase in the homicide/assault ratio. In other words, after a lull the ratio went up despite three intervention techniques being rolled out, and those followed a general expansion in trauma centers in a majority of overly violent metro areas.

We’ll repeat, because it bears repeating: instutionalized interventions and capacity have no expiration date. The effect (if any) should endure, and the homicide/assault ratio should continue declining as organizational memory and experience adds to the effect. But expanding trauma centers did not reduce the ratio, and the three 2007–2019 interventions saw a spike in the ratio after they were all but fully rolled out.

## Do No Harm, but …

Doctors, EMTs, advanced techniques are all good and encouraged. But as a tool for reducing gun deaths from firearm assaults, there is insubstantial evidence they make much—or any—difference.

Notes:

1. *Murder and Medicine*; Harris, Thomas, Fisher, Hirsch; 2002 [↩](#return-note-8521-1)

**Categories:** Uncategorized

**Tags:** firearm assault, firearm homicide, medical intervention

---

### [Cops and Gun Crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/cops-and-gun-crime/)

**Published:** April 10, 2026
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Police staffing has an effect on gun crimes (duh!). But how much? In short, the effect is robust, though other factors matter.

## Take-aways

- Low-end moderate correlation between sworn duty officer headcounts and lower gun homicide rates.
- Effect heavily skewed to major metro cities.
- The ratio of detectives to patrol officers had a lesser correlation but still a strong effect.

## Cops, Gangs and Guns

In our groundbreaking [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study, We noticed a statistically significant correlation between total police staffing and gun homicide rates. But that was a simple measure of the total staffing of an an aggregate of several police agencies and we know that there are other variables. In particular, cities that have low homicide clearance rates tend to have exaggerated homicide rates. This would indicate that the number of detectives might have an effect. And we also know from the Ferguson effect [1](#note-8558-1 "A situation where a police shooting in Ferguson, Mississippi resulted in a backlash against the police and a subsequent withdrawal of policing for a while") studies that the number of police patrolling streets has an effect as well.

So the question is: What really counts in terms of police staffing and gun violence suppression?

## The Data Problems

As Gun Facts fans already know, our biggest complaint is data availability and consistency. Getting data on gun homicides is easy and reliable. Getting data on police staffing is trickier and messier. But the data does exist and we were able to look at least at the macro effects.

One big warning before we continue: we are only looking at univariate measures. In other words, we’re looking for correlations and strength indicators about police staffing only. Nobody should believe that this is a causal effect, because there are a bazillion other variables involved. However, the data does show that police staffing needs to be incorporated into the thinking concerning gun homicides. And since it has an effect on gun homicides, it likely has an effect on other forms of gun violence as well.

## Moderate Correlations, Strong Effects

[![Sworn Officer Staffing and Gun Homicide Covariances, 2000-2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Sworn-Officer-Staffing-and-Gun-Homicide-Covariances-2000-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Sworn-Officer-Staffing-and-Gun-Homicide-Covariances-2000-2023.png)For all sworn duty officers inside large cities, we see two different effects.

The longitudinal measure (studying individual agencies over many years) shows a correlation between the number of full-time sworn duty officers of all types and lower gun homicide rates. The effect (*R*2 average of 0.24) Is on the low end of moderate correlation. That is interesting in and of itself, but the cross-sectional covariance (across all agencies for a single year, in this case 2019) is much stronger at 0.45.

Second big warning: there were only ten cities with more than a million people to analyze. That small number makes some calculations statistically delicate.

As an exercise we separately viewed Chicago. They came in with a slope of 0.42. What this basically means is that for each increase of 1 officer per 1,000 residents, the homicide rate decreases by ~4.2 per 100,000 residents (on average, over time, in Chicago).

And here is why agencies in huge cities are not staffing up aggressively. In 2019, the year for which we did our primary cross-sectional investigation, there were 2,693,976 people in Chicago [2](#note-8558-2 "U.S. Census Bureau estimate"). To add one more officer for every thousand residents would require hiring just under 2,700 new officers, or about a 20% increase in staffing.

That’s not cheap.

[![Gun Homicide Rate Reduction for One Additional Officer per 1,000 Population by Agency Population Group](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Gun-Homicide-Rate-Reduction-for-One-Additional-Officer-per-1000-Population-by-Agency-Population-Group-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Gun-Homicide-Rate-Reduction-for-One-Additional-Officer-per-1000-Population-by-Agency-Population-Group.png)The next question after determining that there is an officer/homicide correlation concerns how much affect sworn officer staffing has on gun homicides. And here we see a huge distinction based on the size of the population served by the agencies.

As has been endlessly noted by us and sundry criminologists, street gang violence is significantly concentrated in a few major metro areas. Thus, cities with a large population see the most dramatic effects of having more officers on their force. The smaller the population, the lower the gang infestation rate and the lower the gun homicide rate, and hence the less effect more officers or detectives have.

### Do detectives make a difference?

One of the things we noticed in our [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study was that major metro areas with high gun homicide rates also had terrible homicide clearance rates. Police departments were unable to identify who murdered somebody else. Nationally police agencies have a 68% homicide clearance rate. In other words nearly a third of people who commit murder get away with it. In our top 15 murder counties, homicide clearance rates drop to 54%. The poster child for street gang homicides, Chicago, Illinois, in the year of our study achieved only a 35% clearance rate, and some news reports indicate that that may have been padded. [3](#note-8558-3 "'Where's my justice?' Only 6% of Chicago shootings lead to arrests, Chicago Sun Times, March 14, 2025")

Since detectives do most of the work in clearing cases and since sending a gang member to prison for a homicide tends to keep them from committing other homicides, it makes intuitive sense that a higher ratio of detectives to patrol officers might have some bearing on clearance rates and thus some indirect bearing on gun homicide rates.

The data, oddly though, only lightly supports this contention. But with so many variables involved between different police agencies in different states, we have to accept that the measurable effect may be muted.

**RSQ****Slope**Detective/Patrol Ratio0.10-48.00One of the interesting confounding conditions is that nearly all of the agencies within the top two population groups have specialized gang units. This means that all of these agencies have actively integrated detectives into the gang suppression process. This is likely the most significant reason we don’t see a lot of variation between agencies in terms of the ratio of detectives to patrol officers affecting gun homicide rates. The covariance only achieves 0.1, which basically means a covariance too weak to positively assume a correlation. However, the effectiveness of having a high detective-to-patrol-officer ratio is steep, indicating that when you have a sufficient number of detectives on the force, it does have a significant suppressive effect on gun homicide rates.

## What this means to everybody

As the [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) studies showed, gun violence is insanely concentrated in a few counties across the country, and in those counties it is typically concentrated in one major metro city. By and large most agencies across the country don’t need to do anything. They are likely adequately staffed (though adding more officers certainly would not hurt).

But for the major metro areas where there is significant violence and significant street gang activity, adding officers makes a measurable and significant difference. There is an open question as to whether it’s more patrol officers, more detectives, or more of both that would be best. But increased staffing is a primary tool, if not ***the*** primary tool, for rescuing innocent people in poor neighborhoods from gun violence.

Notes:

1. A situation where a police shooting in Ferguson, Mississippi resulted in a backlash against the police and a subsequent withdrawal of policing for a while [↩](#return-note-8558-1)
2. U.S. Census Bureau estimate [↩](#return-note-8558-2)
3. *'Where's my justice?' Only 6% of Chicago shootings lead to arrests*, Chicago Sun Times, March 14, 2025 [↩](#return-note-8558-3)

**Categories:** Crime Control

**Tags:** detective and patrol ratio, gun homicides, police staffing

---

### [Medicated Murderers](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/medicated-murderers/)

**Published:** April 14, 2023
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Psychiatric prescribing of psychotropic medications may be contributory to mass public shootings (MPS).

## Main Takeaways

- Increased use of psychotropic medications is associated with increased frequency of MPS.
- Non-psychiatric prescribing of these drugs is not strongly associated with overall MPS frequency.
- Psychotropic medications are associated with elevated rates of homicide, hence also associated with MPS.
- Perps receiving medications and psychiatric counseling are strongly associated, indicating mental health professionals are not catching warning signs.
- Over a quarter of a million at-risk and unmanaged adults are statistically likely to have “hostile” reactions from their drugs.

## A note about data and correlations

Before going into a summary, much less the detailed data, know that this is not a one-problem-fits-all conclusion. There is no singular driver of MPS.

What is herein is an exploration of trends in how America is (mis)medicating the population and how it may well contribute to some/many MPS. The data is strong enough that we must incorporate how psychotropics are involved into any possible set of solutions.

## The summary view

America takes a lot of brain meds. From the initial distribution of modern psychotropics (roughly speaking, 1980), we have gone from a largely unmedicated society to one where:

- 20% of adults are on such medications (23% of MPS perps used them).
- Over 6% of children and teens do, as well.
- 60% of those taking any, take two or more prescriptions.

This is not to decry these medications. There are certainly mental health disorders whereby the patient benefits from them. But they are not risk-free.

A Finnish study [i](#_edn1) of psychotropic medications and homicides shows that the former increases the latter. The rate of homicides committed by people rises 31% among antidepressant users, 45% with benzodiazepines (antianxiety). This pales in comparison to the 92% rise among opiate painkillers and folks swallowing extreme combinations. The fact, however unpleasant, is that fatal violence is a side effect of psychotropics medication.

But most people – about four in five [ii](#_edn2) – taking these drugs were not prescribed them by a psychiatrist. Most prescriptions for these drugs come from doctors untrained or undertrained in psychiatrics, who are not managing patients (and thus medical outcomes) in the way psychiatrists do. \[ED: I once dated a lady whose general practitioner prescribed her Prozac to deal with PMS symptoms.\]

[![Trends in Psychotropic Medications and Mass Public Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Trends-in-Psycotropic-Medications-and-Mass-Public-Shootings-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Trends-in-Psycotropic-Medications-and-Mass-Public-Shootings.png)click for larger, sharable version

![Rates of multiple prescriptions of psychotropic medications](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Polyprescriptions-of-psychotropic-medications-400x296.png)National Trends in Psychotropic Medication Polypharmacy in Office-Based Psychiatry; Mojtabai, Olfson; 2010

[![Mass Public Shooters Prescribed Psychotropic Meds 1966 thru 2020 - five year segments](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mass-Public-Shooters-Prescribed-Psychotropic-Meds-1966-thru-2020-five-year-segments-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mass-Public-Shooters-Prescribed-Psychotropic-Meds-1966-thru-2020-five-year-segments.png)click for larger, sharable version

[![Mass Public Shooters, Medications and Counseling](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mass-Public-Shooters-Medications-and-Counseling-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mass-Public-Shooters-Medications-and-Counseling.png)click for larger, sharable version

[![Psychotropic Use Among Teens and Children and K21 Mass School Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Psychotropic-Use-Among-Teens-and-Children-and-K21-Mass-School-Shootings-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Psychotropic-Use-Among-Teens-and-Children-and-K21-Mass-School-Shootings.png)click for larger, sharable version

[![Psychotropic Use Among Teens and Children and psych vs non-psych prescription source](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Psychotropic-Use-Among-Teens-and-Children-and-psych-vs-non-psych-precription-source-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Psychotropic-Use-Among-Teens-and-Children-and-psych-vs-non-psych-precription-source.png)click for larger, sharable version

The obvious outcome is that fewer and fewer people taking psychotropic medications, and suffering often violence-inducing side effects, are receiving routine therapy where medications and side effects are monitored.

One hypothesis we explore herein is that some fraction of the over-prescribed yet under-monitored psychotropic medication-taking population become mass public shooters.

## Trends in Medicated Americans

Three interrelated factors are concerning:

1. More people are taking these medications.
2. More are doing so without monitoring by trained psychiatric professionals.
3. More are talking multiple psychotropics without consistent precautions concerning interactions.

The reason this is concerning is that some categories of psychotropics have well-documented side effects of a violent nature. We previously documented the possible [correlation between adverse reactions to medications and mass public shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/meds-and-mass-murder/). Given a significant correlation between increases in MPS and perps who take psychotropics, the stronger (possible) correlation between adverse reactions of these medications and the rate of MPS, and the rise in the population taking these drugs without psychiatric monitoring, we may have cooked up a kettle of unrestrained violence.

## Trends in Mass Public Shootings and Psychotropic Medications

The correlation between MPS perps on psychotropic medications is about 30%, which is statistically worrisome.

But the picture is more detailed than that.

Per the Violence Project MPS database, 33% of MPS perps on medications did ***not*** have prior counseling. Conversely, 67% of medicated perps ***did*** have counselling. Stated differently, medications without counselling appears to be less dangerous (though not danger-free) than actually getting hands-on therapy.

The obvious perspective is that people who had such significant mental health issues that they received counseling were also more likely to be disturbed enough to be a risk to the public. Taken a rhetorical step further, those who get drugs and therapy from psychiatric professionals may not be closely monitored enough by those pros. Psychiatrists appear to be missing signs or not referring patients to institutions aggressively enough.

## Kids, Meds and School Shootings

It might be a different story for school shootings, but the data is too thin to state anything with certainty.

One cruel data point is that most K–12 school shooters are also young. The most active group for K–12 shootings is the age 13 through 18 bracket (mainly high school). This is also the group with the highest consumption of psychotropic meds.

This is not correlation. Why? Because there are too few of these events for reliable evaluation. The Violence Project’s MPS database has only 15 instances of K–12 shootings going back as early as 1992. We’ll avoid muddying the intellectual waters by trying to read trends into small and sporadic data.

But it is worth noting that children and teens are also getting psychotropic medications from non-psychiatry sources. Granted, the largest number of prescriptions are for ADHD and in the *stimulant* category, but even these are documented as having some violence-inducing side effects, though not at the same rate as antidepressants.

## What to Make of Meds

To summarize:

- Psychotropic meds have potentially violent side effects.
- They are correlated with rates of MPS.
- The meds by themselves are less correlated than consumption of meds and receiving psychiatric therapy.
- Meds might be a driver of school shootings, but the data is too sparse.

The two weaknesses in the current medical industry in regard to MPS are that more people than necessary \[yes, subjective\] are taking the drugs, and psychiatric professionals are not managing their patients as well as they need to.

Let’s linger on that a bit.

As we showed in previous work on [deinstitutionalization and mass public shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/), we depend on outpatient management of troubled souls. These folks, even under psychiatric care, are often unmanaged on a daily basis, and have been known to do cold turkey withdrawals from the medications their doctors thought would keep them stable.

It is this combo – lack of full-time monitoring. and over-reliance on drugs documented to instigate violent actions – that statistically correlate with rates of mass public shootings.

True, the majority of mass shooters don’t take prescription medications (at least, not that we know of), but the medical community is not actively involved in their care and watching for aberrant behavioral changes. The medical community needs to prescribe less and care more.

The question then is, “How much of a problem is this?”

The answer: substantial.

Let’s just look at adults taking antidepressants, which for MPS is the big cluster of medicated incidents. According to one study,vii about 0.65% of people taking these psychotropic medications had “hostile” events. According to 2017 data, 19.1% of adults take antidepressants. That equates to over 49,000,000 adults. With a 0.65% rate of “hostile” side effects, we have almost 323,000 at-risk adults. Given that 80% of psychotropic medications are prescribed by non-psychiatrists, we have *over a quarter of a million at-risk and unmanaged adults* who are statistically likely to have “hostile” reactions from their drugs.

That’s significant.

## Disturbing numbers and text from the literature

### Who is taking what and how it is increasing

Adults Taking Psychotropics28%Antidepressants667%Antipsychotics200%2+ Medications per Patient40%3+ Medications per Patient96%Youths on Psychotropics181%Taking Antidepressants and Receiving Psychotherapy-39%*Increases in usage from the various studies*Here are the rates of increase in psychotropic medication use from the sundry studies referenced in the endnotes.

## Update #1

Due to a variety of factors, it is impossible to estimate what impact psychotropic medications or their unsupervised withdrawal contribute to gun violence and mass public shootings in the United States. For the United States alone, there are not any high quality studies about unsupervised withdrawal.

That said, one study [1](#note-7362-1 "Patterns, predictors, and patient-reported reasons for antidepressant discontinuation in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys") of just antidepressant users in 13 mainly European countries concluded that unsupervised withdrawals were found among 15.7% of the patient population. This is higher than the 10.9% of recommended and supposedly supervised withdrawals.

That means that 60% of people who withdraw from psychotropics do so unsupervised. Some unknown portion of them might know to taper off slowly, but we suspect that is low.

### Text from all the academic papers ingested for this review

- “Patients often receive psychotropic medications without being evaluated by a mental health professional, according to a study last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).” [\[ii\]](#_edn2)
- Mental Health Disorder: A mental disorder is characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotional regulation, or behavior.
- “Most antidepressants are prescribed by primary-care physicians who may have limited training in treating mental health disorders… Almost four out of five prescriptions for psychotropic drugs are written by physicians who aren’t psychiatrists…fewer of their patients receive psychotherapy than in the past.” ii
- “Many people with mild depression are prescribed antidepressants even though they aren’t likely to benefit from the drugs… Clinical trials for four SSRI antidepressants found that the drugs didn’t perform significantly better than placebos in treating mild or moderate depression, and the benefits of the drugs were “relatively small even for severely depressed patients.” ii
- “Antipsychotics nearly tripled from 1995 to 2008… More than half of those prescriptions in 2008 were for uses with uncertain scientific evidence.” ii
- “Foster children are up to four-and-a-half times more likely to receive psychotropic drugs than other children covered by Medicaid.” ii
- Stimulant ADHD medication side effects: [\[iii\]](#_edn3)
    - Most common side effects mentioned… mood disturbances (21%), with 54% reporting symptoms to be bothersome to very bothersome (so roughly 10% have bothersome+ mood disturbances).
    - Forty-eight percent of the approximately 325 patients surveyed reported having experienced a side effect.
- “While some of these combinations are supported by clinical trials, many are of unproven efficacy. These trends put patients at increased risk of drug-drug interactions with uncertain gains for quality of care and clinical outcomes.” (2+ medications from often non-psychiatric prescribers.)[ \[iv\]](#_edn4)
- 2% of adults had a *major* depressive episode, but 13.2% took antidepressants (nearly 2X). [\[v\]](#_edn5)
- 31% elevated risk of homicide with antidepressants, 45% for benzodiazepines (depressants, Xanax, Librium, etc.; though not antipsychotics). +92% opiate painkillers.
- “Youth psychotropic treatment utilization during the 1990s nearly reached adult utilization rates… Total psychotropic medication prevalence for youths increased 2- to 3-fold and included most classes of medication.”[ \[vi\]](#_edn6)
- “On therapy and during the 30-day drugfree phase after taper had finished, 0.65% of patients had hostile events.” [\[vii\]](#_edn7)
- “In healthy volunteer studies, hostile events occurred in 1.1% of volunteers compared with zero taking placebo.” vii
- “In data from… pediatric trials, aggression was the commonest cause for discontinuation from the two placebo-controlled trials in depressed children. … 4% discontinued for aggression, agitation, or hyperkinesis \[a coding term for akathisia\], compared with zero in patients on placebo.”
- “For any manifestation of treatment induced activation (suicidal ideation or attempts, aggression, agitation, hyperkinesis, or aggravated depression) 8% discontinuations compared with 1% on placebo.”

[\[i\]](#_ednref1) Study analyzes link between psychotropic drugs, homicide risk, University of Eastern Finland, 2015. *Science Daily*.

[\[ii\]](#_ednref2) Inappropriate Prescribing, American Psychological Association, 2012.

[\[iii\]](#_ednref3) Real-World Data on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Medication Side Effects, Cascade, Kalali, & Wigal, 2010.

[\[iv\]](#_ednref4) National Trends in Psychotropic Medication Polypharmacy in Office-Based Psychiatry, Mojtabai & Olfson, 2010.

[\[v\]](#_ednref5) Antidepressant Use Among Adults: United States, 2015–2018, Brody & Gu, 2018.

[\[vi\]](#_ednref6) Psychotropic practice patterns for youth – a 10-year perspective, Zito, DosReis, Gardner, Magder, Soeken, Boles, Lynch, & Riddle, 2003.

[\[vii\]](#_ednref7) Antidepressants and Violence: Problems at the Interface of Medicine and Law, Healy, Herxheimer, & Menkes, *PLoS Medicine*, 2006.

Notes:

1. Patterns, predictors, and patient-reported reasons for antidepressant discontinuation in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys [↩](#return-note-7362-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass public shootings, mental health, psychotropic medications

---

### [Mass Shooting Metrics](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shooting-metrics/)

**Published:** January 5, 2026
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

It is time to look at the other types of “mass shootings,” given that what the public perceives they are, and what they are really, are quite different.

They also inform us that street gang violence has many manifestations.

### Take-aways

- Alternate definitions of “mass shooting” obfuscate street gang causation.
- Highest victim and perpetrator rates are for Blacks in active gang ages.
- Higher urbanicity is correlated with higher mass shooting victims when deaths and injuries are both included.

## Definitions

Amtrak once drastically improved their horrible on-time record by changing the definition of “on time.”

Something similar has happened with “mass shootings.”

In the 1990s, criminologists defined “mass PUBLIC shootings” (note the added word … it is important). Given their well-crafted definition [1](#note-8438-1 "Public shooting events where four or more people are killed, not including perpetrator(s), within an hour, not part of another crime."), decades of research was committed to understanding mass public shootings.

And this is the public’s general perception of such events. They think of Sandy Hook, Pulse Night Club, King Soopers supermarket.

But on average for the 21st century, the United States has about four such events each year. That is four too many, but a relatively low number, and outside of major outlier events (i.e., Las Vegas country music massacre), relatively few victims compared to the total number of gun homicide victims by all causes.

This caused some people, without the aid of criminologists, to devise definitions for “mass shootings” as opposed to “mass public shootings.” And this in turn created a lot of public confusion.

The three major differences between the traditional, criminology-derived definitions of “mass PUBLIC shooting” and “mass shooting” involve the latter allowing for:

- Incidents occurring in private places
- Incidents involving other crimes (i.e., a robbery gone wrong)
- Incidents where people were wounded but not killed

This resulted in some wildly different headline numbers (and some claim the redefinitions were designed to generate headlines).

## High-Level

The high-level comparison of these definitions and less-than-stellar data sources show the extreme distortion of public perception, where a big problem resides, and the horrible condition of crime data.

For the year 2023 (the most recent year of data from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS) we see the following:

Mass PUBLIC Shootings (MPS)Gun Facts Mass Public Shooting DB = 7Definition 1 (4+ killed)FBI data = 51, GVA = 40Definition 2 (4+ shot)FBI data = 471, GVA = 659The [Gun Violence Archive is an unreliable source](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-data-sources-and-reliability/) given the limitation of their input sources and methodologies for data collection. But the 2023 FBI NIBRS data ain’t great either, having major law enforcement agencies (i.e., Los Angeles, California) not reporting at all. And being a “new” system, some NIBRS data entries are simply wrong (Columbia, MO had a mass shooting event where one person was killed and four wounded, but the city recorded it as five murders). Things get a bit messier since 2023 was well above average for the number of MPSs due to a pair of incidents with Asian perpetrators (which is statistically very rare), both in California (Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay).

But the ballpark numbers are “close enough” so that a deep dive in the NIBRS data provides insights about the alternate definitions for “mass shooting.”

We combed through all the competing definitions spawned by activists and media (though the difference between those groups is vague). Two commonly used definitions are:

DEFINITION 1 (DEF-1): 4+ killed, anywhere

DEFINITION 2 (DEF-2): 4+ shot though not necessarily killed

For both, the perpetrator(s) are not included in the killed/injured tallies, and the event may be associated with another crime. And, yes, DEF-2 is a superset of DEF-1.

## Age and Race

We’ll repeat it again: we hate discussing race as a factor in crime. At Gun Facts, we do not believe and have failed to find evidence that being of one or another race makes someone more prone to violence as a genetic factor.

[![Age of Mass Shooting (DEF-1) Victims, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Age-of-Mass-Shooting-DEF-1-Victims-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Age-of-Mass-Shooting-DEF-1-Victims-2023.png)[![Age of Mass Shooting (DEF-2) Victims, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Age-of-Mass-Shooting-DEF-2-Victims-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Age-of-Mass-Shooting-DEF-2-Victims-2023.png)[![Race of Mass Shooting (DEF-1) Victims, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Race-of-Mass-Shooting-DEF-1-Victims-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Race-of-Mass-Shooting-DEF-1-Victims-2023.png)[![Race of Mass Shooting (DEF-2) Victims, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Race-of-Mass-Shooting-DEF-2-Victims-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Race-of-Mass-Shooting-DEF-2-Victims-2023.png)[![Race and Age of Offenders for DEF-2 Mass Shootings, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Race-and-Age-of-Offenders-for-DEF-2-Mass-Shootings-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Race-and-Age-of-Offenders-for-DEF-2-Mass-Shootings-2023.png)[![Mass Shootings by Agency Population Group, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Mass-Shootings-by-Agency-Population-Group-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Mass-Shootings-by-Agency-Population-Group-2023.png)[![Location of Mass Shootings DEF-1, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Location-of-Mass-Shootings-DEF-1-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Location-of-Mass-Shootings-DEF-1-2023.png)[![Location of Mass Shootings DEF-2, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Location-of-Mass-Shootings-DEF-2-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Location-of-Mass-Shootings-DEF-2-2023.png)But, the numbers say that violence is committed by and perpetrated upon different races at different rates, so we have to dig into that data.

It is also important because, as the National Gang Center reported, the three primary metrics associated with street gang participation are race, age and urbanicity.

Age is doubly important because violent crime in general, and gang activity in particular, are a young man’s game. The Nation Gang Center reports that the active age for street gang activity is in the range of a person’s teens and early 20s.

As these two charts show, for mass shootings of either alternate definition, the heat is in the street gang age bracket.

The chart for DEF-2 may be the more incriminating. Watch your news feeds for events where “disputes between groups” led to an exchange of gunfire. Early reporting does not allow the media to guess if the “groups” were gangs or even gang affiliates. Hence, the media equivocates… as they should, since the mainstream media misreports too often as it is.

That then brings us to the uncomfortable analysis of race. And the data is very uncomfortable.

Among the races logged by the FBI, Blacks are victims of mass shootings at nearly three times the rate that their share of the population would otherwise predict. Whites are slightly underrepresented. And in the odd year of 2023, where there were two MPSs committed by Asians on other Asians, they are marginally overrepresented.

But it gets worse.

The 3X rate for blacks was for DEF-1, where 4+ people were killed. For DEF-2, where wounded people are included, Black victims are overrepresented at 5.5 times what their share of the population would predict.

To put it as delicately as possible, mass gun violence by assumed Black gang members/affiliates in crowded settings leads to a lot of wounded bystanders.

That’s the victims. Similar patterns appear for the offenders (perpetrators) that are known (keep in mind that the Gun Facts [Top 15 Murder County](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study showed an alarmingly low clearance rate for gun homicides in the same cities with notorious gang activity, and thus a high number of unknown perps).

For offenders, we see the same skewing associated with gang-age Blacks (the chart for DEF-1 is similar in its curves). Hence, the age and race of both mass shooting offenders and their victims are the same.

This is different from mass PUBLIC shootings where the ages and races of victim are often random, or the ages are higher (typical in workplace MPSs).

## Urbanicity

The third vector that the Nation Gang Center reported on gang demographics was the degree of urbanicity. The larger the population density, the higher the ***rate*** of gang activity.

However, we do see both confirmation about urbanicity leading to more mass shootings, but also a little divergence.

Keeping in mind that the 2023 NIBRS data is missing a few major metro areas, including all of Los Angeles, we see DEF-2 mass shootings occurring with a rate higher than their populations would predict. Yet for DEF-1 incidents, there is a rise as the jurisdictions’ population gets smaller. Since DEF-1 incidents are likely more highly targeted and focused events (i.e., out to kill specific people) and DEF-2 are more wanton, this may be understandable. Smaller population areas have less street gang participation rates and thus lack the indiscriminate shootings associated with gangs.

The important bit is that with higher populations, the ***rate*** of people being killed and wounded in mass shootings rises significantly.

## Private vs public

As the man once said, location, location, location.

We noted that the definition of the criminologist-defined mass PUBLIC shootings required that they happen in public (this includes generally publicly accessible areas like offices). The alternative definitions lack that requirement.

We see that for DEF-1 events, most occur in private, not public. Recall a mass “public” shooting in King City, California in 2024. It technically occurred in a residence front yard … and was gang related. When the definition of “mass PUBLIC shooting” was obscured by “mass shooting,” part of the increase in annual events was the inclusion of instances occurring in non-public spaces.

This is important because people have a great deal of control over what non-public place they occupy. In the King City example, it was people attending a birthday party where gang members were being targeted. This association and the location were elective. Being at the grocery store is not.

For DEF-2 incidents, the leading locations change, but it is still “on the streets” or in a residence that strongly lead in terms of mass shooting locations.

We’ll note that the broad FBI category of “Highway/Road/Alley/Street/Sidewalk” is less specific than we would like, but “street” gangs are called that for a reason, and committing violence on “streets,” “sidewalks,” in “alleys” or along “roads” completes the brand.

## Public Perception

One thing to keep in mind is that the cut-off for all definitions of “mass shooting” discussed here is four victims. Other definitions go as low as three, which would amplify most or perhaps everything you learned today.

Most people are not aware that Blacks are the number one victims of gun violence on a ***rate*** basis. They are also unaware that headlines bemoaning “mass shootings” obfuscate who is being shot and why.

### Definitions of Mass/Public Shooting and Active Shooter

**Definition / Source****Min. # of Victims (Shot)****Min. # of Victims *Killed*****Must Be *Public*****Shooter Excluded from Count****Not Part of Another Crime****Notes****Mass *PUBLIC* Shooting (CRS / Violence Project)**—≥ 4 killedYesYesYesFormal criminological/public policy definition focusing on indiscriminate firearm homicide in a public setting (used by National Institute of Justice/The Violence Project and Congressional Research Service).**Active Shooter Incident (FBI)**n/an/a (no specific fatality threshold)Typicallyn/aYesFBI defines an “active shooter” as someone “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” It *does not* require a particular number of victims and excludes self-defense, gang/drug violence, domestic disputes, etc.**Gun Violence Archive (GVA)**≥ 4 shotNone requiredNoYes (generally)NoGVA counts any incident where four or more people are shot (injured or killed), excluding the shooter. It *does not* restrict by motive or context.**Mass Shooting Tracker**≥ 4 shotNone requiredNo**May include**NoA crowdsourced site; includes any incident with four or more people shot, sometimes counts the shooter in victim totals.**Stanford MSA Data Project**≥ 3 shotNone requiredNo (context varies)YesSometimesAcademic project using a 3+ shot threshold and excluding gang/crime-related shootings.**Everytown for Gun Safety**≥ 4 shot≥ 4 killedNoYesNoEverytown defines mass shootings as incidents where at least four people are shot and killed, excluding the shooter(s); includes private and public settings.**Mother Jones (Magazine)**≥ 3 killed≥ 3 killedYesYesYesMother Jones uses a conservative definition: an indiscriminate public rampage with three or more killed by a single attacker, excluding gang, robbery, or unclear perpetrators.**CBS News (media)**≥ 5 shotn/aNoTypicallyNoSome media outlets adopt a 5+ victims shot threshold; definitions vary across outlets.**Congressional Research Service (CRS) Broad Mass Shooting (not only public)**≥ 4 shot/killed≥ 4 killedNoYesNoCRS sometimes uses a broader measure of mass shooting (not always limited to public spaces) with a 4+ killed threshold in secondary reporting.**Mass Killing (Federal Law, IAVCA 2012)**n/a≥ 3 killedNoYesYesMass **killing** is legally defined (three or more deaths in a single incident), not limited to firearms, and often used in federal policy and data programs.

Notes:

1. ***Public*** shooting events where four or more people are killed, not including perpetrator(s), within an hour, not part of another crime. [↩](#return-note-8438-1)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass public shootings, mass shootings

---

### [Scoping Gang Violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/scoping-gang-violence/)

**Published:** January 30, 2026
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

To say that gangs are the principal source of gun violence in America is akin to saying a Russian invasion is a little noisy.

We at Gun Facts have repeatedly noted that gangs cause most of the bloodshed. A new (to us) academic work helps to illustrate this and to compare with some of our estimates as well.

It’s worse than we thought in some respects.

## Take-aways

- Gun homicides are primarily street gang related.
- This violence is highly concentrated in a handful of metro areas.
- Focusing on core gang members reduces street gang gun homicides.

## Gang related… multiple definitions

We first must discuss yet another problem with criminology data consistency.

There is no single and uniformly applied definition of “gang related” for crime circumstances. Each locality applies their own… if they even bother with writing down a formal definition. Hence, any national data you have seen concerning gang-related violence is ± a lot.

How broad are the definitions? Enough so that one academic review of crime data claims that between 30-50% of homicides are gang related. That’s a wide gap, and that is far below our estimate of 85%.

Much like the concept oof “mass shootings,” the devil is in the definitions.

The “Chicago definition” holds that a homicide is gang related ***only*** when there is evidence the killing was motivated by gang concerns. Conversely, the Los Angeles definition is when gang members participate even if the motive is not clearly gang driven.

Because of this, LA will report gang-related homicides at twice the rate of Chicago.

Keep Osborn’s Law mind as we explore the data: Variables aren’t and neither are constants.

## Gang-related share of homicides

Aware of the inconsistent nature of agency reporting on gang-related homicides, Gun Facts long ago triangulated gun homicide data with the demographic profiles [1](#note-8468-1 "National Gang Center, Department of Justice") of street gang members (age, race, degree of urbanization) to come up with our own estimates (see [Gang Triangulation](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/)).

[![Percent of Homicides that are Gang Related](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Percent-of-Homicides-that-are-Gang-Related-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Percent-of-Homicides-that-are-Gang-Related.png)[![Homicide Clearence Rates, Top 15 Murder Counties, 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Homicide-Clearence-Rates-Top-15-Murder-Counties-2018-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Homicide-Clearence-Rates-Top-15-Murder-Counties-2018.png)Our estimate was much higher than others, though this is easily explained.

The academic estimates (the 30–50% range) were based on police reports. This reporting includes *only* cases where confirmed participation occurred… in other words, where the perpetrator(s) were identified.

But many of the agencies in the most murderous counties of the United Staes don’t solve many homicides and also have large street gang populations. Our [Top 15 Murder County](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study showed that homicide clearance rates can be as low as Chicago’s 35%… and they have been accused of padding their numbers [2](#note-8468-2 "”Digging into the details on Chicago’s murder clearance rate”, Chicago Sun Times, April 4, 2022") so the rate is likely lower still.

The point is that a lot of murders, and thus a lot of street gang murders, go unsolved. Nationally, 32% are not. Thus, police estimates, at least those based on agencies’ rules for classifying homicide circumstances, are lowball estimates on a good day.

But let’s take the LA definition as being more realistic. The Chicago definition (30%) requires that a murder facilitates a gang objective. But there are countless murders that were committed to fulfill gang objectives, where the police lack evidence to prove it. The LA definition is broader and only requires an offender gang member to have been involved.

Yet, the LA definition is also a lowball due to the 41% of their homicides being unresolved (at least in the year of our study).

We took a different approach that lacks instance-by-instance validation of gang involvement but does model gang demographics to the population and at least lands us in the ballpark. So, it is safe to summarize that between 50 and 85% of gun homicides are street gang related (the LA model and the Gun Facts model).

## High-Level Data about Street Gang Violence

There are many more categories of crime than just homicides. The body count does not tell us about failed homicides, negligent homicides, assaults, rapes, et cetera.

**Topic****Statistic**Cities with persistent gang homicide problems (1996–2012)65.3% of sampled citiesEstimated number of gangs (2012 rebound)~30,700Core gang member arrest rate~70% higherCore members participation in gang activities>= 2X higherRetaliation’s role in gang homicides>3X more motivatingOne review of literature [3](#note-8468-3 "Taking Stock of Gang Violence: An Overview of the Literature; Valasik, Reid; 2019") gives the high-level stats, provides a few more interesting tidbits, and (re)introduces a reality that in turn leads us to reviewing possible solutions.

At least for larger population areas, two thirds of those cities have “persistent gang homicide problems” (the obvious insult to those cities is that with such horribly low homicide clearance rates, it is no wonder that the problem is *persistent*).

This is perhaps the foundational number. When that many cities cannot get control of their street gangs or the murders committed by those gangs, the USA as a whole has an unnecessarily high murder rate, distorted by these unmanaged cities. Recall from our [Top 15 Murder County](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study that a mere 15 out of 3,140 counties have 24% of the gun murders but only 8% of the population. It is localized inability or political fecklessness in these cities that makes the country look bad.

Then there is the raw count. The literature says there are 30,700 street gangs in America, which equates to *614 different gangs for each state on average* (but there are shockingly few street gangs in Alaska, Montana, and other thinly populated regions, which then skews the number of gangs higher in more densely populated states). Keep in mind that police in major metro areas have nearly all the gangs to deal with (LA claims 400+ gangs, Phoenix 300+, Houston 300+, etc.).

The academic research shows that in large cities, 30–50% of all homicides are gang related. In large metro areas (more suburbs), only 20% of homicides are gang related. Nationally (which is skewed by those large cities) the rate is 13%.

Summarized:

- Big cities have persistent (even intergenerational) street gang problems.
- They have most of the street gangs.
- Their “gang share” of homicides is vasty higher.

And these factors may not be the biggest problem.

## Core Street Gang Members (a.k.a. Super Killers)

Within street gangs are the worst of the worst, and they come in two overlapping categories:

- **Super Killers:** This is the name Gun Facts applied to gang members who kill often and without remorse. Long ago we noticed a number of agencies making public statements along the line of “for each gang member in custody for a homicide, they are the lead suspect in 2–3 other murders.”
- **Core Members:** Gang members who are intrinsic to the gang’s structure, ethos, and activities. The also show intellectual/emotional deficiencies (e.g., low impulse control, low school performance, more truancy, etc.), aggression (e.g., more willingness to fight, low desire for rehabilitation, etc.), and group involvement (e.g., participate in spontaneous activities, contribute more to the group, desire to lead, etc.). [4](#note-8468-4 "Violent Crime, Violent Criminals; Klein, Maxson; 1989") (2006).

We do not know what the overlap is between these two groups of people, but we would not be surprised if it neared 1:1.

What is important here are the degrees of concentration of street gang mayhem.

1. Concentrated in large and major metro cities
2. Concentrated in specific neighborhoods in those cities
3. Concentrated to a few individuals within gangs in those neighborhoods

That’s why there were 617 murders in Chicago in 2023 and about the same number for the entire state of Alabama *which had twice the population*.

Core gang member arrest rate~70% higherCore members participation in gang activities>= 2X higherPer the academic reviews of “core” gang members, we see that this concentration point has a tendency to get arrested much more often than their gang peers, and we suspect they avoid many arrests because they are more alert, experienced, connected, and prepared when committing their crimes. We also see that when a gang activity (which more closely matches the Chicago definition of “gang related”) is in play, they are twice as likely to be involved.

Mathematically, these core members are a point of interest as they not only commit more of the gang murders, but also because their aberrant behaviors influence other and especially younger gang members.

They also offer the best approach to lowering street gang gun homicides and maybe cripple gang culture… which might help implode gangs themselves.

## Controlling Street Gang Homicides

Many things have been tried to reduce street gang violence, and thus street gang gun homicides. The results are varied with two being proven effective for different reasons. The primary approaches are:

1. **GET TOUGH ON CRIME IN GENERAL:** Proven effective
2. **PREVENTION THROUGH ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN:** Limited, temporary
3. **CIVIL GANG INJUNCTIONS:** Moderate
4. **SUPPRESSION:** Proven effective

America conducted a mass experiment using get-tough-on-crime laws. In the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, some such laws (mainly “truth in sentencing”) were passed and there was a measurable effect. But violent crime was still high and rising.

[![Incarceration rates, handgun supply and homicide rates 1978 thru 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b-400x293.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b.png)Between 1993 and 1996, 24 states, with more than half of the country’s population, passed habitual offender laws. These laws were designed to put people who committed multiple felonies in prison for extended periods of time, up to life (i.e., Three Strikes, 10-20-Life, etc.).

Violent crime plunged. California processed near 90,000 such people in the first decade of their 1993 law being passed, and Cali’s violent crime rate dropped from 40% above the national average down to the falling national average in that decade.

Within the population of habitual offenders are a lot of street gang members. We are unaware of any solid data that identifies how many second and third strike prison inductees were street gang members. But given their noted repeat criminal activities, this subset if likely large.

**Dimension****Prevention – Environmental****Prevention Civil Gang Injunction****Suppression (Ceasefire)**Primary mechanismAlter physical environment to reduce opportunityDisrupt gang cohesion and public associationDirect deterrence of core violent actorsTypical unit of interventionStreet layout, access controlNamed gang members + geographic safety zoneSmall number of high-risk gangs/individualsMeasured outcomeHomicides, assaultsViolent crime, individual offendingYouth homicide, gang shootingsTypical short-term effectSignificant decline while active, but …5–10% reduction in violent crime30–66% reduction in targeted violenceLong-term persistenceWeak once controls removedMixed; often fades after ~2 yearsMixed; sometimes durableLargest reported effectTemporary suppression of gang homicides during intervention18% long-term total crime reduction (best-case study)Risk of rebound/displacementHigh when environment restoredModerate; sometimes violent reorganizationModerate; depends on fidelityOf the other modes, the results are mixed. But on the surface it is obvious that the more specifically a strategy targets gangs and core gang members, the more effective it is.

Environmental changes (leveling blighted houses, blocking streets known for drive-by shootings, etc.) do work, but the effects tend to be short lived. Gangs, like any other pathogen, mutate. The centers of activity morph rapidly and the violence relocates. But the main problem is that it is not specific to gangs. The tactics are generalized to a neighborhood and not to any gangs in said neighborhood.

The first true gang-focused intervention methods are Civil Gang Injunctions (CGI). CGIs are restraining orders that prohibit gang members from engaging in proscribed antisocial behaviors within a designated area. CGI’s prohibit gang members from illegal behaviors (e.g., possession of drugs, firearms, creating graffiti, etc.) and some otherwise legal behaviors (e.g., curfew violations, associating with other gang members).

Like any program, the effects last only as long as the enforcement does. Scattered research shows that CGIs typically wane within the two years of implementation. Yes, they do reduce violent crime by about 5–10% within a CGI designated zone, and some studies show long-term reductions of 18% in total crime, though that reduction is mainly in aggravated assaults.

Where we see significant promise is with targeted suppression. Programs that use every element of local government to focus on core gang members (which includes the super killers) have deeper and longer lasting effects. [5](#note-8468-5 "Authorities inform at-risk youth that violence will be met in a fast and greatly enhanced manner. These schemes utilize a graduated scale of sanctions and resources that can be leveraged against a gang and its members at any time. Some tactics include increased scrutiny on low-level offenses, stricter enforcement by probation and parole officers, seizing assets of drug-related offenses, serving outstanding warrants, more severe terms for bail, and greater prosecutorial latitude. To make sure that the message is heard by gang members, semiformal “call-in” meetings are organized between prominent (core) gang members and the authorities, assuring attendees that violence will be answered with heightened force.")

One such program was Boston’s “Operation Ceasefire” (the Boston Gun Project). There was a 66% drop in youth homicides and an overall 31% reduction in gang shootings (which started ticking back upwards when the program was shuttered in the year 2000).

Gang activity suppression programs have two primary goals:

1. Inhibit gang member’s antisocial behavior through severe and swift punishment (i.e., specific deterrence).
2. Discourage potential gang members/associates’ antisocial behaviors through “preventive consequences of punishment” (i.e., general deterrence).

The reason it is effective is that it focuses on core street gang members and uses a problem-oriented approach where local law enforcement focuses on particular problems / gangs / core members, and applies tailored responses.

## Street Gang Gun Violence in a Nutshell

Swiftly summarizing:

- Street gangs are responsible for 50–85% of gun homicides, depending on how you define “gang related” and measure it.
- Most gang violence is committed by core members (and among them, super killers).
- This problem is extremely concentrated in a few metro areas, and within those cities, just a few neighborhoods.
- Targetting core gang members is the most effective solution even when it is a byproduct of another effort (i.e., Three Strikes).

The question is, when will all of those [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) get with the program and focus on the well-documented key problems and proven solutions?

Notes:

1. National Gang Center, Department of Justice [↩](#return-note-8468-1)
2. ”Digging into the details on Chicago’s murder clearance rate”, Chicago Sun Times, April 4, 2022 [↩](#return-note-8468-2)
3. Taking Stock of Gang Violence: An Overview of the Literature; Valasik, Reid; 2019 [↩](#return-note-8468-3)
4. Violent Crime, Violent Criminals; Klein, Maxson; 1989 [↩](#return-note-8468-4)
5. Authorities inform at-risk youth that violence will be met in a fast and greatly enhanced manner. These schemes utilize a graduated scale of sanctions and resources that can be leveraged against a gang and its members at any time. Some tactics include increased scrutiny on low-level offenses, stricter enforcement by probation and parole officers, seizing assets of drug-related offenses, serving outstanding warrants, more severe terms for bail, and greater prosecutorial latitude. To make sure that the message is heard by gang members, semiformal “call-in” meetings are organized between prominent (core) gang members and the authorities, assuring attendees that violence will be answered with heightened force. [↩](#return-note-8468-5)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** gangs, street gangs

---

### [Gun Injury Deep Dive](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-injury-deep-dive/)

**Published:** February 8, 2026
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Gun homicides are a problem, but so are non-fatal gun injuries from assaults. Yet diving into that data shows the causes are likely the same.

## Take-aways

- Non-fatal gunshot wounds tend to skew to the same demographics as gun homicides.
- The data is likely an undercount due to the same factors.

## The Problem

A lot of people get shot and don’t die.

Estimates vary a bit, but between sources like Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS) data and CDC “Fast Facts,” there are between 73,000 and 85,000 hospital emergency department visits for non-fatal gunshot injuries. On the high end, the Centers for Disease Control’s WISQARS website says there were 142,143 violence related non-fatal firearm injuries.

But that’s just people who sought hospital medical attention. It does not include visits to urgent care, under-the-radar care (doctors with revoked licenses, veterinarians working on people, off-duty nurses, etc.). Let’s toss the outliers and just say 80,000+ for the sake of simplicity.

In 2023, there were 17,927 firearm homicides. If all 80,000+ non-fatal gunshot wounds were from assaults, then injuries would be 4X that of homicides. But in the 80,000+ are accidents (a tiny number, though some “accidents” were not), self-harm (also tiny since most of these attempts go to the morgue, not the hospital), and even fewer legal interventions.

So, the 4X multiplier (actually 4.5 to be precise) is at least a solid ballpark estimate of the difference between gun homicides and assault-related gun injuries.

## The Data

Before jumping into the charts and stuff, note that we used an atypical data source. As such, it only allows for national projections of statistics. No state or county level projections are possible. Though the data is well sourced and calculations made for projections are sound, this is not a census (see the last section titled “Data Source Notes” for the details).

## Data Against Expectations

All other things being equal (which they never are), the rate of firearm [1](#note-8493-1 "The data also included BB gun injuries, and we filtered those out, looking at only firearms.") gunshot injuries should match the population. For example, women make up 50.5% of the population, so all other things being equal (which they are not) they should suffer 50.5% of all gunshot wounds.

They don’t.

Where possible, we look at the divergence between a data point’s population and the rate of firearm gunshot injuries. We express these as the rate that is under or over the population percentwise.

[![Over/Under Representation of Non-Fatal Gunshot Injuries from Assaults by Sex, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Over_Under-Representation-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Injuries-from-Assaults-by-Sex-2023-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Over_Under-Representation-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Injuries-from-Assaults-by-Sex-2023.png)[![Over/Under Representation of Non-Fatal Gunshot Injuries from Assaults by Age Group, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Over_Under-Representation-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Injuries-from-Assaults-by-Age-Group-2023-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Over_Under-Representation-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Injuries-from-Assaults-by-Age-Group-2023.png)[![Over/Under Representation of Non-Fatal Gunshot Injuries from Assaults by Race, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Over_Under-Representation-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Injuries-from-Assaults-by-Race-2023-400x278.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Over_Under-Representation-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Injuries-from-Assaults-by-Race-2023.png)[![Over/Under Representation of Non-Fatal Gunshot Injuries from Assaults by Hispanic Origin for Whites, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Over_Under-Representation-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Injuries-from-Assaults-by-Hispanic-Origin-for-Whites-2023-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Over_Under-Representation-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Injuries-from-Assaults-by-Hispanic-Origin-for-Whites-2023.png)[![Location of Non-Fatal Gunshot Wounds from Assaults, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Location-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Wounds-from-Assaults-2023-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Location-of-Non-Fatal-Gunshot-Wounds-from-Assaults-2023.png)[![Disposition of Non-Fatal Emergency Room Gunshot Wounds from Assaults, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Disposition-of-Non-Fatal-Emergency-Room-Gunshot-Wounds-from-Assaults-2023-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Disposition-of-Non-Fatal-Emergency-Room-Gunshot-Wounds-from-Assaults-2023.png)Since we started with women… they prove themselves once again to be smarter than men and avoid violence. Looking at just firearm gunshot injuries from assaults, we see that women are *under*represented for such injuries at a rate about equal to men being *over*represented. Violence is generally a man’s sport, and quadruply so for male street gang members. Hence, women (even if they associate with gangs) are less likely to catch a bullet.

We also know from decades of criminology literature that violence is especially a *young* man’s game. Outside of the 15–44-year age brackets, most every age group is *under*represented in emergency rooms catering to gunshot victims.

And that is where street gangs come in. We won’t pretend that all the red lines are gang-associated gunshot injuries. After all, most gang members are not active in their early 40s. But we know from the National Gang Center that street gang recruitment starts at age 14 and that the most “active” ages for gang activities are between 14 and 24 (by “active” we mean participating in gang activities that accomplish gang objectives). Some members continue on throughout their 20s and 30s… at least, many survivors do.

The National Gang Center notes that the four primary demographic elements of gang membership are sex (male), age (14–24), urbanicity, and race. The data we explore herein does not provide insight into urbanicity (it only tracks the size of the reporting hospitals, which might be a proxy for urbanicity, but not one we feel safe using). But it does track race.

And this is unsettling.

We have long understood that street gang activity strongly correlates with race. But that is incomplete because culture is the primary indicator of any group’s acceptance of violence as a means to ends.

Here we see the divergence in two charts. Foremost, all races *except* for blacks are underrepresented in non-fatal gunshot injuries. Blacks are astronomically overrepresented. This comports with our previous charting of victim data which shows young black males are proportionately the main victims of firearm homicides.

Every race has gangs (whites have skinheads and the Aryan Brotherhood, Asians have the Asian Boyz, etc.). But the culture in each gang concerning unilateral and reciprocal violence is different. Black gangs in America have a “fatality first” mantra, at least where it concerns inter-gang conflict.

An important distinction concerning Hispanics needs to be made here. Street gangs globally are strongly tied to immigrant populations. The United States has an annual influx of Hispanic people, which both the FBI and CDC define as “persons of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race.” A quick look at white victims subdivided as Hispanic and “white alone” (the government’s parlance, not ours) shows that there is greater violence within Hispanic communities, but at an overage rate of only 23%, which is trivial when compared to the 335% rate for blacks.

As businessmen like to say, “location, location, location!” So it is with gunshot injuries as well.

We have noted elsewhere that most street gang violence occurs in public (“on the streets,” is you will). The data for non-fatal gunshot injuries validates this yet again. For assaults, the combined locations of “streets” and “other public property” (i.e., parks) is a whopping 72% of the *known* locations.

*Known*. Hospitals are not police departments. They gather some information casually. That is why this data collection doesn’t record location for 58% of all assault-related firearm injuries. Given the data and methodologies of the system, this one set of stats is suspect, as it is also not well aligned with police reporting (see our “[Gun Violence Audit – 2025](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-violence-audit-2025/)” study).

What hospitals do diligently report on is how the victim was treated (or not). Most were admitted into the hospital from the emergency department, which indicates the severity of the injuries and also the healthcare cost involved.

But a fair number (38%) had injuries minor enough to be treated and then released, and another 2% simply left without treatment (we will assume their injuries were not too serious).

It is the first group that is a concern from a policy standpoint. The Government Accountability Office (which sounds like an oxymoron) estimated way back in 2017 that the direct taxpayer cost for treating gunshot injuries, mainly via Medicaid, was about $1 billion. They also note costs to the providers that are not covered were likely an additional 20%. The Journal of the American Medical Association (who are gun policy activists, so take their estimates with ample salt) was $1.3 billion per year over their six-year analysis.

But that is the baseline. Not reported are direct costs to the hospitals for uninsured and deadbeat victims. It also includes only emergency room visits and admissions and thus excludes after-care expenses. In short, it is not the biggest budget item for government, but a byproduct largely of bad actors.

## Data Source Notes

The data source for this rant review is “Firearm Injury Surveillance Study,

2023” (ICPSR 39644). The results are cautionary due to the systems design.

The raw data comes from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). The sample is about 100 well-chosen hospitals of various sizes and locations, selected so a reasonable projection of nationwide stats could be created.

Foremost, it is not a census like the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). As such, some weighting of data was necessary to take a lot of data from a few sources to align with national demographics. Hence, the numbers are ballpark estimates for the country.

This is also why no state (much less county) estimates can be drawn from the data.

One annoying data defect is that for incidents with unknown or undetermined intent, the intent is classified instead as “unintentional.” The medical community has some very odd logic here. They believe that (from a public-health standpoint) it is less “harmful” to under-classify intentional injuries than to mislabel ambiguous cases.

*Bovine excrement* in our opinion. There is nothing methodologically incorrect about saying “Intent unknown.” Classifying them as “unintentional” artificially inflates that category, and that is harmful in terms of public understanding of the problems. In our analysis we stuck to incidents resulting from assaults, which bypassed this defect in the data.

Notes:

1. The data also included BB gun injuries, and we filtered those out, looking at only firearms. [↩](#return-note-8493-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** gun injuries, non-fatal gun injuries

---

### [Gun Homicides by Household](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-homicides-by-household/)

**Published:** May 11, 2025
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

How many household guns are used in homicides? Nearly none.

## Takeaways

- Aside from career crimes and gang related activities, 0.004% of households with guns are involved in gun homicides.

## What Started This Analysis

A podcast interviewer sent me a set of questions with which to prep, and he asked about private gun ownership and crime in a way I had not seen phrased before. Given some advances in data and insights into gun homicides, I felt the open question needed to be addressed.

The core question was: “Outside of intentional or spontaneous criminal activities (gangs, robberies, burglaries, aggravated assaults, etc.) what percentage of private gun owners committed a gun homicide?”

## Walking Down The Data Highway

First off, we are going to look at household gun ownership rates as opposed to individual person ownership rates. There are an average of 2.5 people per household. Hence, a household with a gun offers 2+ people an opportunity to misuse a gun. As such, it is a better measure of potential danger.

We use 2022 data because that is the most recent NIBRS data we have loaded into our internal Gun Facts data warehouse (yes, we are underfunded, understaffed, and thus behind schedule).

In that year the CDC reports 19,651 gun homicides. From that total we cut out criminal activities to get down to the homicides that are not part of the typical household lifestyle.

First off are gang homicides, the lion’s share of all gun murders. Because the FBI has very strict rules about codifying the circumstances of crimes [1](#note-8210-1 "Though the FBI does not define the criteria for "gang related""), the categories of “unknown” and “argument” take up 67% of all homicides and “gang” related murders only 4%.

Anyone reading the news knows that the 4% number is wildly inaccurate. But a detective has to find an irrefutable connection to gang affiliation and activity to classify a murder as “gang related,” and gang members are notoriously uncooperative.

Back in 2021 we [triangulated data from the National Gang Center](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/) and the CDC, along with some boundary checks, and concluded that 85% of gun homicides were gang related or nexus. Subtracting that, we have 2,948 remaining gun homicides. Comparatively speaking, that isn’t much for a nation of 341,534,046 people (2022).

19,651Gun homicides 2022 (CDC)16,703Estimated gang gun homicides2,948Non-gang gun homicides831Estimated crime-related gun homicides or residual (NIBRS) 2,116Non-gang, non-crime gun homicides131,200,000Households in the US in 202243%Percent of households with one or more guns56,416,000Households with guns0.004%Rate of gun homicides per gun owning householdBut there are other crimes aside from gang warfare. The National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the replacement for the long-standing FBI Uniform Crime Reporting system, tells us that 28.2% of homicides were associated with other crimes (aggravated assault, robbery, drug/narcotic, kidnapping, burglary, and on and on). Subtracting these from the remaining gun homicides leaves us with 2,116, or about 42 gun homicides per state per year that are not part of other crimes or gang activities.

That ain’t a lot.

Especially when you consider that there were 131,200,000 households in the U.S. that year.

Not every house owns a gun. Major polling companies (Pew, ABC, Gallop, etc.) have shown a consistent 43% household gun ownership rate over the decades. That means there are about 56,416,000 households with guns (and thus about 141,040,000 people who have access to one, but let’s stick to household numbers for now).

When you divide the residual non-crime and non-gang gun homicides by the number of gun owning households, we derive a gun household homicide rate of 0.004%.

## So What?

The all-too-common meme that gun availability leads to gun homicides has no nuance at all, and thus is wholly inaccurate. The data shows instead that the typical gun owner isn’t likely at all to commit spontaneous “crimes of passion” or have a sudden interest in a new career in armed robbery.

It does mean we know where to focus if we want less bloodshed.

Notes:

1. Though the FBI does not define the criteria for "gang related" [↩](#return-note-8210-1)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns

**Tags:** crime guns, gun homicides

---

### [Gang Triangulation](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/)

**Published:** September 25, 2021
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

When it comes to gun violence, it’s tough to beat street gangs. They have made a sport of it.

But the spooky question has been, “How much gun violence is gang violence?” Thanks to a little triangulation on our part, we think it is *amplissimum*.

## Major Take-aways

- Gangs likely constitute 85% of firearm homicides in the US.
- There is a close correlation between metropolitan gang-age homicides and estimates of gang populations by degrees of urbanization.

## The Data Dearth

For all the great scorekeeping the FBI does, when it comes to murder, they have understandable gaps.

Every year the FBI reports on the circumstances that led to a homicide, in their *Expanded Homicide Tables*. There are two rows of data that list what police were absolutely certain were gang related murders. [1](#note-6564-1 "The FBI does not define or enforce the criteria for "gang related", which means the ratio of gun homicides that are gang related differ from agency to agency.")

4%Gangland and Juvenile Gang Killings24%Arguments (other)41%Unknown*Source: FBI Expanded Homicide Table 11, 2019*Combined, those two rows of definitive gang homicides make a measly 4% of homicides. This is because police are only allowed to classify circumstances for which they are *certain* about the origins. This is why the category “unknown” is always the largest bucket for murders. Likewise, if people near the murder heard an argument before the gunshot, police can classify the circumstance as “argument,” though it could have been an argument between gang members, over turf, over drug distribution territory, et cetera.

The fact is that many of the *argument* and *unknown* circumstances are gang related. So, we tried to ballpark gang homicides by triangulation.

## Crips and Bloods

A popular documentary details the historic feud between two street gangs, the [Crips and the Bloods](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479044/). The documentary asserts that in the 30-year war between these gangs, they have killed 15,000 of each other. For contrast’s sake, there were “only” 2,401 U.S. military deaths in the 20-year Afghanistan war. That makes the Crips and the Bloods about four times as deadly on a year-in, year-out basis.

\[EDITOR NOTE: We reached out to the documentary’s director to learn the source of their estimate, but at the time of this writing they had not responded.\]

This brings home the point that any homicide detective in a major metropolitan area will make: most of the homicides there are gang related in some fashion. They question remains, though – how many is that?

## Triangulations

What we know from data is that:

- Street gangs are largely based in metropolitan areas.
- The primary age range for street gang activity is between 15 and 30.

Distribution of Gang MembersDistribution of Firearm Homicides (gang ages)DifferenceRural Counties2.70%3.1%0.4%Suburban Counties24.40%22.2%-2.2%Smaller Cities15.60%5.7%-9.9%Larger Cities57.30%69.0%11.7%### Gang Penetration Rates and Firearm Homicide Rates

Thanks to two data sources – the Center for Disease Control mortality databases and the National Youth Gang Survey – we can compare firearm homicide stats with gang penetration stats and see if they align.

They do, at a 96% correlation level.

This alignment is important to the rest of the analysis. If the degree of street gang membership did not agree with the degree of firearm homicides, then there would be no possible cause and effect (confounding variables, though, might apply). But such a strong covariance (0.96 using *R*2) indicates that the two are not divorced. In other words, if gangs were not a primary source of firearm homicides, then areas where street gangs were rare would also have higher firearm homicide rates, which they don’t. [2](#note-6564-2 "We had to recategorize the CDC’s firearm homicide data from their urbanization categories –­ Large Central Metro, Large Fringe Metro, Medium Metro, Small Metro, Micropolitan (Nonmetro), NonCore (Nonmetro) – to those used by the National Youth Gang Survey.")

### Gang Membership Rates to Documentary Claim

In the year 2012, there were an estimated 850,000 street gang members in the United States. [3](#note-6564-3 "”Measuring the Extent of Gang Problems,” National Gang Center, 2012.") The estimates fluctuate from year to year, but they were at the same level in 1996. Despite a growing population, street gang participation remained fairly constant.

Wikipedia reports that combined, the Crips and the Bloods have about 55,000 members, or about 6.5% of all American gangsters. If the estimate provided by the documentary is anywhere near accurate, and assuming that the Crips and the Bloods are not staggeringly more homicidal than other street gangs, their share of gang homicides should be about the same as their share of gang memberships.

With 15,000 hits over 30 years, this equates to 500 per year for these two gangs (just between them… no telling how many innocent people or members of different gangs were victims). In the most recent year for which data was available, there were 9,063 firearm homicides. The Crips and Bloods count of 500 (average annual) is 5.5% of the firearm homicide rate, which is close to the estimated 6.5% membership rate among gangs.

Now, there are wild variables here. Not every gang member is a murderer, but some members make up for that deficit by killing repeatedly. We’ll accept these variations since we are only trying to ballpark an estimate.

7,227Murders by other gang members7,727Total gang murder estimate85%% of total firearm homicidesWhen we take this analysis and apply it to the members of gangs other than the Crips and Bloods, and assume they are roughly as homicidal, the math works out that roughly 85% of firearm homicides are gang related.

It may or may not be fair to say that most gunshot wounds are gang related as well. Security camera footage of drive-by shootings where multiple people are injured would lead one to this belief. But, alas, there is no solid way we at the Gun Facts project have yet discovered to triangulate such, and the CDC’s WISQARS reporting system is not transparent on firearm injuries. But let’s say that the odds are high… as high as Snoop Dogg, who was a Crip… that most inflicted gunshot injuries are gang related.

## What All These Numbing Numbers Really Mean

Even if this triangulation is fractionally off, it still shows that in terms of gun violence, the single largest contributing factor is street gangs. This is not news; criminologists have been noting it for years.

So why isn’t this problem the priority for politicians? Because they only care about poor people of color at election time. The rest of their term, while they are hobnobbing with wealthy donors and powerful politicos, they are content to let otherwise good but poor people get caught in gang crossfire.

## UPDATE: What if there were no gang homicides

5.4US with gang homicides0.8US Without gang homicides1.2UK0.9Australia1.4France1.2GermanySource: UN Office on Drugs and Crime.One astute reader asked this basic question. Since [America has a much higher gang participation rate than other countries](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gangs-and-guns/), and our gangs (as demonstrated by the Crips and Bloods saga) are much more homicidal than gangs elsewhere, what would happen if America could magically eliminate gang homicides.

A lot. Using U.N. crime data (because it is normalized across countries, for 2016 (the same year as the most recent CDC data is available for comparison sake), we see the U.S. homicide rate fall to be inline with other first-word, western industrialized nations.

## UPDATE 2: 100X homicide rate for gang

One criminology paper [4](#note-6564-4 "On the Validity and Reliability of Gang Homicide: A Comparison of Disparate Sources; Decker, Pyrooz; 2010") states that “gang homicide rates are estimated at up to 100 times that of the broader population.”

## UPDATE 3: Gang Density and Homicides

[![CRIME AND GUNS - Street Gang Density and Homicides Frequency](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Street-Gang-Density-and-Homicides-7-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Street-Gang-Density-and-Homicides-7.png)We we alerted to an older study [5](#note-6564-5 ""The effect of urban street gang densities on small area homicide incidence in a large metropolitan county, 1994–2002"; Robinson, Boscardin, George, Teklhaimanot, Heslin, Bluthenthal ;Journal of Urban Health; 2009") that looked at homicide frequencies depending on how many active street gangs were in a 2-square mile area. There is a nearly 20X increase in homicides from having no gangs present to having upwards of 30.

Notes:

1. The FBI does not define or enforce the criteria for "gang related", which means the ratio of gun homicides that are gang related differ from agency to agency. [↩](#return-note-6564-1)
2. We had to recategorize the CDC’s firearm homicide data from their urbanization categories –­ Large Central Metro, Large Fringe Metro, Medium Metro, Small Metro, Micropolitan (Nonmetro), NonCore (Nonmetro) – to those used by the National Youth Gang Survey. [↩](#return-note-6564-2)
3. ”Measuring the Extent of Gang Problems,” National Gang Center, 2012. [↩](#return-note-6564-3)
4. On the Validity and Reliability of Gang Homicide: A Comparison of Disparate Sources; Decker, Pyrooz; 2010 [↩](#return-note-6564-4)
5. "The effect of urban street gang densities on small area homicide incidence in a large metropolitan county, 1994–2002"; Robinson, Boscardin, George, Teklhaimanot, Heslin, Bluthenthal ;Journal of Urban Health; 2009 [↩](#return-note-6564-5)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** gangs, guns, homicides, murder

---

### [City Size and Police Professionalism](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/city-size-and-police-professionalism/)

**Published:** November 25, 2025
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Local culture, local economics, and perhaps local police professionalism may be key drivers to lower gun homicide rates … even when the potential for street gang activity is high.

## Take-Aways

- Some, slightly fragile, indication that the professionalism of a law enforcement agency is associated with lower gun murder rates

## Cops and Gangs

In our rather detailed [Top 15 Murder County](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study, we noticed that among the most murderous counties, there was a combination of low police staffing and a high percentage of the population that were males of street gang age. With new and very detailed data via the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), we thought to look at cities instead of counties, knowing that core cities (Chicago) more that the surrounding county (Cook County) might offer some validation of what we saw at the county level.

But … nothing is that straightforward.

Crime data remains messy. Less messy than in the early days of the FBI’s switch-over form the long-standing Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to the new and expansive National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). But the most recent NIBRS data (as of this writing) is for 2023 and there are significant problems.

Such as Los Angeles and Phoenix not reporting that year.

That alone is over 3% of the national population. When we look at smaller metropolises, San Francisco and Tucson are AWOL (another Cali–Ariz combo). Smaller yet, New Orleans, Oakland, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Saint Petersburg are absent too.

The word here is “take this analysis as fragile around the edges.”

## Gangs and Cops are Not All The Same

Within the [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/), the correlation of low police staffing and a high percentage of the population being in the primary street gang demographics [1](#note-8421-1 "Nation gang Center") was strong. Yet, this association did not appear universal elsewhere, so we wanted to test it along with another hunch we had: does the degree of professionalism of a police force have an effect?

That last one was important because while scanning the data we saw cities with significant populations, lowish police staffing, and ample street gang potential, but they had lower gun homicide rates. Granted, there are a lot of other variables that help explain differences. Los Angeles and San Diego counties are in California – and thus live under the same gun control laws – but they have different economies, with the latter being better off and their gun homicide rate being lower. LA has more people while SD has a higher median household income, etc, etc.

But LA’s police department has a “reputation.”\[ED: Gun Facts founder Guy Smith grew up around cops, married into a police family, and notes that every officer outside of LA whom he has spoken with thinks LAPD is a criminal organization.\] LA also has a major gun violence disorder. SDPD lacks LA’s reputation and LA’s murder fettish.

Therefore, the “professionalism” of an agency *might* have some effect on the level of gun violence. Recall that Cook County (Chicago) had an abysmal homicide clearence rate. That lack of police efficacy literally allows murders to stay on the streets. Other large cities with better police departments and higher clearance rates typically had lower gun homicide rates even when the potential for gang membership was just as high.

### But … the data is very messy

We are seldom surprised by the state of available data, which ranges from okay to horrible. But in this case it was practically nonexistent.

There is no consistent national system for measuring the quality of police departments. There are data collections like Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS), which has interesting data that we could (and tried) to build a model from. But LEMAS is fed by voluntary submissions and thus woefully incomplete (about 3,400 entries for over 18,000 law enforcement agencies, and many of those that did report are smaller agencies and not very useful here).

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/CALEA-accredidation-checklist-400x242.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/CALEA-accredidation-checklist.png)[![Gun Homicide, Police Staffing and Gang-Age Males by population group, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gun-Homicide-Police-Staffing-and-Gang-Age-Males-by-population-group-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gun-Homicide-Police-Staffing-and-Gang-Age-Males-by-population-group-2023.png)[![Gun Homicide, Police Staffing and Gang-Age Males, Cities 1M+ Pop, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gun-Homicide-Police-Staffing-and-Gang-Age-Males-Cities-1M-Pop-2023-400x301.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gun-Homicide-Police-Staffing-and-Gang-Age-Males-Cities-1M-Pop-2023.png)[![Gun Homicide, Police Staffing and Gang-Age Males, Cities 500K - 1M Pop, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gun-Homicide-Police-Staffing-and-Gang-Age-Males-Cities-500K-1M-Pop-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gun-Homicide-Police-Staffing-and-Gang-Age-Males-Cities-500K-1M-Pop-2023.png)[![Gun Homicide, Police Staffing and Gang-Age Males, Cities 250K - 500K Pop, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gun-Homicide-Police-Staffing-and-Gang-Age-Males-Cities-250K-500K-Pop-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gun-Homicide-Police-Staffing-and-Gang-Age-Males-Cities-250K-500K-Pop-2023.png)The only close-enough-for-government-work proxy we found was the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) certification program. Yet, they have only 553 agencies in their most recent dataset; but interestingly, the gaps are fewer for larger agencies. This makes some *minimal* perspective possible.

## All Cities, All Gangs, One Big City Problem

Among all the population groups defined within NIBRS, we see an unexpected data pattern with one huge caveat.

A number of large agencies had not reported crime data into NIBRS in 2023, the most recent year of data as of this writing. Los Angeles is MIA. So too are Orlando, Phoenix and others. This is the core of the problem on the left side of the chart where the biggest cities (with typically the largest street gang presence) falsely appear to have lower gun homicide rates and fewer potential street gang members.

Among the biggest cities, those with a population of more than a million folk, and the few that reported into NIBRS, we see several opposing trends. Though the number of street-gang-aged males is consistent across them, the gun homicide rate and the number of police officers per capita declines. Again, many factors can explain this, including economics, local court and prosecutor attitudes, and more. But it does illustrate the point that either or both agency staffing and the *potential* for street gang membership are not the only important variables.

The pattern repeats in more detail within the next population group, cities with between 500,000 and one million residents. Potential street gang member rates are all but level, yet gun murders and police staffing decline.

The same pattern replays in the next population group as well. But we have to go back to the original observation from our [Top 15 Murder County](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study – that low police staffing and high street gang potential was covariant with high gun murder rates and low clearance rates. Staffing is but one aspect of an agency’s ability to combat crime, including gun crime. An agency can be proactive in fighting crime or reactive. The more “professional” an agency is, the more likely it is to do well on both fronts.

In the chart above, the agencies that were accredited by CALEA are cross-hatched. It is an imperfect fit, but the general trend for gun murder rates – regardless of the availability of street gang candidates – matches agency “professionalism.” In this chart, for the next population group, the same rough fit applies.

Here is a single comparison to illustrate the point: Cook County (Chicago) is a “large metro” county with 3.3 officers for every 1,000 residents. So is Denver County, Colorado. Cook had a firearm homicide rate of 9.8 and Denver 7.5.

It is a big assumption, but for a moment assume that the professionalism of non-accredited agencies is roughly equal to that of similar sized agencies. The number of officers per capita becomes less important than the effectiveness of agency as a whole.

## Proper Execution

As advised, take this text as advisory. The data is weak, no confounding variables were used, yada, yada, yada. But there is some indication that how an agency is staffed, trained, and monitored affects its professionalism, and that in turns drives gun violence down.

We have identified sets of non-gold standard data and will evaluate them down the road. Perhaps we can cobble together a robust scorecard of police agency professionalism and test all this again.

Notes:

1. Nation gang Center [↩](#return-note-8421-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** gangs, police, professionalism

---

### [Gun Violence Audit – 2025](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-violence-audit-2025/)

**Published:** October 19, 2025
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

You have to be a little crazy to take gun violence analysis to the extremes we do.

This article, an audit of many things we can derive from the FBI’s database of 13,916,425 crime victims in 2023, is just the latest example of our data derangement.

## Take-aways

- 87% of gun crimes result in no or only minor injuries. Deaths occur in 10% and serious injuries in 3%.
- Only 40% of gun crime offenders are arrested in the same year.
- Arrest rates fall sharply in high-population counties.

## Wholesale Data

We have a project at Gun Facts that we jokingly named “Data Whore” while conceptualizing it. Unfortunately, the name stuck, and it appears in too many places within our internal systems to change now.

The goal was to establish a database system (PostgreSQL, for the geeks out there) to load in long-term data and thus be able to correctly extract details at whatever level is needed. Thus far we have FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports going back to 1976, some county-level population and demographic dope, and two years of the FBI’s new National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).

Compared to the old Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system, NIBRS is massive. Data rich. Many more detailed variables. Which is why when the FBI switched to NIBRS in 2021, during the pandemic, the underreporting level was staggering. Underreporting by agencies across the country was so bad that we did not bother loading the 2021 data into DataWhore.

[![Months Reporting to NIBRS by Agency Type, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Months-Reporting-to-NIBRS-by-Agency-Type-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Months-Reporting-to-NIBRS-by-Agency-Type-2023.png)By 2023, reporting was robust – 97.6% of all agencies reported all 12 months. There are many other types of agencies than just city, county, and state police, but they either report to other agencies (“covered by” in NIBRS parlance), or are small/specialized agencies (college campus, tribal lands, etc.) that as a percentage of the population are tiny. For this analysis, we largely stick to the three primary agency types.

But then again, Los Angeles.

They did not transition to NIBRS until March of 2024. Hence, the region known as the “gangsta paradise” is not in the 2023 data on which this study is based. With a population of 3.9 million people, or about 2.8% of the US population, that’s quite a gap, at least for California.

## What Types of Gun Crimes

All gun crime is important, but some crimes involve guns either often or rarely.

[![Percent Gun Use by Crime Type, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Percent-Gun-Use-by-Crime-Type-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Percent-Gun-Use-by-Crime-Type-2023.png)[![Aggravated assaults with Firearms above and below the national average 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Aggravated-assaults-with-Firearms-above-and-below-the-national-average-2023-400x284.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Aggravated-assaults-with-Firearms-above-and-below-the-national-average-2023.png)[![Simple assaults with firearms above and below the national average 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Simple-assaults-with-firearms-above-and-below-the-national-average-2023-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Simple-assaults-with-firearms-above-and-below-the-national-average-2023.png)[![Negligent manslaughter with firearms above and below the national average, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Negligent-manslaughter-with-firearms-above-and-below-the-national-average-2023-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Negligent-manslaughter-with-firearms-above-and-below-the-national-average-2023.png)Across all states, we see many unsurprising things and one cute FBI classification anomaly.

For reasons I can understand but dislike, “Justifiable Homicides” get captured as “crimes.” I get it – you want consistent and robust reporting of any time someone gets shot (including by police). And often a justifiable homicide is initially classified as a homicide while the investigation is conducted. But still…

This chart shows what percentage of each type of crime involves a firearm. Unsurprisingly, guns figure into murders and non-negligent manslaughter most frequently. But after murder are weapons law violations, which include unlicensed public carry, unlawful possession, inappropriate brandish or discharge, illegal sale or distribution, illegal manufacturing, possessing outlawed weapon types, and possession in a restricted location. Aside from intimidating discharges, though, none of these are crimes of violence or even property crimes.

A wrinkle is that the rate of gun use in each crime category is inconsistent from state to state without any strong correlations. This subset highlights when a state has a rate of gun use in a crime category 10% or higher than the national average.

Looking at just state differences, without diving deeper into demographics and such, should be taken lightly. But it is worth exploring since some types of crime where guns figure into the picture matter, and the spread of the rate of gun use is significantly different.

Aggravated assaults [1](#note-8363-1 "Unlawful attack intended to inflict severe or aggravated bodily injury") are heavily concentrated in the Southeast, though some of the rust belt states are prone to using guns to assault people.

But those are attacks with intent to do serious harm. Simple assaults [2](#note-8363-2 "physical attack where no weapon is displayed and the victim does not suffer “obvious severe or aggravated” injury") are another story.

These cases where harm was not the original intent, but guns come into play, show a few interesting elements. Illinois (Chicago) is, of course, a hot spot where spontaneous street gang interactions are hourly occurrences. Likewise with Missouri, which has significant gang problems in a couple of cities, mainly St. Louis.

The most interesting bit is the West Coast. Whereas they were below averages for aggravated assaults with guns, they are above with simple assaults escalating to gun use (this despite California, Oregon, and Washington State’s collective braggadocio about local gun control laws). Like in other states, large metro areas drive violence curves and the type of violence is influenced by local culture and local law enforcement presence.

The last curiosity chart involves when someone died from unintentional gun fire. “Negligent Manslaughter” is a rather broad category, ranging from hunting accidents, to a small child who found a loaded gun, to your weird cousin Cletus who looked down the barrel of the gun he was cleaning. Though these deaths skewed a little to the South, the Idaho and Nevada band show likely differing causes. So too with pinkish New York and West Virginia (for the record, New York was 4.6% above the national average while West Virginia was “only” 4.0% above).

In a future study, we’ll explore these differences in rates of specific crimes with guns against gun ownership rates, demographics, and more. But our past investigations of state-level comparisons have been inconsistent and inconclusive, mainly due to the combination of most violence being centered in major metropolitan areas and reactive changes in policing due to violence (except for Chicago, which is perpetually violent, and which perpetually understaffs their PD).

## When a Gun Crime is not a Gun Crime

As we noted above, “weapon law violations” were the second largest actual crime category in the database. But we know from long experience that such violations are “add on” charges when someone is busted for a different crime (e.g., burglary) and the cops find them with a gun they should not have (i.e., felon in possession).

[![Crimes and those where gun law violations occurred, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Crimes-and-those-where-gun-law-violations-occurred-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Crimes-and-those-where-gun-law-violations-occurred-2023.png)[![Weapons Charges and Active Gang Age Males, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Weapons-Charges-and-Active-Gang-Age-Males-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Weapons-Charges-and-Active-Gang-Age-Males-2023.png)[![Weapon Law Violations and Population Groups, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Weapon-Law-Violations-and-Population-Groups-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Weapon-Law-Violations-and-Population-Groups-2023.png)[![Average Killed or Seriously Wounded per Incident by Race, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Average-Killed-or-Seriously-Wounded-per-Incident-by-Race-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Average-Killed-or-Seriously-Wounded-per-Incident-by-Race-2023.png)The data shows that a few categories of primary crime (first offense logged) have “weapon law violations” as secondary or tertiary offenses.

All in all, 28% of the time when a “gun crime” is a “weapon law violation” it was an add-on charge.

Some of these are pretty obvious (murder, 5.5% of the time), while others are not (stolen property, 3.3%). The point is that the top-line “gun crime” statistics reported by some activist groups may be overstated when they include these add-on charges.

But weapon law violations are often enough crimes on their own, and this chart shows the percentage of crimes where the primary charge was a weapon law violation against each state’s overall population and their street gang male population for the most active ages for street gang activity, ages 14 through 24.Ther are minor differences in the curves, but there are plenty of oddities to consider. For example, the huge spike is Washington, DC, which on a per capita basis is the Murder Capital of the United States.

When we dig in a little more, we see that the rate of primary offense weapon law violations in each state compared to the number of males of street gang age is very inconsistent. In California, the rate of busting a male in the gang-active age group is low compared to that population. In Texas, that rate is inverted.

There are a myriad of explanations for this, but one is that if local law enforcement is focused on street gangs or their members, and in a way that allows interdiction before the young male does something more serious than a weapons law violation (i.e., advances from carrying concealed illegally to killing someone). For now, this view is advisory at best.

## Race and Injury

At Gun Facts, we loathe discussing race. But we must because the numbers tell us there are differences in outcomes.

We had noticed an increasing rate of “dueling confrontation shootings” in metro areas, where two or more people started arguing in a very public setting and then exchanged gun fire. Innocent bystanders are killed or injured.

We see in the data that the maximum number of people killed or seriously injured in violent gun crimes varies a little among races that are a significant part of the population (counts for native Americans and Pacific Islanders are low in large part to their low population totals). But the divergence between whites, blacks and Asians is of interest. The average number of people killed or injured in any event is nearly twice as much for blacks as for whites, but almost non-existent for Asians.

We know from the National Gang Center that blacks are over-represented in street gangs, and the anecdotal evidences cited above, which may be manifestations of gang culture, could explain the increaed death/injury rates for violent gun crimes with blacks.

## Injury Types From Gun Violence

Speaking of injuries, they are not the same and are not the same for each type of crime. For example, only 14% of aggravated assaults where a gun was involved cause serious injuries [3](#note-8363-3 "Do understand that if someone dies, the crime then is classified as a homicide.")

[![Injuries in Violent Crimes Where a Gun was Used, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Injuries-in-Violent-Crimes-Where-a-Gun-was-Used-2023-400x360.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Injuries-in-Violent-Crimes-Where-a-Gun-was-Used-2023.png)Where a gun is involved, nearly 60% of the time there are no injuries at all. But that is mainly because robberies (income-producing activities) and aggravated assaults (spontaneous hot-head crimes) might only involve brandishing a gun.

Going around the pie chart we see that some injuries were not even classified, and we at Gun Facts suspect they were so minor they did not warrant investigators classifying them. We have to roll past “minor injuries” to see that less than 10% of violent crimes involving guns resulted in death. Crime, violence, and guns in crime are still a problem, but the relative rate of death to non-injuries or just minor injuries is stark.

How stark? Of violent crimes involving a gun:

- None and minor injuries: 87%
- Death: 10%
- Serious injuries: 3%

## Catching Criminals

As a country, we don’t do a great job in catching gun crime perpetrators, though the degree is highly variable between the states.

Nationally, only 40% of offenders who committed crimes with guns are arrested in the same year. In some ways, this is understandable. Criminals strive to avoid it. Witnesses are often unwilling to cooperate or are unreliable. And police staffing is not robust. In short, a lot of gun-using criminals get away with it.

The arrest rate varies highly with both the state (and locality, though we are not digging that deep in this study) and the type of crime in which guns are involved.

[![Percent of Gun Crime Offenders Arrested, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Percent-of-Gun-Crime-Offenders-Arrested-2023-400x285.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Percent-of-Gun-Crime-Offenders-Arrested-2023.png)[![Percent of Gun Crime Offenders Arrested, 2023 - bar chart](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Percent-of-Gun-Crime-Offenders-Arrested-2023-bar-chart-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Percent-of-Gun-Crime-Offenders-Arrested-2023-bar-chart.png)[![Firearm Homicide Victims, Offenders, Arrestees by Population, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Homicide-Victims-Offenders-Arrestees-by-Population-2023-400x277.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Homicide-Victims-Offenders-Arrestees-by-Population-2023.png)[![Average Gun Use Offenders Per Incident by Crime Type, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Average-Gun-Use-Offenders-Per-Incident-by-Crime-Type-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Average-Gun-Use-Offenders-Per-Incident-by-Crime-Type-2023.png)Vermont is the most successful with 68% of their gun-using perps being arrested. But Vermont is cold and sparsely populated compared to many states, and the people are nearly Canadian in their politeness. These factors matter.

On the opposite end is Washington, DC with an abysmal 18% of perps being caught, which helps explain why the seat of the federal government is routinely the murder capital of the country. But they are slightly better than New Mexico at 17%.

More disheartening is that the forms of direct violence against a person are where we make the fewest arrests.

Rape could be discounted since guns are very rarely used to commit rape (perps mainly rely on brute force and knives). Yes, aggravated assaults, murder, and negligent homicides result in far fewer arrests than drug running and carjacking.

Most concerning, though, is the “big city” issue. It is well understood that counties with large metro cities rank higher for gun crimes. As we showed in our [Top 15 Murder County study](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/), some of these metro areas have both high street gang activity and lower police staffing. This is a uniquely dangerous combo.

Interestingly, the rate of murder or non-negligent homicide victims for each incident where anyone dies from guns (sans suicides) is higher in smaller population counties. And the number of offenders per incident rises slightly with the population, a trademark of gang conflict shootings. But the rate of arrestees for reported offenders drops off sharply in highest population counties. In short, more gangs, more offenders, fewer arrests.

## Multiple Perps

We have noticed recurring events where two or more people start shooting at one another in public. We also know from old literature that some career criminality can involve “partners” toting guns.

When we look at the average number of armed perps for various types of crimes, we see things expected and not expected.

Crime types with higher average perpetrator counts include the expected: robberies (two dudes hold up a liquor store), vehicle theft (think carjacking). Others are seemingly odd, including gambling crimes, purse-snatching, and ATM fraud (we omitted from the chart “betting/wagering” which averaged four perps per instance).

Halfway down the list came murder and negligent manslaughter. These make sense inasmuch as most instances are unilateral violence, not a team sport. But still, these had an average of 1.4 perpetrators.

## Race and Arrests

We at Gun Facts ***hate*** discussing race. Our conclusion is that there is no biological determinism connecting race to violence.

But numbers don’t lie, and there are disproportionate violence and responses to violence between races. We have covered this quite a bit, so in this study we aren’t going to explore the degrees of violence by race.

We will, however, explore how law enforcement responds after violence is committed.

[![Victims and Offenders for Gun Crimes, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Victims-and-Offenders-for-Gun-Crimes-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Victims-and-Offenders-for-Gun-Crimes-2023.png)One thing to understand is that, by and large, people kill within their own race, their own age groups, and their own geographies. Hence, a simple review of gun violence chaining the number of reported offenders of the same race, and then the number of arrestees of the same race, gives us an idea of disparities in how effective law enforcement may be.

Several things are worth noting. Among whites, the number of reported offenders who were white is low. There are several reasons for this, the main one being that as the majority race in the United States, the raw probability of being a victim of any crime is higher for whites. This includes violent encounters (i.e., aggravated assaults) with non-whites.

But notice that the rate of arrests of white offenders is higher than that for black victims of black offenders. There are many reasons that have been proffered over the decades for this, including:

- Different cooperation rates for different races
- Geographic economic differences for races, allowing some regions/races to have better police departments
- “Localized justice” in some communities where the police and courts are not trusted, and retaliatory actions are condoned (which compounds the problem)

We at Gun Facts don’t have hard statistical data these assumptions, but anecdotal evidence and conversations we have had with investigators lead us to believe these are relevant factors.

## Where Gun Violence Occurs

Since we know from stats and criminology literature that most street gang violence occurs in public, and since one of the major predictors of street gang participation is race (along with age and urbanicity), where gun violence occurs is something worth exploring.

[![Firearm Homicides by Race and Location, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Homicides-by-Race-and-Location-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Homicides-by-Race-and-Location-2023.png)Ignore (if you can) the high rates of public gun play for Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. They are a tiny fraction (0.2%) of the population, and thus any small number of incidents of gun violence could heavily skew the rate of violence, including where the violence occurs. We also have to gulp hard when noting that over half of gun murders and non-negligent homicides where the perpetrator is unknown (no witnesses or silent ones) occur in public places, which combined might indicate they are of gang culture circumstances.

Next, we start to see divisions. For whites, 26% of their gun murders occur in the top two public places (Highway/Road/Alley/Street/Sidewalk and Parking Lot/Garage) while for blacks it is 40%. Excluding the Hawaiian/Pacific-Islander outlier, blacks kill in public at nearly twice the rate than other races (40% versus an average of 22% for all non-outlier races).

## Where Gun Crimes Go Unresolved

In our big study concerning the [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/), we noted that the worst places for gun murders were major metropolitan cities with low police staffing and high street gang activity.

[![Murder Victims, Offenders, Arrestees by City Populations, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Murder-Victims-Offenders-Arrestees-by-City-Populations-2023-400x292.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Murder-Victims-Offenders-Arrestees-by-City-Populations-2023.png)This is shown more clearly when we look at the shortfalls for offenders being described to investigators, and between the number of offenders described and the subsequent number of arrests.

America’s largest cities have the worst record in terms of offenders being documented by police and for arrests per number of offenders. This might be caused by a number of factors, the most important likely being:

- Understaffing of police departments, which not only reduces street-level deterrence but also implies a department-wide inability to investigate and make arrests.
- Subcultures in metro areas where no-snitching rules and high street gang activity rates impede what few investigative hours are made.

## Age and Location Matter

Where a gun crime occurs, and what type of crime it is, exposes some of the age elements we see in the data elsewhere.

We know from other research that most street gang violence occurs, well, on the streets. This is fairly clear on this chart. Street homicides rise more sharply in the active gang ages (ages 14 through 22). Once middle age is achieved, street homicides are well below total homicides in terms of curve chapes.

A deeper look helps confirm this. Between public and private locations and some types of personal violence, there are many “hot spots” (bold, red numbers). The age of gun violence victims are the mode (the peak of the curve for each crime/location combination). [4](#note-8363-4 "We show a subset of all crime and location types, prioritizing the ones that were most personal or frequent, so it would fit on your computer screen.")

The point herein is that location is different for different types of crime, different age groups and different motives. A street gang member hunting rival gang members will prey on the streets, whereas a robber will not.

## Motive Matters Too

Why people commit gun violence is significant. After all, if you have no motivation to point a gun at someone, you won’t.

[![Firearm Murder by Circumstances and Race, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Murder-by-Circumstances-and-Race-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Murder-by-Circumstances-and-Race-2023.png)[![Firearm Aggravated Assaults by Circumstance and Race, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Aggravated-Assaults-by-Circumstance-and-Race-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Aggravated-Assaults-by-Circumstance-and-Race-2023.png)[![Modes of aggravated assault with a firearm, FBI](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Modes-of-aggravated-assault-with-a-firearm-FBI-400x223.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Modes-of-aggravated-assault-with-a-firearm-FBI.png)[![Firearm Murders by Race and Relationship, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Murders-by-Race-and-Relationship-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Murders-by-Race-and-Relationship-2023.png)[![Firearm Murders With Unknown Offenders by Race and Age, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Murders-With-Unknown-Offenders-by-Race-and-Age-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Firearm-Murders-With-Unknown-Offenders-by-Race-and-Age-2023.png)[![Cook County Gun Murders and Unidentified Offender Rate, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Cook-County-Gun-Murders-and-Unidentified-Offender-Rate-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Cook-County-Gun-Murders-and-Unidentified-Offender-Rate-2023.png)The bad news is that only 52% of gun homicides have known “circumstances,” the FBI’s term for “what started it.” Compare that with the lackluster case clearance rates (mainly in major metropolitan areas) and you see enough covariance to again lay blame on insufficient police staffing.

For gun homicides, there is a bit of difference. Though no race is immune to arguments leading to murders, there is a steady escalation in the rate of these circumstances from whites, through Hispanics and to blacks. However, whites are much more prone to lovers’ quarrels and domestic disputes getting out of control.

Interestingly, the rates level out substantially for races when we look at aggravated assaults involving a firearm.

There is plenty of explanation for this because the FBI’s definition for aggravated assault using a firearm is broad:

- An unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury
- Includes all assaults (or attempted assaults) in which a firearm of any type is used or threatened to be used
- Not limited to actual discharge but extends to preparatory or threatening behaviors

Since merely intimidating someone with a gun and not discharging it is included, we have a wide range of motives and cultural constraints at play that would be less prevalent when someone actually pulls the trigger with intent to kill.

## Who Knows Who

The relationship between the offender and victim of a gun crime can be compelling, Remember above that whites were more prone to gun homicides of intimate partners than other races. Also recall that offenders in gang offenses, statistically skewed by both race and age, are often unknown. It is worth having a quick glance at the data to see if there is a meaningful divergence.

With race we see some compelling drift. Most obvious is that the race of the offender in gun murders is twice that for blacks than whites. But all non-white races were also higher, with native Hawaiians and other Pacific islanders being off the charts (though they are such a small portion of the population, this is a data anomaly). However, for whites, boy/girlfriends and spouses are the victims much more often.

## Who Is Unknown

American inner cities are problematic due to community-level cultures.

Many have commented that the following cultural attitudes appear in some very rough neighborhoods: [5](#note-8363-5 "Gotta Make Your Own Heaven; Swaner, White, Martinez, Camacho, Spate, Alexander, Webb, Evans; Center for Court Innovation; August 2020")

- High violence rates, including retaliatory violence
- Distrust of police and courts
- General lack of trust within the neighborhood

Combined, these lead to more murders (using guns) and less cooperation with police.

What is interesting is the unexpected uniformity in the percent of gun murders among blacks regardless of their age. We could have anticipated a spike in the heavy street gang activity years, but that is not the case. Across all ages, lack of cooperation with authorities (the “no snitching” culture) leads to uniformly higher instances of murdered victims and no identifiable offenders (the cops have no description, much less a name).

More interesting and also more expected is how geography plays into the problem.

Let’s pick on Cook County, Illinois, which took the top spot in our [15 Top Murder Counties study](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/).

Among the cities in Cook County, 75% had no gun homicides and 17% had only one. This chart shows those that had gun homicides (aside from three cities that had only one, but also had no identified offenders, and thus presented a misrepresentation of 100% failure rates for documenting offenders).

Chicago landed atop the Top 15 list because they have both an elevated street gang problem and an understaffed police department. They provide 3.3 duty officers for every 1,000 citizens. Among the other “hot” counties, the rate is 4.9 officers. The chart shows how understaffing creates two problems: lack of deterrence of street violence, and the inability to identify those who commit it. Chicago’s homicide clearance rate is only 35% compared to a national average of 68%. Recent news reports claim that 35% is high due to the city’s police department misclassifying case clearances.

## Some Grumpy Notes About FBI Data

I won’t criticize the FBI (too) much. Data gathering and management is a big and thankless job.

And when big changes are necessary, it gets harder and more prone to public discontent.

[![Chicago census_tracts_spdf-1](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Chicago-census_tracts_spdf-1-400x247.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Chicago-census_tracts_spdf-1.png)But I think the FBI missed an opportunity and I want them to consider a correction.

When the FBI designed the new National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to replace the venerable but scant-on-details Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system, they added ***a lot of new data***, which put twisted smiles on faces of data monkeys like me. I might quibble on the data design (not “normalized” in the structured query language sense), but it is a delight to have data that simply was unavailable before.

Yet… census tracks.

The map of Chicago you see here is their census tract map. Had the FBI included one more data field to the crime tracking system, we analysts could have gotten hyper-granular in our analysis. Recall that Cook County (Chicago) is atop the list of most murderous cities when it comes to guns. Had the FBI included the census track variable, we could dive into any county down to the neighborhood level and explore the published demographics, sociographics, and more along with their gun crime rates.

The FBI can add this, but given that they are still waiting for some agencies to even start logging NIBRS data, they might not see it as a priority.

## The State of Gun Violence

What this audit shows is what we have known before, but with greater clarity.

- Gun violence is highly concentrated.
- Most gun violence isn’t deadly, since it is associated with criminal enterprise.
- “Where” and “who” matter most in predicting gun violence.
- Stay out of Chicago.

Notes:

1. Unlawful attack intended to inflict severe or aggravated bodily injury [↩](#return-note-8363-1)
2. physical attack where no weapon is displayed and the victim does not suffer “obvious severe or aggravated” injury [↩](#return-note-8363-2)
3. Do understand that if someone dies, the crime then is classified as a homicide. [↩](#return-note-8363-3)
4. We show a subset of all crime and location types, prioritizing the ones that were most personal or frequent, so it would fit on your computer screen. [↩](#return-note-8363-4)
5. Gotta Make Your Own Heaven; Swaner, White, Martinez, Camacho, Spate, Alexander, Webb, Evans; Center for Court Innovation; August 2020 [↩](#return-note-8363-5)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** fbi, firearm crime, gun crime, nibrs

---

### [Violence Project Policy Problem](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/violence-project-policy-problem/)

**Published:** September 11, 2025
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

When a friend makes a mistake, you kindly nudge them back into a more rational mode.

That is what I am doing now for the Violence Project.

## The Violence Project, Before and Now

Gun Facts has been both a fan and a friend to the Violence Project. In their beginning, they were like us: data butlers who did not make policy recommendations. Their resources (much more than the Gun Facts project has or will ever likely receive) allowed them to gather an incredible amount of detailed information about mass public shooting (MPS) events and perpetrators.

We also have helped the Violence Project. During a periodic update of the [Gun Facts Mass Public Shooting database](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/mass-public-shooting-database/), we identified three such events in our database that were missing in theirs. So, we sent emails with pertinent details, and they responded with kindness and gratitude.

But in recent times, we have noticed that they are both taking policy positions and employing common propaganda phrasing. This trend risks removing the Violence Project from a role of providing data that allows people to make up their own minds, to being an activist organization.

The latter role would be a shame as it would, at minimum, stain their reputation, and at worst destroy their credibility. This article \[penned by Gun Facts founder Guy Smith\] is a friendship nudge that will hopefully guide them back to a more academic path.

## The Violence Project Email

We received [an email from the Violence Project](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Assault-Weapons-SSRIs-and-Mass-Shootings.pdf) (VP) which was distressing due to incautious language that divorced the organization from unquestioned neutrality, and it pronounced sins on others that they then committed themselves. To understand this situation in full, I’ll document where they missed the boat, by how much, and why it is important.

### “Critics often point to the 1994 federal Assault Weapons Ban and claim it ‘didn’t work.’ That misreads the evidence. The ban was short-lived and riddled with loopholes, but it reduced the use of assault weapons in crime.”

Let’s break down this clustered claim:

**Critics:** They did not name the critics, so it is impossible to cross check. But that summary is painfully close to this quote, “… we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”

Who said that? It was in a federal government review of the 1994 “ban” conducted by the National Institute of Justice. [1](#note-8339-1 "An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, National Institute of Justice, June 2004") This was no lightweight analysis. And though their phrasing was cautious, their conclusion was that no measurable cause and effect existed between the “ban” and changes in crime.

[![Assault weapons usage in U.S. Mass Public Shootings through 2019-08-17](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Assault-weapons-usage-in-U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-through-2019-08-17-400x305.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Assault-weapons-usage-in-U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-through-2019-08-17.png)Where the writer at VP may have gotten confused is that there was a lull in violence, and in MPS during the “ban.” This lull included entire years without MPS. Yet there were MPS events including the Columbine massacre, with and without assault weapons. The lull created an artificial lowering of death rates unrelated to assault weapon manufacturing, purchases or existing stockpiles.

**Loopholes:** They left this assertion undefined, but we have to accept that the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Act was poorly constructed (and since its author, Dianne Fienstein, was my senator, I get to pick on her). The “ban” didn’t focus on functionality. Two rifles could have the same cycle rate (number of bullets per minute), accept the same capacity magazines, have equal muzzle energy and velocity, and yet one would be an ”assault weapon” and the other would not. For example, the Rugar Mini-14 Ranch (not an assault weapon) has identical functionality to the Mini-14 Tactical (some variants were an assault weapon). Both were available before 1994.

This is the first point of propagandist language VP exposed in their email. “Loophole” is a “scare word,” one that invokes distrust and fear. Since the 1994 legislation was not “riddled with loopholes” but was simply dumb in its design, the use of this phrase likely had an intended purpose, and not an honest one.

**Crime reduction:** They also did not disclose how they came to the conclusion that the law “reduced the use of assault weapons in crime.” If they referred to the same study I mentioned above, then they concluded incorrectly.

The Institute of Justice study looked at ATF traces of weapons during that period, but there are two problems therein.

[![ATF Traces and Firearm Homicide Rates 1991 thru 2002](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/ATF-Traces-and-Firearm-Homicide-Rates-1991-thru-2002-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/ATF-Traces-and-Firearm-Homicide-Rates-1991-thru-2002.png)The first, and the big one, was that the nation was exercising a massive backlash to violent crime that had risen strongly through the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1993 and 1996, 24 states, with more than half of the country’s population, passed habitual offender laws. This legislation had direct and dramatic effects on crime rates.

And it likely had an effect on the number and types of guns traced by the ATF.

The other issue is all the known problems with ATF traces. Not all guns are traced. Many guns not used in crimes are traced. Police at the local level might not know an assault weapon from a generic boom stick. Trace data is a weak proxy. When paired with a falling crime rate due to a variety of early 1990s-era “get tough on crime” laws, the conclusions that VP might be making are not sound.

### “When \[the 1994 act\] expired, the deadliest attacks in U.S. history — from Sandy Hook to Uvalde to Las Vegas — followed, all carried out with these weapons.”

Their statement is quite a bit misleading and solidly propagandist (did you know I wrote a book on propaganda analysis?).

Foremost, the statement is wrong. There have been MPS with high body counts (Virginia Tech, 32 dead, 2007) involving only handguns after the law expired in 2004. And naturally, any statement using words like “all,” “always,” or “never” are immediately dismissible.

We at Gun Facts have established that, at least in terms of MPS, there are other factors aside from weapon choice. This is not to say weapons and accessories don’t matter. But other factors are involved when it comes to the degree of “deadliness” of MPS events.

[![Mass Public Shooting Incidents by 1994 AW Ban Criteria, 1986 thru 2025 August](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Incidents-by-1994-AW-Ban-Criteria-1986-thru-2025-August-400x289.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Incidents-by-1994-AW-Ban-Criteria-1986-thru-2025-August.png)To start off this review and gain a high level perspective, it is good to look at the number of MPS committed with and without assault weapons. As you likely already know, most MPS do not involve assault weapons at all.

More importantly, as the number of people killed in these events rises, they all become one-off events committed by “super killers,” people aching to get a high score on the MPS roster. On this chart, we see that the super killer events make up 9% of all such events.

Even if all of the “deadliest attacks in U.S. history” had been committed with assault weapons (which they were not), they make up a fraction of MPS, and MPS make up a fraction of gun homicides. VP’s claim is more alarmist than informative.

Since super killer events include ones where assault weapons were and were not used, and since low body count MPS involve assault weapons, the question then becomes “what are the other variables that might explain higher death rates?” Gun Facts has identified two variables that are often interrelated, and which make a big difference.

First is planning. Well-planned MPS tend to be more deadly because the perpetrator has made decisions concerning how to kill more people. This doesn’t always work, as demonstrated by an attempted MPS event at a church/school where despite planning, the perp did not anticipate the doors being locked (he shot through the window out of desperation and killed “only” two children).

[![Mass Public Shooting Incidents and Planning or Assault Weapon, 1986 thru 2025 AugustMass Public Shooting Incidents and Planning or Assault Weapon, 1986 thru 2025 August](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Incidents-and-Planning-or-Assault-Weapon-1986-thru-2025-August-400x266.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Incidents-and-Planning-or-Assault-Weapon-1986-thru-2025-August.png)[![Mass Public Shooting Average Killed, Planning and Assault Weapons, 1986 thru 2025 August](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Average-Killed-Planning-and-Assault-Weapons-1986-thru-2025-August-400x285.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Average-Killed-Planning-and-Assault-Weapons-1986-thru-2025-August.png)When we combine planning and weapon type used, we see two interesting things. First, unplanned events skew to lower body counts regardless of weapon type. Second, well-planned events involving assault weapons are very evenly distributed by the number of people killed, though this is less true for non-assault weapons. Planning (which includes weapon selection) has a strong bearing on MPS effectiveness.

Yet the VP email laid the blame only on weapon type.

To make this picture a little clearer, if we look at the average number of people killed in MPS incidents, we see that there is a marginal increase in the death rate for assault weapons when the event is unplanned. We also see that the death rate for MPS rises for well-planned events regardless of weapon type. But the combination of planning and use of an assault weapon does significantly increase the number of people killed.

The next factor is what the Gun Facts project calls “[cattle pen scenarios](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shooting-cattle-pens/)” (well, I named it such because I worked on a ranch when I was young and have intimate insight into how cattle pens operate). Our definition of a cattle pen scenario is a MPS event where:

- Victims are packed into a confined area with one or both of the following: 
    1. Few or narrow exists for escape
    2. Few or no barriers to seek cover behind

The mother of all cattle pen scenarios was the Las Vegas country music massacre.

- A venue designed for 22,000 people
- 22,000 tickets were sold (assume some no-shows and people being late)
- Using my body dimensions (and I’m lean) 22,000 would be chest to back, shoulder to shoulder
- Exits were few and narrow for ticketing and security
- Only barricades were the stage and a few vending booths

Yes, the perp had exotic accessories (bump stocks, drum magazines) for his assault weapons, but he also had a herd of victims for which marksmanship was unnecessary.

[![Mass Public Shooting Average Killed, Cattle-Pen or Assault Weapon, 1986 thru 2025 August](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Average-Killed-Cattle-Pen-or-Assault-Weapon-1986-thru-2025-August-400x285.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Average-Killed-Cattle-Pen-or-Assault-Weapon-1986-thru-2025-August.png)[![Mass Public Shooting Deaths Average for Scenarios, 1986 thru 2025 August](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Deaths-Average-for-Scenarios-1986-thru-2025-August-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shooting-Deaths-Average-for-Scenarios-1986-thru-2025-August.png)Taking the average number of people killed at MPS, we see that when an incident is not a cattle pen scenario, the degree of death between assault weapons and non-assault weapons is negligible. But the difference is nearly double when it is a cattle pen.

Just like weapon choice, venue selection is part of planning. There have been a number of MPS manifestos and notes left by intercepted MPS candidates that clearly communicated they wanted a cattle pen. In some cases, perpetrators created or amplified such scenarios (the Virginia Tech perp chained doors shut to ensure cattle penning).

The point thus far is that VP bluntly blamed just the weapon type without asking the very basic question of what other variables might be at play when it comes to MPS deadliness. VP’s data collection is great, but their analysis is distressingly poor.

But allow me to drive that point mercilessly home.

When we combine weapon type, planning and venue selection (cattle penning), we see a body count escalation through the combination of factors and not just weapon type.

Without planning or selecting/creating a cattle pen scenario, assault weapons barely have a 30% advantage (and there may be other variables we have not fully explored that create this difference). The highest spread (224%) is for unplanned events that were cattle pens.

But the gap between no planning plus no cattle pen and planning plus cattle pen is a huge 422%.

Understand the difference: 33% delta without these two complicating variables, and 422% with both of them.

### “Limiting magazine capacity to 10 rounds forces shooters to reload more often, creating critical moments for escape or intervention.”

Long ago we dove into “[large capacity magazines” (LCM) and mass public shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/magazine-capacity-muckraking/), and found poor correlations. Click the link for the full report, but the summary is that magazine capacity is not a great determinate variable.

Note the bell curve on the left of this chart and how LCMs are well represented along with standard capacity magazine for low body counts.

Why? The cattle pen scenario is the big driver. There was a bank shooting in Florida where the perpetrator came armed with an assault weapon and “jungle clips,” pairs of 30 round magazines taped together such that rapid reloading is possible. The results? Just enough people killed to be classified a MPS. The bank was largely empty when he entered.

The reloading claim is pretty flimsy in general. A lightly practiced shooter (just a few repetitions at the range) can swap magazines in 2.5–4 seconds, and that is under stress conditions. But mildly practiced shooters often swap AR-15 magazines in 1.5–3 seconds. [2](#note-8339-2 "This data was gleaned from gun hobbyist websites. I was unable to find high quality academic research.") In short, the process is fast. Restricting access to just 10-round magazines will have little effect.

Case: Investigators of the Virginia Tech incident found at least 17 empty magazines at the scene and estimate over 170 rounds were fired. That equates to basically 10-round magazines, though his handguns (yep) were designed for up to 15-round mags. He had plenty of time (2–4 seconds) for each magazine swap.

VP’s assertion is made without perspective. As such, it is an unfounded opinion and certainly not a fact.

### “Too often, this debate cherry-picks evidence.”

The irony.

We have established that the VP’s copywriter (at the very least) is in propaganda mode, not public education. Ignoring confounding variables while declining in depth analysis could be written off as sloppiness. But when they continue with prose like “for the families who bury children” and “the holes in our policy ‘Swiss cheese’ are killing people. It is time to close them,” they escape into advocacy and agitprop.

I’m being relatively restrained with my critique here. In their early days, their data butler era, VP was much like Gun Facts: we both wanted to add as much clarity via data as we could so an adult discussion of gun violence could be had. Because of their noble beginnings, I’m cutting them a lot of slack… for now. I hope they revert to their former M.O. and add quality information, and not malformed opinion, to public discussion.

Notes:

1. An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, National Institute of Justice, June 2004 [↩](#return-note-8339-1)
2. This data was gleaned from gun hobbyist websites. I was unable to find high quality academic research. [↩](#return-note-8339-2)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings, Propaganda

**Tags:** assault weapons, mass public shooting, mass public shootings

---

### [Random Mass Perspectives](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/random-mass-perspectives/)

**Published:** September 4, 2025
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Mass public shootings (MPS) are not random, despite appearances.

Though the Gun Facts Project has uncovered some amazing insights about these events, some induced downtime gave us leisure to explore niches in the MPS data… and we uncovered some new perspectives.

## The Big Database Bust

At Gun Facts, we have an internal project to warehouse crime data and other data for rapid recall and creative exploration. During the conceptualization phase, the project was jokingly named “Data Whore.” Unfortunately, the name stuck.

We had loaded the old FBI Uniform Crime Reports going back to the 1980s with county-level demographic and population numbers, had built a few handy data views (SQL views for our fellow geeks), and more.

Then the database crashed, got massively corrupted, and led to a week-long recovery and migration to a new database technology that isn’t as prone to failure under massive operations (we were deleting 22M rows of data when the technology melted down).

Since our next major project depended on this database, we suddenly had some free time and decided to pull up the latest version of the [Gun Facts Mass Public Shooter Database](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/mass-public-shooting-database/) and explore sundry topics we had not previously. This new look was also instigated by a church/school shooting in Minnesota that thankfully did not qualify as a MPS due to “only” two people being killed. The perp in that sad affair was clearly bonkers (to use the scientific term) and we wondered if school shooters were any more nuts than all MPS perps.

And with that, we were off to the races…

## MPS Venues and Mental Health

[![Mental Health Aspects of Mass Public Shooters 1986 thru August 2025](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mental-Helath-Aspects-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-1986-thru-August-2025-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mental-Helath-Aspects-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-1986-thru-August-2025.png)Many of the perps for K12 school shootings were not well in the head. But were they any more deranged than MPSs at large? That was our first question.

The surprising answer is “no.” K12 shooters have mental health issues at about the same rate as all such mass murderers.

But they appear to take psychotropic medications nearly 50% more frequently than the average for all MPSs.

There is a huge warning here: The total number of K12 perps is small and there is not 100% insight into all of their mental health and management issues. The spike in medication usage might be a small-sample-size aberration. Don’t read too much into this data point.

## Age of Perpetrator and Venue

[![Mass Public Shootings by Age Group and Venue, 1986 thru August 2025](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shootings-by-Age-Group-and-Venue-1986-thru-August-2025-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shootings-by-Age-Group-and-Venue-1986-thru-August-2025.png)[![Mass Public Shootings by Perp's Race and Venue, 1986 thru August 2025](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shootings-by-Perps-Race-and-Venue-1986-thru-August-2025-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Mass-Public-Shootings-by-Perps-Race-and-Venue-1986-thru-August-2025.png)The results of looking at these two factors are rather unsurprising. Adolescent MPSs are most likely to attack a K12 school, normally their own. Likewise, when deranged people enter the work force, they are more likely to commit a MPS in their place of work.

But consistent up until old age is that businesses are the second most targeted place for an MPS. We at Gun Facts offer no explanation aside from businesses being both a source of grievances and a place where a high body count might be more likely, and thus attractive to fame-seeking perps.

## Race of Perpetrator and Venue

Long ago, we made the casual observation that black perpetrators of MPSs more often did it at their workplace.

The data supports the casual observation. Workplace MPSs by blacks occur at about twice the rate for whites, and even more often compared to Hispanics.

Interestingly, blacks have a much lower rate for planning their MPSs than other races. Specifically, they plan their attacks at 1/3rd the rate of whites. If workplace grievances are the key motivation for black MPS perps, then we *might* assume that knowing the workplace well does not require any additional planning per se.

There are very few Asians in our MPS database… less than 6% of all perpetrators, and that is a little less than the 7.2% of the U.S. population that are Asian. So, the numbers for MPS perps of Asian heritage are thin, and thus the fact that Asian MPSs targeted colleges should be taken as statistically fragile.

## Prior Police Encounters

[![Criminal Record or Prior Police Encounters of Mass Public Shooters by Age, 1986 thru 2025 August](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Criminal-Record-or-Prior-Police-Encounters-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-by-Age-1986-thru-2025-August-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Criminal-Record-or-Prior-Police-Encounters-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-by-Age-1986-thru-2025-August.png)[![Criminal Record or Prior Police Encounters of Mass Public Shooters by Race, 1986 through 2025 August](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Criminal-Record-or-Prior-Police-Encounters-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-by-Race-1986-through-2025-August-400x281.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Criminal-Record-or-Prior-Police-Encounters-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-by-Race-1986-through-2025-August.png)**Well Planned****Average Killed**Yes10.7No6.0“He was not on police radar,” is a phrase too often heard after an MPS. But this is not always the case.

In about 62% of MPS events, the perp either had a violent crime history or were known to the police.

There is no surprise about the bulk of “known” suspects being in early adulthood. This is when bad behaviors are commonly exposed. But the lack of bad public behaviors of adolescents is also a reason K12 school shooters are not on police radars.

Race is a different matter, and one that will bring forth some claims of racial profiling in policing. 61% of white MPS perps were known to police, but an average of 76% of blacks, Hispanics and Asians were. This *may* be due to higher policing of non-white races and thus having more people of those races under police magnifying glasses. But it *may* also be a factor of urbanization. Whites are much more prevalent in suburbs and rural areas, and metro areas are higher in crime. Hence, non-white races may have localized attitudes toward violence at higher rates and thus also be subject to police investigations at higher rates.

## Well Planned Mass Public Shootings

Now we get to an interesting topic.

We know that well-planned attacks tend to be more deadly. Nearly twice as deadly. So, knowing who plans their attacks is important.

We see some skewing to adolescents when it comes to planning their attacks. This tendency comes from being both primarily K12 school shooters and being intimate with the internet as a research tool.

Planning is not exclusively their domain. Even into late life, some MPS perps take time to plan. But that the younger generation is “comfortable” with scanning the web to better prepare means that in the future a higher percentage of MPSs will be planned and thus bloodier.

## Much Ado About Some Things

There are no grand conclusions from this brief review of corner issues in MPSs. But awareness of these elements might bring greater awareness to warning signs and thus opportunities for intervention.

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass public shootings, mass shootings

---

### [Universal Background Bust](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/universal-background-bust/)

**Published:** April 19, 2025
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

“Universal” background checks are anything but universal. Criminals don’t bother.

Which is why we see only modest changes in some states that passed such laws, though the average of all such states shows a tiny increase in gun murders.

That tiny increase was significantly lower than in states without such laws.

## Take-aways

- A small net increase in gun homicide rates (all things being equal) after passing universal background checks
- A tiny but larger increase in the same period for state that lacked such laws
- There were significant, concurrent anti-crime initiatives during some enactment periods which muddies the picture

## The Concept and The Reality

[![BJS table from 2016 felon survey](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BJS-table-from-2016-felon-survey-400x251.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BJS-table-from-2016-felon-survey.png)“Universal” background checks impose a requirement on private gun buyers and sellers to conduct a background check on the buyer as would occur in a gun store.

This is a case of “nibbling around the edges.” The Bureau of Justice Statistics tells us every decade that most crime guns (43% in the latest tally) come from “street sources.” These are criminal exchanges typically between prohibited persons (i.e., convicted felons) and completely off the radar. These folks make a living disobeying laws, so the likelihood of them rolling down to the nearest gun store to run a background check is remote.

Notice that the same report lacks a line for “bought from a stranger” or “private transaction.” That means such otherwise legal transfers are a subset of the 5.9% of crime gun sources labeled “other.” This ignores transactions between friends and family, which are 8% of crime gun sources. But mixed therein are “wink and nod” known felonious transfers, and there is no breakout of those subgroups who would choose to ignore any “universal” background check law.

Summarized, “universal” background checks only apply to a fraction of a fraction of all gun acquisitions. As such, you cannot expect them to do much.

But we didn’t expect to see gun homicides go up.

## The Statistical Summary

Slope PreSlope PostUniversal Background Stages – Average0.00.1No Universal – Average-0.10.2No Universal Handguns – Average-0.10.2There are two types of “universal” background check laws: those requiring background checks for just handguns and those requiring such for any type of firearm.

We looked at every state that had enacted such laws that had at least five years of gun homicide data before and after enactment. The short list included Connecticut, New York, Delaware, Oregon, and Washington State. Immediately we see a tight cluster of Northeastern states that share similar cultural/political notions, and two Western states that don’t (we excluded California and Rhode Island, as their “universal” law was in place before the peak year of 1993 in violent crime and thus we could not obtain a faithful before/after picture).

For each of these states, we then compared their gun homicide rates with the average of all states having no “universal” background checks.

We’ll look into some of these states in more detail later, but the average for all the states’ gun homicide rates held two surprises: states that passed “universal” background check laws went from a flat gun homicide situation to a slight increase and states without any “universal” background checks were experiencing decreases beforehand and steeper climbs thereafter.

**State****Enactment Year**Connecticut1999Delaware2013New York2013Oregon2015Washington2014One *plausible* explanation was that four of the five states enacted their laws roughly at the same time (2013 through 2015). Nationally, gun homicides started rising strongly in 2015. Hence, states lacking “universal” background checks took the full brunt of crime gun acquisitions from any source.

One unsatisfying aspect of this explanation is that we know new restrictions drive crime gun acquisitions underground. A different BJS analysis conducted before and after implementation of the National Instant \[Criminal background\] Check System (NICS) showed that 3% of crime guns migrated from gun stores to street sources. One would think “universal” background checks would do the same unless the law was universally ignored. Hence, the explanation has weaknesses.

Using a difference-in-difference test we see that perhaps 14% of the lower gun homicide rates in “universal” states might be associated with the law, all things being equal. But they never are, as shown by the fact that the state-level difference-in-difference scores were wildly different, and in one case the entire degree of change could not be accounted for by the law itself. For example, Connecticut’s difference-in-difference score was 10% and Washington State’s was 53%.

## The Connecticut Conundrum

Connecticut passed their “universal” law in 1999, a mere five years after the peak violent crime rate throughout the United States. Like 23 other states, they passed a habitual offender law (a.k.a., three strikes) in 1994, which was the starting year of our analysis for them. They also plowed $9.7 billion into prison expansion and grabbed $6.4 million in federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants in 1995 alone. In short, Connecticut was on an anti-crime binge throughout the study period.

Before enactment, their gun homicide rate was falling on a slope of -0.4, but after their “universal” background check law was enacted, the rate of decline in gun homicides dropped only at a -0.1 rate. It is likely that in the “before” period, the sundry anti-crime initiatives were getting thugs off the street and causing the gun homicide rate to fall accordingly.

It is tempting to remove Connecticut from the amalgamated calculations, but we’ll leave it in for completeness’s sake.

## The Delaware Ding

The first year of Delaware’s study period saw a sharp and temporary spike in gun homicides. Such small-population states often have sharp swings in crime data, as it does not take a large number of new crimes to create a large *percentage* shift. Delaware is #45 in size of state population; and in the year they passed their “universal” background check law, they had fewer than a million residents, about the size of Austin, Texas before it started growing faster than Willie’s Weed.

In our analysis we excluded that first year. But that did not help erase Delaware’s special status as the only “universal” state that had \[a\] a rising gun murder rate before the law and \[b\] a higher rate after (slopes of 0.1 and 0.2, before and after, respectively).

## Leave It To Others

**Slope Pre****Slope Post**New York and Delaware0.00.1Oregon and Washington0.00.1No Universal-0.10.2No Handguns-0.10.2The non-Connecticut states were nicely clustered in their year of passage of “universal” background checks, so they *should* have some homogeneity, but they don’t. That said, the remaining states pit Delaware and New York (Northeast) against Oregon and Washington (Northwest). These East–West extremes are about as different as Vin Diesel and Dylan Mulvaney.
What we see in terms of change in these four states is educational. Regardless of region, the gun homicide slope went from neutral before “universal” background checks were enacted to rising, but only slightly. Yet in contemporary timeframe states with no “universal” background checks, gun homicides went from a slightly downward trend to a slightly upward one.

201420152016201720181.92.12.01.61.8In all these changes, the degree of change was so slight as to be negligible. A 0.1 slope after passage in New York equates to 0.1 people per 100,000 citizens, or literally one-in-a-million (and for the observant among you, New York’s relative calmness balances out Delaware’s ***rise*** of slope from 0.1 to 0.2.

## Much Ado About Nothing Much

We cannot say from this smallish sample of states that “universal” background checks do much of anything. The changes from before and after are basically flat, and with Connecticut we have a barrage of anti-crime initiatives and spending that make their law’s efficacy difficult/impossible to measure. Alone, these laws look like they produced no statistically valid change.

But measured against all states that had no “universal” background checks, there is a tiny amplifier. The difference between one-in-a-million people and two-in-a-million people is important only to that one extra dead person. In their fifth year of “universal” background checks, long after any impact of the program would have been fully revealed, New York had 356 gun homicides. For most folks, the difference between 356 and 357 is statistical noise.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Before-and-after-trends-in-gun-homicides-around-enactement-of-universal-background-checks-800x565.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Before-and-after-trends-in-gun-homicides-around-enactement-of-universal-background-checks.png)

**Categories:** Connecticut, Crime and Guns, Crime Control, Delaware, New York, Oregon, Washington

**Tags:** gun homicides, universal background checks

---

### [Gangs, Recidivism and Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gangs-recidivism-and-guns/)

**Published:** March 4, 2025
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

The revolving door of incarceration spins like a cyclone for street gang members. Since *gangstas* have a propensity for gun violence, this issue is part of solving gun violence in America.

## Take-aways

- Between 1,556 and 2,304 new street gang gun murders per year are committed by prisoners released for prior gun violence offenses, amounting to 10.5–15.5% of gun homicides
- Upwards of 11,520 people are shot (injured or killed) by these released gang members each year.

## What the academics calculated

We checked in with academic libraries and were surprised at how little work has specifically addressed recidivism of gang members. After discarding studies with tiny, and thus statistically fragile samples, and setting aside one that amalgamated both street and prison gangs, we had two left to gauge how often street gang members go back to prison.

**Gang Members****Non-Gang Members****Higher Risk**3 years35.4%23.5%150%5 years83.2%42.8%194%In summary, street gang members are upwards of 200% more likely than non-street gang members to return to prison.

The only surprise is that this number is as *low* as it is, since American street gangs glorify criminality and use lethal violence to enforce even the pettiest of offenses.

Two factors illustrate and add to the problem: violent re-offenses and quick release.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 32.4% of people released from prison who were convicted of a violent crime were nearly as likely to be rearrested for a violent crime. [1](#note-8160-1 "Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 34 States in 2012: A 5-Year Follow-Up Period (2012–2017), BJS, 2021") In other words, if you went to big boy jail for a violence charge, and later got out and went back in, the probability is that you returned because you were violent again.

It is the releasing of violent criminals that is problematic.

According again to BJS, individuals convicted of murder received an average sentence of 20.2 years (excluding life sentences, death sentences, and cases resulting in death during incarceration). But on average, these individuals served 53.6% of their sentences before their initial release. [2](#note-8160-2 "Time Served in State Prison, 2018 – Supplemental Tables, BJS, 2025")

In other words, the effective sentence for murder is a mere 10 years. A thug entering prison at age 18 for a gang homicide will be back on the streets by age 28, which is still within the “active gang age range.”

**Violent Crime Type****Average Sentence (in years)**Rape9.8Kidnapping8.7Robbery7.9Sexual Assault6.0Assault5.1Other Violent5.0But that is just for homicide. Other violent crimes get shorter sentences, and if they also serve about half of their sentences, then we see them back in circulation quickly. A street gang member imprisoned for assault with a deadly weapon might get a sentence of only two years (the range is 2–12). His next assault with a deadly weapon could be a successful homicide.

## The data dearth

As interesting and compelling as these datapoints are, they do not provide a direct tracing of gun violence offenders and their recidivism on other gun violence charges. As sophisticated as America’s crime data collection systems may be, they remain lacking in key areas.

That said, some additional studies add a little spackle to the cracks in the data:

- The U.S. Sentencing Commission found firearms offenders recidivated at a higher rate than non-firearms offenders: 
    - 68.1% of firearms offenders were rearrested for a new crime within an eight-year follow-up period, compared to only 46.3% of non-firearms offenders.
    - Among firearms offenders who recidivated, assault was the most serious new charge given to 29.0% of them.
- The research also indicates that criminal history is a strong predictor of recidivism for firearms offenders: 
    - ***Firearms offenders had higher recidivism rates than non-firearms offenders*** in every Criminal History Category.
    - In the highest Criminal History Category, 82.8% of firearms offenders recidivated compared to 72.9% of all other offenders.

But this research still doesn’t provide a complete violence-in, violence-in-again picture narrowed to our key question about gangs. Yes, most gang members carry guns and the gun crime rate among street gang members is high, but linking gang membership to crimes of violence and then to recidivism has a few missing pieces.

But we can make a ballpark estimate!

Data from BJS, The Sentencing Project, the Nation Drug Threat Survey, and scattered recidivism reports gives us data or estimates on the percent of prisoners that are street gang members, how many were in for gun violence, what their recidivism rates are, and rates for new gun violence charges. With two data-supported assumptions (convicts repeat the same category of crime and street gang members have higher violent crime conviction rates that non-gang members), we can estimate how many released from prison after serving time for a gun crime commit another gun crime.

The range is between 20 and 30%.

From prison release data we can also estimate how many gun violence prison releasees there were in a recent year. A total of 103,271 state prisoners were released after serving time for a gun violence offense in 2019. Using high and low estimates for gangs and their higher-than-average gun crime rate, this figure boils down to between 20,000 and 36,000 street gang members who served time for gun violence and were released.

Of these, between 7,780 and 11,520 will return to prison within five years for another gun violence offence.

There are approximately five times as many assault-related non-fatal gunshot woundings than gun homicides. Hence, we see between 1,556 and 2,304 new street gang gun murders by prisoners released each year for prior gun violence offenses, but upwards of 11,520 people shot and injured or killed.

Keep in mind that those street gang members who were released had served on average about half of their sentence.

### Other Sources Used herein:

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – “Prisoners in 2022” Report

- Source for the percentage of state prison inmates convicted of violent offenses (63%) and general incarceration statistics for 2022.

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – 2012 Recidivism Study

- Provides data on recidivism rates, showing 70% of state prisoners rearrested within five years and 32.4% of violent offenders rearrested for another violent crime.

Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) – 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities

- Offers historical data on firearm use in violent crimes (e.g., 25% of violent offenders used a firearm) and recidivism patterns.

National Drug Threat Survey (NDTS) 2007

- Cited in the Attorney General’s Report to Congress, providing the estimate of 123,000 documented gang members incarcerated in state facilities in 2007.

Attorney General’s Report to Congress on the Growth of Violent Street Gangs in Suburban Areas (2008)

- References the NDTS data and discusses gang membership in state correctional facilities.

Arizona Criminal Justice Commission – 2009 Gang Recidivism Study

- Found an 83.2% five-year recidivism rate for street gang members compared to 42.8% for non-gang members.

Huebner, B. M., et al. (2007) – “Gangs, Guns, and Drugs: Recidivism Among Serious Young Offenders”

- Study showing 45% of gang members reoffended within 33 months, often violently, compared to 28% of non-gang members.

Thornberry, T. P., & Burch, J. H. (1997) – Rochester Youth Development Study

- Indicates gang members accounted for 65% of all crimes and 86% of serious delinquent acts, with violent offense rates three times higher than non-gang peers.

The Sentencing Project – Reports on Incarceration and Crime Trends

- Provides context on gun-related violent crimes comprising 20%–30% of violent convictions in state prisons.

Decker, S. H., & Pyrooz, D. C. – Various Studies on Gang Behavior

- Research on urban gang activity, estimating 30%–50% of gang-related crimes involve firearms.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation – 2016 Recidivism Report

- State-level data showing a 68% rearrest rate within three years for firearm offenders, with some overlap into violent crimes.

Beck, A. J., & Blumstein, A. – 2012 Survey of 44 U.S. Prison Systems

- Reported an average of 19.1% of prison populations as members of security threat groups (STGs), ranging from 2% to 50%.[](#_ednref1)

Notes:

1. Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 34 States in 2012: A 5-Year Follow-Up Period (2012–2017), BJS, 2021 [↩](#return-note-8160-1)
2. Time Served in State Prison, 2018 – Supplemental Tables, BJS, 2025 [↩](#return-note-8160-2)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** gun violence, recidivism, street gangs

---

### [Worth the Wait?](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/worth-the-wait/)

**Published:** July 9, 2025
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Do waiting periods help or hurt?

The answer is “it’s messy,” but in short, they are ineffective.

## Take-aways

- Only one of 16 study combinations showed any significant change.
- On one statistical measure, the effects in the other 15 combinations were likely random.

## The Claim

Advocates claim that waiting periods reduce homicides and suicides.

The theory (which, as you will see, is wrong) is that some significant number of murders and suicides occur spontaneously. Advocates proffer that a person who gets angry or depressed goes to a gun store and then murders someone or kills themselves right away.

This assumption does not conform with what we know about most gun homicides and suicides.

In the United States, upwards of [85% of gun homicides are street gang related or nexus](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/). Gun acquisitions by gang members are never via gun stores or (we suspect) very rare at gun shows. The Bureau of Justice Statistics notes that a rock-bottom minimum of 43% of all crime guns come from “street sources,” and the rate is obviously higher for street gangs. Most of these [guns enter the underground markets from theft, primarily from cars parked at residences](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/stolen-guns/).

[![Guns and Control - Suicides-3](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-3-400x309.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-3.jpg)Suicides are rarely spontaneous, either. Most people depressed enough to end their own lives have had suicidal ideation for months or years before trying it. Among gun suicides, the rate among elderly rural males [1](#note-8278-1 "See the chapter Suicide and Guns in our book, Guns and Control") who have owned guns all their lives is astronomical.

All this aside, we chose to test the effects waiting period laws had on gun homicides, total homicides (regardless of means), gun suicides, and total suicides. It is important to check both gun and total rates for homicides and suicides due to “substitution of means,” a 50¢ phrase for “if I don’t have a gun, I’ll kill you/me some other way.”

But the data was messy…

## The Surge of Sundry Statutes

The populace reacts in waves. Given the rapidly rising rate of violent crime in the 1970s and 1980s, the public reacted by throwing a lot of laws at the problem, at both the state and federal level.

[![Waiting Period and Habitual Offender Law Changes](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Waiting-Period-and-Habitual-Offender-Law-Chnages-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Waiting-Period-and-Habitual-Offender-Law-Chnages.png)This surge of statutes limits realistic research.

We needed at least four years of crime and suicide data before and after the enactment of waiting period laws to make a fair assessment. With CDC data only going back to 1979 [2](#note-8278-2 "It does go back further, but not with the granularity to see if homicides or suicides involved a gun"), we were constrained on older laws. Starting in 1993, 24 states with more than half of the country’s population passed [habitual offender laws that had significant effects on homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/habitual-effects/). This situation overlapped with the Brady Bill’s temporary five day waiting period that applied nationally.

Combined, it leaves data from 1993 through 1998 ill-suited for analysis. After that era, only Washington D.C. passed a waiting period law with enough years of CDC data to make for a useful analysis… except that D.C. is such an oddball outlier on so many vectors that we declined to include it. D.C. has often been the nation’s murder capital (per homicide rates) and has the odd distinction of being surrounded by two other states with decidedly different sets of gun laws.

In other words, D.C. is a mess… often confirmed by C-SPAN televised sessions of Congress.

That left us with four states, each having four data sets to explore (gun homicides, total homicides, gun suicides, total suicides) totaling 16 things to score.

## The Long and Short of it

In this study we are only looking at handguns, for two good reasons.

First, all state waiting period laws apply to handguns. This is untrue for long guns (rifles and shotguns). To avoid comparing apples to pineapples, we stuck to handgun homicides and suicides throughout.

**Homicides****Suicides**Handgun78%73%Not stated11%Shotgun5%15%Rifle5%12%Other gun1%SORUCES: FBI, Journal of Adolescent Health [3](#note-8278-3 "FBI: FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports, year 2000 through 2019; Journal, Type of Firearm Used in Suicides: Findings From 13 States in the National Violent Death Reporting System; Hanlon, Barber, Azrael, Miller")The other reason is that handguns are the tool of choice for both homicides and suicides. Handguns are common for murder as concealment is often necessary, making it good for street gangs, the primary source of gun homicides in the USA. For suicides, it is all mechanical. Though notable people (e.g., Kurt Cobain) do exit the stage using legal-length shotguns, the dexterity or ingenuity to self-execute this way is physically awkward. Most people who want to die using a gun find handguns much simpler to employ.

Also note that in this study we only look at murder and non-negligent manslaughter, and not other elements such as negligent manslaughter and justifiable homicides.

## What’s the Difference (in difference)

For each of the 16 measures we looked at both a “difference in differences”(DiD) measure as well as before/after slopes.

The “difference in differences” is a statistical method used to measure the effect of a specific change or intervention by comparing two groups over time. In this case we examine one state’s homicide/suicide data, where a waiting period law was enacted, against the average of all states that had no waiting periods during the same time. By focusing on the difference between the changes, it reveals whether the intervention had a unique effect on the group exposed to it.

The four states where waiting period laws were enacted, and where we had ±4 years of CDC data, were Indiana, Hawaii, Washington State and Tennessee. Southern, Midwestern, Western and a few islands in the middle of an ocean. That’s enough variety for anyone’s taste.

## And The Loser Is…

[![Indiana and Non-Waiting Period State Gun Homicide Rates1979 thru 1987](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Indiana-and-Non-Waiting-Period-State-Gun-Homicide-Rates1979-thru-1987-400x273.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Indiana-and-Non-Waiting-Period-State-Gun-Homicide-Rates1979-thru-1987.png)Indiana was the only state that showed that the waiting period might have had an effect, but only on homicides; and even then, there are unusual factors at play.

Indiana’s gun homicide rate was already lower, and falling faster than states without waiting period laws.

Yet once those laws were enacted, at least for the first two years afterwards, their gun homicide rate went up more steeply and earlier than other states, which showed a more minor blip.

There is no concrete reason for this difference. One major and completely speculative explanation is Chicago crack.

This was the era of the arrival of crack cocaine, and Chicago was an import hub.

Nearby Gary, Indiana was a post-industrial hellscape. The G.I. Posse and Two Six Nation gangs operated an estimated 300 crack houses in the area. Hence, the initial wave of crack+gang violence that hit most urban centers *may* have hit northern Indiana hard and early. But this assumption is hard to quantify, and since Indiana is our only exception to the lack of effectiveness for waiting period laws, it is hardly worth digging deeper.

Though… well, we have to point this out: the slope of the line for Indiana’s gun homicide rates before and after are nearly the same. Before the waiting period law was passed, the slope was -0.3, and after, it was -0.2. Not much change, and the decline in gun homicides was not as good afterwards. Said differently, the downward trend after passage of the waiting period bill appears to be mainly a continuation of a prior trend.

[![Tennessee and Non-Wait Handgun Purchase Law State Gun Homicide Rates 1985 thru 1993](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Tennessee-and-Non-Wait-State-Gun-Homicide-Rates-1985-thru-1993-400x273.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Tennessee-and-Non-Wait-State-Gun-Homicide-Rates-1985-thru-1993.png)Tennessee is a different story, but also with some oddities.

The DiD calculations indicate that the law led to marginal increases in gun homicide rates; but as they say, timing is everything.

Tennessee’s wait period law bumped a pre-existing three-day wait to 15 days starting in 1989. Recall that this was when violent crime nationwide was still sharply rising, later peaking in 1993. Even states without wait periods had rising violent crime. But the sharp 1990 jump in Tennessee’s gun homicide rate, following the activation of their longer wait period, by itself did nothing.

**Indiana****Hawaii****Washington****Tennessee****HOMICIDES**GUNSignificant ReductionNo Significant EvidenceNo Significant EvidenceMarginally significant increaseALLStatistically InsufficientNo Significant EvidenceNo Significant EvidenceNo Significant Evidence**SUICIDES**GUNNo Significant EvidenceNo Significant EvidenceNo Significant EvidenceNo Significant EvidenceALLNo Significant EvidenceNo Significant EvidenceNo Significant EvidenceNo Significant EvidenceWhat is important is that on a statistical measure (p-values) in the “difference in differences” test, only Indiana (and only for gun homicides) showed the possibility of an effect. And as we saw with the two years immediately after the enactment of their waiting period, the cause/effect really isn’t there.

## Worth the Wait?

All in all, there is hardly any evidence that handgun waiting period laws make a difference in homicides or suicides. One outlier (Indiana) is problematic due to other trends, and the other state with measurable changes (Tennessee) speaks against the efficacy of these laws.

As far as suicides are concerned, they have no effect on either gun suicide rates or total suicide rates.

If politicians in your state are contemplating enacting a waiting period to acquire guns, perhaps they should wait.

## The p-value table

Since someone will ask, here are the *p* values for the DiD tests for all 16 evaluations.

p-values**Indiana****Hawaii****Washington****Tennessee****HOMICIDES**GUN0.04**0.66****0.70**0.07ALL0.19**0.78****0.47**0.25**SUICIDES**GUN**0.53****0.92****0.69****0.67**ALL**0.70****0.55****0.47****0.59**When a p-value is below 0.05, then there is nearly no chance the effects are random. In other words, there is high confidence in the measurement.

Which makes all the others with p-values ranging from 0.19 (weak) to 0.78 (terrible) represent evidence of waiting period laws having no material effect. Indeed, for all suicide rates, the “strongest” p-value was a stunningly weak 0.47.

Notes:

1. See the chapter *Suicide and Guns* in our book, [*Guns and Control*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510760075/) [↩](#return-note-8278-1)
2. It does go back further, but not with the granularity to see if homicides or suicides involved a gun [↩](#return-note-8278-2)
3. FBI: FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports, year 2000 through 2019; Journal, Type of Firearm Used in Suicides: Findings From 13 States in the National Violent Death Reporting System; Hanlon, Barber, Azrael, Miller [↩](#return-note-8278-3)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Guns and Crime Prevention, Suicides

**Tags:** handgun purchase waiting periods, waiting periods

---

### [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/)

**Published:** August 27, 2023
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

When 0.5% of all counties, with 8% of the people, account for 25% of the homicides, you must pay attention.

When those same counties, on average, have five times the murder rate than the average of all other counties, you must pay attention to details.

When those 15 counties are also known to be dominated by a single city with a reputation for gang violence, you must pay attention to why people in those cities are different than the rest of the country.

But, what makes those 15 counties uniquely violent?

## Major Takeaways

- 1% of counties *with any homicides* have 24.9% of the homicides, but only 8.4% of the population in counties where gun homicides occur.
- The states with these *Hot 15 Counties* have evenly distributed gun law scores ranging from A- to F by a gun control advocacy group.
- A number of factors (including population density, teen-age poverty, and more) help explain their disparity.

## It is a fast fall-off

[![Share of Firearm Homicides minus Share of Population - 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Share-of-Firearm-Homicides-minus-Share-of-Population-2018-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Share-of-Firearm-Homicides-minus-Share-of-Population-2018.png)click for a larger, sharable version

Every year we see that homicides are geographically concentrated. In the year of this study, 2018 [1](#note-7608-1 "This was the most recent county-level distillation of the FBI’s annual Supplementary Homicide Report available from NACJD"), a mere 15 counties out of 3,124 accounted for just under 25% of all murders.

But some counties have no homicides, while others have lots of dead people. What we explore here includes:

- Are some counties more deadly than their populations alone would predict?
- What is different about those counties that might explain their murderous ways?

The answers are at times surprising, unsurprising, and a bit frustrating.

One reality is that counties with big metropolitan hubs (i.e., huge cities) tend to be at the top of the list. All but one of the *Hot 15* are classified as “Large Central Metro” counties, which means they are “counties in metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) of 1 million or more population that contain the entire population of the largest principal city of the MSA or are completely contained in the largest principal city of the MSA.”

[![Illinois Counties - % Firearm Homicides - % Population - 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Illinois-Counties-Firearm-Homicides-Population-2018-400x284.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Illinois-Counties-Firearm-Homicides-Population-2018.png)click for a larger, sharable version

Cook County, Illinois sits atop the *Hot* 15 counties for an excess of their share of homicides minus their share of the population (herein, we call this the “gap,” which expresses excess homicides over what population alone would predict). Looking at just the state of Illinois, we see Cook County – which includes Chicago – having nearly 73% of the of the state’s homicides but only 41% of the state’s population.

Cook County has a lot of people, so you expect more murders there. When we look at the gap between their share of the state’s firearm murders and population, we see the disturbing reality. Most counties adjoining Cook have *negative* gaps (meaning their firearm homicide rate is lower than their population would predict) while Cook is amazingly high. Chicago bleeds into the rest of Cook County, but not beyond.

The same applies for Baltimore (though they are an independent city, not within the jurisdiction of a county), Philadelphia within Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania, Detroit within Wayne County Michigan… and on down the list. 15 big cities – from Chicago down to Dallas – have large core cities, outsized homicide issues, and 25% of America’s murders.

But it levels off pretty fast after that.

[![% Firearm Homicides - % Population by County - 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Firearm-Homicides-Population-by-County-2018-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Firearm-Homicides-Population-by-County-2018.png)[![% Firearm Homicides - % Population, Top 50 Counties - 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Firearm-Homicides-Population-Top-50-Counties-2018-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Firearm-Homicides-Population-Top-50-Counties-2018.png)click for a larger, sharable version

Looking at the homicides-population share “gap” rates, we see that soon after the *Hot 15* counties, there is a profound leveling-off of the gap rate that carries through to most of the rest of the nation. One oddity in the data is that there are a few “large” population counties with low homicide rates, which causes a short plunge in the gap rate on the right side of the chart (here’s looking at you, Wake County, North Carolina and San Diego County, California).

To make this a bit more vivid, let’s zoom in on the on the left side of that chart and look at the troublemakers. The degree of leveling is transparent. Between the top and bottom of the *Hot 15* counties is a four-fold drop in the homicide-population gap. We blow past another 39 counties before seeing another four-fold drop, and after that 94 counties until the next four-fold decrease.

In short, there is something specifically different about the *Hot 15* that must explain why their share of homicides is far above both their share of the population and the gap nearly every other county in the country has.

Why that is, is confounding.

## Confound Those Variables!

In a perfect world we would have pristine data on all demographic, sociographic, and criminology variables that might possibly explain why Cook County, Illinois (1.7% of the country’s population and 4.3% of its firearm homicides) is different from Jasper County, Texas (halfway down the list, 0.01% of the population and 0.01% of the gun homicides).

But we live in an imperfect world.

We pulled data from the Census Bureau, the CDC, and the FBI to gather 24 variables, mostly common (poverty, race, population density) and some not so common (number of police per 1,000 residents, single mother households). We also started a side project to estimate the number of street gang members in each county. In this analysis we looked first at ratios between the *Hot 15* counties and all the others that reported any homicide at all (about half of the counties in the United States report no homicides in a typical year).

### Police Staffing

**Hot 15****All Others****Difference**Population (average)2,116,839174,70312.1Density pop/sqkm (average)2,44715615.7Officers/1K Population (average)4.92.02.4Homicide Clearence Rate54%68%21%The depth of policing in the *Hot 15* is low given both population and population density. The *Hot 15* counties have more than double the number of officers per capita of their population than the other counties [2](#note-7608-2 "FBI Crime Data Explorer, Police Staffing, duty officers") but their population is 12 times higher, and their density is 15 times the average of the others. In short, they are under-policed by one half or one third depending on which variable you use. [3](#note-7608-3 "An outlier is New York County, New York which has about four times the number of cops, yet is still in the Hot 15 counties for the gap between gun homicides and the total population.")

If all other factors (e.g., poverty, education, etc.) were the same (which they are not) then the *Hot 15* would be savagely behind in terms of putting cops on the street for their population alone. Since population density basically multiplies the availability of criminal opportunities per district, police staffing should be exponentially higher. Combined, the police shortage in the *Hot* 15 borders on astonishing.

And that was before the misguided “defund the police” movement.

### Clearing Homicides – a Police Staffing Issue?

“Clearances” are the criminology term for having resolution to an investigation of a crime. Typically, this is when a suspect is arrested.

In the *Hot 15* counties, 21% fewer murder cases are cleared than in the rest of the counties that have any murders at all. This is significant when paired with the fact that most street gang membership and activity occur in Large Central Metro areas, and all but one of the *Hot 15* are such. Uncaught gang bangers continue to bang. Some police agencies have publicly stated that a gang member who is being held on a murder charge is the lead suspect in 2-3 other homicides. Newish thinking in inner-city policing is to hunt the apex predators in gangs, the ones who commit most of the murders.

But this appears to not be the mindset in the *Hot 15*.

### Poverty

Before going too far, we’ll note that the Gun Facts project managed to break the Census Bureau’s data explorer tool. We attempted, in many ways, to export the combination of race and poverty rates for all counties and each attempt caused the Census website to reply “Something went wrong. Sorry, we’re having some issues trying to get the table you’re looking for.”

That said, we do see that the poverty rate for households with people under age 18 are 31% higher in the *Hot 15* counties than all the others. Combined with the population data, we see a pattern of more poor people packed tightly into key counties.

Covariates are increased rates of households that received food assistance (20% higher) and single-mother households with offspring under age 18 (30% higher). The latter comes in a bit later, as there is an ugly intersection of fatherless homes, homicides and public policy.

Poverty is not an excuse for crime, especially homicides. But cultures and cultural attitudes about violence develop within environments. We reviewed a [sociological survey of three such neighborhoods](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/inner-city-guns/) which noted that the level of trust therein is low to nonexistent (about 26% felt they could trust their neighbors, but only 9% trusted the police). “I’m always on point because you just gotta be.” Other literature notes that in poor, urban neighborhoods “everybody will rip you off.” Poverty can motivate someone into criminal activity for profit; and where it goes unchecked (by police \[see above\], elders \[absent fathers\], etc.) it can feed upon itself. Street gangs, a magnet for young males who have a tendency to violent behavior anyway, provide opportunities for “profitable” criminal activity.

Start with poverty, abandon sufficient professional policing, feed new members to gangs… the cycle begins and continues until the mechanics changes the culture.

Where this gets intersectional, is between poverty and…

### Race

[![Poverty and Homicide Rates by Race - 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Poverty-and-Homicide-Rates-by-Race-2018-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Poverty-and-Homicide-Rates-by-Race-2018.png)click for a larger, sharable version

At the Gun Facts project, we detest talking about race. We firmly believe there is no genetic predisposition to criminality.

But statistically, there is a correlation.

The *Hot 15* counties have larger shares of blacks and Hispanics (3.2 and 1.8-fold) over the rest of the counties. Homicide rates for those groups are appreciably higher, though not proportionate. Were the Census Bureau’s data exploration tool more bulletproof, we might be more precise by reporting specific rates of poverty for each race in each county. Should they fix their tool, we’ll update this report.

Key here is that poverty and minorities are a significantly larger presence in the *Hot 15* than the average for all other counties. As such, this combination – especially when paired with understaffed police departments – leaves streets exposed to larger groups of economically “desperate” people.

### Street gangs

[![Gang presence map by county 2011](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ngia-gang-presence-map-by-county-06-2011_orig-400x309.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/ngia-gang-presence-map-by-county-06-2011_orig.jpg)There is an explainable but frustratingly incomplete set of data on where gangs exist, and how many gang members there likely are.

But do know:

- They are primarily in metropolitan areas.
- They are primarily staffed by young males (which are also the people most often shot dead in America).
- They are outspokenly violent, willing to kill over trivial reasons.

But there is no precise county-level street gang membership data. Local law enforcement makes public statements from time to time, but they are guesses. Some agencies report “known” gang members (typically ones who have been arrested and confess their association) but these numbers are a fraction of the total membership. And since criminals rarely answer surveys, there is no way to directly measure.

The closest was the National Youth Gang Survey of 2012 (slightly outdated) which surveyed 2,500 of the nation’s 36,489 law enforcement agencies. Even if we had access to this data (which is locked away and not generally available), the picture would be incomplete.

**Urbanization****Total Gang %****Youth Gang %**Large Central Metro1.0%5.6%Large Fringe Metro0.4%2.5%Medium Metro0.4%4.3%Small Metro1.3%1.3%Gun Facts has started a street gang prediction model, but as of this report, the number of data points is too small to accurately guess the number of gang members in any given county. That said, the data shows large and small metro regions have higher gang activity, especially “youth gangs” which is a synonym for “street gangs.”

But a correlation of sorts does exist. Excess homicides (gap) has twice the correlation with their share of gang age people (ages 14 to 24) for the *Hot 15* counties than all the others. Stated more simply, when a major metropolitan area has a higher percentage of gang age people, the degree of excess homicides rises. This is not proof of gang activity, but it is a mighty interesting indirect indicator.

All but one of the *Hot 15* counties are Large Central Metro areas and for blacks, gang-age youths are present at a 50% higher rate than other counties. Contrarywise, Hispanics youths are about 20% fewer in the *Hot 15*, which may contribute to their lower homicide rate. Stated differently, black youth are more frequent in the *Hot 15* counties, are thus more exposed to gang activity, and thus commit more gang-related or nexus gun homicides that Hispanic youths.

For now, we can’t say anything more definitive about gangs. In previous Gun Facts research (derived indirectly from the locked-up National Youth Gang Survey data), we concluded that [street gangs are likely the source of 85% of gun homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/). A strong, but alas incomplete indicator for the *Hot 15*.

### Multiple variables

When we look at the variables that are strongly associated with the *Hot 15* we see divergence between the *Hot 15* and all the other counties on a few key variables.

**MAJOR LEAGURE WARNING:**

With only 15 counties in the first half of this analysis, we have too few data points for any statistical analysis to be considered “robust.” Take *everything* below with a saltshaker.

For the numbers nuts (everyone else can skip ahead): We did a multivariate regression on the key 11 remaining variables against the “gap” rate (share of gun homicides minus share of population) where there was a significant gap between the *Hot 15* counties and all the others. We ran separate regressions for the *Hot 15* and then for the rest. Divergence between the two is what we explore.

The BIG take-away is that for the selected variables, the correlation (Multiple R2) is a huge 0.97, and even the adjusted R2 is 0.56 (a score of 1.0 means perfect correlation). Without the homicide clearance variable, the score drops to 0.87. In short, policing and the ability of local agencies to find, charge and prosecute murders contributes to more murders and thus the larger gap between a county’s share of murders and their share of population.

Disturbingly, the concentration of black *youths* is highly correlated within the *Hot 15* counties, but not for blacks of all ages in the *Hot 15*, or for either total black population or black youth population elsewhere. The *R*2 regression was 0.64 in the *Hot 15* (but due to the limited sample size, the *p* values were high). Indeed, the only other race that shows correlation in the *Hot 15* counties are Asians, *and they present a negative correlation*.

Past that, households receiving cash assistance had a moderate correlation (0.25 with a moderately stronger *p* value). Single-mother households were not correlated, though [other researchers had concluded just the opposite when measured against all counties](https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2015/11/16/racial-differences-in-homicide-rates-are-poorly-explained-by-economics/).

Oddly, despite other predictors, total population did mildly correlate with the homicide–population gap (0.13), but population density did not.

Policing (actually, the lack thereof) did contribute, but with one really weird gotcha. New York County is in the *Hot 15* but has a “badged officer” headcount more than six times that of all the other hot counties. This one datapoint skews the correlation measure of police staffing levels having an effect on gun homicide. Removing this one county and changing its staffing level to the average of all the other *Hot 15* counties changes the correlation measure from 0.01 to 0.12. Given that this is a huge outlier, we are going with the later measurement.

An important note is that of all the important variables we tested, none were significant in not-hot counties. Things that made a difference in 15 counties counted for nothing elsewhere.

Sadly, all this leaves out…

## Local culture, local politics

Culture tends to go bottom-up. In environments where bad culture is not controlled, it thrives.

There is no means to measure how local attitudes and political priorities affect gun crime. Likewise, given how political law enforcement appointments can be in some places, police chief talking points are often reduced to mere echoes of elected officials.

Here is a comparison.

**Chicago police chief after a bloody weekend:** “Our heart goes out to the families. We just need to do better. Try a little harder.”

**Brevard County sheriff after killing suspect, to ambushed officers:** “Evil can never be dead enough.”

Culture derives from communities. In places and times before modern police forces, communities defined how law was enforced (and it was imperfectly practiced, especially in the South). But it reflected cultural attitudes about crime.

In the early twentieth century, communities insisted on a strong police presence – a cop on every corner. Any mayor who did not “keep the streets clean, keep the streets safe” became unemployed.

In the modern era, some localities have notions about crime tolerance that appears shaped by political ideology ( “defund the police”) or the abandonment of government responsibility (“society is to blame”).

Therein may be two impossible-to-measure variables: current political unwillingness to control crime via developing large and professional police departments, and long-term effects by a succession of politicians who are content with crime as long as it is confined to poor, minority race neighborhoods.

**Police/1K Density****Pop Density**Hot 15: Average w/o NY2.01,820Not hot: Average other LCM1.41,889Let’s ponder this. In the *Hot 15* counties, sans the New York outlier, the average number of cops per their population density (density divided by 1,000 to make easy numbers) is 2.0. For all not-hot counties that are also Large Central Metro (LCM) areas, the rate is 1.4. These counties are thus achieving lower gun homicide rates with fewer police both per capita and per capita/density.

This means something outside of common demographic variables is at play. Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and DC fit one perception. Baton Rouge, New Orleans fits another. Dallas is different than Houston despite being in the same state, but they hold #1 and #2 slots in terms of population for Texas.

[![Homicide-Population Gap, Clearance Rates and Gang Age Residents by County - 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Homicide-Population-Gap-Clearance-Rates-and-Gang-Age-Residents-by-County-2018-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Homicide-Population-Gap-Clearance-Rates-and-Gang-Age-Residents-by-County-2018.png)click for a larger, sharable version

Nowhere does this present itself more vividly than at the intersection of policing and gangs.

This somewhat complex chart shows that counties with insufficient policing in terms of clearing (arresting) murder suspects and a higher potential gang population have a higher gap (the *Hot 15* on the left side). Contrarywise, counties that have sufficient police and clear homicide cases have a lower (often negative) homicide-population gaps despite having many potential youth gang members (and, yes, there are other variables, but none as statistically clear as this).

## Data, hygiene, methodologies and other disasters

Despite having some of the most robust crime data collection processes in the world, American crime data is occationally messy.

In preparing this review, we have to suffer our share of outrageous fortunes.

### FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Records

The core data comes from the FBI’s *Supplementary Homicide Records* (SHR), which details many things about murder, from the age, sex and race of perpetrators and victims.

Except for Florida and the Dakotas.

Participation in filing SHR data is completely voluntary, and Florida perpetually opts out. Fortunately, they annually post their version of SHR online and after a couple of hours’ work, we managed to normalize their data with the FBI’s and include Florida in this report. We did not do that for the Dakotas due to them having comparatively small populations (North Dakota’s most populous county has less than 1% the number of people in Los Angeles). Likewise, they lack major metropolitan areas, which years of data and research (as well as this study) show are violent turf.

### Dearth of Gang Dope

No, not the narcotic type. Raw data.

[![Where Gang Members Reside](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Where-Gang-Members-Reside-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Where-Gang-Members-Reside.png)click for a larger, sharable version

Officers per 1K Pop**!**Homicide Clearance Rate**!**Pop Density (per sqkm)**!**% Less than HS–% HS Diploma–% AS degree or Some College–% Bachelor’s or More–% People in Poverty–% Ages 0-17 in Poverty!Median Household Income–Unemployment Rate–% White–% White Youths–% Black!% Black Youths!% Hispanic!% Hispanic Youths!% Indian/Alaska Native–% Asian–% Pacific Islander–% Two or More–% Households Receiving Cash Assist or Food Stamps!We won’t belabor this (again). The National Gang Center confirms that most gang members are found in the major metropolitan areas, but that is not granular enough for robust analysis.

We can opine with a casual observation. We are attempting to construct a gang membership rate predictive model by gathering local law enforcement estimates of the number of gangs in their counties. To date, we have 50 such reports – about 1.6% of all counties, spanning four urbanization measures and four regions. Too little data across too many model points.

That said, we see that Large Central Metro counties have gang participation rates 2.8 times larger than either Large Fringe Metro areas or Medium Metro areas. All but one of the *Hot 15* counties are of the Large Central caste.

## Variables That Matter

Police presence linked to population density and homicide clearance rates are a key measurable.

The other variables stand alone.

### Update #1

We normally don’t pay much creed to anything from The Trace, but one instance they used public record searches for Chicago (Cook County, the most deadly on our list) and came up with something of interest.

As noted above, Cook County, which includes Chicago, has one of the worst homicide case clearance rates in the nation.

The Trace concluded that more than a third of the few cases that they do clear were due to “exceptionally cleared”, mainly via investigating officers dying or prosecutors declining to file charges.

In the year of our study (2018), Cook County had a homicide clearance rate of under 35%. If the roll-up by The Trace is correct, then the actual clearance rate is more like 22%.

Little wonder then that Cook County is on the top of the Top 15 Murder Counties.

Notes:

1. This was the most recent county-level distillation of the FBI’s annual *Supplementary Homicide Report* available from NACJD [↩](#return-note-7608-1)
2. FBI Crime Data Explorer, Police Staffing, duty officers [↩](#return-note-7608-2)
3. An outlier is New York County, New York which has about four times the number of cops, yet is still in the *Hot 15* counties for the gap between gun homicides and the total population. [↩](#return-note-7608-3)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, Crime Control, Police and Guns

**Tags:** county, firearm homicides, policing

---

### [The Gun Facts CCW Scorecard (first edition)](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/the-gun-facts-ccw-scorecard-first-edition/)

**Published:** June 13, 2025
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

It is time for a new method of grading states based on their concealed-carry regimes.

Gun Facts has created one, and the findings are stark.

## Why Is A New System Needed?

The old system classified states by the generality of how concealed-carry permits (CCWs) were provided. The major classifications were:

- No Carry: Carrying firearms in public was not allowed.
- May Issue: The government, largely local, had discretion on if and to whom a permit would be issued.
- Shall Issue: Providing a person was not prohibited (i.e., prior felony conviction) the government would issue a permit.
- Permitless: No permit was required providing you were not a prohibited person.

However, this system was in and of itself inadequate, and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bruen case changed much. The weaknesses of the old classification system were manifold:

- The Bruen case resulted in several May Issue states being forced to become Shall Issue. But they legislated sundry laws that made obtaining a permit expensive and difficult, and highly restricted where one might carry.
- Even in other Shall Issue states, there were barriers. For example, North Carolina requires eight hours of training and demonstrated live fire proficiency.
- The cost of obtaining a permit, both in government fees and training, could be prohibitive.
- Some states issued permits quickly while others took many months.
- Some states allowed local governments (counties and cities) to modify carry regulations, making the legal risk of carrying unpredictable.
- Some states required prerequisites to be met, such as mental health background checks.

Hence, the old no/may/shall/permitless system was often inaccurate. Gun Facts has fixed that.

## The Gun Facts CCW Scorecard Methodology

StateScoreStateScoreAlabama5New York47Alaska3New Jersey42Arizona5California39Arkansas6Maryland35California39Massachusetts33Colorado22Hawaii33Connecticut31Illinois33Delaware21Oregon33District of Columbia26Connecticut31Florida14District of Columbia26Georgia6Nevada22Hawaii33Colorado22Idaho3Delaware21Illinois33Michigan19Indiana5Virginia18Iowa8North Carolina18Kansas9New Mexico17Kentucky11Rhode Island17Louisiana12Minnesota16Maine7Wisconsin16Maryland35Florida14Massachusetts33Tennessee14Michigan19Louisiana12Minnesota16Utah12Mississippi6Missouri11Missouri11Kentucky11Montana7Pennsylvania11Nebraska9Washington10Nevada22South Carolina10New Hampshire4Kansas9New Jersey42Nebraska9New Mexico17Ohio9New York47Oklahoma9North Carolina18North Dakota8North Dakota8Iowa8Ohio9Texas8Oklahoma9West Virginia8Oregon33Montana7Pennsylvania11Wyoming7Rhode Island17Maine7South Carolina10Arkansas6South Dakota4Georgia6Tennessee14Mississippi6Texas8Arizona5Utah12Alabama5Vermont3Indiana5Virginia18New Hampshire4Washington10South Dakota4West Virginia8Alaska3Wisconsin16Idaho3Wyoming7Vermont3Gun Facts has identified seven major topics that affected the ability to be allowed to carry in public or the flexibility of carrying. These topic areas are:

- SENSITIVE PLACES: These are locations where the law disallows a person to carry a firearm. The more sensitive places, the less flexibility a person has to carry, and the higher the risk of being charged with a “firearm crime” (e.g., forgetting that guns are not allowed in hospitals while rushing in to see your injured child in the ER).
- TRAINING: The number of hours of formal training required before a permit can be issued.
- PREREQUISITES: Having to prove in advance certain factors such as mental health validation, having “good moral character,” providing personal references, or having a “good cause” to carry.
- PREMTION: The state preempts local governments from modifying carry laws.
- TIME TO ISSE: The legislated maximum amount of time in which a permit must be issued.
- COST: The total cost, including government fees and training, to receive a permit.

Though this sounds straightforward, there are some things worth noting where Gun Facts adapted to reality:

- SCHOOLS: Federal law currently disallows guns on K12 campuses, which applies to all states. So, we did not include schools in the list of sensitive places.
- COSTS: We combined the government fees and the *average* cost in a state for training (if required) and scored that as the number of hours at the average wage in each state to cover the costs (i.e., how long does the Average Joe have to labor to afford a permit).
- SENSITIVE PLACES: This was tricky as there are huge variations in how any given sensitive place is governed. For example, in many states you can carry in a bar if you are not drinking but in others you cannot under any circumstances. Thus, we had to crudely classify carry in sensitive locations as allowed, disallowed, or conditional.
- PREMPTION: We had to classify as well for state law preempting local law concerning carry regulations. Most states cleanly preempt or do not preempt local laws concerning carry, but others preempt some things and not others. These were scored yes, no or partial.

## How The States Score On CCW Permitting

The total scores quite conveniently fell into a range of 3–47, where the higher the score the more restrictive the regime.

No state, not even permitless states, scored zero. This is primarily because even permitless states have sensitive-place provisions. For example, Alaska tied for the low score, but prohibits carrying firearms in government buildings and courthouses, and private property without consent, as well as airports and terminals.

## What About Comparing to Crime?

The laws gathered were in force as of June of 2025. The most recent CDC firearm death data is for 2023. That is enough time for laws to have changed significantly. For example, four states went permitless between January of 2023 and June of 2025.

Because of this time lag, comparing gun homicide rates against the scorecard might be misleading. Two years from now, when gun death data for 2025 is available, it would be accurate.

[![2025 Gun Facts Concealed Carry Scorecard Map](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025-Gun-Facts-Concealed-Carry-Scorecard-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025-Gun-Facts-Concealed-Carry-Scorecard.png)But… what the hell. Here is a brief analysis removing the states that changed their regimes between 2023 and 2025 (Florida, Nebraska, Louisiana and South Carolina). We’ll also note that six states had gun homicide rates so low that the CDC labeled their own estimated rate as “unreliable.”

The correlation measure, *R*2, for the 2025 scorecard and 2023 gun homicide rates, excluding states that transitioned to new legislative regimes in that period, is 0.01, which means there is no correlation between the state public carry laws and gun homicide rates.

I wish we could say we were surprised.

### Details on Scoring

Since someone will ask, here are the details on how we scored each topic area.

OVERALL: We attempted to get a 0–10 score on each topic. The only one that was problematic was the “time to issue,” the legislatively mandated number of days in which a permit had to be granted. Permitless states have zero days, and New York has 180 days. That is a wide swath to normalize.

**SENSITIVE AREAS:** There were nine sensitive location types. For “disallowed” locations, we multiplied the count of disallowed location by 1 and multiplied “conditional” locations as 0.5. “Allowed” locations defaulted to zero.

**TRAINING:** Training hours went from zero to 16, depending on the state. We normalized each state’s score on a 0–10 scale.

**PREREQUISITES:** There were four types of prerequisites, so we counted how many in each state were mandated and multiplied by 2.25 to push them into a 0–10 scale.

**PREMPTION:** Full state-level preemption scored zero (no local barriers to use), partial as five and full “local prerogatives” as 10.

**TIME TO ISSUE:** We divided a state’s legislated maximum number of days by the largest figure of all the states, then multiplied by 10.

**FEES:** For each state, we added together the fees charged by the government and the average cost of training (if training was required). We then divided that total cost by the state’s average hourly wage to determine the number of hours a person would have to work to pay for a permit. Quite happily, the maximum of all the states was 10 hours of labor, so it fit our 0–10 scaling scheme nicely.

**Categories:** Concealed Carry

**Tags:** ccw, concealed carry, state laws

---

### [Homicide Breakdown 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/homicide-breakdown-2023/)

**Published:** May 26, 2025
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) recently diced homicide data for 2023. [1](#note-8230-1 "Homicide Victimization in the United States, 2023, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2025]") Some of the data is not surprising, and some is.

# Take-aways

- Homicides and gun use skew significantly to the demographics of street gangs.

## The Dismal Reminder

[![Homicide Rate by Race 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicide-Rate-by-Race-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicide-Rate-by-Race-2023.png)[![Homicide Rate by Age 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicide-Rate-by-Age-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicide-Rate-by-Age-2023.png)[![Homicide Clearance Rates by Race, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicide-Clearance-Rates-by-Race-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicide-Clearance-Rates-by-Race-2023.png)[![Homicides by Weapon Type and Race, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicides-by-Weapon-Type-and-Race-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicides-by-Weapon-Type-and-Race-2023.png)[![Homicide Perp-Victim Relationship by Race, 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicide-Perp-Victim-Relationship-by-Race-2023-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Homicide-Perp-Victim-Relationship-by-Race-2023.png)Much of the BJS’s report amplifies what has been seen in criminology data for decades, namely that being a young, black male puts you in the crosshairs… quite literally.

The homicide rate for blacks of all ages is staggeringly high. As we noted in many Gun Facts studies, the rate is strongly correlated with both age and the degree of urbanicity, which are the same vectors that the National Gang Center found were associated with street gang membership.

Accounting for age, and knowing that the active street gang years are from the late teens through early 20s, it is completely unsurprising that the latter age group is where most people are murdered.

Since gangs are the prime suspect, it is also unsurprising that the police don’t/can’t do a great job in preventing more homicides.

## The Un-Clearance Multiplier

In criminology parlance, “case clearance” means resolving a case via an arrest or at least identifying the corpse of the perpetrator.

A “case clearance rate” indicates what percentage of cases the local cops resolve. The lower the clearance rate for murders, the higher a city’s murder rate tends to rise, as we showed in our [*Top 15 Murder County*](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study.

The clearance rate for homicides by race is anything but uniform. The clearance failure rate for homicide of a black person is 30% higher than that for whites. The street gang participation rate for blacks is also 30% higher than for whites. [2](#note-8230-2 "National gang Center: National Youth Gang Survey Analysis: Demographics; Office of Justice Programs: Race and Ethnicity: What Are Their Roles in Gang Membership?; Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology: Race, Ethnicity, and Street Gang Involvement in an American Context")

A univariant comparison is not a whole story, but the nearly exact correlation, when combined with the other data, makes a compelling case that (as we already knew) street gangs are the primary source of deadly violence.

## The Racial Gun Multiplier

Unexpectedly, we also see a very significant divergence in who uses guns for homicides.

Guns are the primary tool for homicides in the United States, hands down. But their use for such is not evenly distributed by race.

And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record (look that up, kids), blacks use guns 29% more often than whites for their homicides. Let’s just round that up to 30% to agree with the same data for overall homicide rates and gang participation rates by race.

As if we needed more correlation, next comes…

## The Unknown Killers

We discussed the lackluster clearance rates for homicides for blacks. One reason is that (aligned with higher gang participation rates) the police have less to work with. Gang members are notoriously uncooperative with the authorities. But often the victim doesn’t even know that attacker.

For blacks, the rate of a homicide perpetrator being unknown is 60% higher than for whites (glad we didn’t say 30% again?). This is a function of street gang MOs. A body in an alley with no witnesses (or at least none who will talk to the cops) is common in the inner-city neighborhoods where gangs are “the law.” Hence, low clearance rates are in part due to high rates of unknown (and unknowable) assailants.

## Triangulation and Priorities

At Gun Facts, we avoid making policy recommendations. There are plenty of activist groups, both pro- and anti-gun, who are more than happy to proffer policy opinions.

But we do believe that all big problems are a set of smaller problems, and it is always best to attack the biggest of those first. The biggest problem with gun violence in America is street gangs. It is a complex problem involving culture, economics, social issues, and more. But the core is that gangs will continue to commit the lion’s share of gun homicides, [85% of them by our estimate](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/), until gang culture is broken and there is long-term, adequate and professional policing in the neighborhoods where gangs dominate.

Notes:

1. *Homicide Victimization in the United States, 2023*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2025\] [↩](#return-note-8230-1)
2. National gang Center: National Youth Gang Survey Analysis: Demographics; Office of Justice Programs: Race and Ethnicity: What Are Their Roles in Gang Membership?; Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology: Race, Ethnicity, and Street Gang Involvement in an American Context [↩](#return-note-8230-2)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** gun homicides, homicides

---

### [Young Thugs in California](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/young-thugs-in-california/)

**Published:** December 18, 2024
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

California is the home of the original “gangsta paradise” which was exported nationally.

As such, a large study of the gang membership in California secondary schools helps to understand the scope of the overall gang problem, and by proxy how to reduce gun violence.

## Take-aways

- 4% of surveyed students claimed to be gang members.
- The rates are skewed by race and align with National Gang Center demographics.

## Big Sample, Biggish Problem

Surveying 667,610 secondary students constitutes a large study, and thus the resulting numbers should be solid approximations… despite a possible self-reporting bias.

The study [1](#note-8134-1 "A Statewide Study of Gang Membership in California Secondary Schools; Estrada, Gilreath, Astor, Benbenishty; 2014") covered 57 of 58 California counties over two years. They polled 667,610 secondary students in grades 7, 9 and 11, and after the few who dropped out of the survey or were for other reasons disqualified, about 31% of the enrolled population were sampled. Quite impressive.

The weakness of the study, though, was that students had to self-identify as to whether they were/were-not gang members. There are likely reporting biases, in that some students will “brag” that they are gang members when they are not, and some gang members are reluctant to admit membership if they think the survey is traceable to them.

This limitation is somewhat balanced by the sheer size of the study, so we present it with the cautious suggestion that these should be treated as ballpark estimates.

## 8.4% Are Gang Members

Over eight percent of the student body claim to be a gang member. But the question asked was a bit vague for Gun Facts’ taste. It read, “Do you consider yourself a member of a gang?”

We know that there are “gang affiliates,” individuals who associate with gangs but have not been officially inducted. The question could have been abused or misunderstood by secondary school students who hang out with gang members but don’t participate in sanctioned gang activities.

Still, being a close associate may be a narrow distinction in terms of juvenile crime, including acquiring street guns and committing felonies.

## Race Is A Factor

As much as we at Gun Facts loathe discussing race, it is statistically significant in violent crime, most specifically in regard to street gangs.

We are not alone in this observation. The National Gang Center composed [statistical profiles of gang members](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/) in the USA, and certain races were amazingly over-represented.

[![California Middle and Highschool Students in Gangs by Race 2005 THRU 2007](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/California-Middle-and-Highschool-Students-in-Gangs-by-Race-2005-THRU-2007-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/California-Middle-and-Highschool-Students-in-Gangs-by-Race-2005-THRU-2007.png)The same holds true for California secondary school students. This chart shows, for each race, the percent of the total student population the race represents in schools (red bars) and the percent of gang members within their race. Latinos in secondary schools outnumbered blacks by nearly 8:1, but blacks were 27% more likely to be in a gang.

For guns and violence, this tendency is acutely important. There have been long-standing wars (in the literal sense) between rival black street gangs. While a black gang member might commit violence against non-black gang members, gun play between certain black gangs (notably the Crips and Bloods) is automatic. Hence, the more likely a black male teen is to associate with a gang, the more likely they are to murder or be murdered, primarily by another black.

## Grades and Slides

 Gang7th grade: 12-139%9th grade: 14-159%11th grade: 16-177%Surprisingly, perhaps, gang membership drops off in the higher grades.

The National Gang Center tells us that active street gang recruitment starts at age 14. In California, they start a bit earlier and gang “membership” remains high until teens approach graduation age, when it declines.

Sadly, the California Department of Education website was broken during our investigation and the data files for dropout rates were unavailable. But we can reasonably expect the following about gang members in secondary school:

- Some drop out of school.
- Some are incarcerated.
- Some are dead.

Thus the 2% decline between grades 9 and 11 might just be an aberration, and the higher rate of non-gang members is a function of fewer gang members still being in school at all.

## Where?

The paper did one questionable bit of analysis.

[![California Secondary School Age Gun Homicide Rates by County 2005 thru 2007](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/California-Secondary-School-Age-Gun-Homicide-Rates-by-County-2005-thru-2007-400x348.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/California-Secondary-School-Age-Gun-Homicide-Rates-by-County-2005-thru-2007.png)They clustered the California counties into regions, often amalgamating rural and urban counites. The result was a fairly even level of gang membership among the regions.

This impression, of course, is nonsense.

Part of the National Gang Center’s demographic analysis clearly showed gang presence is higher in metropolitan areas and nearly nonexistent in rural ones.

When we look at gun homicides of gang-age teens by county in California, we see quite a different story.

Homicide rates for this age group is sharply higher for regions emanating from Los Angeles and the corridor between Alameda County (Oakland, a gang-heavy town) and Sacramento (less gang-heavy, but significant). The counties in white had homicide rates so low the CDC classified their calculations to be “unreliable”; and the gray zone numbers were so low the CDC “suppressed” the data for victim privacy purposes.

## Cali’s Condition

California is not unique. As we explored in our [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) analysis, gang activity and associated homicides cluster in metro areas, agreeing with the National Gang Center’s analysis. California has more major metro areas than other states, so their net gang presence looks large and likely is.

For example, Illinois has Chicago with 2.6 million souls. The next largest is Aurora with a mere 177,500 people. Contrast California starting with Los Angeles at 3.8 million, San Diego at 1.4 million, San Jose with 969,600, San Francisco at 808,900, Fresno housing 454,700, and so on.

The point is that Cali’s 8.4% gang participation rate in secondary schools may be an outlier when compared to other states due to its multiple major metro areas.

But what happens in Los Angeles also happens in Baltimore, Houston, Detroit, Memphis, Saint Louis, Philly …

Notes:

1. A Statewide Study of Gang Membership in California Secondary Schools; Estrada, Gilreath, Astor, Benbenishty; 2014 [↩](#return-note-8134-1)

**Categories:** California, Children and Guns, Crime and Guns

---

### [Direct Exposure to Nonsense](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/direct-exposure-to-nonsense/)

**Published:** March 22, 2025
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

There is weak research, improper research, and misleading research.

Then there is stupid research, which often incorporates all of the above.

We recently encountered what can charitably be described as *stupid gun research* of a variety where common sense appears to be a foreign concept to the authors.

## JAMA That In Your Pipe And Smoke It

Yet again the Journal of the American Medical Association committed criminology malpractice. In this case, the corpse of intellectual reason was slayed by a paper titled ***Direct Exposure to Mass Shootings Among US Adults***. [1](#note-8179-1 "Direct Exposure to Mass Shootings Among US Adults; Pyrooz, Densley, Peterson; JAMA; 2025") We would normally just put a new entry on our [Bad Research Roster](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/) page, which you should reference any time someone lobs a “study” at you. But this piece of work (or piece of something) was so deeply defective and comical, it calls for a blog entry to not only inform you, but teach how to detect industrial-grade buncombe.

### The Hardheaded Headline

The paper claims that that 7% of surveyed adults had “been present on the scene where 4 or more people were shot.”

Seven percent is a big number. Asians and Native Americans combined make up a little more than 7% of the population. So, imagine every single person of those races being “present” at what JAMA classifies as a “mass shooting.” [2](#note-8179-2 "Keep in mind there are multiple definitions of “mass shooting”, none of which are certified and blessed by criminologists. “Mass public shootings” were defined by criminologists in the 1990s and is the enduring definition for serious students.")

JAMA’s reported survey was of adults, so let’s make the case even worse for the authors of this paper, who should seriously consider self-exile to the woodshed. In the USA, this would extrapolate to over **18 million adults** having been present at a “mass shooting,” which is perfectly improbable. The state of New York has 19 million residents. So, the authors claim that nearly the equivalent of the population of the Empire State has been “present” at a mass shooting.

## Honest Injure?

The paper also concludes that 2% of the people surveyed (regardless of being at a mass shooting or not) report being injured at the event.

That is about 361,620 adults. That is roughly the population of Cleveland, Ohio. That’s a lot of bloodshed.

But it isn’t.

Foremost, the authors included all injuries at the “scene,” including “being trampled, or other causes of injury.” So, if you were at the “scene” of a mass shooting and you sprained your ankle running away, you were added to the 2% figure and thus helped them make a headline few reporters would ever read deeply enough to debunk on their own.

But it gets even worse, and even ob-scene.

## This Paper Is An Ugly Crime Scene

When you read a headline about 7% of the population having “direct exposure” to a mass shooting, you think “direct” would mean being at the event itself.

Sorry, but believing that would disqualify you from publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Per the survey design, the authors classified being “present” at a mass shooting to include “or you could hear the gunfire.” We think it is not being nitpicky to classify hearing gunshots a block away as not “being present” at a mass shooting or having “direct exposure” to the event. The lack of *physical* presence is the giveaway.

## Synthetic People

So where did the author find their survey respondents? They don’t completely disclose this.

The respondents were obtained via an online survey panel, which is an acceptable approach providing it is a public resource (it was) and large enough. Their approach, though, was synthetically suspicious.

Most well-designed surveys merely oversample the population at large, then weight the responses by demographics (age, race, etc.) to scale overall responses to match the population at large.

They didn’t do that. Instead, they created a “matched sample… based on selecting individuals to be interviewed \[that\] matched the target sample from a large pool of online opt-in panelists.” One might claim this is economy, an attempt to get rational results while polling fewer people. But the selection criteria are not completely, or even well described.

But self-selection exists, and in this paper, it is a bit of a sham. After synthetically modeling their matched sample, they sent survey invitations clearly telling possible (and possibly preselected) potential respondents that the survey was about “Exposure to Gun Violence in the United States.”

People who have been exposed to *any* type of gun violence are vastly more likely to take the bait than those who have not. This is self-selection on steroids. Yes, respondents to a company doing random digit dialing, the time-tested mode of survey randomization, do deselect from surveys. But that is vastly different than people reacting to provocative text like “Exposure to Gun Violence.”

It is worth noting the authors do not mention self-selection biasing in the section subtitled “Sampling, Quality Checks, Generalizability, and Non-Random Selection.”

## The \[Rotten\] Core Problem

Those who work in the computer fields know well the old adage “garbage in, garbage out.” Herein we have a “garbage in” problem.

In our [Journalists Gun Issue Guide](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-why-this-guide/), we have a page on which data sources are reliable and which ones are questionable. In that latter category resides the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).

That this study cites GVA shows another case where the extrapolated numbers expose unbelievability.

In a strangely worded passage, the authors note that “Estimates from the Gun Violence Archive… led us to generate a sample of 10,000 individuals residing in the US.” How this unreliable source generated a sample is not described in the paper or errata sheet.

To give you an idea of where this source may have polluted the author’s understanding, they themselves note that GVA estimates about 500 mass shootings a year in the US, or about 1.4 a day. Keeping in mind that their own definition of “mass shooting” is 4+ people catching a bullet, the estimate is improbable.

## Lifetime Tonnage

One factor to bear in mind is that the survey responses are “lifetime” recollections, not annualized data.

Is it *possible* that 18 million adults have been present at a “mass shooting” at some point in their lives? Unlikely.

U.S. life expectancy is 77 years. If we halve that (to use the midpoint of all ages) after subtracting those under age 18 (since the study specified “adults”), we have a 29 year average range for “a lifetime” of remembrances.

This roughly equates to 620,690 people (slightly more than all the folk in Memphis, Tennessee) a year experiencing a “mass shooting” in their lifetimes to get to that 18,000,000 adults mark.

## Perspective Ignored

What the authors did was to sail past basic order-of-magnitude sanity-checking to ensure their writing and ’rithmetic wasn’t risible. When you are presented with scary headlines, ask what the extrapolated numbers are. If they are inconceivable, then the paper is ill-conceived.

Notes:

1. Direct Exposure to Mass Shootings Among US Adults; Pyrooz, Densley, Peterson; JAMA; 2025 [↩](#return-note-8179-1)
2. Keep in mind there are multiple definitions of “mass shooting”, none of which are certified and blessed by criminologists. “Mass ***public*** shootings” were defined by criminologists in the 1990s and is the enduring definition for serious students. [↩](#return-note-8179-2)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** jama, mass shootings

---

### [Recidivism and Violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/recidivism-and-violence/)

**Published:** December 28, 2024
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Some criminals never learn. Well, actually most don’t.

But when it comes to violence, and hence gun violence, this is an important part of the puzzle.

## Take-aways

- 2% of prison admissions are for violent crimes.
- 64% of admitted prisoners had their first arrest in the teen years.
- 30% of them account for 51% of prior arrests.

## Large, Oldish Data, Frustrating Study

When a reputable (and positively OCD) organization like the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reviews over 90,000 newly incarcerated convicts, and repeats the stunt 15 years later, you have an admirably robust study.

Which had one aching gap.

In 2009 and again in 2014, BJS tallied folks heading to the Big House [1](#note-8144-1 "Arrest History of Persons Admitted to State Prison in 2009 and 2014; Durose, Antenangeli; Bureau of Justice Statistics; 2023"), and nabbed data about their crimes, demographics, and prior arrest histories. A stunning achievement given that this accounted for 73% of all prison admissions.

The aggravating thing is that, though we know in aggregate something about these inmates’ prior crimes, we do not have a discreet summary of how many of them who were imprisoned for a violent offense had previous violent offenses, much less the ratio of new and old gun violence offenses.

All that griping aside, we can get an idea of how problematic jailbirds are and make rational guesses about the violence angle.

## They Start Young

The report says 28.2% of the new or renewed cons went in for violent crimes.

But that is only the “now,” whereas the “then” is more important.

*click to enlarge sharable charts*[![Age of First Arrest of Admissions to State Prisons 2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Age-of-First-Arrest-of-Admissions-to-State-Prisons-2014-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Age-of-First-Arrest-of-Admissions-to-State-Prisons-2014.png)[![State Prison Admissions by Age 2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/State-Prison-Admissions-by-Age-2014-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/State-Prison-Admissions-by-Age-2014.png)[![Prior Arrests for and Percent of State Prison Admissions](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prior-Arrests-for-and-Percent-of-State-Prison-Admissions-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prior-Arrests-for-and-Percent-of-State-Prison-Admissions.png)[![Share of Imprisonment and Prior Arrests 2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Share-of-Imprisonment-and-Prior-Arrests-2014-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Share-of-Imprisonment-and-Prior-Arrests-2014.png)[![Prison Admissions and Prior Arrests 2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prison-Admissions-and-Prior-Arrests-2014-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Prison-Admissions-and-Prior-Arrests-2014.png)Repeat offenders tend to start their criminal ways young, including committing acts of violence. Nearly 64% of the Prison Class of 2014 had their first arrest in their teenage years.

To shed a bit more light on this issue, the National Gang Center notes that blacks are much more likely to be street gang members. In 2014, 14.4% of gang age males were black, but 33.5% of prison inductees were as well. The overrepresentation of blacks in gangs and prison is not coincidental.

The age of the 2014 roster of incarcerated criminals also skews heavily younger, with the second biggest group being under the age of 24. Gang recruitment begins at age 14, according to the National Gang Center demographic study, so it is unsurprising they are high on the list.

And their numbers herein are underreported. Some states do not classify or process juvenile violent offenders as adults, and depending on the offence, it might not involve prison time. Odds are the 25-and-younger group is functionally the largest in this collection.

## They Repeat Often

The early 1990s backlash against rising crime was due in no small part to a “revolving door justice system.” The phrases “repeat offender” and “habitual criminal” were frequent utterances (we previously covered [habitual offender laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/habitual-effects/)).

But the remaining degree of habitual crime is still huge.

Astoundingly, 77% of people heading for the hoosgow have five or more prior arrests. Given that 25% of them are going down the river for a violent offense, odds are at least one of those priors is for violence as well.

Despite 24 states with more than half of the nation’s population passing habitual offender laws between 1993 and 1996, criminals still repeat crimes and repeatedly go to prison. The punishment is not enough of a deterrent and rehabilitation is incomplete.

The staggering view shows that 30% of the people going into prison had 51% of all prior arrests.

This correlation is important because it mirrors what has long been known about street gang members. Within gangs, there are super predators – “people” who kill routinely. In scattered local law enforcement statements, we have seen that a gang member being held on a murder charge is the lead suspect in 2–3 other homicides, and those are only the ones where cops can make a connection. It is unsurprising that the prison induction caseload is weighted heavily toward repeat offenders, and as a byproduct repeat *violent* offenders, which in turn means repeat *gun violence* offenders.

In fact, of the sundry crime categories, violence is ahead of all the others, covering 28.2% of all the new offenses.

## The Incomplete Data

As meaty as this BJS report is, it does not directly tally the number of fresh violent crime inmates who had prior violent crime arrests, much less prior gun crime arrests. We can infer correlations thanks to other data from other sources, but the connection is not ironclad.

The BJS is aware of this shortcoming. They note that one of their reports from 2021 indicated 32.4% of people released from prison who were convicted of a violent crime were nearly as likely to be rearrested for a violent crime, whereas only 28.9 were rearrested for property crimes. The report “suggests” that there exists a significant recidivism rate among violent offenders.

It is a shame that their analysis stops here. BJS has the best researchers. Mapping prior and new violent crimes, and additionally prior and new gun crimes, would provide many revelations and reset national priorities.

Notes:

1. Arrest History of Persons Admitted to State Prison in 2009 and 2014; Durose, Antenangeli; Bureau of Justice Statistics; 2023 [↩](#return-note-8144-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** crime, recidivism

---

### [School Guns and Non-Disaster](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/school-guns-and-non-disaster/)

**Published:** May 1, 2024
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

*“Teachers carrying guns … “*

Want to start an argument? Utter that line at a cocktail party.

But is it a problem, a solution, or both? As for as being problematic, it largely isn’t.

## Takeaway

- The number of gun discharges on campuses in almost immeasurably small.
- Most of the problems are police/security having accidental discharges.
- These account for 0.04 incidents per year per state.

## The Iffy Data

One of the gun control advocacy groups created a “scare the public” web page [1](#note-7950-1 "Giffords, “Armed adults frequently mishandle their guns in schools.”") listing instances of adults with a gun on “school” grounds. We put quotes there because more than a few of the schools on the activist organization’s roster were vocational schools and colleges. When discussing “arming teachers,” the public tends to visualize this as pertaining to K–12 schools only.

But that isn’t the only defect in their raw data. They extracted the tally of incidents from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), and we have previously noted that [GVA is *not* a gold standard data source](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-violence-archive-assessment/), by any common definition. As computer nerds say \[ED: and Gun Facts founder Guy Smith is one of those\], garbage in, garbage out.

But laying data quality issue aside, and assuming the gun control advocacy group did not monkey with the data, we have a rather un-shocking perspective on how arming teachers might or might not be problematic.

The data in question spans the years 2014 through 2021. Perhaps 2020 and 2021 should have been omitted since those were COVID pandemic years and many schools were shuttered. But we left the entries just to be as pessimistic about authorized guns being on campus as possible.

In their tally, *anyone* authorized to have a gun on campus was included. This included sheriffs on duty, parents waiting in parking lots, resource officers, administrators, security guards, and, yes, teachers.

## Low Numbers and Lower Rates

For this period, there were 107 instances of guns on campus in a possibly/actually endangering situation. But in 72% of those, no shot was fired, and 57% were instances that were of no immediate endangerment (in 36% the gun was left somewhere, or handled in a way that a student *could* access it, such as leaving the gun in a bathroom stall, or bringing one onto campus when not authorized).

Let’s ingest those high-level number for a moment. Of all incidents, 72% did not involve a gun being discharged and 57% had no immediate endangerment to students. Additionally, 34% of states had no recorded incidents whatsoever in this period. So far, it isn’t sounding like a massive problem. But we need to scratch below the surface a little.

## How Guns Were Involved

[![Adult Gun Issues on School Campuses 2014 thru 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Adult-Gun-Issues-on-School-Campuses-2014-thru-2021-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Adult-Gun-Issues-on-School-Campuses-2014-thru-2021.png)click to enlarge

[![Accidental Discharges at Schools by Perp Category, 2014 through 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Accidental-Discharges-at-Schools-by-Perp-Category-2014-through-2021-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Accidental-Discharges-at-Schools-by-Perp-Category-2014-through-2021.png)click to enlarge

[![School Gun Discharges by Perpetrator and Intent, 2014 thru 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/School-Gun-Discharges-by-Perpetrator-and-Intent-2014-thru-2021-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/School-Gun-Discharges-by-Perpetrator-and-Intent-2014-thru-2021.png)click to enlarge

[![Who Was Shot by Authorized Gun Carriers on School Grounds, 2014 thru 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Who-Was-Shot-by-Authorized-Gun-Carriers-on-School-Grounds-2014-thru-2021-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Who-Was-Shot-by-Authorized-Gun-Carriers-on-School-Grounds-2014-thru-2021.png)click to enlarge

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shootings-resolution-of-events-2000-2010-1-400x325.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shootings-resolution-of-events-2000-2010-1.png)click to enlarge

The problem with the “scare page” by the policy advocacy organization is that details remove much of the fright.

Though nobody wants a gun to be left in a bathroom stall (a frequent issue with police on campus), such lapses in safe possession were the most frequent, but they were also undeadly. In fact, only one instance resulted in a child pulling a trigger and that was not from negligently leaving a gun unattended – “A child pulled the trigger of a gun in an officer’s holster while the officer was visiting his classroom.”

For most worrywarts, the next area of common concern is accidental discharges (ADs). And with this we find both the skewing of the data and how the advocacy “scare page” distorted reality by not summarizing details.

Law enforcement had the largest number of ADs – 64% of them, to be specific. Underlying this data point are two realities, one understandable and the other… not so much.

First, not every state allows non-police to carry guns on campus. Hence, cops are often the only adults at a school with a gun (teenage gang members have them too, but this study doesn’t involve those delinquents). So, cops are statistically more likely to have an AD because nobody else can in these schools.

That’s the understandable bit. The less understandable aspect is that cops should be trained in firearm safety, which begins with firearm paranoia. Cops are a bit notorious for not training often with guns and not always being “cross the T’s and dot the I’s” with guns \[ED: Gun Facts founder Guy Smith grew up around cops, married into a cop family, his daughter is a dispatcher, and he has collected his own set of “bad gun handling” horror stories from law enforcement\].

That said, there were “only” 16 police/security ADs over this period, or about 0.04 incidents per year per state. That said, zero is the goal.

To get a bit more granular, we see that ADs are the primary issue for any “adult” carrying on campus or a student who gets their hands on a gun an adult brought to the school (such as the incident mentioned above about a kid pulling the trigger on a cop’s holstered weapon).

One interesting aside: teachers – you know, the people who are the center of the current debate – had a much better ratio than cops for discharging a firearm with intent, meaning to control a situation. They had a whopping three ADs across eight years and 50 states, and two “shots fired” interventions. For police/security, all but one were ADs.

## Who Gets Shot

Given that guns brought to campus by adults are almost never discharged, and that most of those are accidental discharges by police/security, the question of who gets shot is, for practical purposes, statistically null. But the next curiosity in the data shows that it isn’t (by and large) students.

As noted, most (87%) are on-campus adult gun issues that involve no bullets flying. Of the 13% of instances where someone was hit by a bullet, 7% are either the “adult” with the gun injuring themselves or purposefully attempting/threatening suicide.

Of the three students injured by guns going off, two were hit by bullet fragments from accidental discharges and one by falling debris as an after effect.

## Is Arming Teachers Wise?

Since Gun Facts does not advocate, we won’t opine on whether arming teachers is desirable or not.

What we can say is that guns on campus with adults authorized to carry them is not thus far causing a statistically significant (indeed, barely a measurable) problem.

Since armed interventions are the most common mode for stopping mass public shootings, and according to a number of academic papers, a key to deterring attacks, armed school staff *might* decrease the probability of outside attacks (or at least end them rapidly), before more children are hunted. And in inner-city schools where teen gang members rove armed, it might change the motivation calculation for bringing gang violence onto the campus.

*Special note of thanks to Gun Facts volunteer researcher Steve for cross-compiling the data.*

Notes:

1. Giffords, “Armed adults frequently mishandle their guns in schools.” [↩](#return-note-7950-1)

**Categories:** Children and Guns

**Tags:** resource officers, schools, teachers

---

### [Stolen Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/stolen-guns/)

**Published:** June 28, 2024
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

One way criminals gets guns is to steal them, or to buy guns from gun thieves.

The question is if this is a major source of crime guns, and where is the leakage occurring?

The answers are serious though the data is convoluted.

## Takeaways

- A net 154,746 guns (stolen minus recovered) enter the underground in a year.
- They are overwhelmingly taken from civilians.
- Most disappear from vehicles, not homes.
- Public carry is not a predictor of gun theft rates, but the adult population is.
- Gun theft rates are not covariant with gun homicide rates.

## A crabby note about data

Data quality is the bane of research, and data quality on this issue is inconsistent.

We’ll include rants about data as we explain our findings, but for starters, we’ll note that snapshot data (i.e., a one-year picture) is divorced from long-term data, and the long-term data required us to triangulate factors. That latter bit leads to a mild caution about trend charts herein, and a not-mild (borderline screaming) complaint to the FBI for data design, collection and reporting.

## The framing questions

We scripted the following framing questions.

- What is and has been the rate of guns thefts?
- How is it split between civilians and federal firearm licensees (FFL), a.k.a. gun dealers?
- Is the situation getting worse, better, or staying steady?
- Does the general degree of gun ownership correlate to gun thefts?
- Does public carry correlate to gun thefts, and if so, how?

We soon discovered that some of these questions produce fuzzy answers, some data is misaligned, and some sub questions (such as the percentage of stolen guns that end up “on the streets”) cannot be accurately estimated.

All that said, some things are clear and clearly not good.

## The high-level national view

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) – which would be a good name for a Nevada convenience store – produced a report [1](#note-7998-1 "National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA): Firearms Trafficking Investigations - Volume Three") on the subject. Though some insights therein are important, they only covered five years, and two of those were during the pandemic when criminology data was wildly fluctuating. The report is also frustrating because they pulled data from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), which is not readily available to the public, and thus not to Gun Facts (see Righteous Data Rant #1).

However, it gives us a starting point for both the degree of the problem and for sanity-checking other data.

[![Annual Firearm Thefts 2017 thru 2021 for civilians and FFLs](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Annual-Firearm-Thefts-2017-thru-2021-for-civilians-and-FFLs-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Annual-Firearm-Thefts-2017-thru-2021-for-civilians-and-FFLs.png)click to enlarge

The ATF report breaks down thefts from both civilian and Federal Firearm Licensees (FFLs). The latter are gun dealers ranging from your Uncle Harvey who trades a few pieces a year for profit, to every Bass Pro shop, all the pawn shops, et cetera. Combined, the ATF estimates that every year 211,934 guns get stolen. As we’ll explore in a moment, about 15% of stolen guns are recovered each year, so there is a net leakage of approximately 180,144 guns into criminal hands per the ATF’s snapshot.

That is a lot of guns.

Compare that gun loss rate with the 19,651 gun homicides in 2022. That is more than nine guns entering criminal hands for every gun used in a gun murder. But guns are used for other types of crime (i.e., attempted homicide, armed robbery, etc.), some are ditched after being used in a crime and then replaced, and others are not used. But still, that is a lot of guns entering the underground.

The good news is that the ATF’s private data source roughly agrees with published data from the not-yet-matured National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the new scheme replacing the decades-old Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system. We used 2022 NIBRS data because they rolled out of NIBRS nationally in 2021 and the reporting compliance rate was not great. But the last year reported in the ATF was 2021, leaving a one-year gap.

That said, the numbers are “close enough.”

NIBRS 2022 reported 165,378 instances of gun thefts and the ATF 2021 report disclosed 159,422. This is a difference of less than 1% and given that the nation was still masking up and locking down in 2021, the non-pandemic related gun theft fluctuations are likely near zero.

However, NIBRS says that in the year 2022, there were 24,098 instances where stolen guns were recovered. The ATF report says that on average, 59,357 stolen guns were recovered. This is about 2.5 guns recovered for every instance of *any* stolen guns being recovered. This is significantly higher than the ATF’s reported average of 1.3 guns stolen in each gun theft instance. Summarized, police recover more stolen guns per instance than are stolen per instance. This discrepancy is likely due to busts of underground gun marketers and police obtaining small caches of guns when a criminal is charged.

For now, using just NIBRS instance numbers for 2022 and ATF guns/event ratios, we see:

- GUN STOLEN: 214,991
- GUNS RECOVERED: 60,245
- NET GUNS ENTERING UNDERGROUND: 154,746

[![BJS table from 2016 felon survey](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BJS-table-from-2016-felon-survey-400x251.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BJS-table-from-2016-felon-survey.png)click to enlarge

For perspective’s sake, in 2022 there were 19,651 firearm homicides, [2](#note-7998-2 "CDC WONDER mortality database"), or about seven guns stolen for every gun homicide. To add even more perspective, sundry local police statements have shown that a street gang member being held on a homicide charge typically is also the lead suspect in two to three other homicides. This resolves into a few thousand super killers. Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics decadal studies on crime gun sources, most of these guns are acquired from “street sources.” [3](#note-7998-3 "Most recently, Survey of Prison Inmates, United States, 2016")

But the gap between the number of guns stolen and the maximum number of guns chucked into a river after being used to commit a crime is way off. Perhaps crime guns not used in murder explains the gap. After all, if you wounded but didn’t kill someone, you might be motivated as well to dispose of the crime weapon.

In 2022, there were about 59,000 firearm woundings due to assaults or undetermined intents (though this includes the tiny fraction of gun accidents). Add this to the gun homicides, and we still only get to nearly 79,000 cases where someone was hit with a bullet in a criminal action, which is still well below the net 154,746 guns stolen (actual number stolen less the number recovered). That’s a nearly 2:1 ratio.

Since criminals notoriously decline to describe their activities, we are in the dark as to how many of the stolen guns:

1. Enter underground markets
2. End up in criminal hands
3. Are used in crime, even if not fired
4. Are used in crime and fired
5. Are used in crime, are fired, and someone is wounded or killed

But 154,746 new free-range guns a year is clearly a problem.

One quick aside is that not all stolen guns are acquired by street thugs. There are times where people acquire stolen guns though they are not active criminals ([as in this report](https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-homeowner-arrested-after-fatally-shooting-robbery-suspect) of an elderly man who shot a burglar, and the old fellow used a stolen gun). It is impossible to know the breakdown of who receives stolen guns, but other research [4](#note-7998-4 "Underground Gun Markets; Cook; The Economic Journal; 2007") has shown the “street price” for a handgun is about 25–50% that of the retail price, which makes it affordable to gang members and disadvantaged seniors alike.

[![Civilian and FFL gun thefts and losses 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Civilian-and-FFL-gun-thefts-and-losses-2022-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Civilian-and-FFL-gun-thefts-and-losses-2022.png)click to enlarge

[![Firearm theft and recovery ratio 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Firearm-theft-and-recovery-ratio-2022-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Firearm-theft-and-recovery-ratio-2022.png)click to enlarge

[![Map showing the ratio between firearm thefts and firearm recoveries by state in 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Gun-thefts-per-100000-population-by-state-2022-400x284.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Gun-thefts-per-100000-population-by-state-2022.png)click to enlarge

[![Covariance between gun theft rates and five variables 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Covarience-between-gun-theft-rates-and-five-variables-2022-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Covarience-between-gun-theft-rates-and-five-variables-2022.png)click to enlarge

[![Per capita firearm theft instances and gun homicides 1996 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Per-capita-firearm-theft-instances-and-gun-homicides-1996-thru-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Per-capita-firearm-theft-instances-and-gun-homicides-1996-thru-2019.png)click to enlarge

[![FFL gun theft and loss rates per 100,000 population 2012 thru 2020](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FFL-gun-theft-and-loss-rates-per-100000-population-2012-thru-2020-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FFL-gun-theft-and-loss-rates-per-100000-population-2012-thru-2020.png)click to enlarge

[![Firearm theft covarience measures against public carry law chages](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Firearm-theft-covarience-measures-against-public-carry-law-chages-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Firearm-theft-covarience-measures-against-public-carry-law-chages.png)click to enlarge

To complete the high-level one-year snapshot, we need to look at the relative rate of guns “disappearing” (the real “ghost guns”) between civilians and gun stores.

In the five-year ATF report mentioned before, they concluded that only 3.2% of lost and stolen guns left the hands of FFLs. The 2022 data we gathered puts the figure at around 8%, which is a significant difference. Again, the ATF’s report was made using opaque data unavailable to us, and included pandemic-era fluctuations, so we are more content with the pie chart presented here.

## State-level view

Keeping in mind that there was still an under-reporting problem with NIBRS for the year 2022, there are some disturbing and illuminating state-level elements in the data.

Foremost, we are concerned with the net number of stolen guns that enter the underground markets. This can be viewed for each state by the ratio of guns that are stolen and the number of stolen guns that are recovered. A lack of policing, which is [associated with high gun homicide rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/), also likely allows more stolen guns to not be recovered. Illinois (with Chicago’s Cook County, the leader in excess gun homicides) also has the worst stolen/recovered ratio of all states.

But that is not the whole story. If a state has a much higher rate of gun thefts, and an average theft/recovery ratio, then they will have more guns leaking into the wrong hands. For example, Michigan (think Detroit) is about average in the number guns stolen per capita, but their stolen gun recovery ratio is 20% worse than average. Texas has nearly double the number of guns stolen and has even a worse recovery rate (a recovery rate of 8%, compared to a national average of 13%).

Later on, we will get more detailed, but at a high level for states we see no meaningful covariance between rates for stolen guns and either the average gun ownership rates or public carry rates (“shall issue,” permitless carry, or the combination of public carry laws). It is, however, much more associated with how many adults there are in any state. Since you have to be an adult to buy a handgun, and since handguns are the primary choice of gun thieves, the intersections are unsurprising.

## Is it getting better or worse?

Neither, though the data is maddening (see Righteous Data Rant #2).

Using the FBI’s data for the value of guns stolen, and adjusting for inflation, we see three interesting things about stolen guns.

- The gun homicide rate was falling as a byproduct of 24 states passing habitual offender laws in the early 1990s, even though the gun theft rate was static.
- For six years after the Great Recession of 2008, gun homicides continued to fall even though the gun theft rate was rising.
- Murder started spiking in 2015 (post Ferguson Michael Brown shooting and early police defunding drives) when the gun theft rate started falling.

The chart above includes both civilian and FFL thefts. Looking at just FLL thefts and losses (this is how the ATF clustered their data) we see a general downward trend in guns leaking into underground markets from gun stores. But recall that depending on which data sources are used, FFL guns account for only 3–8% of guns stolen (and for FFLs, lost). Good that the trend is downward, but the FLL contribution is the minor problem to consider.

The take-away here is that the gun theft rate does not appear to predict the gun homicide rate.

### Did expanded public carry induce more gun thefts?

The short answer is “no,” but it really depends on how big of a change in public carry laws a state made.

From 1988 through the 2022 Bruen Supreme Court decision, the US went from 10 states that allowed public carry to 42 states. And by “allow” we mean that any adult not convicted of a felony would be issued a permit upon request, or within the increasing number of states that eliminated permitting all together.

From 1996 through 2020 (see Righteous Data Rant #3) 67% of states saw a net ***decline*** in the inflation and population adjusted value of stolen firearms. Only two states showed both an increase in firearm thefts and a significant 24-year covariance. In short, for most states, gun thefts did not get worse as public carry expanded from 10 to 42 states.

But there were hiccups.

How big of a leap a state made seems to matter. There are four modes of public carry legislation:

**No Carry:** Forget about it. No civilian is authorized to carry.

**May Issue:** The government may or may not grant anyone a permit to carry. This is often at the whim of local law enforcement and historically has been about as restrictive as No Carry.

**Shall Issue:** A carry permit will be issued to any adult who wants one providing they have no felony convictions. There may be other requirements (i.e., a written test, life-fire test, etc.).

**Permitless:** Lacking a felony conviction, any adult can carry a gun in public without the need to obtain a permit.

What we see is when states made a big jump from No Carry to Shall Issue, gun thefts jumped significantly and consistently. However, states that graduated from May Issue to Shall Issue were less at risk for new gun thefts, and states moving from Shall Issue to Permitless even less so.

Incidentally, that big spike on the right is New Hampshire, whose population in 2020 was about the same as Dallas, Texas. Being a small-population state means any smallish blip in the trending data looks like a huge covariance.

Between the long 24-year trends and the spot checks around specific public carry regime changes, no case can be made that expanded public carry, generally speaking, induced more gun thefts. This is somewhat intuitive because criminals have been in the gun theft business since guns were invented. Their MOs were well established before public carry came to their state. Given that the population has grown and the number of handguns in circulation has too, the lack of uptick in gun thefts is a good sign.

Because the FBI did not track either the number of guns stolen or where they were stolen from until 2021 (at least not in public accessible datasets), we don’t know for certain if gun thefts from cars has increased with pubic carry.

This is important because some states and the federal laws disallow carrying guns in certain “sensitive” locations. For example, in most states you can carry a gun in the supermarket, down the sidewalk, in a movie theater, and just about anywhere. But when you enter a post office, you have to leave it in your car.

Also, people are lazy. When we posted some data about car gun thefts, one person on Twitter/X chimed in with “Your car is not a holster!” People get lax and leave guns in cars. Sometimes they forget, sometimes they think “Nobody knows my gun in in the console.”

[![Primary firearm theft locations 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Primary-firearm-theft-locations-2022-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Primary-firearm-theft-locations-2022.png)click to enlarge

[![Residential Firearm Thefts, buildings and vehicles, 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Residential-Firearm-Thefts-buildings-and-vehicles-2022-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Residential-Firearm-Thefts-buildings-and-vehicles-2022.png)click to enlarge

Most of the time (52%), guns stolen from civilians are taken from a residence, for the top 10 locations, which account for 95% of civilian gun thefts. This might be the gun owner’s residence, or it might be someone they are visiting.

Contrast that with about 36% of civilian gun thefts happening in parking lots or in roadway settings. Initially one might think that 36% of gun thefts from cars is pretty bad, but the number is actually 73%.

A theft of a gun from a car at a residence gets logged initially as a residential theft, because your driveway is part of your residence. Fortunately, we have additional data in NIBRS that shows added detail.

About 72% of residential gun thefts are thefts from cars. Again, if you are parked in a friend’s driveway and leave a gun in your car that is then stolen, that is a “residential” theft.

When you combine the residential car gun thefts with parking lot and roadway thefts, the total of civilian gun thefts from cars is about 73%… at least for the top ten location sources (95% of all gun thefts are in that top 10).

Using the ATF’s annualized averaged data, that means civilian car gun thefts account for approximately 149,874 stolen guns. This may well be the core of the supply of underground armament.

## Undeniable problem, onery solutions

154,746 guns is a lot of guns, by anyone’s accounting… outside of the U.S. Army.

The data shows the sore points. Handguns stored in cars is the biggest source. But the solutions will be hard and/or contentious.

People who carry have lives just like everyone else. They have to go to the post office like everyone else. But federal law says they have to leave their gun in the car. One aspect of reducing gun thefts is to reduce the number of not-really-sensitive places where you cannot carry a gun down to just those which are actually sensitive (court houses, where people who are already in conflict congregate).

But gun owner laziness has the bigger payoff. The firearm industry and local governments might educate people about the rate of vehicle gun thefts and encourage new gun buyers to not be lazy.

And, of course, more police on the streets will prevent gun thefts, especially if local police analyze their data and identify which places in their cities have car gun thefts happen the most… which might lead to declassifying some “sensitive places.”

## Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Gun Facts research volunteer Steve S. for gathering and codifying a set of ATF files on FFL gun thefts.

Also, a special thanks to the crew at Outdoor Analytics who compiled historical gun prices that helped cross-validate our normalization of FBI UCR data about stolen and recovered guns.

## Righteous data rants

### \#1: Non-public data

The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) “is a computerized database of documented criminal justice information available to virtually every law enforcement agency nationwide.”

But not to researchers.

There may be good reason for this as there may be sensitive data about ongoing investigations or personal info about victims therein. But it raises suspicions when researchers cannot verify reporting.

### \#2: FBI data is ugly

The old FBI UCR system is a bit of a mess. For example, if you use the raw data for homicides, some states will show nearly none. When you dig in, you discover that the number of agencies not reporting their crime data at all to the FBI is extreme. Both the FBI and the criminology data warehouse NACJD interpolate the missing data to produce the annual crime stats you read.

For gun thefts, data quality sank into the realm of ridiculous.

The FBI collected not the number of guns stolen for each instance of gun thefts, but the subjective estimate of the *value* of the property taken. Unless the officer creating the report was an expert in retail and resell values for a wide array of firearms, they likely either looked it up in a valuation book (which might be wrong, outdated, unadjusted for condition, etc.) or made a guess.

### \#3: Even the archives are crappy

While loading annual FBI data into our databases, we notice a sudden 40,000% drop in the reported value of stolen firearms in the 1995 data. We documented this for NACJD, the archivist of crime data. They reviewed the situation and said (paraphrased) “Yep. Pre-1996 data has a data anomaly. We are unsure what happened, but we’ll look into it.”

This is why our analysis does not go back further than 1996. The data is not available, and there is no telling when it might be.

Notes:

1. National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA): Firearms Trafficking Investigations - Volume Three [↩](#return-note-7998-1)
2. CDC WONDER mortality database [↩](#return-note-7998-2)
3. Most recently, *Survey of Prison Inmates, United States, 2016* [↩](#return-note-7998-3)
4. *Underground Gun Markets*; Cook; The Economic Journal; 2007 [↩](#return-note-7998-4)

**Categories:** Concealed Carry, Crime and Guns, Crime Control

**Tags:** crime guns, stolen guns

---

### [Pondering Permits](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/pondering-permits/)

**Published:** August 28, 2024
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Though it is difficult to ignore the possible unconstitutionality of requiring a permit to exercise an enumerated right, some states require residents to obtain a permit before they can purchase a handgun (or any gun).

But do these permits make any difference? Some activist groups say so. Some academic studies say either yes or no. That a minimum of 43% of crime guns come from underground markets would indicate any effect would be marginal.

After that… it gets complicated.

## Takeaways

- Permit-to-purchase laws have no material effect on gun homicide or suicide rates.
- The 1993-era anti-crime legislative movement limits pure test cases.

## A Dearth of Data

Permit-to-purchase (PTP) laws have been touted as preventatives for homicides, suicides and gunshot injuries. We can measure the first two, not the last.

For all their fine work, the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) data junkies cannot report on state-level non-fatal gunshot injuries. They get (barely) enough hard data from the field (ER reports mainly) to make statistically fragile national estimates on this topic. They cannot, from that data, make anything resembling accurate state-level data.

That’s an important blind spot. If you read the news every week, you see instances of street gang gunplay in public where few or no people are killed, but several are wounded. We once [triangulated street gang homicides to be about 85% of gun homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/). Most other forms of gun homicides tend to be one-victim, targeted killings. Hence, we would expect the gunshot wounding rate to be *significantly* higher for gang actions.

Not having adequate data about woundings makes proving this impossible.

But that is only part of the problem we face.

## The 1993 Legislation Binge

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/1993-era-state-permit-to-purchase-roster-400x383.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/1993-era-state-permit-to-purchase-roster.png)Americans got fed up with rising crime and, starting in 1993, passed reams of laws to deal with it.

For example, 24 states, with over half of the country’s population, enacted habitual offender laws (e.g., “three strikes”) in a four-year period. But during the same time some of those states also passed PTP laws, while 12 already had them in place. Thus, untangling any effect PTP laws had separate from habitual offender laws gets fractional and tricky.

In fact, given the rise in incarceration rates in the decade following the 1993-era legislative orgy, looking for before/after effects of gun control laws might get problematic.

So, we focus herein only on state law changes after the legislative onslaught… which reduces the list to three states where a new PTP law was either passed (Washington) or rescinded (Michigan, Missouri). There were also nine states that had PTP laws throughout and 34 that never had them, which given geographical reach makes many of the comparisons inane (Hawaii and Wyoming have nothing in common, even including the surprising variety of Tiki bars in Cheyenne).

## Homicide Hot Takes

### States That Stopped

Michigan and Missouri both scrapped the PTP laws, though in different years. They are also quite geographically different. Michigan is largely surrounded by water borders with Canada, while Missouri is landlocked. Michigan borders only three states, all of which lack PTP laws, while Missouri touches seven states (a couple just barely) and has a near even mixture of neighbors who have or lack PTP legislation.

Atop that, Michigan has Detroit, a city that has fallen into a wretched condition. But Missouri has Saint Louis, a gang-heavy region. Both cities are in the [top five murder counties in the country](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/). And yet the two states have similar per capita personal incomes levels and educational attainment rates.

The two cannot be compared in the absolute, mainly due to the border issues, but they are worth exploring anyway.

[![Michigan Gun Homicide Rate Differences with No Permit to Purchase Laws, +-5 Years at Enactment](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Michigan-Gun-Homicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Michigan-Gun-Homicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment.png)click to enlarge

[![Missouri Gun Homicide Rate Differences with No Permit to Purchase Laws, +-5 Years at Enactment](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Missouri-Gun-Homicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Missouri-Gun-Homicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment.png)click to enlarge

[![Saint Louis homicide chart from FBI CDE](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Saint-Louis-homicide-chart-from-FBI-CDE-400x106.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Saint-Louis-homicide-chart-from-FBI-CDE.png)click to enlarge

[![Washington Gun Homicide Rate Differences with No Permit to Purchase Laws, +-5 Years at Enactment](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Washington-Gun-Homicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Washington-Gun-Homicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment.png)click to enlarge

[![Michigan Gun Suicide Rate Differences with No Permit to Purchase Laws, +-5 Years at Enactment](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Michigan-Gun-Suicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Michigan-Gun-Suicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment.png)click to enlarge

[![Missouri Gun Suicide Rate Differences with No Permit to Purchase Laws, +-5 Years at Enactment](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Missouri-Gun-Suicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Missouri-Gun-Suicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment.png)click to enlarge

[![Washington Gun Suicide Rate Differences with No Permit to Purchase Laws, +-5 Years at Enactment](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Washington-Gun-Suicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Washington-Gun-Suicide-Rate-Differences-with-No-Permit-to-Purchase-Laws-5-Years-at-Enactment.png)click to enlarge

Michigan saw a *drop* in gun homicides compared to other non-PTP states after repealing their own PTP law. In fact, the curves of the rates of decline against all states lacking PTP, and just border states lacking such, were similar.

Interestingly, Michigan’s population bottomed out in 2010, the year before they rescinded their PTP law, and has rebounded since. The lack of PTP coupled with a 2.5% *increase* in population and a falling gun homicide rate indicates the law in Michigan was not doing anything. We won’t speculate if PTP was negatively correlated with gun murders, but one might make the case.

Down in Missouri, the view is the opposite but also much messier.

The difference between Missouri and neighboring states lacking PTP laws was roughly stable both before the law was repealed and a year afterwards. Beyond that, gun homicides rose and stayed elevated.

Which brings up Saint Louis, MO. This is a shoot-em-up town. In 2006, the year that Missouri repealed their PTP law, Saint Louis had a gun murder rate 6.5 times higher than the national average. But PTP had no effect on Saint Louis. Homicide rates there were more-or-less steady before the law was trashed, had a bump two years later, but then fell below pre-rescinding rates for several years before climbing again. Blaming PTP for these undulations in the biggest city with the worst crime in the state misses the mark.

### State That Started

That leaves Washington State, which launched their PTP in 2014.

For unknown reasons, gun homicides dipped for a single year three years before enactment of their PTP. This distorts the trendline slightly. But it is obvious that compared with neighboring states that lack PTP laws, Washington’s made no difference positively or negatively on gun homicides. It is curious that Washington’s state is (before and after) much less prone to gun violence than all other non-PTP states nationally, and higher than their two neighboring non-PTP states.

## Suicide Slipperiness

“Substitution of means” is a term found in criminology and epidemiology to note that if one way of doing something is unavailable/unattractive, a person has alternatives. If a suicidal person lacks a gun, they have pills+booze, hard drugs, prescription drugs, plastic bags, garages with gas-burning cars, ovens, razors, rope, etc.

Hence, we have to take any change in gun suicide rates before/after changes in PTP laws with at least two grains of salt.

### The Two Terminating States

That said, we don’t see much difference in rates before and after dropping or enacting PTP laws.

Michigan had roughly the same difference rate with all non-PTP states nationwide. But compared to its neighbors, it *looks* like things got better. However, Michigan’s stand-alone suicide rate was *rising*, before and after PTP was ended (about 3% annually before *and* after), which means the rates in the neighboring non-PTP states were falling faster.

Likewise with Missouri. The difference between that state, all states with no PTP and all aggregated neighboring states (regardless of the PTP status) were roughly the same before and after Missouri dumped PTP.

## One Enacting State

Washington State tells the same story. Enacting or scrapping PTP laws has had no material effect on suicides.

For Washington State, this was once pretty important. In King County (Seattle) suicide rates used to be very high. (ED: I once joked to a Seattle friend that there were only two types of people in Seattle, those who could deal with the rain and those who committed suicide. He did not laugh, and just replied, “Yep.”)

Whatever changed in Washington State and/or Seattle, it occurred long ***before*** they enacted PTP and has moved them down the suicide rate roster, and they enjoy a lower rate than their neighbors (which are all non-PTP states) and all non-PTP states across the country.

## Does Permit-to-Purchase Mean A Damn?

Not really. All changes are either minor or have fairly obvious confounding variables.

And this makes intuitive sense on both the murder and suicide angles.

Most gun homicides are street-gang related or part of that nexus. Gang members get their guns from underground sources, never at retail. Thus, they never apply for a permit. The permit-to-purchase regime has no effect on the 85% of gun homicides (and even a larger percentage of woundings) from gangs.

We have demonstrated that [suicide rates are primarily affected by cultural and demographic factors](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-deaths-and-religion/), not gun availability. And even then, as international data shows, [gun availability does not affect suicide rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/), due to “substitution of means.” Thus, a permit to purchase does not affect either the predisposition toward suicidal ideation or the odds of success, given all the available alternatives to guns for doing oneself in.

In short, permit-to-purchase laws have no meaningful effect, except to delay a person from obtaining a gun for self-defense.

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, Licensing and Registration, Suicides

**Tags:** homicides, licensing, permit to purchase, suicides

---

### [Firearm Violence, (non) Surprises](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/firearm-violence-non-surprises/)

**Published:** November 22, 2024
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) gives government a *good* name.

At a time when the FBI’s crime data program switch-over caused massive under-reporting and the COVID+defund+riot era spiked crime, BJS once again provided data that helps understand the realities. Most of the data was unsurprising, but some stood out.

## Take-Aways

- Non-fatal gun violence fell alongside homicides after 1993.
- Much of the non-fatal data appears associated with gang demographics and modes.
- Half of gun violence is not reported to the police, relying instead on “street justice.”

## The Report

*click any image to enlarge*[![Incarceration rates, handgun supply and homicide rates 1978 thru 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b-400x293.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b.png)[![Drop in non-fatal firearm violence 1992 thru 2023 - BJS](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Drop-in-non-fatal-firearm-violence-1992-thru-2023-BJS-400x271.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Drop-in-non-fatal-firearm-violence-1992-thru-2023-BJS.png)[![Non-fatal firearm violence against people ages 12 and above 2018 thru 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Non-fatal-firearm-violence-against-people-ages-12-and-above-2018-thru-2022-400x195.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Non-fatal-firearm-violence-against-people-ages-12-and-above-2018-thru-2022.png)[![Firearm Violence Rate by Age Group 2018 thru 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Firearm-Violence-Rate-by-Age-Group-2018-thru-2022-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Firearm-Violence-Rate-by-Age-Group-2018-thru-2022.png)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Location-of-firearm-violence-2018-thru-2022-BJS-400x172.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Location-of-firearm-violence-2018-thru-2022-BJS.png)[![Non-Fatal Violence Rates 2018 thru 2022 - BJS](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Non-Fatal-Violence-Rates-2018-thru-2022-BJS-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Non-Fatal-Violence-Rates-2018-thru-2022-BJS.png)[![Firearm violence reporting rates to police and justifications for non-reporting by victims 2018 thru 2022 - BJS](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Firearm-violence-reporting-rates-to-police-and-justifications-for-non-reporting-by-victims-2018-thru-2022-BJS-1-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Firearm-violence-reporting-rates-to-police-and-justifications-for-non-reporting-by-victims-2018-thru-2022-BJS-1.png)The boringly titled report “Trends and Patterns in Firearm Violence, 1993–2023” provides a three-decade long look at sundry aspects of guns, violence, crime, gangs and so forth.

The starting date for the report was the first of four straight years when 24 states, with over 50% of the nation’s population, passed habitual offender laws. This is a pivotal moment in U.S. history in regard to violent crime. Two- and three- strike offenders were left no option but prison, and their violent tendencies were confined there. Keep this in mind for the first non-surprise.

## Non-Fatal Gun Violence Also Sank

As the homicide and gun homicide rates fell, so too did the rate of *non-fatal* gun violence.

Important here is that the definition of “non-fatal gun violence” is very broad. It is stated as “victimizations in which the offender had, showed, or used a firearm.” Notice that mere brandishing would be an act of “gun violence.”

The steep drop in the rate indicates that people with violent tendencies, when locked up, no longer commit any act regardless of the severity. Brandishing and homicides fell as one.

But both also bumped up during the COVID+defund+riot era. As we previously explored, during this era [police pullbacks facilitated street crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/de-policing-and-death/). It is then unsurprising that a general retreat by police would embolden all forms of violence including non-fatal gun violence.

## The Prime Gang Violence Ages

We know from National Gang Center data that gang recruitment starts at age 14. We also know from sundry criminology reports that young gang members are on a short leash until their later teens. Thus, it is unsurprising that the highest gun violence rates appear in the 18–24 age group, while the next highest group is those slightly older (25–34).

What is important is the *magnitude* of the difference in the age groups. The rate is four times larger for the 18–24 group than the 12–17 group. In short, the more a young person in rough neighborhoods is out among the street population, the more likely they are to be victimized. If they are males, the more likely they are to be gang members and thus more likely to victimize.

## Location, Location, Location

Where people (and we’ll include gang members in the broad definition) commit violence is instructive. Firearm misuse, which is extremely high among gang types, occurs more often in their neighborhoods than in the home, for all forms of violence.

Among the three common “street” locations for violent crime, firearm violence is 16 points higher than for all violence (firearm and non-firearm combined). In other words, gun play in the streets surpasses gun violence in the home, or at commercial establishments or in schools.

## Stranger Danger

We see more signs of the gang violence association when it comes to the relationship of the attacker and victim. This view is illuminating as it compares non-firearm and firearm violence rates against the victim’s relationship with the assailant.

Among relationships, firearms are *less* involved when the assailant is known (which is intuitive) and *more* when the attacker is a stranger (also intuitive).

For known relationships, guns are used 2–10 points *less* frequently in violent encounters, but for strangers the firearm rate is 19 points *higher*. Anyone watching news headlines of “mass shootings” in public knows that the assailants and victims (many of which are innocent bystanders) are not necessarily familiar with one another. A gang member hunting any rival gang member, or a specific rival member, may have never personally met. True, this applies to ATM muggings and street crimes like that, but those rarely are fatal. Herein, both fatal and non-fatal instances rise when the space is public and the association is nonexistent.

## Cops Not Involved Because …

One reason crime, and particularly gun crime, remains high in certain neighborhoods is that much of the violence is not reported to the police.

We all know the “snitches get stitches” inner-city meme. But of the half of gun violence incidents that go unreported, only 10% of those instances are attributed to fear of reprisal.

So called “street justice” culture requires a person to take action themselves, which explains why 27% of gun violence instances result in victim retaliation of some sort (the retaliation might not be violent, but it is outside the realm of cops and courts). This is well above the 23% of victims who believe police cannot or will not do anything to help.

## Non-Fatal Is Not A Non-problem

A real problem is that data on non-fatal gun violence is hard to come by. So it was great that the BJS not only produced this report, but provided the data tables and sources to go with it.

Non-fatal gun violence has social impacts. About 4,600 people a month are wounded, not killed, by guns. An emergency room visit for gunshot (assuming no admission afterwards) costs about $5,250. All told, that’s about $290 million a year just for ER work. Statistically, much of that will be indigent care via Medicaid.

But there are other hard costs. Police interventions, investigations, lost work time, and more. All in all, gun woundings are a bigger fiscal problem than gun deaths. Remember this the next time you read a news story about a gang-banger shooting into a crowd while targeting one rival gang member.

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** bureau of justice statistics, non-fatal firearm crime

---

### [Gangs and Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gangs-and-guns/)

**Published:** November 10, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

America doesn’t have a gun problem, but it sure as heck has a gang problem.

## Quick Take-Aways

- America has an insanely high concentration of people in gangs – about 953% higher than other countries (see analysis warnings below).
- Thankfully these are confined mainly to a few really rank cities.
- American gang culture is not replicated elsewhere
- Nearly every study associated gang membership with violent crime (including gun homicides).

## The Silly Propaganda

When the gun control industry starts complaining about American gun violence, they never mention gangs. When someone (like me) mentions gangs to gun control advocates, they dismiss gangs as a non-issue. As someone who has lived next door to Oakland, California I can attest that it is very much an issue (as it is in Barack Obama’s own Chicago).

Yet it is very different in America. “European cities lack the strong gang traditions that exist in some large U.S. cities,” was how one study summarized the situation. [1](#note-3555-1 "International Handbook of Violence Research, Heitmeyer, Hagan, Springer Science & Business Media, 2005") “Hence \[European\] gangs tend to be less territorial.” In short, gangs elsewhere are little like gangs here.

But despite every beat cop in major metropolitan towns noting that gangs are a big problem, some politicos won’t budge. So I decided to provide some perspective – to present some data on just how big and different America’s gang problem is, and hence their misuse of firearms (about 90% of gang homicides are committed with guns).

## Measuring Gangs

This wasn’t easy.

The tracking of gangs across the globe is at best a hodgepodge of roughly similar definitions and either no measurement or reporting. Finding hard numbers is nearly futile. But after a few hours of molesting Google, at least we have the start of a picture.

**WARNINGS ABOUT THE ANALYSIS TO FOLLOW:** Do not take the following research as robust. Reporting on the number of gang members in any region was sparse, varied by the year of publication, and often did not clearly delineate data. But there was enough to get some perspective, and for now that will do.

The international criminology world has more or less agreed that there are a few types of gangs worth studying:

**STREET GANGS:** This is what Americans worry about most – Bloods, Crips, MS-13, etc.

**OUTLAW BIKER GANGS:** Though much smaller in number than street gangs in the U.S., the relative lack of street gangs elsewhere makes biker gangs proportionately larger.

**ORGANIZED CRIME GANGS:** We have not included these because they are not typically sources of *random* violence.

**PRISON GANGS:** Also not included in the analysis since when you are locked up, you can’t cause violence in anyone’s neighborhood.

One problem with cross-national gang comparisons is that the best numbers available are estimates. Gang members rarely queue to answer surveys, and thus the numbers are the best guesses that criminologists could devise.

## Stacking ‘em Up

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Street-Gang-Participation-Rates-by-cities-or-counties-internationally-b-400x287.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Street-Gang-Participation-Rates-by-cities-or-counties-internationally-b.png)When we chart the handful of cities for which I could rapidly identify data on gang populations (and note that many countries and cities don’t report gang statistics because gangs are not a significant problem for them), we begin to see the scope of the issue.

When compared to non-American cities around the globe, we see the average gang membership penetration rate to be over nine times as much as overseas. Chicago’s gang penetration rate is 278 times higher than London’s (5.56% vs. 0.02%).

Based on raw numbers alone, and given that all street gangs tend to have violent/sociopathic behaviors, we expect the American violence rate in major metro areas to be proportionately higher (adjustments required for local portion of population being in gangs).

This agrees with the FBI’s findings. Their 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment indicates that **5%** of the typical male street gang age population (age 15-24, using the Census Bureau age brackets) are in street gangs. Compare that with say Glasow which sports a mere 0.6% participation rate ***for the entire city, not just young males***.

But this isn’t the whole story. American gangs have a deserved international reputation for “a bit of the old ultraviolence.” According to the FBI’s 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment:

- Gang members are responsible for an average of 48 percent of violent crime in most jurisdictions.
- Law enforcement officers report about 44% of homicides are from gang involvement.

Compare this to the snippet we read before: “European cities lack the strong gang traditions that exist in some large U.S. cities.”

So, America has a higher concentration of gang members, and they are vastly more violent than elsewhere. We also know from various government reports that gang violence is by-and-large a big city issue (you know, those same big cities where the mayors do nothing to control gangs but advocate gun control). The FBI in their National Gang Threat Assessment said it simply enough:

“Larger cities and suburban counties accounted for the majority of gang-related violence and more than **96 percent of all gang homicides**.”

## What This Means for Policy (guns and gangs)

The American issue then is gangs and their guns. So the first question anyone should ask is if there is a legislative solution to the problem of gangland gun violence.

The FBI doesn’t think so. From their National Gang Threat Assessment, the FBI concludes:

“Typically firearms are acquired through illegal purchases; straw purchases via surrogates or middle-men, and thefts from individuals, vehicles, residences and commercial establishments. Gang members also target military and law enforcement officials, facilities, and vehicles to obtain weapons, ammunition, body armor, police gear, badges, uniforms, and official identification.”

Strawman purchases have been illegal for decades, and theft has always been so. Universal background checks suddenly sound oddball.

The policy then is to break gangs and the recurring cycle of gang recruitment. This is not a simple task, but it addresses the disease and not the symptoms. It goes to the heart of most violence in America and to the communities most affected by that violence. Gangs are our priority.

## Addendum:

The Small Arms Survey has a little info on this. In one report concerning gangs, they say (and I paraphrase) ‘Gangs are a small part of the population, but an over-sized part of violence. Hence, gangs and their behaviors are part of the solution set.’

 Portion of Pop% From U.S.Japan0.000312%England/Wales0.000415%Italy0.000415%United States0.0026100%Columbia0.0033127%Honduras0.0050192%They also had a table of sorts in one publication [2](#note-3555-2 "Elusive Arsenals, Gang and Group Firearms, Small Arms Survey, 2010") that reported some gang membership estimates by country. The list is far from complete, missing most of Europe. I only replicated a few for perspective sake.

Key to perspective is the nations lauded for their alleged non-violence also have nearly non-existent gang membership rates. The United States is closer to Columbia and Honduras in gang participation than Japan and England.

The same report also notes that there is “no doubt that
gang members are much more likely to be armed than most young people.” One survey [3](#note-3555-3 "Gun Ownership and Gang Membership, Bjerregaard, Beth and Alan J. Lizotte, 1995, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology") reported that gang member gun ownership rates to be above 77%, and likely higher due to the fear of some convicted felon gang members to truthfully report ownership/possession to anyone.

Notes:

1. *International Handbook of Violence Research*, Heitmeyer, Hagan, Springer Science & Business Media, 2005 [↩](#return-note-3555-1)
2. *Elusive Arsenals, Gang and Group Firearms*, Small Arms Survey, 2010 [↩](#return-note-3555-2)
3. *Gun Ownership and Gang Membership*, Bjerregaard, Beth and Alan J. Lizotte, 1995, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology [↩](#return-note-3555-3)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, Crime Control, Guns in Other Countries

**Tags:** gangs, guns, international, violence

---

### [Suicide, Survival and Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicide-survival-and-guns/)

**Published:** February 17, 2021
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

“Guns are inherently more lethal in committing suicides!”

Yet when we looked at [W.H.O global suicide data](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/), we discovered that the most suicidal country at the time (Lithuania) had about three times the rate of suicides, 1% as many guns per capita, and nearly everyone killing themselves used rope.

In the USA, where guns are abundant, the data skewed in odds ways. We think we know why, but with a lack of absolute data, it is a little speculative.

## The Quick Take-aways

- Suicide “deaths” are those regardless of medical attention.
- Successful suicide victims receive no EMT or hospital treatment.
- EMT/hospitalization is effective for some modes of suicide and not others.

## The big clue

[![Suicide and Firearm Suicides rates in High Socioeconomic Score Nations for 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Suicide-and-Firearm-Suicides-rates-in-High-Socioeconomic-Score-Nations-for-2016-400x311.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Suicide-and-Firearm-Suicides-rates-in-High-Socioeconomic-Score-Nations-for-2016.jpg)Click for a larger, sharable version

We at the Gun Facts project have routinely noted the international disconnect between firearm ownership and suicide rates. In short, the availability of a gun did not affect the probability of a successful suicide.

Looking at just the topmost nations on a socioeconomic index, we see with great clarity that First-World countries have highly similar suicide rates, ranging from 11.5 suicides per 100,000 Irish (death by Guinness overdose does not count) to 17.2 for Swiss (resist the obvious “death by chocolate” jokes). But look at the highly variable firearm suicide rate compared to the comparatively static overall suicide rates. It is clear that in most of the First-World countries, non-gun suicides are just as fatal as gun suicides. Suicide success is assured, but the means vary.

## “I’m not dead yet!”

Forgive me for quoting Monty Python while discussing suicide, but in this case, it illustrates the likely data disconnect.

The swing variable is medical care. If the police get a call about someone who has attempted suicide, they arrive and discover either a dead person or a slightly alive person. The fact is some suicidal people are not very good at executing the task (or themselves), or they are discovered before the act is completed (e.g., found before they suffocate in a plastic bag, before the rat poison they ate is fully digested, etc.)

In the former case (dead person), the body is most commonly transported to the county morgue (regardless of the mode of suicide). In the latter case (slightly alive), EMTs provide first aid, the victim is rapidly transported to a hospital, and full medical recovery care is provided. And it is this split that likely causes confusion for some people with agendas to prove.

## Timing is everything

The time span between a suicide attempt and death is highly variable. A gunshot wound to the head tends to be instantaneous. Depending on the size of the plastic bag, suffocation can take up to half an hour and recovery is highly likely if the victim is found early. Drugs can take time to kill a body and EMTs have plenty of alternate drugs to reverse the effect if they know what the victim swallowed. Running your car in a closed garage could take an hour (much longer is you have a Tesla). The point is that the fatality of a suicide is *highly* dependent on (a) whether you are found and (b) how soon help arrives after the attempt, as well as the mode you choose.

Looking at just emergency rooms and hospitals for outcomes is horribly inaccurate (which is why some people do so … because accuracy is not their friend). When some activists claim that “guns are inherently more fatal in suicides”, they cite sources based on emergency room and hospital data and not total death and non-death suicide statistics.

[![Suicide Hospitalizations and Deaths by Method - 2010 thru 2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Suicide-Hospitalizations-and-Deaths-by-Method-2010-thru-2014-400x373.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Suicide-Hospitalizations-and-Deaths-by-Method-2010-thru-2014.jpg)Click for a larger, sharable version

Here is a simple contrast to illustrate (and a caution about mixed data therein). The blue bars show suicide attempts that required hospitalization; by obvious exclusion, they do not include successful suicides where the victim bypassed the ER and went straight to the morgue. The orange bars are the total successful suicide deaths, regardless of whether the victim lived long enough the get treatment or not. The caution on this chart is that since consistent national data is not available, and since the CDC WONDER website makes some things difficult, we are comparing one region in one state with national numbers … not precise, but ballpark accurate.

People who poisoned themselves routinely got hospitalization. Even people who slit their wrists or stabbed themselves saw a doctor in a hospital. But people who use a firearm – which has instantaneous effects – are rarely tended to by a doctor. Stated differently, the odds of suicide survival decrease when the time to death after committing the action decreases.

But the odds of dying from any form of suicide are close to 100% if nobody finds you. Recall that it could take half an hour to suffocate in a plastic bag (the second most popular form of suicide in the USA). In the average home, where people expect to see you frequently pass through on the way to the refrigerator or toilet, the odds of being discovered before death are pretty high. The odds go way down when hearing “bang” is their first clue.

## Where the numbers evade us

One source does provide more clarity, but not enough to make the Gun Facts number nuts completely happy.

Attempts1,442,000% Of AttemptsNo treatment233,65616%Medical attention717,00050%Hospitalized 1+ days443,00031%Deaths48,3443%The Suicide Prevention Resource Center diced CDC numbers we don’t (yet) have access to. In the year 2018, American suicide attempts had the outcomes in the table at right.

A full 50% of people who attempted suicide received medical treatment, and 31% were in the hospital at least overnight. That means 81% of suicide attempts received some form of medical treatment—which, depending on other variables, is more likely than the mode of suicide to be the primary cause of survival.

Now, the sundry caveats:

- Some unknowable percentage of these were “cries for help” and not really suicide attempts.
- Some unknowable percentage of these were people incompetent in killing themselves (for example, I know a young fellow who swallowed a bunch of Tylenol, but not enough to die).
- Some unknowable percentage of these would have survived even without medical attention.
- Some unknowable and very small percentage were attempted homicides that the victim would not disclose.

But let’s run with the numbers a bit more. In the same year, as reported by the same source, 50.5% of *successful* suicides were by firearm. That divides out to 24,413 firearm suicide deaths, which is 1.7% of all suicide *attempts*.

The open question remains: “How many people are rescued from suicide by medical treatment?” It is impossible to tell, but ponder this basic contrast:

- 7: Percent of suicide attempts by firearm that result in death
- 4: Percent of suicide attempts that receive medical treatment
- 6: Percent of non-fatal suicide attempts

Clearly, the mode of suicide is far less significant than a response by a medical team to a suicide attempt.

## UPDATE #1:

[![Suicide Attempts, Deaths and Medical Interventions by Meathod - 2007 thru 2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Suicide-Attempts-Deaths-and-Medical-Interventions-by-Meathod-2007-thru-2014-400x339.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Suicide-Attempts-Deaths-and-Medical-Interventions-by-Meathod-2007-thru-2014.jpg)Click for a larger, sharable version

Shortly after performing our review, we happened upon a paper from 2019 [1](#note-6128-1 "Suicide Case-Fatality Rates in the United States, 2007 to 2014; Conner, Azrael, Miller; Annals of Internal Medicine; 2019") that was very rigorous, used good data sources, performed no statistical slight of hand and basically confirmed our findings above (all of which is rather surprising given that the study was funded by the Joyce Foundation).

In the chart you will see that nearly no firearm suicide attempts receive medical treatment. You will also notice that firearm suicides only account for 4.6% of all suicide attempts while receiving 0.5% of medical interventions.

In the absence of quick response and constantly improving medical treatments, we might see firearms slide down the suicide fatality scale.

For those who prefer their numbers raw:

- 1%: cutting or piercing with a sharp object
- 2% intentional drug over-dose
- 28% jumping from a high place or in front of a moving vehicle or object
- 31% gas inhalation
- 53% hanging
- 56% drowning
- 90% self-inflicted firearm injury

## UPDATE #2:

[![Body part targeted by gun suicide victims](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Body-part-targetted-by-gun-suicide-victims-400x171.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Body-part-targetted-by-gun-suicide-victims.jpg)We had our favorite academic-focused A.I. gather the statistics on gun suicides by the point on the body that the suicide victim chose.

It is of little surprise that most suicidal people who use guns aim for the brain. They have likely heard that it is assured, other body parts are (bad pun unintended) hit-or-miss, and entertainment media often portrays such.

This amplifies our findings above. Guns are instantly fatal for head wounds. This is known by police, military, and self-defense folks. If more victims targeted other body parts, some would be rescuable.

Another note (though we did not capture the data) is that the gap between men and women for headshot suicides is not large, in the 5-10% range depending on the data source. This violates a belief that suicidal women are unlikely to target their heads.

Notes:

1. Suicide Case-Fatality Rates in the United States, 2007 to 2014; Conner, Azrael, Miller; Annals of Internal Medicine; 2019 [↩](#return-note-6128-1)

**Categories:** Suicides

**Tags:** firearm, suicides

---

### [Gun Deaths and Religion](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-deaths-and-religion/)

**Published:** March 31, 2023
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

I once joked that San Francisco was “spiritually horny.” It is true, being the birthplace of the Church of Satan, home of Jim Jones, and containing the largest concentration of upper-middle-class white Buddhists on the planet.

And a lot of Catholics. Between the Spanish missions and a flood of Irish, you often can tell how many miles you have driven in California by how many Catholic churches you have passed.

It also explains California’s low “gun death” rate.

## Takeaways

- Religious affiliation changes suicide statistics
- Places with higher percentages of Catholic and non-Christian congregants have fewer suicides.
- Since guns are a favored American means of suicide, this ripples into lower gun suicide rates and thus lower “gun death” rates.

## The Culture Clues

Culture is the major determinant variable for violence, including violence upon oneself.

In our book [***“Guns and Control”***](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1510760075/), we made the following cultural comparison:

Last time I checked, the annual NRA convention was about seventy thousand members. These are people that own guns and know how to use guns. They are in a confined space with lots of guns. But nobody gets killed. Now, take seventy thousand garden variety street gang members and put them into the same building with the same stockpile of guns. You’ll need plenty of mops and buckets to clean up the blood.

There are quite a few variables between these groups, but culture is the most pervasive. NRA members are largely “law and order” types. Street gang members have little or no respect for any law, and from crime statistics, no respect for gun laws. Two heavily armed groups, but with very different cultural norms, produce two very different outcomes.

There are cultural differences concerning suicide as well. It is almost unheard of in Peru and shockingly common in Lithuania. Different places, different people, different cultures.

That is why California’s “gun death” rate is low – because their suicide rate is low (regardless of means). Since guns are America’s most popular way of exiting life unassisted, it means that California’s gun suicide rate is low… which lowers its “gun death” rate. We noted before that [California’s gun ***homicide*** rate is marginally below average](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/newsoms-gun-gaff/) and tied with Colorado (gun control lite) and Kansas (nearly none).

The unanswered question is, “What cultural elements might explain California’s (or any state’s) lower suicide rates, and thus ‘gun death’ rates?”

Religion is consecrated culture. Each religion attempts to instill a set of values in its followers. In some religions this includes very specific notions about suicide.

This came to our attention on Twitter, an anti-social hellscape. We had noted that Massachusetts had an admirably low suicide rate, which explained their low “gun death” rate. Another tweeter replied, “That’s because it is a heavily Catholic state.”

Such are the seeds of research.

## Is Faith a Factor?

One’s beliefs guide one’s actions, and thus one’s religious beliefs guide, as well.

Different religions have different precepts about suicide (and there is no single guiding theory among atheists). The Catholic catechism has an entire half page on the subject, and the bluntly stated rule is that thou shall not *off* yourself. Discussions with Catholic relatives and a local priest confirm suicide has an outsized place in the faith. As such, it would be rational to think suicide rates among Catholics would be lower than Protestants or atheists (we’ll get to other sects next).

It is a fact. One study [1](#note-7325-1 "Religion and assisted and non-assisted suicide in Switzerland: National Cohort Study; Spoerr, Zwahlen; International Journal of Epidemiology 39; 2010") reports that crude suicide rates per 100,000 people were 39 for atheists and agnostics, 28 for Protestants and less than 20 for Catholics. That is nearly a 2:1 ration between the top (faithless) and the bottom (Catholic). Pew Research [2](#note-7325-2 "Views on End-of-Life Medical Treatments; 2013") noted that 50% of white Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly say suicide is not a moral right under any circumstance.

A rational test, then, is to see whether suicide rates (and thus gun suicide rates) fall in states where faith is statistically at play.

## Eternal Incentives

Looking at just Catholics for the moment, we see there are:

- 23 states where the percent of Catholics in the population is higher than the national average.
- 15 of those states (65%) have lower suicide rates than the national average.

[![Suicide Rates and Religious Affiliation 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Suicide-Rates-and-Religious-Affiliation-2019-400x272.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Suicide-Rates-and-Religious-Affiliation-2019.png) 

click for larger, sharable version

**Religion****R2 Suicide Correlation**Protestant0.001Catholic0.114Mormon0.071Other Christian0.071Other0.172Catholic + Other0.153Not Religious0.049Based on just one religion, there is a visible skewing of suicide rates. When we throw in the other major American faiths and the irreligious as well, we see patterns emerge.

The data gets quite compelling when we focus our statistical microscope.
The table tells us that for some faiths (i.e., Protestants) there is no correlation at all between their religion and the likelihood of them committing suicide. But the Catholic faith and the hopelessly vague “Other” amalgamation of Native America, Middle Eastern and Asian faiths have a slightly stronger correlation still.

Which gets us back to California.

California is #7 down the list of states by Catholic population. They are #4 for “other,” which speaks to their immigrant residents and heritages (only New York, New Jersey and Hawaii have higher concentrations). Thus, from a purely faith-driven aversion to suicides, California has a low suicide rate – 11.2 suicide victims per 100,000 people in Cali verses 14.5 for nationwide, or about 23% less.

Given that suicides are about 60% of all “gun deaths,” this faith factor, more than gun laws, explains why California politician brags are bogus.

## Have Faith in Data

“But, our gun control laws….”

Could they have an effect? Let’s recap:

- Suicides are 60–66% of “gun deaths,” depending on the year (see update at page bottom).
- California (and other states) have lower suicide rates but nominal homicide rates.
- Lower suicide rates lower the “gun death” rate because guns are a popular means.

[![Suicide Rates vs Religious Influence and Everytown Ranking 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Suicide-Rates-vs-Religious-Influence-and-Everytown-Ranking-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Suicide-Rates-vs-Religious-Influence-and-Everytown-Ranking-2019.png)click for larger, sharable version

Since California’s governor appears joined at the hip to Everytown (a gun control advocacy group), a contrast of their state gun law rankings along with state-level religious leanings and suicide rates is valuable information.

And it doesn’t speak well for claims made by smug governors. As the rate of two religious groups (Catholics and “other”) drop, suicide rates rise. But there is no correlation (positive or negative) for Everytown’s state law rankings (which oddly omit Washington, DC and Vermont) and suicide rates. The *R*2 correlation between Everytown’s favored gun laws and suicides is a measly 0.02, which is basically no correlation at all.

Your attitude about suicide has a strong bearing on whether you would actually off yourself, including whether you used a gun to do so. It thus affects state-level suicide rates and that misleading amalgamation called “gun deaths.”

## Update

We received a nice email from the Outreach Manager for an organization called Women on Guard. She politely suggested that our base numbers for the percentage of suicide deaths by firearm needed updating.

So we do that now, and do them one better by showing the trends in suicides for the top three mechanisms (means) the CDC records.

[![Suicide by Mechanism 1979 thru 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Suicide-by-Mechanism-1979-thru-2022-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Suicide-by-Mechanism-1979-thru-2022.png)click to enlarge

As you can see, until the COVID pandemic, firearm suicide as a share of all suicide modes was falling, though suffocations were rising. Poisoning was falling as well.

In the 21st century, outside of the pandemic, the firearm suicide rate fell and ranged from 50-57%, depending on the year.

We only show the top three modes here as the other modes are relatively rare.

Notes:

1. Religion and assisted and non-assisted suicide in Switzerland: National Cohort Study; Spoerr, Zwahlen; International Journal of Epidemiology 39; 2010 [↩](#return-note-7325-1)
2. Views on End-of-Life Medical Treatments; 2013 [↩](#return-note-7325-2)

**Categories:** California, Everytown, Suicides

**Tags:** california, gun deaths, suicides

---

### [Underreporting Gun Crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/underreporting-gun-crime/)

**Published:** July 16, 2024
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

“The crime rate isn’t going down,” moaned a Twitter user. “The big cities are purposefully not reporting crime.”

Neither of the above is accurate, but there is a crime reporting problem, in that some people may be misinterpreting data … for political gain.

# Take-aways

- There is significant, general nonreporting into the FBI’s new NIBRS system.
- Some well-documented hot counties with large populations are not reporting, which masks their gun crime and street gang data, including gun homicide rates.
- The systems that the Federal government has in place to encourage reporting into NIBRS are ineffective.

## NIBRS Mayhem

For decades, the FBI orchestrated the Uniform Crime Reporting system (UCR). This was a nationwide program whereby all law enforcement agencies – city, county, state, campus, et cetera – were to report what crime incidents they processed. These were largely monthly counts of major categories of crime (robbery, murder, being a politician).

And it was nearly robust.

Both the FBI and the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) would interpolate crime data for regions where reporting was incomplete. This was acceptable because for these major summaries, the reporting participation rate was in the mid- to high-90% range, and the laggards were often small cities and counties with not much crime anyway.

But the system was not capturing enough detail, and computer technology had advanced significantly (for the geeks reading this, UCR was, to the end, encoded in EBCDIC and the data portions were referred to by the FBI as “cards”). So, the FBY devised the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to replace UCR, testing it on several states for years. They spent a significant amount of time and effort notifying and educating the rest of law enforcement that their reporting into NIBRS required them to be ready… in 2021 – during the pandemic, when law enforcement agencies were losing staff and had COVID outages, and as with all big government projects, few agencies were ready.

Using the 2022 NIBRS database, we see that compared to the Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) database from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), law enforcement reported fewer gun homicides than the CDC… in some geographies.

But these shortages are not evenly distributed by state, nor are they evenly distributed within a state.

## The National State View

We used the CDC data to compare against the NIBRS data to see where the law enforcement agencies were behind on their reporting.

The CDC gets their data from the medical community, including from coroner departments. This is different than from the FBI getting data from yet-to-be-trained and COVID-absent clerks. That major gaps exist between the two, and that the CDC gun homicide counts are consistently higher than NIBRS counts, are indicators that a significant problem exists.

[![Map showing the difference in CDC and FBI NIBRS reporting of gun homicides in 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gun-Homicide-Difference-between-CDC-and-NIBRS-by-State-2022-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gun-Homicide-Difference-between-CDC-and-NIBRS-by-State-2022.png)click to enlarge and share

This map shows the percentage difference for the states… and immediately shows a tricky anomaly, that some law enforcement agencies are reporting more gun homicides than the CDC does. Since NIBRS is new, there remains the possibility that local agencies enter data incorrectly, that agencies (i.e., a city within a county) are double-counting some homicides, or that in a mad rush to catch up, some 2021 homicides were lumped in with 2022 murders. The old UCR system allowed agencies to report previous year homicides anytime in the future, to be reconciled by the FBI afterwards. So the FBI might not have had control of the data inflow, or with only two years of national rollout, the post-processing either.

In short, it is a mess.

Much to the chagrin of party partisans, there is no Red/Blue divide in this data. Of states reporting at least 25% fewer gun homicides via NIBRS than via CDC, we see places distinct as Arizona and California, and Florida and Nebraska, though New York and New Jersey are significantly negligent too.

## The National County View

Drilling deeper into the county level, we see a lot of problems that need explanation.

[![Map showing county-level differences between CDC and FBI NIBRS gun homicide reporting in 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/County-Gun-Homicide-Reporting-with-CDC-and-NIBRS-2022-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/County-Gun-Homicide-Reporting-with-CDC-and-NIBRS-2022.png)click to enlarge and share

[![Map of county level differences between CDC and FBI NIBRS reporting of gun homicides, detailing counties where both CDC and FBI data is incomplete, 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/County-Gun-Homicide-Reporting-with-CDC-sans-suppressed-and-NIBRS-2022-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/County-Gun-Homicide-Reporting-with-CDC-sans-suppressed-and-NIBRS-2022.png)click to enlarge and share

The CDC suppresses county-level data when the numbers are low (less than 10, but not zero). This means that we have an incomplete comparison between the CDC and NIBRS data, as this map shows (gray regions had both CDC suppressed data and no NIBRS reports of gun homicides). This left Gun Facts with some tedious spreadsheet work to substitute NIBRS for CDC data when the CDC labeled it “suppressed” (NOTE: data is not suppressed by the CDC at state level because the amalgamation of all county-level data masks any potential privacy issues vis-à-vis low numbers of instances in a locality).

Trying to visualize deficient counties on a map is difficult because the range of underreporting is wide. But this map gives a general idea, and you can see two realities that are concerning.

1. The number of counties where the CDC suppressed data disallows a comparison.
2. Some states have counties that are seriously underreporting.

But let’s go back to the first map that showed state-level data which does not suffer from CDC suppression. We see handful of states (Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey and New York) that reported at least 25% fewer gun homicides than the CDC. On that point there may be some worthwhile insights. We’ll consider three of the worst of them (New York with 37% of CDC count, Mississippi with 26%, Florida with 30% and California with 39%) and look for patterns.

### California

Yikes!

I get to say this because I lived in Cali for 22 years, mainly in Alameda County. I worked in downtown Oakland, and I know the turf, including its earned reputation as a gang city.

It is surprising that in the year of our investigation, the CDC recorded 118 gun homicides and the FBI’s NIBRS system noted only 6.

[![Map of California counties showing FBI NIBRS gun homicide under-reporting in 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gun-Homicide-Under-Reporting-to-NIBRS-in-California-2022-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gun-Homicide-Under-Reporting-to-NIBRS-in-California-2022.png)click to enlarge and share

[![Map of Florida counties showing FBI NIBRS gun homicide under-reporting in 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gun-Homicide-Under-Reporting-to-NIBRS-in-Florida-2022-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gun-Homicide-Under-Reporting-to-NIBRS-in-Florida-2022.png)click to enlarge and share

[![Map of New York State counties showing FBI NIBRS gun homicide under-reporting in 2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gun-Homicide-Under-Reporting-to-NIBRS-in-New-York-2022-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Gun-Homicide-Under-Reporting-to-NIBRS-in-New-York-2022.png)click to enlarge and share

For Los Angeles county, home to “south central” and the epicenter of the legendary Crips/Bloods war, the CDC knew of 530 gun homicides and the FBI only 35.

Also note, the gray colored counties are where there is no viable reporting from either the CDC (due to a low enough gun homicide count that they suppress the data) or the FBI (due to no reporting from the counties at all).

### Florida

Bad, but in a different way. But… yikes!

I get to say this because I grew up in Brevard County, have relatives all over the state, and so I know the turf. Like California, some counties and cities in the Hurricane State (or as antagonists say, the state that blows) have gang problems.

But underreporting in hot counties is secondary to no reporting in most counties (76% of counties had CDC suppressed data and no reports into NIBRS).

That said, some of the most likely counties to have gang hotspots are not comparatively delinquent. Duval (Jacksonville) underreports by 25%. Dade (Miami) is low by half (CDC reports 202 gun homicides, FBI logged 98).

But Broward… home to Fort Lauderdale (or as spring break visitors called it, Fort LiquorDale)… is seriously underreporting. Broward is Florida’s second most populous county after Miami-Dade County, and it is the 17th most populous in the United States. The CDC gathered reports on 126 gun homicides, and all the agencies in Broward noted just one.

### New York

Yikes-squared!

New York has both the California and Florida diseases (insert your own joke here).

Seventy-four percent of New York counties have unusable data due to low, and thus suppressed, gun homicide counts by the CDC, and no reporting into FBI’s NIBRS.

But that isn’t the BIG problem.

Three counties – Kings, Queens and New York – all part of the New York City metro area, and with 33% of the state’s population – did not report any gun homicides into NIBRS. The CDC notes 84 gun homicides in Kings, 45 in Queens, and 35 in New York. Add to this the 86 gun homicides in Bronx. Then there were 23 in Suffolk and 10 in Nassau (together, Long Island with 15% of the state’s population) for which the FBI was given no data.

## What to Make of This Mess

We’ll stop here because some patterns keep showing up:

1. Local police agencies are not reporting at a sufficiently high enough rate to give statistical comfort in the FBI’s data. The degree of interpolation necessary to fill in these blanks makes the FBI’s annual summary reports invalid.
2. In some high-population states, underreporting is tragic, perhaps even criminal.
3. In some states, well-known *hot* counties with ample street gang activity are not reporting at all.

And it won’t get better without congressional intervention.

The federal government cannot legally force state, county or local governments to do work for them. [1](#note-8022-1 "Printz v. United States") As such, reporting is voluntary. Under the old UCR system, reporting levels were “high enough” but still spotty.

Congress has tried to tighten things up, but the results are lackluster. There once was the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant funding where each jurisdiction was reviewed for missing data, but that vanished in 2006, being replaced by the Justice Assistance Grant.

But that is only a carrot… no stick.

The Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program cannot force law enforcement agencies to report crime data to NIBRS. All it does is offer money if an agency has reported at least three years of data (either UCR or NIBRS) during the 2012–2021 period. But, as with most federal programs, the bureaucracy to (a) get NIBRS ready, and (b) apply for the grants, is daunting, especially for agencies that are already under-staffed.

To encourage participation in NIBRS, the FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics provide money to state and local agencies to “get on board.” But the $120 million made available does not appear to have created minimally acceptable reporting.

This leaves researchers in a rough spot. As we demonstrated in our “[Top 15 Murder County](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/)” analysis, gun crime is ***highly*** localized. The CDC data would be useful if they did not routinely suppress gun homicide data at the county level. Until either (a) the CDC admits that suppressing gun homicide stats is dumb or (b) the federal government finds a functional means for inducing high crime reporting participation levels, we have to accept that gun crimes are indeed being underreported.

Notes:

1. Printz v. United States [↩](#return-note-8022-1)

**Categories:** California, Crime and Guns, Florida, New York

**Tags:** cdc, data, fbi, gun crime

---

### [Tracking Transgressors](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tracking-transgressors/)

**Published:** June 8, 2023
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

In a perfect world, a gun would tell you who used it in a crime … over and over again.

Such is the stuff of science fiction. Gun serial numbers really don’t help (more on that later). But one program and set of sciences is helping to expose repeat offenders and maybe get serious bad actors off the streets.

## Take Aways

- 96% of guns recovered in crime are linked to one or more additional cases.
- 83% of guns were used in two or more crimes.
- These statistics may be low due to staffing problems in forensic labs.

## Repeat offenders and guns

We know from decades of criminology and some indirect evidence that among the criminal class, there are some super predators who repeatedly misuse guns. Ignore for the moment perps like ATM muggers and liquor store bandits who rarely fire their guns at anyone (instead, the gun is used as “persuasion”). Elsewhere, especially among American street gangs, there is a [small set of individuals who are ruthless and shoot people with little regard](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/d-c-guns-and-gangs/). Even within street gangs, where fatal violence is common, there are apex predators whom even other gang members fear.

As we have often noted, according to sundry news reports, a gang member in custody for a homicide is the lead suspect in an average of three other homicides. Even though guns trade hands rapidly in Thug World, some perps carry the same gun long enough to use it several times.

That is where a ballistic database exposes this reality and occationally adds multiple charges onto a suspect’s list of new charges.

## NIBIN background

The National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) is a government program to capture the markings left on bullets and casings found at crime scenes. The goal is to create a database of evidence about crime guns, with one express purpose being to tie a gun to multiple crimes.

It works basically like this:

- Cops gather spent bullets and cartridge brass from a crime scene or test fire recovered guns.
- Trained lab technicians identify marks left on this evidence which are “largely” unique to the gun used.
- The data is entered into the NIBIN database.
- When evidence is gathered at another crime scene, the marks there are compared to everything in the database, looking for matches (“hits” in NIBIN parlance).
- If matches are found, this is noted; and if a suspect is arrested for any of the crimes the gun was used in, detectives can quickly determine if the suspect was likely the perp in the other crimes.

Please note that this is *not* the occationally proposed national ballistics fingerprinting database that politicians occationally proffer. This database does not capture ballistic evidence from guns before they are retailed. It is just crime evidence.

The question is whether it does any good. The answer is that the benefits are significant but could be improved.

## NIBIN results

Keep in mind that NIBIN is not universal. You might even consider it in startup mode with only 258 labs across 46 states (as of the end of 2021). With some of those cities still ramping up, they may not be fully operational, and in the paper we cover here [1](#note-7538-1 "Forensic Evidence and Criminal Investigations: The Impact of Ballistics Information on the Investigation of Violent Crime in Nine Cities; King; Journal of Forensic Sciences; 2017") from 2017, there appear to be chronic understaffing issues.

That said, in this limited sample (nine agencies) we start to see both the repeat nature of gun crime and the value of the NIBIN system.

Of the 65 cases where the researchers obtained full information and completed interviews with detectives, 63 cases (96%) had at least one additional case that was matched via ballistics (“linked via a ballistics imaging hit to at least one other case”).

That datapoint alone is unsurprisingly staggering. Given that 83% of the primary cases (where the gun or ballistic evidence was recovered) were homicide cases, and 41% of the secondary cases were homicides or assault with deadly weapons cases, we see the apex predator phenomena at play.

[![NIBIN Primary Case With Links To Additional Cases](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/NIBIN-Primary-Case-With-Links-To-Additional-Cases-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/NIBIN-Primary-Case-With-Links-To-Additional-Cases.png)click for larger, sharable version

And it gets better (or worse, depending on whether you are data-geeking or horrified about repeat violent offenders). The limited data in this paper shows that the majority of cases where the gun was used in multiple crimes were used in just one other. That said, 27% of the time it was two other cases.

But this is likely an understatement due to a number of factors:

- NIBIN is a relatively new project, launched in 1997. The program itself had to ramp up (funding, recruitment of participating agencies, training agency staff, getting technology acquired/configured, etc.).
- This paper notes very long periods from the recovery of the weapon and/or ballistic evidence to finding a “hit,” an average of 181 days.
- The ramp-up of data in the NIBIN database (too little data, too few hits).

The hits are producing results, but the full promise is not being met. Per the authors of this study:

“Hit reports rarely contribute to identification, arrest, charging, or sentencing of suspects, because of delays in producing hit reports. On average, hit reports were completed 181.4 days after the focal crime. This delay forces investigations to proceed without the benefit of information from ballistics analysis.”

That strong statement shows the current weakness of the system. Supposedly the statistics will improve over time as the database is populated with more forensic data. But the key problem appears to be a case of overload via understaffing. Detectives are not given match data for half a year and thus proceed with their investigations using traditional methods.

[![NIBIN Cases and Suspect Outcomes](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/NIBIN-Cases-and-Suspect-Outcomes-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/NIBIN-Cases-and-Suspect-Outcomes.png)click for larger, sharable version

That said, in 17% of cases, NIBIN matches helped identify a suspect, and 3% of cases resulted in an arrest. And these are the cases where no suspect had been identified at the time NIBIN presented a match. In another 17% of cases where a suspect had already been identified, NIBIN matches helped solidify the cases, and the suspects were charged in 3% of those.

Given anecdotal testimony that we at Gun Facts have received from people in government, serial number tracing is producing poor or no results. According to one former state and federal prosecutor in a major metro region, “Not a single violent crime that ever involved a lead developed from just a serial number search.” We hope to validate those claims soon, but for now NIBIN is producing some desirable results and might be on the way to doing much better.

## NIBIN the bud

\[ED: sorry for his bad pun\]

NIBIN shows promise. The question is whether the participating agencies will fund, staff and prioritize NIBIN data to help incarcerate local apex predators. With only 217 participating cities (after we combine duplicate labs and overlapping jurisdictions, such as three for Los Angeles), and some of those being tiny (e.g., Meriden, Connecticut, population 60,000) there is ample room for improvement of this system, which is already producing results.

Notes:

1. Forensic Evidence and Criminal Investigations: The Impact of Ballistics Information on the Investigation of Violent Crime in Nine Cities; King; Journal of Forensic Sciences; 2017 [↩](#return-note-7538-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, Crime Control

**Tags:** crime guns, NIBIN, repeat offenders

---

### [Gun Violence Archive Assessment](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-violence-archive-assessment/)

**Published:** December 6, 2023
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) is not a gold-standard data source. It isn’t even a reliable source. Yet it is commonly, and tragically, cited by people in the media who don’t know enough about gun violence data and criminology to understand why they should avoid citing GVA.

We’ll attempt to clarify that.

## Take-aways about GVA

- History of data quality issues
- Incomplete scope of data
- Invents terms that do not comport with established definitions
- No transparency on operations and methods

## What the Heck is GVA?

According to some, GVA is a real-time database of gun violence and an important research tool. To others it is an insult to serious researchers and a detriment to public education, and a naked agitprop tool.

The truth is in between.

We’ll start by saying we do not read into the GVA’s motives. We won’t classify them as saints, sinners, geniuses or morons. We’ll leave that for Twitter mobs.

But GVA never has been an academically serious source for data. Their history, such as it is, paints a picture of people who were ill-equipped to take on such a mission as they did, and who despite improvements, are still way below the bar for gold-standard data.

Indeed, no data source is pristine. Take for example the FBI’s supplementary homicide reports (SHR), which are considered gold-standard… until you notice that Florida supposedly has no homicides every year. This is because Florida does not forward their homicide data to the FBI, instead posting it to their own websites. But the FBI’s data collection procedures are uniform and have been consistent for decades, which is one of the pillars of data quality.

The same cannot be said about GVA.

## GVA and data quality

In their earliest years, GVA was basically crowd-sourced news scraping. There appeared to be few, if any, real data quality controls.

We’ll leave it to your Google skills to find the rosters of original complaints, but people who tore through GVA’s data noted:

- Events with multiple entries (i.e., one shooting, counted repeatedly)
- Missing events
- Self-defense shootings included as if they were criminal (no designations)
- No follow-up concerning charges not being filed (e.g., cops determined it was a good shoot), and district attorneys or courts dismissing charges that would reclassify events

Some of these problems may still exist (we won’t do an exhaustive discovery, but enough oddities caught our eyes to make us suspicious, such as one event being classified as both a murder and a self-defense non-shooting).

![GVA search for quality control processes](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/GVA-search-for-quality-control-processes-400x381.png)Indeed, if you do a directed search into the GVA website, Google cannot find any mention of GVA’s data quality processes or procedures. Even their “general methodology” page ([archived here](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/General-Methodology-_-Gun-Violence-Archive.pdf)) never uses the word quality.

All that said, they do claim to have abandoned crowd sourcing in favor of “a dedicated, professional staff,” though there is no clarity on what constitutes “professional” in GVA’s lexicon.

### Transparency and data quality

It is this last point that is most concerning. To believe in data quality, one must:

- Understand the data sources
- Approve of the scope of data sources
- Understand the processes in which data is gathered, categorized, encoded, etc.

If you have an afternoon to waste, dig through the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system, and their newer National Incident-Based Reporting System. The processes are documented to a mind-numbing degree, and at least for the aged-out UCR system, consistently uniform over a very long time.

This will be one of our two principal points for rejecting GVA as a data source. Transparency leads to critique, which leads (hopefully) to improved quality. GVA appears disinclined to both.

## Scope of sourcing

GVA claims that they are “utilizing up to 7,500 active sources,” but they do not disclose a list of those sources (not even Google can find the list of GVA sources using directed searches into the GVA website, though BARD does suggest in might include social media and “tipsters”). They note that it is a mix of media and law enforcement, but GVA doesn’t even disclose the rough ratio between these.

This is important because even that 7,500 number is low.

The FBI’s Originating Agency Identifier (ORI) database shows there are nearly 36,500 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Even *if* all of GVA’s 7,500 sources were law enforcement, that would represent 20% of all agencies, and since GVA started life as a news website-scraping operation, we doubt that even the majority of GVA’s sources are law enforcement.

All this circles back to GVA’s general lack of transparency. In short, with limited data sources, undisclosed sources, undocumented methodologies, and a poor early history of data quality, GVA lacks any trust-based standing in the field of gun violence research.

## GVA’s inappropriate definitions

This is where GVA draws the wrath of people familiar with propaganda tactics.

It is well understood by propaganda practitioners that if the data doesn’t favor you, change the definition of the measurement. Amtrak famously improved their lousy on-time record not by improving operations, but by changing the definition of “on-time.”

We won’t accuse GVA of malevolent intention. But they have done the public a grave disservice by muddling public understanding of gun violence by inventing similar sounding terms to established criminology definitions, and by revising underlying definitions.

[![Gun Violence Archive redefinitions or invention of terminology](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/GVA-redefinitions-of-invention-of-terminology-400x275.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/GVA-redefinitions-of-invention-of-terminology.png)click to enlarge

This table, from the GVA website, gives but one example.

There is an established definition for “mass PUBLIC shooting” (4+ killed not including the perpetrator, one public location, not associated with another crime). GVA invented their own version of the term “mass shooting,” omitting the word “public.” Journalists who were not educated on the nuances then proceeded to misreport the nature of mass PUBLIC shootings.

Even GVA’s definition of “mass shooting” starts injecting irregularities, such as the murders being in the same “general area” (hopelessly vague definition) and same “general time” (equally vague). This inappropriate approach has led to cases where someone may have killed their spouse at home in the morning, a patron at a bar that afternoon, then two people in the neighborhood that night. This is *not* a mass public shooting and thus is a horrifically invalid data definition.

But the *BIG* gotcha is not time and place, it is people killed ***or* *injured***. Note that for “mass shooting” GVA includes people who were “shot and/or killed.” Hence, their 4+ definition might include four people wounded, none killed. The problem GVA created, intentionally or not, is that reporters and activists are now conflating “mass PUBLIC shootings” (4+ killed) with GVA’s “mass shooting” (4+ wounded … or killed).

## GVA = Gun Variables Altered

The quick point is that between:

- Poor data quality (at least in the beginning)
- Limited data sources
- Lack of transparency
- Unwillingness to use standard definitions (i.e., mass public shootings)

… nobody should cite GVA. They fall far below gold-standard quality and their lack of definitional fidelity makes their motives suspect.

**Categories:** Gun Violence Archive, Propaganda

**Tags:** Gun Violence Archive, GVA, mass shootings

---

### [Habitual Effects](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/habitual-effects/)

**Published:** January 19, 2024
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Repeat offenders in prison are not committing crimes on the streets.

This was proven when in a national revolt over spiraling crime, 24 states passed habitual offender laws in just four years. The effects are compelling.

## Take-aways

States with habitual offender laws:

- Incarcerate 73% more violent offenders.
- Reduce violent crime by 85%.
- Reduce homicides by 49%.

## The Prelude to Three-Strikes

[![CONCEALED CARRY - Concealed Carry Expansion and Violent Crime Rates 1986-2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/CONCEALED-CARRY-Concealed-Carry-Expansion-and-Violent-Crime-Rates-1986-2017-400x271.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/CONCEALED-CARRY-Concealed-Carry-Expansion-and-Violent-Crime-Rates-1986-2017.png)[![Incarceration rates, handgun supply and homicide rates 1978 thru 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b-400x293.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b.png)Violent crime was rising across America in the 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s. Americans got sick of it and launched two of the largest legislative realignments since the end of the Civil War, both with an eye toward controlling criminals.

We won’t spend time discussing the expansion of concealed carry, except to note that it started in 1988 in Florida. After it was shown that public carry was not causing harm there, and even greatly dropped some categories of violent crime in the “Gunshine State,” other states flipped to “shall-issue” concealed carry regimes. We cannot confirm that expanded concealed carry contributed to the steady drop thereafter in violent crime, but we can say with certainty that it didn’t make things worse.

But we confirm that locking up criminals did.

The second great legislative reaction was that 24 states passed habitual offender laws (HOLs) in just four years. Those states accounted for 54% of the nation’s population in 1993, the first year of this legislative wave. This is statistically compelling – that over half of the repeat criminal offenders in America were suddenly facing long or even lifetime prison sentences.

And send them to prison America did.

Incarceration rates already were rising before 1993, mainly due to the justice systems focusing on all offenders even without HOLs. Incarceration rates accelerated into the four-year span of new HOLs. But interestingly, violent crime rates remained steady leading up to the wave of HOLs, then started dropping thereafter.

This alone does not prove that HOLs did the trick, but the statistics bear out the theory.

## The Plunge

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Prission-admissions-violent-crime-and-homicide-rates-difference-between-states-with-habitual-offender-laws-three-strikes-and-those-without-1991-thru-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Prission-admissions-violent-crime-and-homicide-rates-difference-between-states-with-habitual-offender-laws-three-strikes-and-those-without-1991-thru-2019.png)**HOL States****Other States**Violent Admissions69.240.0% VC of Admissions-0.2-0.5VC Rate-14.0-7.6Homicide Rate-0.2-0.1Slope of line[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/California-Violent-Crime-and-Homicide-Rates-after-Three-Strikes-habitual-offender-law-1991-thru-2011-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/California-Violent-Crime-and-Homicide-Rates-after-Three-Strikes-habitual-offender-law-1991-thru-2011.png)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/California-CDE-chart-400x106.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/California-CDE-chart.png) 

Chart from the FBI CDE website

HOL states saw a deeper drop in violent crime, but especially in homicides as HOLs took effect. Keep in mind, all states were “getting tough on crime,” but some passed HOLs to ensure judges and prosecutors did not remain soft on crime. So, even in non-HOL states, there was a drop in violence.

Just not nearly as deep as in HOL states.

HOL states accelerated their violent criminal prison admissions 73% more than non-HOL states. This translated into HOL states seeing 84% more reduction in violent crime rates and half as many homicides.

Curiously, the percentage of incarcerations for violent crimes dropped a little in both HOL and non-HOL states. But as more people in total were being imprisoned, so too were the total number of violent offenders being locked-up.

It was the difference that matters because surprisingly the total new prison admission went up more in non-HOL states – a 33% increase compared to 28% for HOL states. On the whole, non-HOL states were processing more total prisoners, and HOL states were processing more repeat violent offenders. So naturally HOL states enjoyed a greater drop in violent crime.

## California’s Three Strikes Law

California politicians have of late claimed the 1993-onward drop in violence in their state was attributed to gun control laws.

And they never even mention their 1994 three-strike HOL.

California processed nearly 90,000 people in the first decade of their HOL. [1](#note-7823-1 "A Primer: Three Strikes - The Impact After More Than a Decade, California Legislative Analyst’s Office, 2005")

That’s a couple of large football stadiums full of habitual criminals.

Before their HOL was enacted, California’s violent crime rate was much higher than the national average. Yet California’s aggressive HOL incarceration rate (up nearly 50% in the first five years) caused California violence to rapidly fall to national levels.

## The Odd Bump

Smart readers like yourself noticed that between 2006 and 2008, violent crime in HOL states rose to about the levels of non-HOL states. This bump was odd and has no great explanation because it was attributable to four states.

For this brief period, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada and Wisconsin saw their violent crime rates worsen. All except for Wisconsin reversed this trend in 2009 and rates resumed falling, exceeding their previous lows. Two states were Southern but not neighbors, one is in the Western region, and one is Midwestern. All have very different geographies, demographics, economies. Assuming that the FBI did not have a data collection fluke for these four states in a three-year window, we’ll have to accept a temporary anomaly.

## Data Disclaimers

Like much in life, data is not as complete as number nuts like Gun Facts would like. For example, when you ask the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) for a data table on prison admission by the classification of crime to the state level, the data only goes back to 1991, shortly before the HOL tsunami. In a more perfect world, we would look at a decade of data before and after this legislative transition; but in this case we don’t know if most people entering prison were going in for violent or non-violent offenses before 1991.

Worse still, some states were a bit sloppy about reporting data to BJS. Arkansas, for example, simply did not classify 44% of their prison admissions from 1991 through 1998, resulting in the classification of “missing.” Hence, Arkansas is “missing” from this analysis.

Ten states (Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wyoming) did not report imprisonment data before or into the early years of the HOL enactment spree, DC stopped doing so in 1997, and Massachusetts quit classifying categories after 1995. BJS coded Connecticut as NA, which is a bit of a stumper.

Longish story short, a lot of states were dropped from this analysis due to their data reliability issues. Also, six states had HOL laws long before the 1993 peak (Alabama, Delaware, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Texas) and are excluded from analysis. But enough states (31) remained, 16 (52%) of which were new HOL states and the rest not, so roughly an even split.

## Thug Life in the Pen

Keep in mind that HOLs are for *habitual* criminals, and that *habitual* means “done or doing *constantly*.” HOLs then address individuals who make a life of criminality.

Some research indicates that there are links between genetics and aggressive behaviors. There are also subcultures that condition people to accept violence as viable if not glorious. Combine the two and you generate mayhem.

This is the key to the success of HOLs – they target people who are habitually violent by nature or nurture. Since there is no evident redemption created by the criminal justice system, anything less than incarcerating repeat violent predators means that they will return to and harm society.

Notes:

1. A Primer: Three Strikes - The Impact After More Than a Decade, California Legislative Analyst’s Office, 2005 [↩](#return-note-7823-1)

**Categories:** California, Crime and Guns, Crime Control

**Tags:** habitual offender, three strikes, violent crime

---

### [TASSS and Accuracy](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tasss-and-accuracy/)

**Published:** March 28, 2024
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

There is a lot of public confusion about school shootings. Some of this is intentional, due to data manipulation by activist groups. Some of it is because researchers are highly inconsistent about definitions and approaches.

The good news is that there is a high-quality database that shows us a lot of interesting information about shootings in K–12 schools. The bad news is that the raw data is not publicly available, but we’ll get to that gripe later.

## Takeaways

- Media-cited K–12 shooting databases overstate such events by 40%.
- Most K–12 shooting events are in major metro areas and exceed their population-based share.
- Many K–12 shooting events share M.O. profiles of street gang retaliatory action.
- 26% of K–12 shooting perpetrators are “unknown” and not charged.

## Reliable Sourcing

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/K12-School-Shootings-from-Two-Tracking-Databasses-TASSS-and-K12SSDB-400x282.jpg "K12 School Shootings from Two Tracking Databases - TASSS and K12SSDB")](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/K12-School-Shootings-from-Two-Tracking-Databasses-TASSS-and-K12SSDB.jpg)A small number of databases have been generated by sundry people and organizations in an attempt to document school shootings. Some of these data sets are marginally acceptable while some are completely ridiculous. Some of these include colleges while others omit them, and some don’t even require a gun to be fired for it to be classified as a “school shooting.”

One database [1](#note-7926-1 "Alternately either the K–12 School Shooting Database or the K–12 school shooting database from the Naval Postgraduate School. The maintainer of the former was a graduate of the latter, which explains both the connection and the shared problems with both databases.") that gets a lot of media attention is possibly one of the worst of the lot. We won’t recite all of their sins, but they include so many events that are not actual school shootings that when the federal government used their database as a starting point, and then whittled away those things that were not actual school shootings, 40% of the database went away. [2](#note-7926-2 "Characteristics of School Shootings, General Accounting Office, 2020")

That’s what makes the database that we review here [3](#note-7926-3 "The American School Shooting Study (TASSS), Using Open-source Data to Better Understand and Respond to American School Shootings: Introducing and Exploring the American School Shooting Study (TASSS), Journal Of School Violence, 2022") of great interest to us. The methodology, scope of data sources, and general robustness of the methodology gives us great confidence in the soundness of the data. The researchers also defined a rather crisp and accurate definition of a school shooting and made sure that all the entries in their database conformed to that definition.

## The Perp and Metro Connection

One of the first interesting elements of this database is that most of the K–12 school shootings occur in major metropolitan areas. It is also interesting to note that many of the characteristics of the shooters align with what we see with common street gangs, which as we know are also a feature of major metropolitan areas.

The snap assumption one could make from this is that street gangs, gang culture, or inner-city cultures that condone or tolerate gangs, are foundational to attitudes about violence which then carry into the schools in those same neighborhoods. In other words, most of the K–12 shooting problem may be distinctly associated with inner-city dysfunctions.

Here is one indicator: 56.9% of all K–12 shootings happen in major metropolitan areas. However, those areas have only 30.1% of all K–12 age students. [4](#note-7926-4 "Using 2016 Census Bureau estimates, to coincide with the endpoint of the TASSS dataset") In other words, school shooting rates are about double what the population alone would predict in major metropolitan areas. And as we know from reams of criminology research about street gangs, and survey work done by our own federal government, most gang activity is in major metro areas.

### The unknown and unauthorized perp problem

26% of the intentional shootings on K–12 campuses were committed by unknown perpetrators.

*Unknown ….*

There are a few reasons why a perpetrator might be unknown. He could be a stranger. Within gang-centric communities which have “no snitching” cultures, witnesses may not be pointing to those who they know pulled the trigger. Often within urban areas, people involved in street crime will wear hoodies and some form of face covering to conceal their identity, which would apply to targeted shootings on K–12 campuses.

The key point is that over a quarter of K–12 shootings are done by people who are never apprehended or charged. That the police cannot figure out who the perpetrator was is a major concern. That said, this data agrees with other research [5](#note-7926-5 "Characteristics of School Shootings, General Accounting Office, 2020") that shows that people coming on to K–12 campuses who aren’t supposed to be there are significantly contributing to school shootings.

To foreshadow, we note that inside street gang cultures, retribution killings are very common. It is not a far stretch to say that many, perhaps most, of these stranger-perpetrator K–12 shootings are gang members or gang affiliates coming onto campus and hunting one or more of the students.

### The criminal record problem

Thirty-two percent of adolescent perpetrators of K–12 shootings had prior criminal records. Using FBI definitions, about 29% of the entire population, not just the adolescent population, has a criminal record. And people who have been out of K–12 education for decades have had many more chances to rack up criminal offenses than somebody who only became a common criminal at age 14 and left high school at age 18.

This means a higher percentage of adolescent school shooters are already criminally minded compared to older people. Stated differently, to rack up so many criminal charges before you are a fully formed adult means that you entered the criminal realm early in life and have been willingly committing crimes. This is far different than people who commit crimes during adulthood out of the “necessity” of economic survival.

[![Table from TASSS of demographic issues with K12 school shooters](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Table-from-TASSS-of-demographic-issues-with-K12-school-shooters-400x396.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Table-from-TASSS-of-demographic-issues-with-K12-school-shooters.png)Pair that datum with the other elements we’ve discussed so far, and you begin to see a picture evolving. Teens with criminal records, many of them on campuses where they don’t belong, are committing most of the K–12 shootings in major metropolitan areas.

Twenty-one percent of the adolescent perpetrators, according to this report, had gang associations. This is almost exactly the percentage found for street-gang active ages (14 thru 24) in the [Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) study we conducted.

But these are known/admitted gang members. There are many members who do not confess to authorities about being in a gang, and a lot more juveniles who are only “associates” of street gangs. Hence, the 21% of K–12 shootings being gang related is a floor, not a ceiling.

### The mental health underpinning

Twenty-six percent of adolescent K–12 shooters had evidence of psychological troubles. However, we don’t have a breakdown of this vis-a-vis the kind of shooting they did. As with all mass public shootings, we expect the slope to skew heavily towards perpetrators of those events.

Though the literature is chaotic, the percentage of the population that has some sort of mental health issue ranges between 20% and 26%. What this means is that for K–12 shooters, they are on the high end of the range for mental health problems. There is some literature about the mental health of gang members, but we won’t get into that for now because it’s very narrowly studied, and we are unconvinced of the validity of the data on a national scale. However, that this many K–12 shooters are on the high end of the range for mental health problems is a factor that needs to be considered.

## The Relative Dearth of Mass K12 Shooting Events

“Only” 3% of K–12 shootings were mass shootings, and that’s using the more generous definition of three or more people killed in the event (the traditional criminology definition of a mass public shooting is four or more killed, not including the perpetrator).

What we’re beginning to see here is a divergence of public understanding and fear when it comes to K–12 shootings. Most of our attention is riveted on the high body count events such as Parkland High School or Sandy Hook Elementary. But statistically, those kinds of events are very rare. The bulk of K–12 shootings appear to be tied to major metropolitan areas (likely inner cities), and likely associated with or related to gangs, or at least suggesting gang culture retaliations.

## The Suicide Question

[![K12 School Shootings 1990 thru 2016 by Intent](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/K12-School-Shootings-1990-thru-2016-by-Intent-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/K12-School-Shootings-1990-thru-2016-by-Intent.jpg)[![Trends in K12 School Shootings by Intent](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Trends-in-K12-School-Shootings-by-Intent-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Trends-in-K12-School-Shootings-by-Intent.jpg)Fifteen percent of K–12 shootings were self-harm events. Within this category are both attempted and successful suicides, which includes not just students, but also faculty or employees.

This begs a question that we’re not going to solve today. The question is whether suicides or other forms of self-harm shootings should be included in a K–12 school shooting database. We at Gun Facts are of a mixed mind. We certainly want to account for all potential damage caused by a bullet intentionally fired on a campus. Even a suicide attempt might result in collateral damage.

On the other hand, nearly all suicide attempts don’t result in harm to others. What most parents are worried about is whether their kid will be the victim of gunfire on their campus. Including suicides gives a misleading indication of the threat.

Our gut instinct is to present the data both ways. First, we would encourage the maintainers of this database to publish the data in separate modes with the same column headings. Mode 1 would be all events. Mode 2 would be all events minus self-harm. Mode 3 would be all events minus self-harm and legal interventions. Mode 4 would be the same as mode 3 but would also remove accidents. This would give everybody a clean view of the probability of a threat to any given school student.

## The Database Access Complaint

We have to take a moment to complain.

The raw database for this project is not available to the general public, and not available to the Gun Facts project either. Academics at universities that have gone through elaborate needs justification processes can get access to this data, but nobody else can.

Our favorite self-quote is, “To solve a problem you must understand the problem.” The best way to get an understanding of K–12 shootings is to make sure that all of the data is available to all researchers so that all of the perspectives can be generated and published. We encourage the maintainers of this particular database to find a way to anonymize the data (the common justification for sequestering such is due to privacy concerns for victims and perpetrators) and make the anonymized database freely available.

We’re not going to hold our breath, because academia loves having a stranglehold on inconvenient information.

## School is Out for Today

The good news, if we can say anything is good about K–12 shootings, is that statistically they are rare and they are also highly concentrated in major metro areas. This at least makes the problem much easier to address because of its locality and its likely underlying causes.

But we have a hunch that politicians will not do so. The literature on the intersections between inner-city street gang cultures and homicides is well established, and yet politicians in the major metro areas where most of the blood is shed do little or do nothing to address the underlying disease.

Notes:

1. Alternately either the *K–12 School Shooting Database* or the *K–12 school shooting database* from the Naval Postgraduate School. The maintainer of the former was a graduate of the latter, which explains both the connection and the shared problems with both databases. [↩](#return-note-7926-1)
2. Characteristics of School Shootings, General Accounting Office, 2020 [↩](#return-note-7926-2)
3. The American School Shooting Study (TASSS), *Using Open-source Data to Better Understand and Respond to American School Shootings: Introducing and Exploring the American School Shooting Study (TASSS)*, Journal Of School Violence, 2022 [↩](#return-note-7926-3)
4. Using 2016 Census Bureau estimates, to coincide with the endpoint of the TASSS dataset [↩](#return-note-7926-4)
5. Characteristics of School Shootings, General Accounting Office, 2020 [↩](#return-note-7926-5)

**Categories:** Children and Guns, School Shootings

**Tags:** children, k12, school shootings

---

### [K–12 Shooting Stats](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/k-12-shooting-stats/)

**Published:** March 22, 2024
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

School shootings are reasonably rare, though you would never know if from reading stories in the mainstream media or listening to people who maintain databases of questionable quality.

Fortunately, the federal government did a deep dive into the subject, and from that we come to some interesting conclusions about who is actually in danger at K–12 schools and why it only reinforces what we know about gun violence in general.

## TAKEAWAYS

- The most commonly media-cited K–12 school shooting database is overstated by 40%.
- Most K–12 shootings are over disputes that align with inner-city and street gang subcultures.
- School-targeted shootings (which include mass shootings) occur at about half the rate of “nominal” dispute/gang shootings.
- Targeted shootings, because they are planned, come from generalized grievances, and use “cattle pen scenarios,” have a higher body count than the more common one-victim dispute shootings, though the latter occurs twice as often.

## What is a “shooting”?

As with anything that has a political angle, definitions are routinely corrupted in order to try to get notoriety in the political marketplace.

Such is the case with the definition of school shooting. In one database [1](#note-7903-1 "K-12 School Shooting Database, a.k.a. K-12 SSDB") which is unfortunately [cited by the media without scrutiny](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-data-sources-and-reliability/), the number of instances of so-called school shootings is vastly overstated. It is interesting that in the government study we review today, they began with this highly questionable database, devised a rational definition of school shooting that conforms to the public’s understanding of what such an event is, and then proceeded to present data that has a basis in reality.

And from that we discovered that the highly suspect database mentioned before overstates the number of school shootings by 40%. How do they do that? Their definition of school shooting is so broad that a stray bullet landing on school ground from a drive-by-gang shooting a block away constitutes, for them, a school shooting. A seriously depressed teacher who commits suicide in her car in the parking lot at three o’clock in the morning is also considered by them to be a school shooting.

In other words, they peddle nonsense.

The report in hand [2](#note-7903-2 "Characteristics of School Shootings; GAO; 2020") was developed by the General Accounting Office (GAO) and did what good researchers should do – namely, start with a well-reasoned and sound definition of a school shooting. They very specifically define it as “anytime a gun is fired on school grounds, on a bus, during a school event, during school hours or right before or after school.” This excludes events that do not involve students, do not involve faculty, do not involve resource officers, and actually occur when students would be in danger. In other words, it is highly inconvenient for people who want to create panic over K–12 school shootings.

Fortunately, this report distilled the important elements of the data in a way that it’s meaningful to us. Unfortunately, the raw GAO filtered data is locked up, which makes it nearly impossible for independent researchers such as the Gun Facts project to do an even deeper dive. The government may have done well by studying the subject, but they did a grand disservice to the public by not allowing others to second-guess their work and to take it even further.

Be sure to write to your congressperson about this because we at the Gun Facts project are rather ticked off about the situation.

## The GAO Report

We’ll start by noting that the origin of the inappropriate database actually occurred within government, at the Naval Postgraduate School, a part of the Center for Homeland Defense. The maintainer of that database has since gone independent, and seems to be hungry for media attention, which unfortunately he actually acquires.

For their exercise, the GAO took the database as last updated by the Naval Postgraduate School and applied their rational definition of what constitutes a school shooting to every row in the database. This led to an end count of 318 school shootings over a 10-year period from the school year 2009–10 through 2018–19.

That comes out to being about 32 school shootings in K–12 institutions every year, or about one K–12 school shooting per state every two years. But it must be noted that this definition of school shooting includes a lot of things which are not a direct endangerment to innocent students.

For example, a full 3% are classified as “other.” This category includes shots fired by resource officers at the school in response to a threat. It also includes 11% that were suicides or suicide attempts, either by students, workers, faculty, or strangers on the campus. As you can see, even our total count of 318 may be grossly inflated. We will continue to use that number during this review, but keep in mind that the situation is better than it appears on the surface.

Though the raw data is not available to us, the breakdown provided by the GAO is sufficient for us to view the three critical elements of school shooters – namely, why they shoot, who does the shooting, and where they do the shooting. It also gives us a little background on the shooters, which leads to an interesting inspection of the intersections of who, where, and why, which in turn leads us back to inner cities and the influence of street gangs.

# The “Why”

[![GAO K12 shooting report - why they shot](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-why-they-shot-400x363.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-why-they-shot.jpg)Why people discharge firearms in K–12 schools breaks down along predictable lines. The largest slice of the pie comes from people exercising grievances or disputes; those constitute 31% of all school shootings. We’ll come back to this later because dispute settlement is a hallmark of street gang culture, and we see this exercised far too frequently in K–12 incidents. Given that nearly half of all K–12 firearm discharges were done by students or former students, and another 19% by unknown actors, it’s ***highly unlikely*** that most of these discharges were related by authorized carriers. Indeed, the table shows that 8% of discharges were either from police and resource officers or teachers and staff; thus we are not certain if all the teachers and staff were authorized to be carrying.

That said, the GAO notes that the disputes classification includes gang-oriented disputes. So, they are functionally aware that gang culture and retribution culture within gangs may be a primary cause of the largest segment of K–12 campus shootings. What is unsaid, out of necessity, is that some students may not be gang members, and the shooting might not be a “gang function,” but the student might be a gang associate or simply exercising gang “retribution” culture.

After that, 16% of firearm discharges are purely accidental. There’s not a solid breakdown, without the raw data, to know whether these accidents mainly occurred due to people authorized to have guns on campus, or idiot children who have brought them to school.

Note that these two elements – disputes and accidents – constitute 47% of all K–12 campus shootings. The next biggest group, targeted attacks, which we relate to tragic events such as Parkland High School and Sandy Hook Elementary, are at worst only 14%.

This is where the public is probably getting a mass misperception about K–12 shootings. Most of them are dispute-oriented, which may also mean gang-related. These disputes are over twice as likely to occur than a targeted shooting, and targeted shootings go well beyond mass shootings (e.g., they may target a small number of very specific people instead of the student/faculty body at large).

After that comes suicides, which rack up 11% of these instances. Sad as suicides are, they are not generally endangering to other students. And often these suicides are committed by faculty or staff. So again, it’s not a student protection issue in general.

The other categories are rather nominal, but we’ll note that 3% of what are classified as K–12 school shootings were conducted by “others,” which includes police and resource officers responding to threats. There is no finer breakdown of this number, and the load is so small that a breakdown might be misleading.

## The “Who”

Having looked at the why, let’s explore the who.

[![GAO K12 shooting report - who shot](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-who-shot-400x346.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-who-shot.jpg)Nearly half of all K–12 shootings were done by students or former students. That word “former” is intriguing because somebody who is not supposed to be on campus in order to receive an education, but comes on campus to shoot somebody, is a sign of external matters unrelated to the school system. It would be entirely unsurprising to learn that former students, including dropouts, who are associated with or members of street gangs, come on to campus to settle disputes, which are the largest motivation for K–12 incidences.

This also gets to the next cluster of 19%, where the person who pulled the trigger is unknown. Contemplate that for a second. Someone brings a gun onto a K–12 school campus, fires it, and that suspect is never identified. This cluster is quickly followed up by 12% of shooters who had no relationship to the school whatsoever. They were not students, not faculty, not workers or bus drivers, nada.

Foreshadowing just a bit, we see that most of the instances were caused by students, and most of their motivations were for the settlement of grievances.

## The “Where”

[![GAO K12 shooting report - where they shot](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-where-they-shot-400x297.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-where-they-shot.jpg)Chart from GAO report on school shootings that breaks down both the motivations/circumstances of why a gun was discharged and if it was indoors or outdoors

Where the shootings take place combined with the motivation gets very interesting. What we see is that the settlement of grievances, the largest motivation for K–12 campus shootings, tends to happen outside of the school building. We noted that a number of people not associated with school or who are unknown come onto campus. The intersection of grievance settlement with students and non-students outside of the school building is instructive.

On the other hand, accidents and specifically targeted shootings mainly happen in the building. The accidental aspect is predictable since people on campus spend most of their time in the building, and if they were to have an accidental discharge it would most highly likely be indoors. And somebody who’s committed to mass murder is going to look for cattle pen scenarios, which means looking for classrooms packed full of students.

This separation of motive versus indoor/outdoor locations is another bit of foreshadowing as we begin to explore the intersections and what possibly constitutes the greatest threat on K–12 campuses.

Economists and rational people (which is not to say that all the economists are rational) will tell you that motivation is driven in part by circumstance. The circumstances of shooters are a key to reducing K–12 school shootings.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-risk-and-protective-factors-800x511.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-risk-and-protective-factors.jpg)

The most disturbing table within the GAO’s report lists the risk factors and the protective factors that drive public school shooters. Most important on the list is how one comes to their beliefs about violence, which for children and teens in K–12 schools are largely formed by both their parents and their community.

When we look at the relationship row of a specific table in the GAO report, we see what has also been reported by those who study gangs and gang culture. Parents who are disconnected, who are violent themselves, who have poor conflict management skills of their own, or who simply just don’t care about their children much, create children who also are bad at conflict resolution – or worse, who adopt street gang behaviors where violence is how conflicts are resolved.

## The Death Divide

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-deaths-and-incidents-per-motive-800x383.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/GAO-K12-shooting-report-deaths-and-incidents-per-motive.jpg)

It is worth noting that although dispute shootings, which we suspect are aligned with gang culture, are twice a frequent as school-targeted shootings, while the latter category has a higher average body count. This makes sense for the following reasons:

**DISPUTE:** Most often one person, acting spontaneously, with a grudge/dispute with one other person, so a limited set of targets and intents.

**TARGETED:** A generalized grudge against the school/classmates/cliques, which allows for a large number of targets; often planned to “benefit” from classroom and hallways creating a [cattle pen scenario](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/las-vegas-perspectives/).

Sadly, the former is more predictable than the latter and more straightforward to address.

## Getting Pointed About K–12 Shootings

From the above associations and the core data, we’re beginning to see a relationship between the type of community and the type of parents and the most frequent causes of K–12 shootings. To put an extremely fine point on it, the probability of a gun being misused on the K–12 campus is strongly associated with inner-city life, inner-city attitudes towards violence, and the influence of street gang culture in terms of the use of violence to settle grievances.

As with street gangs in general, political leaders in major metropolitan areas seem largely disinterested in controlling cultural attitudes towards violence, and this then leaks into K–12 schools within their control.

Notes:

1. K-12 School Shooting Database, a.k.a. K-12 SSDB [↩](#return-note-7903-1)
2. Characteristics of School Shootings; GAO; 2020 [↩](#return-note-7903-2)

**Categories:** Children and Guns, School Shootings

**Tags:** k12, school shootings

---

### [De-Policing and Death](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/de-policing-and-death/)

**Published:** March 14, 2024
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Does reducing the number of police on the street cause crime to go up?

It would seem obvious, but we at Gun Facts don’t like to assume *anything*. So we scanned about and found some analysis.

According to two academic criminology papers, the answer is that reducing police presence on the streets absolutely increases homicides, and gun homicides. And it mainly affects poor people of color in major metropolitan areas. This agrees with our “[Top 15 Murder Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/)” analysis which showed that a lack of policing, and the associated lack of case clearances for homicides, lead to more gun murder.

## TAKEAWAYS:

- The mode of de-policing doesn’t matter.
- This hypothesis was tested against: 
    - Pandemic pullbacks (for public health safety and police outage reasons)
    - Pullbacks in the face of the George Floyd riots
    - De-staffing via “defund the police” and “criminal justice reform” movements
- The largest impact was in areas normally associated with high street gang activity, and gang crimes rose as much as five-fold.

## 2020 Was a Hell of a Year

In recent history, the United States has had two substantial and accidental test cases concerning the reduction of police on the streets. The first was a byproduct of both some bad policing (Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota) and police pullbacks. These resulted in police officers not being as engaged as frequently with the community as they used to be (e.g., due to police resentment of public abuse, resignations, defunding). The second was the pandemic, which caused police to withdraw from the streets for health management reasons, as well as many officers being off duty because they became infected with the virus.

With both influences, though mostly associated with the former, there was a dramatic spike in street violence and gun homicides in the year 2020.

Unsurprisingly, the spread of this violence was uneven. To quote one of the papers, “Gun violence increased to a greater extent in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and minority populations.” Though the authors did not explore that statement more deeply, it aligns with demographics common to communities rife with street gangs and is compelling in and of itself.

Between these two papers [1](#note-7887-1 "Did De-policing contribute to the 2020 homicide spikes?; Kim; Police Practice and Research; 2023") [2](#note-7887-2 "Explaining the Recent Homicide Spikes in U.S. Cities: The “Minneapolis Effect” and the Decline in Proactive Policing; Cassell; The Federal Sentencing Reporter; 2020"), we see a picture of police officers not being on the streets in already dangerous neighborhoods.

One thing well known about street gang members is that they commit most of their violent crimes in public. A lack of police presence on the streets gives gang members an open playing field on which to commit more violent crime. With police pullbacks from pandemic health management, defunding activities and disincentives, as well as some overly optimistic criminal justice reform activities, net policing in major metro areas declined dramatically in the year 2020.

So, it should be unsurprising that street crime went up in those areas.

The first study looked at just New York City. Granted, that’s looking at only one major metro area. But the level of detail in the study is quite promising.

[![NYC - effects of de-policing on crime during the pandemic era](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/NYC-effects-of-de-policing-on-crime-during-the-pandemic-era-400x519.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/NYC-effects-of-de-policing-on-crime-during-the-pandemic-era.png) 

click too enlarge

[![Chicago - homicide incidents during George Floyd riots](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Chicago-homicide-incidents-during-George-Floyd-riots-400x284.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Chicago-homicide-incidents-during-George-Floyd-riots.png)click too enlarge

There was a drop of almost 50% in police stops in the early days of the pandemic and the riots. During that same initial drop in police activities, homicides spiked by almost double and “gun crimes” went up by more than double. However, non-gun crime remained level. Likewise domestic crimes actually decreased a little bit, while both non-domestic and gang crimes went up significantly.

In other words, crimes in private (where police presence is nonexistent) stayed static, and crimes in public (where police presence dropped) went way up.

In fact, the rate of ***gang crimes went up as much as five-fold*** in the initial months of the pandemic and the George Floyd riots.

The other paper is much broader. It examines the timing of the George Floyd protest and homicide spikes in Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and New York. It also incorporated seasonal adjustments, given the time of year when many of these factors were happening. Importantly, it examined the policing in those specific cities to measure the effects of the policing on homicides.

Minneapolis would be a special case, considering that is the city where George Floyd was killed. But it’s instructive to note that in almost every major metro area where there were George Floyd protests, homicides spiked at the start of the protest. In other words, rioting and public disorder, combined with de-policing and over extension of the remaining police staffing, provided ample opportunity for street crimes and violence to escalate.

The second paper is extraordinary inasmuch as it looked at the timing of both the pandemic police pullback and the George Floyd riot pullbacks, and concluded that had pandemic pullbacks alone been responsible, the spike in homicides would have happened 10 weeks earlier. They did not. They rose almost in lockstep with civil disorder.

Like the other study, this one also notes that nonviolent crimes did not rise during the Floyd riots. Again, this harkens back to the fact that most street gang violence occurs in public, and that gang members took the opportunity of the de-policing – whether from pandemic pullbacks or defunding initiatives – to commit violence in the absence of deterrence.

One of the compounding effects was that police became disenchanted in their careers in the wake of the defunding initiatives and public resentment over George Floyd’s death. For example, the Minneapolis Police department lost at least 100 officers during that era. That already strained police departments were losing officers only exacerbated the situation.

## Police Should Be Present and Proactive

What emerges from these studies is that proactive policing – ensuring that police are on patrols in whatever neighborhoods they are needed – is a suppressant to street crime. We’re seeing this play out in select major metropolitan areas (e.g., San Francisco) that endorsed defunding and criminal Justice reform initiatives during the George Floyd era, but that are now reinstituting “tough on crime” programs and ramping up police presences because their street crime rates escalated beyond the public’s tolerance level.

The shame of it all is that this spike in violence, gun homicides, and street crime was highly concentrated in poor neighborhoods populated with minorities. The most disadvantaged people in our country were the biggest victims of de-policing.

Notes:

1. *Did De-policing contribute to the 2020 homicide spikes?*; Kim; Police Practice and Research; 2023 [↩](#return-note-7887-1)
2. *Explaining the Recent Homicide Spikes in U.S. Cities: The “Minneapolis Effect” and the Decline in Proactive Policing*; Cassell; The Federal Sentencing Reporter; 2020 [↩](#return-note-7887-2)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, Police and Guns

---

### [Incarceration, Handguns and Homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/incarceration-handguns-and-homicides/)

**Published:** July 11, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

*“The homicide rate is going up because there are more guns!”*

That was a hysterical statement made by a talking head on a television news network. Sadly, this fellow is considered to be a journalist by people who evidently don’t own dictionaries or know of Edward R. Murrow.

At the Gun Facts project, we pour through so much data that recognizing low grade equine effluvium, such as the statement above, is second nature for us. Yet our joy in life is converting hard numbers into knowledge and perspective so that people with high intellects (that would be you, kind reader) will see through such comical statements as what the nightly news anchor uttered.

## The basic take-away

[![Incarceration rates, handgun supply and homicide rates 1978 thru 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b-800x586.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b.png)

Starting in the early 1990s, after two decades of steadily rising violent crime rates, all forms of crime started dropping. This includes homicides. But after 1993 (more on that in a moment), while the homicide rate in the United States was steadily falling, the supply of handguns kept rising steadily.

If the basic theory as pontificated by the undereducated “journalist” held true, the rising supply of handguns – the primary tool of choice for homicides in the US – would have gone up, not down. Firearms account for 56–74% of homicide deaths [1](#note-6465-1 "Centers for Disease Control, WONDER database") depending on the year. Though slightly variable, and ignoring the nadir year of 2001, we see a range of 65–75% of homicides being committed with guns since 1993.

That said, post-1993, stockpiling guns didn’t make things worse on the homicide front; things kept getting better. But why were there fewer shootings?

## Ticked-off Americans

The rising crime rates of the 1970s and 1980s led to a citizen’s revolt of sorts. Starting in 1993, states began enacting “habitual offender” laws. These laws targeted thugs who kept committing crimes with the goal of “keeping them off the streets” (and we know from decadal Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that “the streets” are where criminals get their guns).

These laws were most commonly of the “three strikes” variety. Ignoring whether these laws were poorly written and maybe went too far, we see in the chart above that as more and more people entered and stayed in the prison system, the more the homicide rate dropped even as the per capita supply of handguns kept rising. With nearly half of US states passing such laws in a four-year window, and a handful of states already having them on the books, the cause-and-effect relationship is highly probable.

We know from a scatter-shot of criminology studies that repeat violent offenders are responsible for the majority of homicides. As cited elsewhere on Gun Facts, we note that the average street gang member held for one homicide is the lead suspect in three homicides, on average. Hence, once America started putting shooters – or people who might graduate into becoming shooters – into prisons for extended stays, there were fewer shootings.

All while the handgun supply went up… and up… and up.

## Limitations

There are other factors aside from habitual offender laws. Many have pointed out that there were confounding factors such as changes in demographics, earlier changes in attitudes about abortions which led to demographic changes, a post-cold war economic boom, et cetera. Grafting all that is more than we at the Gun Facts project will take on this week. But even if those factors were significantly influential, they still deny the basic premise that the supply of guns leads to more violent crime.

Your job is to share the opening graphic on social media so the next time a talking head on a network news program says something uneducated, your friends and neighbors will change the channel.

Notes:

1. Centers for Disease Control, WONDER database [↩](#return-note-6465-1)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns, Crime Control

---

### [Magazine Capacity Muckraking](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/magazine-capacity-muckraking/)

**Published:** February 2, 2019
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

The capacity of a firearm magazine should not make anyone high. But given the hyperbole over “high capacity” magazines, I fear some politicians are positively stoned.

Whenever there is a mad rush to legislation, accompanied by exaggerated sound bites, we at the Gun Facts project just have to take a closer look. Research is *our* drug of choice.

## Main Take-aways

- Magazine capacity is only applicable to mass shootings
- Mass shootings are rare events
- Magazine capacity is not the underlying factor in high death rates
- The number of people killed at mass shootings is a tiny fraction of homicides

## Legislative Limberness

Exactly what is a “high” capacity magazine? It depends on who you ask. Ardent firearm enthusiasts consider a 30 round magazine commonplace and can cite meaningful usefulness for 100 round mags. Some gun control supporters believe anything over six is excessive.

As with “assault weapons”, “high” capacity is in the rheumy eyes of the politician. For sake of convenience, we will follow the two arbitrary legislative definitions of “high” capacity, namely 10+ or 15+ rounds. We do this so we can measure any alleged efficacy of such laws, but also because one of the common publicly available databases covering mass public shootings [1](#note-5113-1 "Crime Prevention Research Center") lists in which events these types of magazines were used. This makes the math both reasonable and easy.

### A note about other events

There is no reliable and comprehensive database concerning the magazine capacity of guns used in crimes outside of mass public shootings (MPSs). Even if there were, there are gun crimes where guns are not fired (e.g. ATM muggings). If anyone knows of a solid database that denotes magazine capacity for guns fired in the commission of a crime, and what the crime was, we would love to get our mitts on the numbers.

That being said, what we do know from sundry criminology reports is that for garden variety crime, magazine capacity isn’t an issue. The average number of rounds unleashed by criminals during a crime is between 2.04 for revolvers and 2.53 for automatics. [2](#note-5113-2 "Urban firearm deaths: A five-year perspective, Michael McGonigal, John Cole, William Schwab, Donald Kauder, Michael Rotondo, Peter Angood, Journal of Trauma, 1993.") Hence, MPSs may be the only crime in which the capacity of the magazine matters.

Though for 27% of MPS, it may not matter at all. This is the percentage of cases in the [Gun Facts Mass Public Shooting Database](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/mass-public-shooting-database/) where the killer brought multiple guns. If 15+ round magazines are banned and the killer comes with three guns with 10 round magazines, he still has 30+ rounds to spend (assume one in the chamber) before the first reload.

This is an important point. In 2016, there were 11,788 arrests for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter [3](#note-5113-3 "Crime in the United States, FBI, 2016"). On average there are fewer than three MPSs in any given year in the United States, and some years there are none. From a purely death rate perspective, magazine capacity is simply a dumb policy point. To wit:

- Magazine capacity only matters in mass shootings, and even then not much (see more below)
- Mass shootings are rare
- The total fatalities from mass shootings, even *including* exceptional events (e.g. the Las Vegas country music massacre) are less than 0.2% of homicides

Given this alone, attempts to ban magazines of 10+ or 15+ rounds is an exercise in futility. Statistically speaking, such bans are meaningless.

## Improper Amalgamation

**Incidents****Deaths**<10 rounds32310-14 rounds64415+ rounds31390On a purely raw number basis, larger capacity magazines look terrible in terms of MPS deaths. The misleading table at the right summarizes the number of MPSs and the number of people killed with various magazine capacities. But as the Gun Facts project likes to remind people, the Devil loathes details.

### Over time

As other Gun Facts research (not yet published) has discovered, MPSs are increasing in frequency globally. The rate of increase of MPSs in the United States is actually *slower* than the rest of the world. But with the increase in the number of such events, we wondered if lunatics bent on mass murder were augmenting their armament. The event in Las Vegas was a vivid example of extreme lunacy and firepower (the shooter possessed 12 100-round magazines).

[![Mass Public Shootings Incidents by Magazine Capacity 1998-2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Mass-Public-Shootings-Incidents-by-Magazine-Capacity-1998-2018-400x262.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Mass-Public-Shootings-Incidents-by-Magazine-Capacity-1998-2018.png)What we discovered though is that 15+ round magazines in MPSs have been the norm since at least the late 20th century. Any increase in their rate of use appears to be strictly a byproduct of the slow rate of increase in MPSs in general.

But does this mean more people are dying due to 15+ round magazines. The answer is “yes, but …”

### Excuse the Skew

Since the number of incidents of MPSs using “high” capacity magazines is relatively static over time, we had to discover if they are inherently more lethal. As the argument for banning these magazines goes, “the less often you have to reload, the more people you can kill”. But as the Gun Facts project noted with our groundbreaking perspective on “[cattle pen shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shooting-cattle-pens/)”, the magazine capacity is secondary to the venue. Stated differently, fire from a 15+ round magazine into an empty room and the only thing you will kill is the furniture and your ammo budget.

[![Deaths in Mass Public Shootings by Magazine Capacity - 1998-2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Deaths-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-by-Magazine-Capacity-1998-2018-400x317.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Deaths-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-by-Magazine-Capacity-1998-2018.png)When we mapped MPS incidents and fatalities, we saw a distinct pattern. For <10 round and 10-14 round magazines, the average number of people killed was 8.0 and 7.1 respectively (yes, fewer people are killed using the larger 10-14 round magazines).

The first interesting comparison point is that even *including* exceptional events (e.g. Las Vegas), the body count from shooters using 15+ round magazines was 11.9. Granted, this is 50% higher than the average for <10 round magazines, but numerically not a huge bump ***and is less than the magazine’s capacity***. And given the relative infrequency of MPSs, the death rate is still a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of all gun homicides.

The next interesting bit was how well the number of incidents involving 15+ round magazines fit with MPSs employing smaller capacities. In other words, in most cases, *the shooter stopped murdering people long before he ran out of ammo in his first magazine*. This leads rational people (a.k.a. ‘not your congressman’) to conclude that deaths from MPSs are more a factor of location and people density than the weapon type of the magazine capacity, which is where the Gun Facts cattle pen scenario research is leading.

The third observation is that only eleven MPSs since 1998 in which 15+ round magazines were used – those with twelve or more people killed – accounted for just under 70% of the deaths in events using said magazines. If we look at just the events above where the next category of magazine shows on the chart – events with 26+ people killed – they account for *half of all deaths*. The point of these observations is that ***a small number of extreme events skews the death rate*** from 15+ round magazines. Without these over-the-top homicidal rages, you might not see a dime’s worth of difference between smaller capacity magazines and larger ones in terms of the number of people killed.

But let us not speculate. Let’s look at these exceptional events and see what commonalities we can glean from them:

**Killed****Cattle Pen****Mental Health Indicators****Gun Free Zone****Notes**58YesYesYesMultiple 100 round magazines49YesYesYes“Jungle” taped magazines32YesYesYes15 round stock handgun magazines27YesYesYes26YesYesNo14YesNoYesTerrorist Act13YesYesYesTerrorist Act13YesYesYes12YesDebatableYesHere is the point of this exploration. As the charts above show, magazine capacity is not a reliable variable in term of the number of people killed in MPSs. That 20 MPSs where 15+ round magazines were used resulted in fewer than 10 people being killed – within two standard deviations of the mean for lower capacity magazines – means other variables are likely more important.

From the exceptional events – ones where many people died – all but one of the shooters had prior mental health issues, and all but one of the events occurred in a gun free zone.

BUT, ALL OF THESE EVENTS WERE CATTLE PEN SCENARIOS.

## What to do, or not to do

Will bans on “high” capacity magazines make any difference at all? Not really.

Now, will a politician listen to numbers? I fear the current crop of legislators suffers from either mass delusions or mass innumeracy.

## *Update #1: How Many Lives Savable?*

It occurred to us that it would be interesting to know how many MPS lives could be saved even if all 15+ round magazines were confiscated.

Excluding the Las Vegas Country Music massacre, in which 100 round magazines were used and thus is a *very* unusual case, we can derive this number. First we exclude incidents where the death rate was within the two standard deviation range of smaller capacity magazines. The logic here is that the shooter stopped long before they reached the end of even a first magazine of ammo, and thus not having a larger capacity magazine made no difference.

A maximum of 211 lives were at play. But as we see, the average body count using magazines <15 rounds was eight. We have to assume the shooter would have still gone on a rampage and used smaller capacity magazines.

When you do the subtractions, 123 lives over 20 years were in play, or about 12 lives per year. And even this is purely theoretical and optimistic.

## Update #2: The Planning and Cattle Pen effect

A reader asked a great question, namely “If we remove the well planned events, how does magazine capacity figure into MPSs?”

The answer is quite profound. Below is a table where we we removed those events that (a) the Gun Facts MPS database classified as a “cattle pen scenario” and that (b) the Violence Project MPS database said were well-planned (we’ll note that both “cattle pen” and “well-planned” had 32 instances each, though it was not a 100% match between those factors).

As you can see there is ***no material difference*** in the number of people killed in MPSs based on magazine capacity. Aside from an inexplicable dip in the number wounded for mid-range magazine capacites, there is no material difference in the number of people wounded either.

**Killed****Wounded**<10 Rounds6.64.710-14 Rounds6.02.5>= 15 rounds6.85.2

Notes:

1. Crime Prevention Research Center [↩](#return-note-5113-1)
2. *Urban firearm deaths: A five-year perspective*, Michael McGonigal, John Cole, William Schwab, Donald Kauder, Michael Rotondo, Peter Angood, Journal of Trauma, 1993. [↩](#return-note-5113-2)
3. *Crime in the United States*, FBI, 2016 [↩](#return-note-5113-3)

**Categories:** Assault Weapons, Crime and Guns, Mass Shootings

**Tags:** high capacity, magazines, mass, shootings

---

### [Assault Weapon Deadliness](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/assault-weapon-deadliness/)

**Published:** June 27, 2020
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

***“Assault weapons must be banned because they are vastly more deadly!”***

(It is equally believable that this was said by Everytown, MSNBC, or the crazy homeless person on the corner… it is getting hard to tell the difference.)

Are “assault weapons” inherently more dangerous that any other type of gun? I know ardent gunnies will go into deep discourse about the relative energy transfer potentials of sundry ammo types and rifle configurations. But thanks to the [Gun Facts Mass Public Shooting database](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/mass-public-shooting-database/), we can make a quicker review.

## The High-Level Numbers

[![Mass Public Shooting Deaths and Woundings by Weapon Type - 1982 thru 2020-06-26.png](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Mass-Public-Shooting-Deaths-and-Woundings-by-Weapon-Type-1982-thru-2020-06-26-1-800x432.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Mass-Public-Shooting-Deaths-and-Woundings-by-Weapon-Type-1982-thru-2020-06-26-1.png)click for a larger, sharable version

NOTE #1: “Assault weapon” is a legislative term, not a technical one. There are a plethora of “assault weapons” laws that cover everything from handguns to hunting rifles to Lord Knows What. So we use the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons bill definition since it is the only one that covered all of the United States.

NOTE #2: It is necessary to look at the data both with and excluding the infamous Las Vegas Country Music massacre, which was the most carefully planned “[cattle pen scenario](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shooting-cattle-pens/)” event ever.

What we see from the data is odd but explainable.

**Rifles:** The death rate for “assault weapons” (excluding Las Vegas) is marginally higher than for rifles in general (and maybe someday we’ll isolate out “assault weapons” and rifles that are not “assault weapons” – for now they overlap). The general lethality of a rifle round is barely changed depending on the type of rifle from which it is fired (to which the gunnies say, “Well, duh!”). Rifles, 9.1 deaths per incident, “assault weapons,” 10.

**Handguns:** Though handguns are used in 58% of all mass public shootings (MPSs), both the number of people killed or wounded is lower than for rifles (1:1.3 killed, 1:1.9 wounded) and “assault weapons” (1:1.5, 1:1.5). The anomaly here is the greater number of wounding for rifles than for “assault weapons” (1.9 vs 1.5).

## The Incomplete Conclusion

Ignoring the overlap between the rifle and “assault weapons” categories, we can make one additional observation, and it involves planning.

Criminology and psychology literature show that MPSs are being more and more carefully planned, and that the “cattle pen scenario” is well understood by mass murderers looking for the infamy of “breaking the record.” That leads to this interesting table.

**Cattle Pen Scenario****Yes****No****Handguns**10.75.0**Rifles**10.54.7**Assault Weapons**24.34.6Average Number Killed per IncidentAs you can see, the average body count for handguns outside of a cattle pen scenario is marginally higher than for rifles. This is understandable since it is easier to target, track and kill fleeing victims with a handgun.

Also we see that for cattle pens, the number killed is nearly identical for rifles (which overlap with assault weapons) and handguns. Taken in irrational isolation, one would conclude that rifles are not more deadly in MPSs.

But when we combine advance planning, a chosen cattle pen, and an “assault weapon,” the body count doubles. The question then becomes whether shooters selected the weapon type based on planning. We know that was the case in Las Vegas. Here is the give-away: the body count is higher for cattle pen scenarios for all types of firearms (handguns 2.1:1, rifles 2.2:1) but much higher for “assault weapons” (5.3:1).

And here is the proof point that shows why. For both handguns and rifles, there are seven cattle pen scenarios for every 10 non-cattle pens, a ratio of 0. 7:1. For “assault weapons” the ratio is nearly 1:1. This indicates that those who plan (and you have to plan for cattle pens) then often select “assault weapons” for the event. Given the light added death rate with “assault weapons” over rifles (and, again, some overlap) then the increase in the “assault weapon” death rate is not from the firearm used, but from the planning and location selected.

**Categories:** Assault Weapons, Mass Shootings

---

### [What leads To Mass Public Shootings?](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/what-leads-to-mass-public-shootings/)

**Published:** January 31, 2021
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

That is the big question everyone is asking.

You, I, even your crazy Uncle Jim who never “got over ‘Nam” don’t shoot-up elementary schools or their company headquarters. That leaves us to wonder what makes mass public shooters different that the rest? What causes them to disconnect from reality and society to the point where mass murder seems like a good idea to them?

Well, we now may have some numbers to (partially) answer the question.

## The Major Takeaways about Mass Public Shooters

- [![Causes of mass public shootings - per Violence Project and Gun Facts databases](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Causes-of-mass-public-shootings-per-Violence-Project-and-Gun-Facts-databases-400x650.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Causes-of-mass-public-shootings-per-Violence-Project-and-Gun-Facts-databases.jpg)Mental illness is confirmed (yet again) as a significant contributor.
- We now have some hard numbers showing that addiction to violent videos games may be contributory.
- Social media looks like it drives people crazy (but most of us know enough to put down our devices from time to time).
- Being a bully, having some childhood trauma (which may have turned someone into a bully), and being on the autism spectrum (as [we showed before](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/)) can be contributory.
- Mass public shootings (MPS) are becoming increasingly planned events and so too is incorporating “cattle pen” scenario selection.
- Lack of containment of, and/or amplification of negative/antisocial emotions appear to be the net driver.

## The Violence Project

Some criminologists launched [The Violence Project](https://www.theviolenceproject.org/) with the mission of digging into the underlying causes of mass murder. They were kick-started by a grant from the National Institute of Justice, a government agency that is focused primarily on criminology and related topics. In other words, they are pros who know the business (unlike, for example, a pediatric surgeon working for the Bloomberg School of Public Health at John Hopkins).

Things that make their database insanely useful include:

- It goes back much further than most MPS databases.
- They have unprecedented access to non-public information (including mental health records of shooters).
- They incorporate a huge number of variables… sneaking up on 200.

Onto their database, we added a couple of columns of data from the [Gun Facts MPS database](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/mass-public-shooting-database/) that are unique to the Gun Facts project.

Our goal was to see, statistically, what underlying variables are most tightly associated with someone going bonkers and killing people by the dozens. As always, the answers are surprising.

## The Method is not Madness

**WARNING!** If discussion of statistics and research methodologies make your head hurt, then skip ahead to the next section. This section is for the nerds.

We followed a very common approach to isolating the most likely causes that could catapult a person from being an acceptable citizen to a mass murderer with a preference for MPSs:

1. Performed a regression for each variable (we skipped past variables that previous research showed to be poor predicators for MPSs, and some that simply were not interesting to us, such as the period of time a personal crisis occurred before the MPS).
2. Eliminated variables with a low score (using the *R*2 regression test).
3. Performed a multivariate regression on the remaining variables, testing against both the number of MPSs in each year and the number of people killed in MPSs (at some later date we’ll repeat this step for the average number of people killed per incident per year).

## What We Discovered

Welcome back, those of you who skipped statistics class too often in school.

Whittling down, we found eight variables that made it onto the short list of *possible* contributing factors and five that were statistically *probable* contributing factors.

What caught our attention is that some variables are much more predictive of the number of people who will be killed in an MPS than the overall number of such events in a given year. In other words, some things make people want to go on a rampage and other things make them want to get a new high score on the Mass Shooter Scoreboard.

[![Causes Associated with Mass Public Shootings - Per Violence Project MPS Database](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Causes-Associated-with-Mass-Public-Shootings-Per-Violence-Project-MPS-Database-400x283.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Causes-Associated-with-Mass-Public-Shootings-Per-Violence-Project-MPS-Database.jpg)A mass shooter often commits domestic abuse, and those who kill many strangers in an MPS are also likely abusers. This makes a bit of sense – if you are the type who, in a fit of uncontrolled rage, would beat your wife, kids or elderly parents, then murdering a bunch of people when life throws you a curveball is not unthinkable.

Likewise, people who are obsessively consumed by social media tend to get (pardon the pun) triggered. Social media, especially on Twitter, is a source of constant aggravation. People who do not handle aggravation and bitter arguments (online or off) may not be able to channel their cumulative rage effectively.

Violent video games are a contributing factor, though there is a note of caution here (and after reading this blog, grab a copy of [*Assassination Generation*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316265934/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=gunfacinfo-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=0038fb691c09daa89307ea3422a949c7&creativeASIN=0316265934) to read some of the psychology industry’s insights into this). In terms of the number of people killed in MPS, addiction to violent video games was moderately associated; but the problem is, violent video games have not been around all that long. Indeed, the Violence Project database does not track this to before 1992, and we have to understand that the number and graphic excess of these games increases every year. All that noted, the association was weaker in terms of the number of MPSs in any year. We can say that violent video games may moderately increase the number of incidents (though the statistical test is weak, *p*-value not below 0.05) but may well cause some shooters to become competition killers and attempt to set the new high score.

On the mental health front, we have a field of landmines to contend with. You can see that having been previously counseled by a psychologist or psychiatrist shows a moderate association with a high body count on an annual basis. But it does not affect the likelihood of committing an MPS itself. In other words, if someone had a significant enough mental health issue to have received counseling, they are not much more likely than the population at large to shoot-up a movie theater, but they are more likely to plan out an attack and take a lot of lives *if* they do.

Crazy + Planning = Body Count.

Where this gets a bit odd is that the Violence Project tracks a bunch of psych symptoms, reported from news media, that are not at all associated with either the number of MPS or the number killed in any given year. This is likely a limitation of news reporting. In the absence of a psych evaluation, the odds of (a) someone who knew the shooter (b) offering an insight to an (c) unbiased journalist is very low. Hence, we did not see a *statistical* association with shooters and recent/ongoing stressors, depressed mood, being unusually calm or happy, rapid mood swings, increased agitation, abusive behavior, isolation, losing touch with reality, paranoia or even suicidality.

## What to make of this mess

I had a very tightly wound girlfriend once who noted that she would behave badly until someone put her in her place (“Knock it off, Sally” would do the trick, I discovered). But I also witnessed her bad moods escalated under certain stressors (buy me a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you the story of a particularly weird New Year’s Eve).

Containment and amplification… a deadly combo?

A domestic abuser lacks outside “containment.” Too rarely does an elder male family member come around and drag the abuser into the street for a not-so-subtle attitude adjustment. Likewise, not limiting the amount of time one exposes themselves to things that amplify bad feelings (social media, TV news, violent video games, the Kardashians), along with intent, appear to drive MPS.

Take for example this passage from the manifesto left behind by the Isla Vista rampage shooter. “This was the point when my social life ended completely. I would never have a satisfying social life ever again. It was the beginning of a very lonely period of my life, in which my only social interactions would be online through video games.” This is a double whammy. Addiction to violent video games removes the containment that social interaction affords (e.g., the need to behave in socially acceptable ways) while also amplifying violent urges and antisocial responses.

As we look into the data and into the world around us, watch for people who lack containment of bad impulses and who may be spinning into a maelstrom of antisocial amplifiers. This *may* be the center of the storm for mass public shooters.

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass public shooting, mass shooting

---

### [Grounded](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/grounded/)

**Published:** June 16, 2023
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

“Stand your ground” laws are very misunderstood and heavily politicized.

And from a data perspective, they don’t do much at all, though they appear to be a net positive.

## Take-aways

- “No duty to retreat” states saw mild declines in both total homicide and gun homicide rates.
- The majority of “no duty to retreat” states saw declines, where the majority of other states saw increases.

## Can You Stand It?

The name itself, “stand your ground,” is a heroic meme and a bit of a misnomer. However, the non-politicized term “no duty to retreat law” is both cumbersome and provides neither the pro- or anti-gun factions with a phrase to inspire their followers… or fill them with dread. Indeed, “stand your ground” (the pro-gun phrase) evokes a “cowboy American” posture while “shoot first law” (the anti-gun phrase) evokes endangering chaos.

Stripped of such fluffiness, “no duty to retreat” laws are two things simultaneously:

- An extension of the “castle doctrine”
- A limited immunity from prosecution for not evading an attacker

We’ll take those in reverse order. These laws say that you may use deadly force when you *reasonably believe* it to be necessary to defend against certain violent crimes. This is extended to saying you are under no duty (legal obligation) to retreat before using deadly force in self-defense, along with sundry conditions (e.g., you are in a place where you are lawfully allowed, you are not the instigator of conflict, etc.).

These laws are an extension of the ancient “castle doctrine,” which comes from the old adage that a person’s home is their castle. The castle doctrine allows you to assume that a person not allowed in your home (i.e., burglars, aggravated exes, etc.) can be assumed to intend you harm, and you are within your rights to kill them to protect yourself. “Stand your ground” laws are in effect castle doctrine brought onto the streets.

In this century, 20 states have passed such laws, so the question on today’s table is whether they did harm, did good, or did nothing at all.

## Data Constipation

Fortunately, data is available for all but one of the states in question, but for two states we have reservations about data quality.

Montana, the 48th least populated state by population density, has so few homicides – by guns or other means – we encountered perpetual “divide by zero” errors, and so we omitted them from the analysis.

But two other states showed a quirk. CDC data says that both South Dakota and New Hampshire had homicides but no gun homicides for the years 2000 through 2018. This is inconceivable, and the FBI crime stats for 2018 (as a spot check) show otherwise. Now, the CDC “suppresses” data when the numbers are too low, and we see *very few* gun homicides in these states (8 and 12 respectively for 2018, per the FBI). For now, we’ll allow the CDC to encode these as gun homicide rates of zero, but the CDC should provide an option for presenting the statistic even when data is in the statistical noise range.

That aside, we can look at both total homicides (murder by any means) and gun homicides. We would have liked to report on the effect “stand your ground” laws had on aggravated assaults, but the FBI neutered their data exploration tool, and other sources (NACJD) are missing entire years of data. Perhaps in a more data-rich future…

## Spaghetti Charts on the Tables

[![Changes in homicide rates between stand your ground states and states that did not change](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Changes-in-homicide-rates-between-stand-your-ground-states-and-states-that-did-not-change-800x522.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Changes-in-homicide-rates-between-stand-your-ground-states-and-states-that-did-not-change.png) 

click for a larger, sharable version

First, we looked to see the changes before and after passage of “stand your ground” laws against states that did not pass them. Since these laws were passed in waves, it was easy to cluster them together in groups (A, B, C, etc.) based on the year of the law becoming effective. We measured the slope of the line for before and after passage for each state and for the aggregate of states that did not enact such laws covering the same years. The green cells show where homicide and gun homicide rates were falling, red for when they were rising.

For all modes of homicide, rates fell in 58% of the states, and for gun homicides, in 63% of the states. Contrast that with the fact that the “static states” (states that did not pass such laws) all saw total homicide rates rise, though for gun homicides only half did. All other things being equal (which they are not), “stand your ground” laws are a net social positive.

However, rates were not evenly spread throughout all “stand your ground” states, though increases or decreases were generally nominal.

[![Firearm Homicide Rate Changes Before and After Stand Your Ground Laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-Changes-Before-and-After-Stand-Your-Ground-Laws-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-Changes-Before-and-After-Stand-Your-Ground-Laws.png)click for a larger, sharable version

[![Firearm Homicide Rate Differences Between Stand Your Ground Law States and Others](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-Differences-Between-Stand-Your-Ground-Law-States-and-Others-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-Differences-Between-Stand-Your-Ground-Law-States-and-Others.png)click for a larger, sharable version

The simple, aggregated view tells us something interesting. On average, newly minted “stand your ground” states saw a net drop in gun homicides, with some minor undulations. Their cousin “static” states had an odd dip 2–4 years in. Looking at the data, we see two low-population density states – Alaska and Iowa – reporting CDC suppressed data in that span, which caused their average gun homicide rates to fall as low as 36% for the five-year pre-law averages. Hence, the dip is a data anomaly, as evidenced in part by how the gun homicide rates snap back in year +5.

As for all the states, this messy looking chart shows the difference between the “stand your ground” states and their sister “static” states. Aside from (a) single-year dips and surges and (b) one rising rogue state (Nevada), gun homicide rates were basically flat. On the chart, a rate of 1.0 means the “stand your ground” state was no different than the states that did not have such laws. The heavy line is the average of all the states.

## Standing Still

At best, we *could* say that “stand your ground” laws have a mild net positive, with 58–63% of states having net declines in homicides and gun homicides respectively. But the margins are thin and the long-term changes are, by and large, flat.

The better summary is that, in aggregate, “stand your ground” laws don’t cause public harm and at least keep good actors – those committing acts of self-defense – out of trouble.

**Categories:** Concealed Carry, Guns and Crime Prevention

**Tags:** public carry, self-defense, stand your ground

---

### [Industrialized Data](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/industrialized-data/)

**Published:** March 11, 2014
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

During a CCTV televised discussion, an anti-gun agitator rebutted my statement that the United States had a lower firearm homicide rate than international averages (here is one of my favorite charts that proves the point and shows zero correlation between gun availability and gun homicides). His snarky remark (and I closely paraphrase) was “That’s easy when you compare us to places like Somalia!”

Actually, the worst nations don’t report their homicide rates. If they did, the United States would look even better than it does now.

His belabored point was that in “industrialized” countries with allegedly civil societies (sans guns), life is oh so much better. Someone should tell all the Swedish rape victims.

But his challenge required some investigation. Here is what we can see from international data, which incidentally is not always of great quality or cross-border compatibility (click any chart to enlarge it).

[![Industrialized nations - firearm homicides and gun ownership](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Industrialized-nations-firearm-homicides-and-gun-ownership-400x232.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Industrialized-nations-firearm-homicides-and-gun-ownership.jpg)![International firearm ownership and homicide rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Industrialized-nations-all-homicides-and-gun-ownership-400x256.jpg)![Industrialized nations - rape and gun ownership](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Industrialized-nations-rape-and-gun-ownership-400x233.jpg)![Industrialized nations - robbery and gun ownership](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Industrialized-nations-robbery-and-gun-ownership-400x256.jpg)**Firearm Homicides:** The United States does have a high firearm homicide rate compared to other industrialized countries. But since firearms are used to prevent crime as well as commit crime, we have to look further. We already know that when tough laws (like California’s 10-20-Life) target thugs, the firearm homicide rate plunges.

**All Homicides:** The United States still ranks high in homicides compared to other advanced societies, but notice that we are no longer alone. Estonia has a higher homicide rate than America despite having 1/10th the number of firearms per capita. South Korea is a fairly fatal place despite having 1/100th the firepower. The point is that people find a way to murder even without a gun.

**Rapes:** My wife is part Swedish, so I felt a bit of personal shock to see Sweeds raping like it was a national industry, at double the rate Americans do. Though we Yanks are no innocents when it comes to sexual assault, we have to assume that female owned firearms have kept a few visiting Sweeds at bay. Our rape rate is about 80% of the industrialized average.

**Robberies:** Muggers don’t like armed ATM users, and it shows with Americans suffering robberies at almost 70% the rate of other nations with indoor plumbing. Get walloped in Wales, bludgeoned in Belgium and swiped in Spain seems to be the rule of the day.

### The take-away:

Being industrialized does not take away crime. Cultural factors guide misbehavior. American street gangs – the ones responsible for most violence and most murder – use the best tools they can, namely handguns. Swedish men use other tools for other crimes. Englishmen don’t mind beating you bloody while robbing you.

The goal then has nothing to do with guns, and everything to do with controlling criminal intent. Cure the disease and the symptoms go away as well.

**Categories:** Guns in Other Countries, Uncategorized

**Tags:** crime, firearms, international

---

### [Only Scattered School Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/only-scattered-school-shootings/)

**Published:** April 22, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

[![The scattered infrequency of school shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/school-shootings-usa-today-zoom-400x33.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/school-shootings-usa-today-zoom.jpg)click to enlarge

School shootings are actually pretty rare, though you would never know if you listened to gun control groups.

USA Today recently illustrated the point, even while attempting to sensationalize the topic. In a story titled “Deadly school shootings since Columbine”, the paper created a timeline showing when such events occurred. I suspect their goal was to make each tragedy easy to find and read about.

What it really showed was how infrequent such events are. In the slider bar at page top, there are multi-year gaps between such events. This matches data from the federal government that noted a low mortality rate and a steadily falling rate of school deaths.

This is one point that needs to be stressed: Things have been getting better for the past couple of decades. Violence against children is falling, with the occasional lunatic mass murderer causing angst. Statistically speaking, your child is safer than any time in recent memory.

**Categories:** Children and Guns, School Shootings

**Tags:** children, guns, schools

---

### [Suicides and Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/)

**Published:** May 12, 2014
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Gun control groups love to say that there are “30,000 deaths from gun violence every year.”

What they don’t say is that 62% of those are suicides, almost all of which are committed with legally acquired handguns (no assault weapons or extra capacity magazines required).

The common retort is that if America had fewer guns, there would be fewer suicides. Yet a brief examination of international data shows this to be utter buncombe.

[![International suicide rates and gun availability ](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/international-suicide-rates-400x250.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/international-suicide-rates.jpg)click to enlarge

The World Health Organization (WHO) tallied suicides around the globe, and the Small Arms Survey estimated private gun ownership rates. WHO also noted how people exit this life when it gets too rough for them.

The chart to the right pretty well debunks that guns are the determinant variable for suicides. The United States has way more guns than anyone else, yet their suicide rate is not terribly higher than international averages (11.1 suicides for every 100,000 people, versus the global average of 10.0). We would likely rank even better if we could ignore happy-go-lucky lands like the Bahamas (1.3) and Antigua (zero).

Since culture plays a big role, comparing American and Canadian suicides is compelling. We share many historical origins and cultural traits. Because of this our suicide rates are nearly identical (American has 10.1 suicides per 100,000 people and Canadians with perpetual [seasonal affective disorder](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder "Seasonal affective disorder (SAD)") are higher at 10.4). However, Canadians allegedly have about 1/3rd the number of firearms as Yanks. Were guns a cause for suicides, Canucks would have 66% fewer.

(they prefer poisoning themselves when the Winter Blahs get to be too much)

The other way of looking at the situation is to compare America to the most suicidal place on the planet, Lithuania (35.9 suicides per 100,000 folk). Guns don’t make Lithuanians more suicidal because they own only 0.8% as many guns as we do. But they do evidently own a lot of rope, because that is their favorite form of suicide.

[![Suicides, guns and hanging - Australia trends](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Suicides-and-guns-oz-chart-400x291.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Suicides-and-guns-oz-chart.jpg)Which brings up an interesting study of Australian suicides. As we know, Oz has endured several spurts of gun control measures which lessened availability of guns. One handy study [1](#note-2089-1 "Trends in Hanging and Firearm Suicide Rates in Australia: Substitution of Method?, De Leo, Dwyer, Firman, Neulinger, The American Association of Suicidology") is a compelling time series review of how gun availability has no bearing on total suicide rates. In their review period, total suicides increased which firearm suicides decreased (men started hanging themselves much more often).

Since guns are not the determinant variable in 62% of American gun deaths, then we need to look for real solutions. If the Brady Campaign is serious about ending gun deaths, then they should change to being a mental health advocacy group.

Notes:

1. *Trends in Hanging and Firearm Suicide Rates in Australia: Substitution of Method?*, De Leo, Dwyer, Firman, Neulinger, The American Association of Suicidology [↩](#return-note-2089-1)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns

**Tags:** gun control, international, suicides

---

### [Media Meddling](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/media-meddling/)

**Published:** May 29, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Since I work with the media to help them understand the realities about guns and public policy, I receive many media inquiries. One source is via ***Help A Reporter Out*** (HARO), a service where reporters can widely query experts.

After the rampage in Santa Barbara, a reporter from the Arizona Republic nakedly asked for expert to help the gun control industry craft better market messages.

We all accept there is bias in all media. We also accept that reporters, like the rest of us, often skew their work. But the request from Megan Finnerty goes beyond bias: she is actively aiding a political ideology, and thus abusing the very word “journalist”.

Here is her request (minus some links she provided). Folks everywhere should call the “newspaper” (800-331-9303) and express their concerns:

> I am looking for thoughts on how Richard Martinez, the outspoken father of a young man killed in the Isla Vista, Calif., shooting Friday, **could craft a gun control message** that might make a difference to politicians, and to the national discourse.
> 
> I am looking for clever ideas for re-branding or re-framing the national conversation on gun control – from visuals to slogans, to talking points.
> 
>  
> 
> I am looking for your expert take on what Martinez, and others like him, could try talking about **that would sound fresh, that would shock into action, that would make a difference, cut through the noise, that might succeed** where the parents in Newtown and Mark Kelly and Gabby Giffords have yet to break through.
> 
> From the Washington Post: “Martinez said he is consulting with experts to help develop a clear message and a specific course of action that the public can undertake with the aim of preventing similar tragedies in the future. ‘There’s no playbook for this. We don’t know what we are doing,’ he said. ‘I just know I have to keep fighting until something changes.'”
> 
> This story is about how there \*is\* a playbook for this, and it’s not working right now.

By this, I assume she is referring to *Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging*, the leaked gun control play book that was exposed last year.

> Angry, indignant, hurt families and rising body counts don’t seem to be persuading politicians to act.
> 
> For two years following the Tucson shooting three years ago, Americans for Responsible Solutions has been advocating and educating about stronger background checks, limits on high capacity magazines, stricter gun trafficking laws, a reinstatement of the assault weapons bans, and improved mental health services.
> 
> Thank you for considering this opportunity,
> 
> Megan

UPDATE: This article appears to be the aftermath of her inquiry.

**Categories:** Propaganda, Uncategorized

**Tags:** arizona republic, gun control, media, Megan Finnerty

---

### [74 School Shootings Bunk](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/74-school-shootings-bunk/)

**Published:** June 16, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

How you define a thing defines that thing.

Recently the President of the United States, echoing without analysis a gun control group sound bite, talked about how there have been 74 school shootings since the Sandy Hook massacre. He did not elaborate on how he came by this number because, frankly, he doesn’t know what he is talking about (surprise).

Like many criminological things, the definition of a “school shooting” is borderline nonsensical and defined by government criminologists. In the Bureau of Justice Statistics publication Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2013, they note:

> School associated violent deaths include those that occurred while the victim was **on the way to or returning from regular sessions at school** or while the victim was **attending or traveling to or from an official school sponsored event**.

Ponder this for a moment. A kid wearing the wrong colors while dashing from school to home through a gang-infested inner-city neighborhood, and who is mistaken for a rival gang member and thus murdered, is considered a “school shooting.” But this gets even odder when the report also states:

> Victims of school-associated violent deaths include not only **students and staff members,** but also others who are not students or staff members, such as parents.

So anyone regardless of their age, job or employment/enrollment status, shot in route to or from a school is considered a school shooting. A janitor who commits suicide in his car when he gets home is a school associated violent death. A street thug running for his life and escaping onto a campus while catching a bullet in the back is a school shooting.

I could go on, but the point is clear: There is no epidemic of fatal school violence. The same BJS report that defines school shootings also says:

> … the percentage of youth homicides occurring at school remained at less than 2 percent of the total number of youth homicides … there were 17 school-associated violent deaths between December 15, 2012, and November 14, 2013; of these deaths, 11 were homicides and 6 were suicides …

First, when it comes to young people being murdered, school is one of the safer places. Second, in the first year after Sandy Hook, eleven youngsters were murdered (some without guns and some nowhere near campus).

The source of the scare tactic was none other than Everytown, who didn’t even bother to use the governments definition of a “school shooting.” Instead they scanned news reports and gathered up all stories whereby:

> Incidents were classified as school shootings when a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds, as documented in publicly reported news accounts. This includes assaults, homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings.

In their “analysis”, a school shooting involves self-defense warning shots, accidental discharges by cops on site, and college campus suicides (14 of Everytown’s 74 incidents were suicides or attempts, 15 involved nobody getting shot, and only 20 people were reported dead).

Fear not mom and dad. Your schools – unless you live in Chicago – are one of the safest places your kids can be.

**Categories:** Children and Guns, Everytown, Uncategorized

**Tags:** everytown, school, shootings

---

### [Booze, not bullets](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/booze-not-bullets/)

**Published:** June 30, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Alcohol has always been fun, but deadly. Now we find out the the odds of dying from drinking is much larger than dying from guns.

[![Comparison of gun, alcohol, automotive and poisoning deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Alcohol-deaths-400x290.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Alcohol-deaths.png)Click To Enlarge and Link

A recent Center for Disease Control (CDC) [study](https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/13_0293.htm) determined that 88,000 working age Americans die from excessive drinking (not always from the booze itself, but tied to guzzling more than one should).

This tally provides some perspective. We have long known that working-age adults were almost three times as likely to be killing by a motor vehicle, and almost five times more likely to get poisoned than to catch a bullet meant for them or someone they were standing close to. But consuming more than a couple of drinks a day is deadlier still.

Why bring this up? For perspective’s sake. People picture guns as a huge daily threat when compared to other things – voluntary liver abuse and associated pancreatitis, hypertension, prostate cancer and cirrhosis – the risk of death by non-suicide gun shot is rather small. Given that most gun play is between gang members, it is even smaller still.

**Categories:** Uncategorized

**Tags:** alcohol, death, gun control, guns

---

### [EveryCon and Your Child](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/everycon-and-your-child/)

**Published:** July 7, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group EveryTown should be renamed EveryCon.

In a bit of email agitprop, they made the following two statements:

> I want you to imagine a chilling scenario: Your child is at friend’s house for a sleepover. While she’s there, her friend starts playing with a parent’s unsecured gun. All of a sudden, the gun fires. A child is unintentionally shot and killed.

The intent of this first one is to frighten anyone who likes kids and wants them to be safe, which is basically everybody. To create fear, they invent a personalized scenario, then …

> Sadly, this sort of tragedy happens with frightening regularity in our country. In 2013, almost two kids per week were killed in shootings that involved unsecured guns.

… they present that scenario is real. This is a common propaganda ploy, and one equally matched in shamelessness and ham-handedness. You would think that Bloomberg could afford better spin doctors than this.

According to the Centers for Disease Control mortality database for the most recent reporting year (2011 as of this post), 74 kids were accidentally killed by gun fire. Yet Bloomberg claims 104. When you follow the links to his web site, they cite the CDC and then state the number if 64 kids using a range of years averaged, then repeats the 104 kids con using non-standard reporting time spans (he looked at one December to the next instead of calendar years, an apparent cherry picking stunt).

So a little more than one child per week is accidentally killed with a firearm. Two are poisoned, thirteen kids drown and 21 suffocate. Yet Michael Bloomberg is immune to this greater suffering. He does not care about those children, for they garner him no propaganda points or power.

**Categories:** Uncategorized

---

### [False evidence, biased judges](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/false-evidence-biased-judges/)

**Published:** July 10, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

One reason constitutional rights are made inviolate is because judges have been known to violate them. If passed, a California law will be invalidated due to this principle.

Cali is considering giving judges to power to take away a person’s guns based on something less than evidence. Known as **AB1014** and the **Ex Parte Gun Violence Restraining Order** bill, the law would empower a judge to revoke the Second Amendment if a person is claimed to be a danger to himself or others. This is one of several knee-jerking reactions to the recent Santa Barbara slashing/shooting/driving homicides homicides. The idea is that is a friend, family member, neighbor or perfect stranger claims you are armed and nuts, the government can take away your firearms.

![mean-black-woman](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/mean-black-woman-400x213.jpg)Lack of real evidence is the issue.

The law as currently written requires a judge to consider squishy evidence such as written or oral statements by “any witness the petitioner may produce.” The judge doesn’t have to demand testimony however – just the petition to have guns removed is enough. If your estranged husband wants to break into your house and beat you to death, all he has to do is petition the judge and claim you have been making, or have a history of psychotic or violent behavior. Disarmed, he then has his way with you.

Some forms of squishy evidence allowed by this inept legislation includes:

- “A recent threat of violence or act of violence by the subject of the petition directed toward another.” I once got a restraining order on my ex-wife for tossing a cup of coffee on me (just the java, not the cup). That was an act of violence, but one so minor it was barely enough to get an emergency restraining order.
- “A recent threat of violence or act of violence by the subject of the petition directed toward himself or herself.” Have you ever heard of an overwrought mother worried her temporarily depressed kid might do themselves harm? Happens daily, and now would be grounds for eliminating the kids preferred mode of self-defense.
- “A violation of an unexpired emergency protective order.” See above. If my wife had tossed another cup of Joe at me, that would have been grounds for disarmament.
- “The reckless use, display, or brandishing of a firearm by the subject of the petition.” Oddly, reckless is not defined. Had my ex swung a hammer at my head instead, and I pulled a gun, would I have been reckless? A biased judge might think so.
- “Any prior arrest of the subject of the petition for a felony offense.” Does a felony check kitting charge count? Why did they omit “violent felony”?
- “Evidence of recent or ongoing abuse of controlled substances or alcohol. ” Again, this could be the evidence of unprovable testimony (“I saw the preacher popping heroin your Honor!”)

There is more … oh so much more. The bottom line is that this bill doesn’t address the problem (dangerous kooks who may want to kill people) in a way that assures it doesn’t abridge a right, or is abused by people with grudges, or that it won’t force them to find other ways (like the knives and automobiles used in Santa Barbara).

The good news is that even the anti-gun crowd is looking seriously at mental health as the key issue. Now they just need to get mentally healthy enough to write a good law.

**Categories:** California

---

### [AKs and ARs: Real assault rifles vs. mythical "assault weapons"](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/aks-and-ars-real-assault-rifles-vs-mythical-assault-weapons/)

**Published:** July 16, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

When Mikhail Kalashnikov, the inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle, passed away, [some media reports estimated that about 100 million AKs](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mikhail-kalashnikov-inventor-of-ak-47-dies-at-94/2013/12/23/624e40be-6bf5-11e3-b405-7e360f7e9fd2_story.html) around the world. They are full-fledged and full-auto war weapons.

There are between 3-10 million AR-15s in the United States. These are civilian, semi-automatic sporting rifles, and not weapons of war.

![](http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/uploads/images/article-images/guns.jpg)![mexican-cartel-weapons](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/mexican-cartel-weapons-400x340.jpg)This perspective is important. In the worst of the worst places around the globe − Syria, Rwanda, Somalia − AK-47s are the norm and the corpses are plenty. Civilian AR-15s are nearly never used in homicides in the U.S. (yes, it has happened, but statistically it is so rare you cannot assign statistical accuracy to their use in crimes).

Mexican drug cartels show how this all gets in the way of gun policy.

Drug cartels like AK-47s … a lot. South America is awash in Soviet made AK-47s left over from when the former communist block was exporting their ideology one bullet at a time. I suspect they are as cheap is elsewhere in the world, such as Afghanistan where reports had claimed a functioning military AK-47 can be had for as little as $100.

Herein is the perspective reporters need to obtain. Near zero gun deaths in the U.S. are caused by civilian AR-15s and other so-called “assault weapons”. Most Americans cannot obtain real assault rifles, like Kalashnikov’s AK-47, so they actually count for zero homicides here. Elsewhere, government supplied military firearms do hurt a lot of people, and the people have no opportunity to defend themselves due to civilian gun control laws.

My advice to reporters is to avoid using the phrase “[assault weapon](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/assault-weapons/ "Myths about so-called "assault weapons"")” as it is inaccurate. In the global firearms industry the term is non-existent, and the U.S. Department of Defense doesn’t even classify them (or at least did not in the year 2000). It is a legislative phrase to classify any firearm a politician wants to demonize. Even the gun control industry admits to this: in 2004, the Legal Community Against Violence (now the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence) documented that across eight jurisdictions there were anywhere from 19 to 75 banned firearms, six differing generic classification schemes and several legal systems for banning more firearms without specific legislative action. hence, there is no single definition of “assault weapon” and thus there is no such firearm.

To be accurate, reporters should stick to the indisputable facts and definitions. Do mention if a firearm used in a crime is a handgun, rifle or shotgun. If it ever happens again, feel free to use the phrase “assault rifle”, but be sure it was a full-automatic military-grade weapon, not a civilian model that merely looks like one.

**Categories:** Assault Weapons

**Tags:** assault rifles, assault weapons, journalists, media, reporters

---

### [Children and handgun availability](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/children-and-handgun-availability/)

**Published:** July 21, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

One bit of persistent good news is that very few children die from guns in the United States.

[![Child Firearm Deaths and Handgun Availability](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Child-Firearm-Deaths-and-Handgun-Availability-400x295.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Child-Firearm-Deaths-and-Handgun-Availability.jpg)click to enlarge

There is no need to recite all the other statistics about things that kill kids. We know that suffocation, drowning, poisons and other life hazards are more dangerous to kids than guns. The rate of child gun deaths remains low, about one kid per day out of a population of 61 million such critters.

But I had to look at the trends, because the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ annual *Firearms in Commerce* reports show that the number of guns keeps increasing steadily. Certain policy groups promote that gun availability is a danger to your offspring.

Not the case. Peaking in 1993 (as most violent crime did), the rate of kids being killed with guns (regardless of the cause) has been falling fast, and leveling off around 2004 (around the same time that violent crime across the nation started to flat line).

The point is that people tend to be safe with guns, and even safer when they know kids are around. Get rid of a few gang members who leave their illegal and often stolen handguns at home, and the death rate might soon approach zero.

**Categories:** Children and Guns

**Tags:** children, guns, handguns

---

### [Reason gets it wrong](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/reason-gets-it-wrong/)

**Published:** July 21, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

In a [recent blog piece](http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/21/the-truth-about-violence-in-chicago), the otherwise reasonable Reason magazine got the Chicago violence story wrong.

In short, Reason was saying that things in Chicago are not bad … compared to other horrible places … and that violence is a lot less than at it’s peak.

[![Reason magazine got it wrong on Chicago violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/reason-wrong-1-400x297.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/reason-wrong-1.jpg)click to enlarge

[![Reason magazine got it wrong on Chicago violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/reason-wrong-2-400x297.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/reason-wrong-2.jpg)click to enlarge

The problem with this … errrr … reasoning is that by any measure, Chicago violence is off the charts and not doing as well as the nation. This first chart shows the trends. You notice that the rest of America is much safer than Chicago, and had I the time I could run the same series for other major metro areas and get similar results.

More to the point, most of Chicago’s “progress” echoes national trends (the second chart put the U.S. on a different axis so we can see trend tracked together). This means whatever minor good if happening in Chicago is likely unrelated to anything Chicago is doing.

The fact is that criminals still own much of Chicago, including much of City Hall. Until gangland mentality is roped or enough thugs go to jail for extended stays, it won’t get better.

**Categories:** Uncategorized

**Tags:** chicago, reason, violence

---

### [Holder on Hold](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/holder-on-hold/)

**Published:** July 24, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Despite heavy federal penalties for illegally acquiring guns or committing crimes with them, the feds have never been big on prosecuting gun crimes. As Bill Clinton’s attorney general said (and I paraphrase) “that’s a state issue.”

(see our [infographic on current attorney general Eric Holder](/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/holder-nics-mexico.png) who helps smuggle guns to Mexican drug cartels, and is responsible for what you are about to read).

[![Trends in federal gun crime prosecutions](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/federal-gun-prosecutions-400x288.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/federal-gun-prosecutions.jpg)click to enlarge

News of the day shows the trends. Federal gun crime prosecutions started to rise once the National Instant (background) Check System (NICS) was in place, then started a decline in the latter Bush years. Under Obama, the decline was not reversed.

There are a number possibilities with this trend line. Since crime in general has been falling over the past decades, perhaps the total number of ripe opportunities to prosecute people is also falling. But that argument is implausible since there are over 34,000 Brady Act retail purchase violations committed by felons each year.

Another explanation is that of these 34,000+ Brady Act violations and tens of thousands of gun crimes that have federal penalties, that only a few are such strong cases that federal prosecutors have little to choose from. That doesn’t fly either since a felon attempting to buy a gun is a slam dunk, and all the thugs caught shooting rival gang members are easy pickings.

The only real explanation is insincerity. Congress enacted tough federal gun crime penalties and this administration sees little benefit from sending violent criminals to jail. They want the states to carry the load, which makes the entire federal law a meaningless gesture.

Speaking of meaningless gestures, after the Sandy Hook rampage killing, Barack Obama said “We should get tougher on people who buy guns with the express purpose of turning around and selling them to criminals. And we should severely punish anybody who helps them do this.”

A more narrow definition of who Obama thinks fits federal gun crime sanctions. As one BATF director said in the news story “… case selections within the ATF have gone from mostly violent crime cases — which is their forte — toward the regulatory, where they look at dealers, manufacturers and trafficking cases. ***The agency’s philosophy has shifted to guns are the problem and access to guns are the problem, rather than the criminal being the direct indicator of crime***.”

Obama, Holder: Criminals are the direct indicator of violence. Handle that first.

**Categories:** Crime Control

**Tags:** federal, gun, holder, obama, prosecutions

---

### [Understand­ing California's Crime Collapse](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/understanding-californias-crime-collapse/)

**Published:** August 25, 2014
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Some gun control groups claim that California’s drop in violent crime since the early 1990s is due to gun control. But a causal review of [California gun-related legislation](http://wiki.calgunsfoundation.org/index.php?title=Time_Line_of_California_Firearms_Laws "Cal Guns - history of California gun control legislation") shows that when violent crime started falling in the Golden State, there was no significant gun control legislation.

If not gun control, what then explains the drop in violent crime in general, and firearm crimes in particular starting around 1993. My preliminary research indicates it is traceable to California’s *Three Strikes* law and the firearm penalty enhancements passed in that same year. But it is worth digging into the data to see if we can understand *why.*

[![Violent crime in California, 1984 through 2011](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Cal-crime-chart-1-all-violent-crime-400x277.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Cal-crime-chart-1-all-violent-crime.jpg)click to enlarge

[![California robbery rates 1984 through 2011](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Cal-crime-chart-2-firearm-robbery-400x298.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Cal-crime-chart-2-firearm-robbery.jpg) 

click to enlarge

Up to 1993, violent crime in California was significantly higher than the rest of the country. Like most other places, robbery was a leading cause of violent crime. In fact, in the pivot year, robbery accounted for 38% of all violent crime. The rate of robbery as a subset of violent crime is so large, I’m forced to graph it on a separate axis so the other categories of crime are not diminished.

My source for the data (California Department of Justice) breaks down the weapons used for robbery, though sadly not for the other forms of violent crime. About 40% of robberies were being committed with firearms in the pivot year, though this rate started to decline shortly thereafter. The clearance rate (percent of robberies where someone was charged with the crime) did not materially rise for a few years afterwards, but we know that thugs started going to prison for a minimum of ten years right away.

The net results is that though all forms of violent crime fell, robberies fell fastest, in no small part to them being the most frequent to begin with. Unlike homicide, robbery is an income stream and a crime which perpetrators commits with regularity. Thus, sending armed robbers away reduced robberies on a progressive scale (on jailed robber would reduce the number of armed robberies by a multiple).

What makes this all interesting is that gun control, the rate of prosecutions, or any other factors had little bearing on driving down California’s violent crime rate. But one law, aimed at bad actors, dropped the primary form of violent crime instantly and significantly.

**Categories:** California, Crime Control

**Tags:** california, robbery, violent crime

---

### [Assault Rifle Rename](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/assault-rifle-rename/)

**Published:** September 8, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

It would be easy to laugh if the motivations of gun control groups were not so well advertised.

[![Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence redefines assault rifle](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/lcpgv-redefines-assult-rifle-400x348.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/lcpgv-redefines-assult-rifle.jpg)The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (LCPGV) is the newly self-anointed gun control propaganda group. I attended one of their meetings where they were collaborating with members of MADD and the anti-tobacco coalition, openly discussing reforming public opinion. Their desire to enact more gun control laws – regardless of efficacy – is something they promote with slightly snarky glee.

So when they get basic definitions wrong, I doubt it is amateurish idiocy.

One LCPGV web page I discovered this graphic. Ignore the irrational concepts it promotes, but pay close attention to the text block in the lower right where they claim an “assault *rifle*” is a “semi-automatic firearm”.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s *Small Arms Identification and Operations Guide*, assault rifles are “short, compact, ***select-fire*** weapons that fires a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges.” In short, a firearm that can switch to machine-gun mode with the flip of a switch … not a semi-automatic as the LCPGV claims.

What makes this allegedly sinister is that the gun control movements *assault-whatever* campaign is purposely composed to confuse the public. The Violence Policy Center (VPC) is credited with inventing the term “assault *weapon*” with the mission of misleading the public about sporting rifles that are not *assault* rifles. In their own words:

> “Assault weapons … are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons – anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun – can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”

Over time, even the media began to understand the difference between an AR-15, which is a semi-automatic sporting rifle that looks like (but does not fire) a military M-16, which is a switch-fire firearm. In other words, anything that looked like a machine gun was no longer assumed to be a machine gun.

So I suspect the LCPGV decided to deepen the canard by mislabeling sporting rifles (a.k.a. “assault weapons”) as assault *rifles*. It fits the gun control industry’s M.O. and might lead greener reporters astray.

I’m calling B.S. on the LCPGV … though that is a bit redundant.

**Categories:** Assault Weapons, LCAGV

**Tags:** assault rifle, assault weapon, definition, lcpgv

---

### [Big City Bang-Bang](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-city-bang-bang/)

**Published:** October 27, 2014
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

It is no secret that most gun violence occurs in America’s big cities (in part because big city mayors, who don’t give a damn about the poor, who are most affected by violent crime). What is interesting though is how bad these places are and how disproportionately they contribute to American gun homicides. It is, after all, the big cities where street gangs thrive and to where criminal devolve.

Here are the mind numbing numbers:

- America’s homicide rate is 4.7
- The top 20 most deadly big cities 
    - 7% of the nation’s population
    - 21% of their homicides

Thus, making 20 cities disappear would lower the lower the national homicide rate to 4.0, or 15%.

[![America's top 20 cities for homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Big-City-Bang-Bang-400x208.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Big-City-Bang-Bang.jpg)click to enlarge

So can we send these cities to Syria?

- Detroit
- Baltimore
- Philadelphia
- Memphis
- Chicago
- Milwaukee
- Oklahoma
- Washington
- Dallas
- Indianapolis
- Jacksonville
- Fresno
- Nashville-Davidson
- Houston
- Louisville
- Boston
- San Francisco
- Phoenix
- Tucson
- Los Angeles

### UPDATE 2017-08-03:

[![Gang member distribution by geographic area - United States - 2012](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gang-member-distribution-by-geographic-area-United-States-2012-400x277.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gang-member-distribution-by-geographic-area-United-States-2012.jpg) 

click for a larger, sharable version

[![Gang homicides by geographic area - United States - 2012](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gang-homicides-by-geographic-area-United-States-2012-400x287.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Gang-homicides-by-geographic-area-United-States-2012.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

Having finally found the time to locate and process American gang data, we can see how this is a Big City problem given the distribution of gang members by geographic area types.

Large metro areas have 57% of the gang members. Interestingly, and not coincidentally, according to the FBI’s data for 2014, 7.2% of all homicides result in just two of America’s 3,007 counties (0.1% of counties). Those counties are Los Angeles, California (home of the original *Gangster Paradise*) and Cook County, Illinois (home of Chicago).

Now for one last interesting twist, which will come as a surprise to nobody. Gangs in America’s big cities are more violent than elsewhere. So, even though big cities have 57% of the gang members, they have 67% of the gang murders. Criminologists and sociologists have numerous explanations for this, but the fact is big city mayors don’t care about the plight of poor people in their towns, and so government won’t resolve the problem.

**Categories:** Uncategorized

**Tags:** cities, gangs, guns, homicides

---

### [Brady Scorecard Scam](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/brady-scorecard-scam/)

**Published:** November 20, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

I love it when ideologues prove the oppositions’ point.

[![Brady Campaign state scorecard and violent crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/brady-campaign-state-scorecard-21-400x296.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/brady-campaign-state-scorecard-21.png)Every year the Brady Campaign – the aging gun control group with fading influence – publishes their scorecard of state gun control laws, listing which states have “strong” gun control and those with “weak” ones.

Every year it makes me chuckle.

The source of the humor is that a simple diagram shows the meaninglessness of their analysis. Every year I plot states by the Brady Campaign ratings against various forms of crime, and every year there is no covarience. None. It is a simple yet savory summary that gun control laws make no difference in crimes of violence.

But this year I noticed something I had never noticed before.

On the far left of the chart is California, state that the Brady Campaign believes has the strongest gun control laws. It ranks #1 according to Brady. On the right is #50, Arizona, the state with almost no gun control at all. \[click to enlarge\]

They have nearly identical violent crime rates. California has 423 violent crimes per every 100,000 residents and Arizona has 429. Not a dime’s worth of difference.

To my growing group of reporter friends: Don’t bother covering the Brady Campaign Scorecard story next year. The stats show that the story is meaningless.

**Categories:** Brady Campaign

**Tags:** brady campaign, crime, scorecard, violence

---

### [Cop killers and under­ground guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/cop-killers-and-underground-guns/)

**Published:** December 23, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

A serial felon shoots his girlfriend then assassinates two cops, and this is all caused by the “gun lobby.”

I have a pet theory that one reason the gun control industry has been losing favor with the American public is that their talking point sound evermore like PETA (a.k.a. psychotic).

We have all now heard about Ismaaiyl Brinsley gunning down two New York cops. What did not immediately hit the news cycle is that the former Mr. Brinsley (who saved taxpayers a wad of cash by killing himself after the two officers) had a rather lengthy criminal record. According to a dispatch from the New Republic, an organization never guilty of journalism, the last year in which Brinsley was eligible to legally buy a gun was 2008.

So how did he get his hands on one? With all the “tough” criminal control laws, who failed?

Nobody, aside from perhaps the federal government (they rarely enforce their gun crime laws) or the State of Georgia who caught Brinsley with a stolen handgun in 2011. This lack of enforcement, nor the absence of evidence concerning where Brinsley acquired his murder weapon, did not stop the anti-gun agitprop masters from blaming the lack of background checks between civilians for two dead cops.

This, we know from the criminological data, is a scam.

[![Bureau of Justice Statistics - crime gun sources](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources-400x380.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources.jpg)The bureau of Justice Statistics releases a decadal analysis of gun and crime, the latest installment arriving just two years ago. In *Firearm Violence, 1993-2011*, there is a tally of the sources from where crime guns were obtained.

A full 40% of crime guns come from completely underground sources – through exchanges designed to be criminal in nature and outside of any regulatory control. Specifically:

- 25% from drug dealers or “off street” vendors (dudes selling “hot” armament from the trunk of their car)
- 7.5% from theft and burglary
- 7.4% from the black market and fences

Call me a gambler, but I bet the late Mr. Brinsley did not bother to go to a federally licensed gun store when there were plenty of career criminals from whom he could buy a gun.

The numbers game gets even quirkier when you look at the next nearly 40% of crime gun sources. The same BJS report notes that 37% of crime guns come from “family or friends”. Among these transfers, often into the hands of known felons, we have seen stories that include:

- A drug dealer “friend” giving/selling/loaning a gun to another drug dealer
- Thugs who con their girlfriends or wives into buying guns for them (strawman purchase)
- Family members who willingly arm felon relatives “for their protection”

The BJS report does not (and likely cannot) breakdown this 37% group further, so there is no way to know how much we should add to the total. But the range is defined. On the low end, 40% of Brinsley-style crime guns came from places no background check will touch, and upwards of 77% are untouchable. 40-77% is the big target, and one Michael Bloomberg aims to miss.

Gun shows are 0.8% of the problem.

If New Republic, the New York Times and Everytown were actually interested in stopping violence committed with guns, they wouldn’t waste their time, their money or our patience by trying to make your Uncle Bob go through a background check when you sell him your old Glock. He isn’t the type to shoot cops.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime Control, Propaganda

**Tags:** background checks, bureau of justice statistics

---

### [Cops Killed By Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/cops-killed-by-guns/)

**Published:** December 31, 2014
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Headlines are misleading things … by design.

[![Police shooting deaths over time](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Police-shooting-deaths-over-time-400x288.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Police-shooting-deaths-over-time.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

Case in point: Bloomberg news feeds (yes, the same Bloomberg who is funding the resurgent gun control industry) issued the headline “56% Increase in Gun Fatalities Leads Rise in Police Deaths.” The associated article begins with “U.S. law-enforcement deaths rose to the highest in three years, led by a 56 percent increase in the number killed by gunfire …” and then proceeds to tie the trend to recent racial tensions.

What the article doesn’t say is that over the past decade, the number of cops being shot on the job is declining and that 2013 was a low outlier year that distorts 2014’s “increase”

The source for the data is the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, and I’ll assume they are reasonably meticulous in their gathering of on-the-job police fatality counts. Thankfully, they post the numbers they have gathered over the past decade and the preliminary figures for 2014. Cops do get shot, and with the exception of one year, it is the leading cause of officer fatalities. But the second most common cause is automobile accidents (they get into a lot of them) and guns outpace squad car crashes by a bit more than 25% (significant, but not unexpected).

But the “56% increase in gun fatalities” headline is misleading on two fronts.

- 2013 was an abnormally low year for cops catching bullets
- The decade-long trend is downward despite 2014 data

The fact is that the number of officers shot to death while on the job in 2014 is the same as in 2012 and 2009 and lower than 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2011.

Whenever you see scary gun numbers in headlines, dig a little deeper. Especially if the story come from a Bloomberg news syndication “service”.

**Categories:** Police and Guns

**Tags:** deaths, guns, police, trend

---

### [Interstate Gun Trafficking Mythology](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/interstate-gun-trafficking-mythology/)

**Published:** January 29, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

## Why “lax” gun control states don’t send guns to “strict” states

Most crime guns come from the state where the crime was committed. For states with strict gun control laws, most come from other “strict law” states.

You would not know this if you listened to the gun control industry. They routinely claim that states with “weak gun laws” are the source for guns used in crime. Nationally this theory is nonsense, and it doesn’t even hold up well for states with strict gun laws.

## Background

The claim is simple and designed to generate voter fear in places where gun owner rights are not well represented. The insinuation is that states where gun control laws are not burdensome are the source for guns in states where such laws are onerous.

There is no doubt that in a free country where people roam at will, guns follow with them. But they mainly follow legal channels when people relocate from one state to another. If you lived in Florida, bought a gun at retail, moved to Massachusetts, legally sold the gun and it was later used in a crime, then that firearm is listed as an “interstate trafficked gun from a weak gun law state” according to the gun control industry.

## What Do We Really Know

[![Map of Maryland state crime gun sources (interstate gun movement)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/map-maryland-crime-gun-sources1-400x307.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/map-maryland-crime-gun-sources1.jpg)First, we know that across the country crime guns most commonly come from (a) the state in which the crime was committed and (b) neighboring states. The latter is interesting because people rarely make big jumps when they relocate – they tend to move into states with similar climate, culture and industries (I’m a rare bird having jumped from Florida, to Virginia and then to California). The map above shows where firearms used in Maryland crimes come from, and you will notice that for practical purposes, they all come from Maryland’s eastern coast region.

We also know that crime guns tend to be old. On average, a gun used in a crime was sold at a retail outlet more than eleven (11) years before it was recovered at a crime scene (it might have been used in previous crimes, but there is no good way of knowing this). This time lag indicates that few crime guns were purchased at retail for the purpose of committing crimes. We know this to be true because the Bureau of Justice Statistics notes that 40% of crime guns come from completely unregulated, black market street sources (more than 25% are exchanged as part of the drug trade).

Together – guns being old and largely bought in the same state where the crime was committed – this means that the myth of weak gun states is a shabby theory. That guns mainly come from their home states is enough to nail the lid on this rhetorical coffin.

But we can prove it a bit more.

## The Top and Bottom States

Since I like picking on the Brady Campaign (and Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence) propaganda scorecard of state laws, we’ll use that as our basis for analysis. Using the 2013 Brady Campaign State Scorecard, I took the top and bottom ranked states given Brady’s wish list of gun control laws (which we have [proven time and again](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/brady-scorecard-scam/) have zero bearing on violent crime). Then using the 2013 reports from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, or BATF (which sounds like an entertainment publication for Baltimore) we tallied up the number of crime guns that were originally retailed in the state, and those that in significant numbers came from out of state, using the BATF’s own reports. We then tallied the number from the ten states with the lowest score on the Brady State Scorecard.

***NOTE:*** *In this quick-and-dirty analysis, we examine the top-and bottom states. The reason is the (a) the top six states according the Brady Campaign all have a “passing” grade of 60 or above and (b) the 7th state is Hawaii, which due to being a volcanic spec in the middle of an ocean changes the dynamics of interstate transportation of anything, much less guns.*

**Most guns come from within the states:** Averaged, the six most restrictive states have more guns originating inside their borders than outside. Oddly California (#1 on the Brady State Scorecard) which neighbors Arizona (#50) had a lower ratio of imported crime guns than the national average of the top six Brady states, with a whopping 249% more of their crime guns coming from within their borders as opposed to outside of their borders.

 **Ratio Intra/Interstate
Crime Guns****U.S. Average****7.0****Top six “strict” States****11.4****Top 10 “strict” states
excluding Hawaii****19.5****“Lax gun control law” states are not a big problem:** Nationally, the ratio for in-state retailed crime guns to the ten states with the most “lax gun laws” according to the Brady State Scorecard was 7:1. For the top six states with Brady’s strictest gun laws, the ratio jumps to 11:1. In other words, ***fewer guns from “lax law” states find their way to “strict law” states***. The ratio climbs even higher when we look at the ten states with the strictest gun control laws (excluding the geographically isolated Hawaii). Thus the claim that states with freer gun owner rights jeopardize states with strict laws is flapdoodle (how’s that for an antique term).

**Trafficking is barely on the radar:** In the same BATF report, they list how many of the traces were for gun trafficking investigations. In the top ten “strict law” states, a mere 0.6% of traces were for suspected gun smuggling, indicating that the local cops are not finding many violators in the act. Nationally cops agree, devoting only 0.4% of their trace requests to gun smuggling.

**Time is the big variable:** States with the strictest gun control had the longest time between when a gun was sold at retail (regardless of where it was retailed) and when it was used in crime, with a “time to crime” of 13.8 years from retail to criminal misuse. This diminishes the claim that trafficking is a large source of crime guns because traffickers (what few there actually are) move their merchandise quickly.

**The guns being used:** Interestingly, many of the “strict law” states have unexpected surges in the types of guns least commonly used in crimes (the favorites of thugs everywhere are the standard revolver or medium caliber pistol). California traced 25% more crime rifles than the national average, and Maryland is 38% higher. Maryland criminals used 58% more shotguns. Derringers were quite popular in Connecticut (25% higher), Massachusetts (21%) and New York (35%).

**Time plus type:** One possible reality is that because so few guns are being trafficked from “lax law” states to “strict law” states, criminals are actively recycling the guns still available in the state – aging rifles, shotguns and derringers.

Difference From National AverageViolent
Crime
rateMurder and
non-negligent
manslaughter rateRobbery
rateFirearm
Homicide
RateTop ten strict
gun control states
(excluding Hawaii)9%7%51%8%Ratio of
Home State to
“Strict” StatesCalifornia54.9Connecticut**5.8**New Jersey**1.0**Maryland**5.0**New York**2.5**Massachusetts**6.5**Illinois27.2Rhode Island7.6Delaware**2.8**Pennsylvania17.8[![strict-vs-lax-gun-control-source-states-2-1024w](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/strict-vs-lax-gun-control-source-states-2-1024w-400x300.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/strict-vs-lax-gun-control-source-states-2-1024w.jpg)**Violent crime is bigger in strict states:** This all would be amusing except that violent crime is 9% above national averages in “strict law” states, and even firearm homicides are 8% higher.

## Strict States Export to Strict States

While prowling through the numbers, I decided to see how many states receive an unusually large number of crime guns from “strict” law states. Knowing that ratio from home-bought to “lax” law state guns if 7:1, we looked for states with a worse (lower) ratio for guns from “strict” law states.

I was stunned.

It appears that “strict gun control” states often get most of their guns ***from other strict states***. Indeed, most top ten “strict” states got as many or more guns from other strict states as they did from their own retail stores.

So, compared to the ratio of guns from “weak” gun control states, the problem of crime guns it more closely tied to gun ownership restrictions. Maybe the associated criminal political classes in those states have something to do with it.

## The Troubling Facts

Bottom line: States with “strict gun control laws” don’t get many guns from states with very “lax” gun control laws. As a percentage, many more guns instead come from states with strict gun control laws. The ratio for guns from “lax” gun control states is much lower than they are for other states, meaning that “lax” states are less of a problem than “strict” states.

For all their legislation, and the endangerment of their citizens by inconveniencing or restricting the options for self-defense, these same states have high violent crime rates.

Most guns move from state to state as a normal function of human migration. Government studies of trafficking show that to be a minor factor in crime guns. Give this and the ratios seen between strong/lax state gun laws, and given that 40% or more of crime guns come from street sources (which are inherently local), the entire campaign to vilify one or another’s states laws – on the failed hypothesis of crime gun trafficking due to “weak gun control laws” – is rejected.

## Precautions:

1. BATF firearm traces may not be accurate. Guns traced at a crime scene may not have been used in crimes, and guns used in crimes may not have been traced.
2. We only sampled the top- and bottom states to contrast what are allegedly the toughest and least tough states for gun control..
3. Since the Brady State Scorecard is a completely arbitrary ranking, the basis of analysis exposes nothing about the efficacy of state laws. We hope to cross-compare the Brady Scorecard with a proposed Gun Facts Scorecard in the near future.
4. Never confuse covariance with causation. If you see other covariance in the data, be sure to run standard statistical tests before jumping to a conclusion.

## Sources

CRIME GUN SOURCE DATA: Firearms Trace Data – 2013, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, www.atf.gov/content/About/statistics/firearms-trace-data-2013

CRIME STATISTICS: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting database, www.ucrdatatool.gov

**Categories:** Availability of Guns

**Tags:** BATF, gun control, gun trafficking, interstate

---

### [VPC Gun Death Dumb-Down](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/vpc-gun-death-dumb-down/)

**Published:** February 5, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

A recent news report revealed something astounding, namely that the Violence Policy Center is still in business (given the serial discrediting VPC and it’s head henchman Josh Sugarmann receive, that the VPC and Sugarmann are still active only proves that zombism may not be as fanciful as previously thought).

## The recurring VPC con

The VPC recently stole some media recognition. They rehashed their previously debunked reporting of the alleged link between gun ownership rates and “gun deaths”. For new comers, whenever a member of the gun control industry uses the terms “gun death” it typically includes:

- Suicides (63% of all “gun deaths”)
- Legal interventions (plugging your rapist)
- Accidents (tiny and dropping at 1.5%)
- And then, finally, criminal homicides (what you normally think of as a “gun death”)

Their “analysis” looked at gun ownership and “gun death” rates from the top and bottom five states ranked by total “gun deaths” (e.g., all categories above). VPC’s numbers looked inaccurate as I spelunked through the Center for Disease Control database, but we never expected exactitude from the VPC.

Their insiuation is that when a large portion of the population in a state owns guns, people drop faster than pants at a Bill Clinton pool party. Where their “research” mainly goes astray is the subject of suicides. As reported here, cross-section studies show that [firearm availability is not a determinate variable for suicide](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/). Including suicides within the VPC’s report is *intended* to skew the numbers, in much the same way as the VPC intended to mislead the public about “assault weapons” (from their own web page: “Assault weapons … are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons – anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun – can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.”).

## The non-suprising reality

[![Firearm homicides, suicide and ownership rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/firearm-homicides-suicide-ownership-rates-400x294.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/firearm-homicides-suicide-ownership-rates.jpg)So what does it mean if we evaluate suicides, and perhaps remove them from the conversation (since we have already proven that this is a mental health, and not a gun control issue)? The rate of firearm ownership means a little less than nothing … unless there are very few guns around.

**Suicides:** When we plot gun ownership rates (the big, blue shaded area in the back of the chart) against a trend line for suicide rates (green line), we see a similar slope. We know that a suicidal person with access to a gun will likely choose the gun to kill themselves. People without guns find different means, but are just as dead. Lithuanians have less than 1% the gun ownership rate of Americans but have a suicide rate more than three time larger (suicidal Lithuanians method of choice is hanging).

**Homicide:** Interestingly, the same trend analysis applied to firearm homicide rates indicates that fewer firearms somehow leads to more firearm homicides. Covarience is not cause-and-effect, and Washington D.C.’s staggering homicide rate certainly lifts the right-most end of the chart. But the effect is seen throughout the 51 instances measured. Even ignoring the trend line, we have to ponder why California has a slightly higher firearm homicide rate than Texas and Arkansas despite having signifcantly lower household firearm ownership rates (21%, 36% and 55% respectively).

## The critical take-aways

- Any reporter quoting a VPC press release should find a new line of work, perhaps involuntarily. That VPC publications have been continually debunked for ages, while they drink heavily from the Joyce Foundation money trough, is enough for any journalist to dismiss VPC agitprop.
- Anyone discussing firearm policy must quit including suicides in the stats. Guns do not cause people to be suicidal, and lack of guns does not keep people from killing themselves. This is a mental health issue and is relegated to a different forum.
- Someone should escort Josh Sugarmann to the old folks home. It appears that senile dementia has taken hold within his cranium.

## Update:

[![firearm homicides and suicide rates per gun ownership without Washington D.C.](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/firearm-homicides-suicide-ownership-rates-wo-dc-400x294.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/firearm-homicides-suicide-ownership-rates-wo-dc.jpg)I was challenged via email about the chart above, and how Washington D.C. might overly skew the firearm homicide trend line (an issue I noted in the original post). This person’s contention was that if the D.C. outlier were deleted, firearm homicide rates would not curve up as household firearm ownership rates drop.

Well, t’is not the case. Removing D.C. does, as anticipated, reduce the degree of curvature of the line, but the firearm homicide trend line still rises as private gun ownership declines.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Propaganda, Uncategorized, Violence Policy Center

---

### [Bloomberg's (latest) Blunder](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/bloombergs-latest-blunder/)

**Published:** February 20, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

How in the Sam Heck did Michael Bloomberg ever become a billionaire? He can’t count that well.

Recently, the Former New York City Mayor said of minorities age 15 to 25 “[95 percent of all murders fall into this category](http://www.aspentimes.com/news/14957190-113/michael-bloomberg-calls-colorados-decision-on-legal-pot-stupid).” Rephrased, Bloomberg believes (or, more accurately, he wants *you* to believe) that young minority men are responsible for nearly all gun murders.

Racist!

![bloomberg-fbi-minority-homicides-guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/bloomberg-fbi-minority-homicides-guns-400x160.png)The FBI begs to differ, and they are pretty good at this criminology thing. In their “Expanded Homicide Data Table 3” they present counts of murder offenders by race and age. It is pretty easy to sum-up the homicide counts for an age range, then divide it by the total number of homicides.

Now, in fairness, Bloomberg did specify minority males ages 15-25. Unfortunately the FBI brackets ages differently than Bloomberg (which makes you wonder from where Michael got his data). But the FBI’s 17 through 24 bracket is good enough, especially since the missing ages are younger and less prone to homicide.

Anyway, 17% of homicides are committed by minorities age 17-24. If we trust that the male/female ratio applies to minorities equally as to whites, then only 15% of homicides are attributable to minority males.

From the same report, Table 9 shows use the weapons used for homicides, and within the same age group we see that “only” 83% of murders are by gun. Merging those numbers together, we see that less than 13% of all homicides are by young minority men.

Given this, I suspect Barack Obama will soon show umbrage to Bloomberg’s racist assertion.

**Categories:** Uncategorized

**Tags:** 95%, bloomberg, minorities, statistics

---

### [Suicides and Propaganda](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-propaganda/)

**Published:** February 21, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

It is no secret that when a member of the gun control industry speaks of “gun deaths” they are purposefully including suicides by gun. By not disclosing that suicides are about 65% of all guns deaths, they create dread in the public by making “gun deaths” appear to be a growing menace. [![Homicides and suicides - time series](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Homicides-and-suicides-time-series-400x277.jpg "Click to enlarge")](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Homicides-and-suicides-time-series.jpg)

But this got me to wondering if there is a hidden agenda to them broadcasting this canard more frequently. There is. Because over the last seven years of records, more people have been killing themselves.

Since in the U.S. guns are a preferred means of suicide (where as in Canada poison is more popular), any upward change in suicide rates makes it look like guns are a growing problem.

Firearm homicides have remained rather static in recent years, as the chart shows. However, suicides started rising sharply along with the Great Recession. This is a common occurrence — hard times cause some people to escape their economic woes via self-inflicted death. Between 1999 and 2013, the suicide rate went 24% higher and the firearm suicide rate rose proportionately. Whereas the ratio between gun suicides and gun homicides were 1.5:1 in 1999, they are 1.9:1 today.

This explains why the gun control industry is paint guns in society as a problem. If they noted that economics drove suicides rates higher, and that suicides were a mental health/economics issue, then their arguments would go away. Which is exactly why they don’t talk about these subjects.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Propaganda

**Tags:** firearm, homicides, suicides

---

### [Ammo Ban Asininities](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/ammo-ban-asininities/)

**Published:** March 2, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Leave it to a politician to hide behind cops (must have been out of children to use as shields).

![m855-ammo](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/m855-ammo.jpg)Today the administration employed regulations to [ban a popular type of ammunition](http://www.wnd.com/2015/02/devilish-details-behind-obamas-bullet-ban/) for a very popular type of rifle, namely “green tip” rounds for AR-15s. Their excuse claim was that it would save the lives of police officers.

Having grown-up with cops and having married into a cop family, I found this as provocative as it was craven.

In the last year tallied by the National law Enforcement Officers Memorial, 50 cops were shot dead in 2014. That’s 50 too many, but that is lower than the childhood accidental firearm death rate (69 in the last available year’s data). According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (the same people tasked with banning AR-15 ammo), of all recovered crime guns, 19% were rifles, and some undefined subset of those were rifles capable of shooting green-tip ammo. So far, of the 50 shot cops, at most nine could have possibly been killed with this ammo (incidentally, the BATFE did not list anyone, cop or otherwise, who has been killed with this make of ammunition).

Now, only 3% of all crime guns traced were used in homicides and attempted homicides. Multiply that fraction into the mix and at worst 1/3rd of an officer would have been killed using any AR-15 compatible ammo ejected out of any rifle, much less the subset of green-tip ammo (it may be popular, but it isn’t the only round of that caliber … by a long shot).

Since the BATFE did not disclose a single cop death from this ammo, and since the statistics show that there likely has not been a single cop death from such bullets, questions concerning White House sanity once again shoot across the political world.

**Categories:** Assault Weapons, Police and Guns

**Tags:** ammo, ban, cops, police

---

### [Permitless Carry](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/permitless-carry/)

**Published:** April 13, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Five states require no permit to carry a concealed handgun in public. Twenty more are considering it.

Needless to say the gun control industry is apoplectic. They are riled as they have not been since states started following Florida’s lead and passing shall-issue, permitted concealed carry throughout the 1990s. Back then the gun control industry said permitted concealed carry was a terrible idea, and watched as violence rates dropped nationwide. Today they think permitless (constitutional) carry is a bad idea.

For them *it is* a bad idea, because it is proving to be a non-problem.

Currently four states have had permitless concealed carry laws enacted long enough to see what, if any, effect it might have in terms of violent crime. Kansas just passed their permitless carry legislation, so it is too soon to see if tornados kill more folks in Kansas than people packing pieces. Arkansas’ permitless carry law became effective in 2013, which is the latest year for data on firearm homicides, and thus we can’t measure any impact. But we can look at the other states, compare them against national numbers, and see if the gun control industry is wetting their knickers for no good reason (spoiler alert … they are).

# The Permitless States

Currently, Arizona, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont require no permit for non-felons to carry a weapon concealed in public (like all other states, felons are prohibited from being in the same zip code as a gun, much less tucking one in their waistband).

Vermont is a tickler. They simply never bothered to outlaw the practice. In fact, most states didn’t outlaw concealed carry until the 1800s, and a fair bit of those restrictions were only enforced against selected minorities … mainly freed blacks.

These four states, excluding Vermont, enacted their permitless carry laws between 2003 and 2011. Thus, we can examine their firearm homicide rates before and after the laws came into effect and see what problems permitless carry may have caused.

# Problems With The Data

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/permitless-carry-firearm-homicides-chart-1-1-400x292.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/permitless-carry-firearm-homicides-chart-1-1.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

Wyoming and Vermont are vexing. People in Big Sky country tend not to commit many homicides and the people in Vermont seem to dislike it all together. Thus when we look at a chart with Wyoming and Vermont, we see Wyoming’s firearm homicide rate leaping from nada to infinity (I had to put a dummy value in for the base year to even graph the chart properly). So it is wise to take Wyoming out of the analysis as the numbers would be inaccurate (and the Center for Disease Control’s mortality database makes note that Wyoming’s firearm homicide rate is so low that even the raw numbers cannot be believed entirely).

Vermont we can keep in because zero is zero. The CDC reports that Vermont residents are too frozen solid to point a gun at anyone.

Of the remaining states, we had to truncate pre-enactment data by a year given that the CDC’s primary mortality database only goes back to 1999 (I could have dug another year of data from their older database, but felt it likely wasn’t necessary given that we could still map a five year trend before permitless carry coming into force). Because Arizona made permitless carry available in 2010, we have only three years of data after that to which we can compare other states and the nation.

As for a national comparison, we had a bit of a poser. We could compare each state to the national average for their years, or try to aggregate them all. Since two of the three states that enacted permitless carry this century were only a year apart (2010 and 2011), we used 2010 as the baseline for nationwide averages. We did the same with Vermont since that improves the apples-to-apples comparison and helps make some sense of any underlying trend).

# Firearm Homicide Trends in Permitless Carry States

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/permitless-carry-firearm-homicides-chart-2-1-400x292.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/permitless-carry-firearm-homicides-chart-2-1.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/permitless-carry-firearm-homicides-chart-aggregated-1-400x292.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/permitless-carry-firearm-homicides-chart-aggregated-1.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

We start to see a downward slope in firearm homicides in permitless carry states (sans Wyoming, which we do not display due to their zero-base homicide rate and the resulting nonsensical comparison). Even Alaska, which also has significant fluctuations in firearm homicides, shows a downward trend. But the United States as a whole also has a downward trend (helped I suspect by the significant decline in concealed carry states, permitless or otherwise).

Aggregating firearm homicide rates for permitless carry states is not a terrible idea. Despite variations in population density and other factors, the close alleged tie between permitless carry and firearm homicides is the primary point of measurement. Thus averaging the firearm homicide rates of permitless carry states is not a corruption of methodology, and certainly helps to clarify the results.

The outcome is quite compelling. Though firearm homicides dropped 13% across the country, they fell 50% in permitless carry states. Most of the fall in permitless states occurred before permits were obviated. Yet the overall firearm homicide rate dropped another 19% in the first two years after enactment while the rest of the nation didn’t drop at all.

This does not prove that permitless carry caused a radical reduction in firearm homicides, but it does disprove claims by the gun control industry that the streets run red with the blood of innocents once permits to carry concealed firearms are no longer required.

# Other Canards

The gun control industry isn’t resting on their one false claim about permitless carry causing more firearm homicides (which it doesn’t). One of the premier gun control groups also asserts that permitless carry will:

**Embolden felons to carry concealed weapons in public:**

Is this even worthy of comment? Felons already disobey laws that prohibit them from possessing or carrying firearms concealed. They carry concealed in Detroit, Chicago, Philly and all the other dangerous cities where concealed carry is more or less verboten.

**Reduce law enforcement’s ability to identify prohibited people carrying:**

This make even less sense. Cops never know if they are dealing with a prohibited person or a law abiding citizen until they engage them. Cops, as good as they are, are not omnipotent. They don’t even know if someone is carrying until they ask or see a distinctive bulge. Thus a law enforcement officer’s awareness isn’t changed one iota with permitless carry.

**Increase intentional and accidental shootings in public:**

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/permitless-carry-firearm-accidental-deaths-chart-aggregated-2-400x293.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/permitless-carry-firearm-accidental-deaths-chart-aggregated-2.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

So far neither has been the case. We already covered homicides, one form of “intentional shootings”. The other type is legal interventions, one purpose behind being armed in public (though in practice one normally need not shoot their attacker … merely sticking a snub nose up their nose is enough).

But even accidental shootings (public and at home, which are merged herein since I don’t have a handy, state-by-state source for only public shootings) have declined much more rapidly in permitless carry states than for the nation at large. Total accidental shootings should be a good proxy for public accidental ones since the major change being measured is a change in public carry.

**Increase gun trafficking:**

There must be some heavy drinking going on at offices of the gun control industry, because this makes zero sense, even to the senseless. If someone can explain how law abiding citizens (non-felons), carrying firearms in public will encourage felons to traffic guns into or out of those states, please send that explanation to me along with your prescription …  I really want to know, and to know what medications make people hallucinate like that.

# What, Me Worry?

Granted, less than 10% of states being permitless carry states makes for a fragile model. But early analysis, and given the lack of carnage that shall-issue permit-based concealed carry created, it appears that at worst no harm comes from permitless carry, and it may well be driving bad actors to not use their guns as often.

**Categories:** Accidental Gun Deaths, Concealed Carry

---

### [Campus Carry, Not Scary](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/campus-carry-not-scary/)

**Published:** May 18, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Why does California State Senator Lois Wolk choose to be ignorant? With her representing a college town you would hope otherwise.

[](http://www.guns.com/2015/05/15/move-to-ban-concealed-carry-at-california-schools-advances/)[![Decrease in violent crime in states with campus carry](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/campus-carry-state-violent-crime-rate-decrease1-400x319.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/campus-carry-state-violent-crime-rate-decrease1.jpg)[Wolk is campaigning](http://www.guns.com/2015/05/15/move-to-ban-concealed-carry-at-california-schools-advances/) to largely prevent the few folks with California concealed carry licenses (CCW) from exercising the right on campuses (the bill as currently drafted, subject to change no doubt, leaves it up to schools to set policy). Ignoring how this creates legal jeopardy for CCW holders unaware of shifting restrictions from place to place, the bigger question is “why?” The empirical data does not support the need to discriminate as Wolk wants to do.

In our recent *Non-Brady State Scorecard* report (ED: alas, no longer being published), we discovered that states that allow CCW holders to carry on campuses, both K12 public schools and college campuses, had significantly lower violent crime rates, including firearm homicides and all forms of murder. The effect is amplified in “college campus carry” states, indicating that a fair amount of murder, rape, robbery and assault that happens on or near college campuses is suppressed by the possibility of armed response.

In her own words, Wolk thinks “As concealed weapons permits are becoming more prevalent and easier to obtain, campus public safety officials need more authority to regulate them on campus grounds.” Yet her statement is made without justification. What precisely is the danger posed by CCW holders? Statistics tell us the opposite effect is in play; that CCW holders not only fail to cause problems, their very presence suppresses violent acts. In states where college campuses allow CCW holders equal access, murders are 37% lower, rapes are 11% less frequent, robbery drops 47% and aggravated assaults plunge 36%. Even firearm homicides drop 33%.

In the absence of a measurable problem, Wolk – like every politician before her – uses fear to motivate votes. But the empirical data shows that CCWs on campus is a non-existent problem and possibly part of the solution. This is what we know about CCW holders, from the available data:

- CCW holders have amazingly low violent crime rates, often lower than police officers in the same states where CCWs are the norm.
- People who take the time to get a CCW are not hot heads who misuse guns, hence they do not contribute to crime levels.
- Numerous incarcerated felon studies have shown the one thing thugs really hate are armed victims. Hence, if a co-ed might be armed, her rapist or mugger is far less likely to act on his criminal impulses.

The proper voter action at this point is to ignore Wolk and other fear mongers, and to insist on equal self-protection rights.

**Categories:** Concealed Carry

**Tags:** campus, carry, concealed, statistics

---

### [VPC DGU Dupe](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/vpc-gdu-dupe/)

**Published:** June 19, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

![violence-policy-center-logo](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/violence-policy-center-logo-400x59.jpg)An acquaintance of mine once claimed that Josh Sugarmann, head of the Violence Policy Center (VPC), consumed copious amounts of military grade narcotics and had been doing so for some time. I found the statement offensive since it masked more likely organic sources for Sugarmann’s disconnect from reality.

In the [VPC’s latest con job](http://thehill.com/regulation/245280-gun-owners-not-likely-to-use-firearms-for-self-defense-study-claims) they:

- Assumed all [defensive gun use](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/guns-and-crime-prevention/) (DGU) results in death
- Compared criminal homicides with legal interventions (justifiable or even meritorious killings)
- Ignored all manner of non-lethal DGUs

In an attempt to make American’s believe that guns have no rightful purpose in self-defense (something that [recent polling](http://www.gallup.com/poll/179213/six-americans-say-guns-homes-safer.aspx) indicates is going the opposite direction), the VPC contrasted criminal homicides with guns with self-defense shootings that only resulted in the attacker permanently halting their predatory practices. This willfully ignored:

- DGUs where the attacker is wounded.
- DGUs where a warning shot is fired.
- DGUs where the gun wasn’t fired (pointing a handgun at a thug or chambering a shell into a shotgun is known to demotivate attackers)

Gary Kleck’s criminology masterwork *[Targeting Guns](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0202305694/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_lc?tag=frethimed-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0202305694&adid=1WBAY06Q35MPJ3SPPEYS&&ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gunfacts.info%2Fgun-control-books%2F)*, has shown that over 92% of DGUs don’t involve trying to shoot the attacker. This is why DGUs resulting in death are so rare; American’s use death as a last resort, even against violent predators. Of the remaining 8%, most are woundings (intentional or otherwise). The net result is that there are nearly 400,000 instances every year where a victim feels “almost certainly” that a gun saved their lives. This 400,000 is a small fraction of the aggregated 2.5 million times guns are used in self-defense for any purpose (preventing rape, robberies, beatings, etc.).

So why does the VPC not discuss this, and instead claim people are much more likely to use a gun to kill someone than to protect themselves? Because facts don’t support their case for preventing you or your neighbor from owning guns. So instead the VPC hides approximately 2,499,741 defensive gun uses.

That’s quite an omission Josh. Maybe my acquaintance’s assumption wasn’t so far off base after all.

“We hope legislators in every state will stop believing the self-defense myth and look at the facts,” was what Julia Wyman, the executive director of States United to Prevent Gun Violence, said. “Guns do not make our families or communities safer.”

2.5 million people disagree.

**Categories:** Crime Control, Guns and Crime Prevention, Violence Policy Center

**Tags:** guns, self-defense, violence policy center, vpc

---

### [Kids, Cops and Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/kids-cops-and-guns/)

**Published:** June 24, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

A talk radio host called me for some show prep. He had a guest coming on who planned on making the claim that in 2010 guns killed more children under age five than cops.

She was right, but wrong at the same time.

Indeed, in the year 2010, more Americans under age five died from bullets than police did. But this scary statistic was designed to scare, not to illuminate. When you look at two issues, the perspective gets very clear very quickly.

## Population

MurderedAccidentalChildren (CDC)5425Police (Officer Down)592Children (% pop)0.0003%0.0001%Police (% pop)0.0131%0.0004%Difference % pop 49:1 4:1Foremost, there are a lot more kids than cops. In 2010, we had about 44 times as many crumb crushers than active duty officers (U.S. Census Bureau and the FBI Crime in the United States tally for 2009). Comparing these two groups by raw numbers is, of course, inappropriate. Comparing gun deaths as a percent of each population group, as is the norm, is appropriate.

What we see is oddly comforting (if the thought of either kids or cops catching bullets could make anyone comfortable). In terms of homicides, cops are killed with guns 49 times more than preschoolers. The accidental death rate is much closer, but cops are still four times more likely to plug themselves than kids (likely due to handling guns daily and occasionally being a little too self-assured in the practice).

## Homicides

Where things get more interesting, and more depressing, is in how kids die in general.

[![Children and guns - homicides by assailant trend](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Children-and-guns-homicides-by-assailant2-400x317.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Children-and-guns-homicides-by-assailant2.jpg)In the most recent year for which data is available, we see that guns make up a mere 30 deaths for preschoolers, or a little more than ½ a child per state *per year*. Given the rather horrible behavior of inner-city gangsters who leave their hardware around the house, this number is surprisingly low.

Homicides are where the conversation gets prickly. Of all preschooler homicides, 92% were done without guns. Since small children are easily manhandled, guns are largely unnecessary. The 8% killed with guns includes those caught in gang-land warfare, a common occurrence in towns like Oakland, California. It is the non-gun homicides of small children that provide disturbing contrast.

Year over year, about 60% of the murdered kid are killed by their own parents. Another 25% by friends and acquaintances. Most of these are non-gun homicides – typically beatings, strangulation and drownings.

GunNon-GunHomicides51619Accidents302,472Homicides (%)8%92%Accidents (%)1%99%Homicides (% pop)0.000%0.003%Accidents (% pop)0.000%0.012%Yet nobody is calling for the licensing and registration of parents.

## Take-away

The sound bite that more urchins than officers are killed with guns is misleading at best. It is, without contradiction, unscientific. But it does expose a few important inarguable facts:

- Kids are pretty safe in the United States
- Guns are the least of their deadly worries
- With gun accidents at an all-time low, we should focus on non-gun homicides and accidents

**Categories:** Children and Guns, Propaganda

**Tags:** accidents, deaths, guns, homicides, police, preschoolers

---

### [Weapon in Ukraine: Lessons in Law and Reality](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/weapon-in-ukraine-lessons-in-law-and-reality/)

**Published:** August 25, 2015
**Author:** Katarina Ustymenko

**Content:**

*The following is a guest blog by a Ukrainian gun owner.*

There is an old joke about people and guns here in the Ukraine.

A man went outside and saw his neighbor showering a flowerbed using lubricating oil.

“What are you doing, my friend?” he asked. “Your flowers will wilt!”

“Sure,” his friend replied. “My flowers will wilt, but my machinegun will not rust!”

Such is the state of firearm ownership in the Ukraine. The right to own a firearm is heavily restricted. With Russian soldiers and tanks in our streets, you might think a citizens’ militia would be a reason to remove such restrictions. But it isn’t and decades of such restrictions have led to well lubricated flowers here.

From the first stone axe used by one caveman against another, the right to arms for self-defense – and national defense – is one of our oldest stories. So too is the story of craven government agencies preventing self-defense and causing bloodshed as a result. The easiest way to control is to dictate.

I would like to tell you about the modern Ukrainian situation concerning firearms, legal and illegal guns, and people’s right (or lack of a right) to own and to carry guns.

# The way the law works

It is no secret that war has come to the Ukraine. Russia, the Soviet Union’s reincarnation, is laying its violent hands on our land. That is why the subject of firearms is merely important to us … it is a matter of survival and independence.

Ukrainian firearm laws are designed to keep the average citizen from owning anything but hunting weapons, and to make getting those as difficult as possible. Without an equivalent of America’s Second Amendment, all gun laws are by bureaucratic edit. Our Ministry of Internal Affairs provides guidelines, rules, regulations and plenty of delay, but no law guides them.

All legal gun owners in Ukraine fall into one of a few groups:

1. Members of the army or the police.
2. Deputies, prosecutors, judges and well-connected connected half-officials/half-criminals.
3. A small group of sportsmen and people with award guns.
4. All other (The legal weapon in Ukraine we could separate to army and civil, and civil separates to hunting or sporting weapon. Therefore, most of Ukrainian gun owners obtained guns for hunting, but few of them sought-out hunting licenses. Most of us need a pistol to protect ourselves, but we are instead forced to buy rifles or shotguns).

The last item starts painting the picture about armed self-defense in the Ukraine. You can, with great effort, get a rifle or shotgun for hunting. But a pistol for protecting yourself cannot be legally obtained. Most Ukrainian citizens have no right to buy a pistol, though in rare instance the government may award you a pistol, typically if you are well-connected. The Ministry of Internal Affairs should know how many award pistols are in the Ukraine. Yet when journalists try to get this information, the Ministry’s press-office insists that such information is secret. Non-official sources say you can be “awarded” a pistol if you have about $15,000 U.S., with the price of the pistol (all monetary units in this article are U.S. dollars, but keep in mind the salaries for Ukrainians are much lower, and thus the relative expense of firearms and bribery is much higher).

You might think that in a country so rigidly regulated that the Ministry of Internal Affairs would have a fair estimate on the number of guns not under flower beds, as well as crimes committed with guns and legal shootings (what Americans call “justified”). Interestingly there exists no official statistics of legal weapons in the country. Why?

> *“By 2005, official accounting of permissions does not appear accurate, and some of the old data has been lost by the police. All data, every month is brought from districts to central office on floppy disks.*
> 
> *So it is physically impossible to get official data from the Ministry. However, according to our count there are about 2.5 million of licensed weapon in Ukraine, and about 1.5 million people are the gun owners \[ED: from a population of 43 million\]. There are hunting arms (smooth-bore and sliced), traumatic \[ED: low-velocity, small caliber, rubber bullet firearms that reportedly don’t even bruise a person\] (about 300,000 units) and awarded (about 25,000-40,000 units).*
> 
> *According to statistics of the Ministry for 2014 year, there are 217,614 gun permissions (you can find the scans of official Ministry’s answer and statistic here: http://zbroya.info/ru/blog/5939\_statistika-po-vydannym-v-ukraine-razresheniiam-na-oruzhie-za-2014-god/).”*– Told Georgiy Uchaykin, Chairman Ukrainian Gun Owners Association.

Statistics for illegal guns in the Ukraine are laughably unreliable, even if one estimates the number of flower beds here. The Swiss Small Arms Survey project claims the volume of illegal weapons in Ukraine was between 2 to 6 million units (quite a spread) and this doesn’t count recent Russian imports. However, after talking with some knowledgeable people about their observations, the Small Arms Survey estimates could easily be multiplied by five.

One reason why there are fewer than 400,000 legally owned guns and between 2-30 million illegal ones is price. All gun shops in Ukraine are owned by a small number of Ministry of Internal Affairs ex-officials. They have, in effect, created a small monopoly on firearm retailing, and thus control prices and keep them high. A shotgun starts at 230$ and 330$ for rifles. AK-47 made by a Ukrainian state plant and converted from the Army’s stockpile by “modernizing” it by blocking automatic fire (in fact – breaking one internal piece in it) sells from 890$ to 1,471$ at gun shops. \[ED: The average weekly salary for a Ukrainian worker, depending on the region, is from $100 to $500, making a civilian AK-47 an expensive firearm\]

But the money isn’t the hard part for a Ukrainian citizen that wants a long gun. Getting permission is the socially expensive part. To get a permission to buy smooth-bore hunting weapons you

- Must be 21 years old for shotguns, 25 years old for rifles.
- Go to the Ministry of Internal Affairs permission center (which is only open a few hours a day, and only three days a week)
- Complete an application form
- Provide them a copy of your ID, your photos and proof of where you live or alternately are registered (for example, I live in one district of Kiev with my husband, but I am registered in another where my parents live – to get the registration papers, I had to get my husband, three neighbors from different flats, have them all should sign the paper stating that I lived there, and we can do it only 1 time a month)
- Buy a safe (yes, all guns have to be stored in safes)
- Visit a training center twice; first to take a number of exam questions and second (one week later) to pay over 7$ and to pass a live shooting test – shoot five bullets from 22lr pistol
- Go to a medical center, where you pay 21-34$ to obtain a medical certificate that states that you can own and use the gun
- Go to one of those monopolistic gun stores (not mandatory, but is highly desirable) and pay 50% of the gun value to ensure you can get the gun you want (because the permission period to actually get a gun is only three months)
- After waiting one month, go back to the permission center and pay 45$ to cover administrative fees to get written permission to buy the gun \[ED: $45 is about 1/3 of the weekly food costs for a Ukrainian family\]
- Go buy the gun
- Wait 10 working days register it
- In 1-3 months receive the official permission to own, keep, carry and use the gun

It is almost as bad as California! We don’t even conceive of instant background checks in the Ukraine.

In theory, in a month from your first visit to the permission center, a district police officer must come to your home to verify that you live there and that you have a safe in which to store your gun. But in all the experiences I and my associates have, the policeman newer comes. The same situation exists for the training – no one really cares. Before coming to that training I learned all the materials – from criminal law relating to firearms, to the Ministry’s instructions about firearms, to first aid theory, to ballistic theory, all the hunting rules – and my instructor told me that I am crazy for studying so hard … no one need such information and that the 30 exam questions were simple enough.

# The ways the law doesn’t work

That is the legal way to get a gun in the Ukraine. There are also half-legal ways, which are primarily used by deputies, prosecutors, judges, connected half-officials/half-criminals and I estimate 30% of ordinary citizen gun owners. The half-legal way involves providing 300$ plus copies of your ID and photos to a Ministry of Internal Affairs ex-officer. In a month they move the paperwork from hand to hand within the Ministry, saving you running around the city, taking medical examinations and training in any way. Even if you have a previous criminal conviction that might otherwise prevent you from getting permission to own a gun, this is your best alternative – you just need to pay more money than someone who hasn’t been a criminal.

Then there is the absolutely illegal way. This involves paying money to a Ministry of Internal Affairs ex-officer or an army officer/ex-officer and get a gun without waiting and permissions. These become flower bed fertilizer.

The first and second methods still only get you a shotgun or hunting rifle. No revolvers. No pistols. Nothing better suited for self-defense. The reason is that there is little in the way of justifiable self-defense as a matter of law. We have instead institutionalized victimhood.

Think for a moment the practical effects. You will not walk about the city with a rifle on your shoulder. First off, it is strange and won’t win you many friends. Second, it too is illegal. When transporting your hunting rifle, you must carry the gun unassembled and without the magazine in it, which makes it perfectly useless. Third, it is inconvenient to protect yourself with a rifle in the center of the city.

Protecting yourself with a shotgun or rifle in your home is a bit more practical, but largely illegal. By Ukrainian law, you may have a right to own a gun, you have a right to train with it, you have a right to hunt with it. But you will have big problems protecting yourself, your family, your home or other people with your gun. This despite a stated right to self-defense.

The Constitution of Ukraine, according to the Basic Law, states that every citizen “has the right to protect his life and health, life and health of others from unlawful encroachments.” You can [browse this site](https://www.numan.com/) to know more about this statement. The right to self-defense enshrined in the main document of my country and it is an inalienable right of every citizen. But the definition of self-defense is not spelled out in the constitution, and thus has been squashed by bureaucrats and judges. The first and third parts of Article 36 of the Criminal Code say that injury to the person who infringes (the attacker) shall be necessary and sufficient for the immediate prevention or stopping of an encroachment. Causing severe damage (death or grievous bodily harm) to the person who infringes, must meet two interrelated circumstances: danger of assault and environment protection.

Translating this legalese to the people’s language, you can protect yourself by means that do not exceed those is attacking. If you are small thin woman returning from parental duties with a child, and you jumped chunky “hopnik” (a.k.a. Ukrainian white trash) with a stick, you can defend yourself and your child with only a stick. If “hopnik” has a knife, then only a knife. If he has a gun, then only a …Oh, sorry. Ordinary people (those without a spare 15,000$) can have only a “traumatic” gun, which at a distance greater than a few meters away are ineffective, and the less effective if they knock and not shoot. Or you will be judged for exceeding the boundaries of self-defense.

Some claim these limitations on self-defense are by design. Weapons are regulated by internal order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These orders and instructions of the Ministry can change then by its own will. All legal weapons trading is farmed-out by the Ministry, an organization which is totally against the people’s right to defend themselves assumedly because this will lead to a reduction in crime and reduced funding of the Ministry. It is much easier to make money by selling fewer guns at higher prices, and the demand will stay high is street crime does.

If you distrust our Ministry of Internal Affairs, understand we do as well since most of its workers from Crimea and East region betrayed Ukraine, going over to the Russian/terrorist side at the beginning of the war.

# Why we know so little about crime and guns in the Ukraine

It is about as hard to get statistic from the Ministry as it is to get dirt off a flower bed machine gun. Yet the quantity of crimes with legal guns is too small (since there are so few and people fear using guns for self-defense due to it being considered “excessive force”). Add to this that the authorities do not like to show these statistics to the public. The newest information comes from the years 2002 through 2012. In that 10 year period, there were 33,500 murders. Of these 1,150 were committed with guns, or about 3.5%. The Ministry does not provide the number of murders with legal guns, but unofficial sources says – there are few such incidents over a ten year period.

Example: in March 2012 in the town Kodima (Odessa district) a 62-year-old businessman named Oleksiy Sokolov used his legal rifle to shoot two of the four robbers who climbed at night into his building. Those two are alive and were convicted of robbery, mugging and car theft. Alas, Sokolov has been charged with a criminal action under Article 118 (exceeding the boundaries of self-defense).

Ordinary citizens are always guilty, even when they are not!

[![ukrainian-ministry-internal-weapons](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ukrainian-ministry-internal-weapons-400x326.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ukrainian-ministry-internal-weapons.png)[![ukrainian-ministry-internal-weapons-english](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ukrainian-ministry-internal-weapons-english-400x326.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ukrainian-ministry-internal-weapons-english.png)So we have to ask about the illegal guns in that case. We may never know. Ukrainian authorities do not like showing this problem to the outside world, and don’t discuss personal realities inside of the Ukraine. When you visit the official Ministry of Internal Affairs web page, you see news about illegal guns one after another:

However, when you will visit the Ministry of Internal Affairs web page for English speakers, you will see nothing in the news about illegal guns at all:

Why does the government change the story depending on the reader? Many theories have been provided. I believe there exists an uncomfortable theme for the government, one where perhaps 10% of people with illegal guns are criminals, and the other 90% are otherwise law-abiding citizens … people who grow lots of flowers, who are hiding guns, machineguns, whizz-bangs, grenade-guns, explosive and other essentials for bad days (and watching Russian tanks prowl our streets makes this prospect very real). Lot of our soldiers and volunteer soldiers, who are protecting our country from Russia, are burying weapons for such bad days. This creates a problem for the Ministry of Internal Affairs – if they caught these gardeners, they would catch our country’s defenders and our national heroes.

# Government’s no-win design

So when you have a painful process to get gun ownership permission, suffer high prices, and are absolutely unprotected by law when you do defend yourself with a gun, a huge number of illegal guns find their way into the hands of good people. What is it the Americans always say … that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns? Every gardener in the Ukraine was made into a criminal by their own government.

Our people are not criminals. They do not want to kill innocent people. They do not want to take someone’s property. They do not want to do illegal things. They just want to protect themselves from those that do. Protect themselves, their families, friends, neighbors, country. There are a growing number of flower beds in the Ukraine. The people lubricating the flowers may be doing something illegal, but not criminal.

The Ministry’s main official argues against changing our gun law, claiming it is easier to criminals than it is for criminals to get weapons. That is a mare’s nest. Criminals do care about gun laws. They already got guns and they are not interested in law at all. Only law-abiding citizens need a fair gun law, but they do not have it. Add to this the real need that war presents, and you have otherwise law-abiding citizens acquiring illegal guns and studying horticulture.

**Categories:** Guns in Other Countries

**Tags:** gun control, illegal guns, ukraine

---

### [Newsom's Nuisance](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/newsoms-nuisance/)

**Published:** October 19, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Nobody has ever accused California’s Lieutenant Governor of being well informed. Sadly, he insists on proving it.

![evil gavin newsom california](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/evil-gavin-newsom-400x400.jpg)Emboldened by presidential politicians strutting for gun control, Gavin Newsom is supporting a public ballot initiative to bring Californians four new forms of gun control. \[EDITOR: It is noted that Newsom is running for Governor\] Clear in his proposal is an utter lack of understanding about the nature of crime, violence and guns. Without exception, the proposals will:

- Do nothing to address the common and recurring forms of gun violence.
- Possibly push illegal activities to more underground means.
- Harass and legally imperil legitimate gun owners and hobbyist.

So what doesn’t Gavin understand about gun policy? Nearly everything (and this opinion comes from someone who has lived in and around San Francisco for 20 years and watched Newsom’s dementia up close)? His proposals may be ignorant, but the method of announcing his support was politically astute.

Take for example that he stood in front of 101 California Street to make the announcement. This was a building where years ago [a lone madman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_California_Street_shooting#The_shootings) committed a mass murder, hunting lawyers. Gavin likely doesn’t know David Frankel, a lawyer who survived the shooting, became a gun control advocate, but through years of personal experience with violence and gun control is now a gun rights activist and civil rights lawyer.

So let’s examine Newsom’s nuisances one by one and estimate the impact they may have.

## Banning extra capacity magazines

Perhaps the most inane of Newsom’s proposals is forcing people who own grandfathered extra-capacity magazines (which the media keep calling “clips”) to dispose of them – turning them over to police, sending them out of state, or destroying them.

According to criminology research, nearly all firearm homicides are committed with handguns, and in a typical firefight even between trigger-happy gang members, the number of rounds fired by any single person is less than three (3) [1](#note-3518-1 "Targeting Guns, Kleck, Aldine, 1997") [2](#note-3518-2 "11 Years of Police Gunfire, in Painstaking Detail, New York Times,May 2008"). Knowing this (as Newsom apparently does not), it becomes obvious that this doesn’t solve much of anything. It might inconvenience an insane mass shooter, but we know [these instances to be rare](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/mass-shootings/), especially when compared to the daily carnage within inner-cities … like San Francisco. \[EDITOR: Sad to note the most recent mass public shooting was done with just handguns and no extra capacity magazines.\]

“I just don’t get why people need 11-plus rounds of ammunition,” was one of the silly things Newsom [uttered at his press event](http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/10/15/lt-gov-gavin-newsom-to-propose-gun-control-ballot-initiative/). Gavin remains blissfully unaware that recreational shooting requires these magazines. Hog hunters rely on the capacity during extended chases. Three-gun match shooters cannot compete without them. Even target shooters prefer not to reload so often.

Then there is the matter of civil unrest, as in the Rodney King riots, where the media filmed shop owners sitting atop their stores with so-called “[assault weapons](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/assault-weapons/)” sporting extra-capacity magazines. These firearms kept many stores from being looted, burned down, and their owners injured or killed.

## Background checks for ammunition sales

Newsom wants to license all ammunition sellers and make people pass background checks for ammo. The question is why?

Foremost, if criminals are in possession of a firearm (and if [they have a record](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/crime-and-guns/), as most do) then they are already in violation of the law. And according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, they most likely came to possess the gun through completely underground means. [3](#note-3518-3 "Firearm Violence, 1993-2011, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2013") This is how they can and do acquire ammo as well. At best, Newsom’s ammunition retail regulations might scare off a few of the bolder thugs who would walk into a gun store to buy a few rounds.

The more likely outcome though is that it will push the supply chain underground. Strawman purchases, out of state trafficking (such as occurs daily with over-taxed cigarettes) and more theft will be the first alternative. So *you* get to wait in line to buy ammo, but the gangsters don’t.

More interesting though is that some enterprising felon will discover that you can buy ammunition manufacturing equipment and order the raw materials online. Gavin may be creating a new criminal industry in the manufacture, distribution and retailing of ammo for thugs.

## Lost/stolen reporting

Oddly, nobody is opposed to reporting stolen guns. Not the NRA, not the cops, not me. But the devil sleeps in the details alongside Newsom’s PR team.

The issue is creating legal vulnerability. Some firearm hobbyist own more than a few guns. Thankfully, most of them own more than a few safes. But if robbed and say 20 guns went missing, would the victim be able to account for every one of them? Perhaps not. So if one of these firearms found its way into criminal hands, was recovered by the cops, and thus flagged as never having been reported stolen … the honest gun owner goes to jail but not the gun thief.

So the law as proposed does nothing to intercept crime guns that were stolen. It also does little to disrupt the few guns that enter underground markets via strawman purchases [4](#note-3518-4 "Firearm Violence, 1993-2011, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2013") by non-felon criminals. Would these petty entrepreneurs be concerned about the penalty for not reporting a gun that wasn’t stolen to begin with as stolen if the bigger charge of trafficking firearms to known felons is enforced? At best Newsom’s “solution” solves nothing in terms of daily gun abuse, but may well abuse lawful gun owners.

## Felons turn in their weapons

The final proposal is to clear the process to make felons who are not allowed to have guns turn in their weapons. This is an outgrowth of the failed Armed Prohibited Persons System (APPS) program. What law enforcement has noticed when they go to collect guns from felons is:

- Non-violent felons cooperate (this doesn’t reduce gun violence).
- Violent felons have a lot of excuses as to why they don’t possess the gun registered to them, such as claiming they were lent to a friend or relative who can no longer be located (this doesn’t reduce gun violence).
- Violent felons who get their guns off the street – at a minimum 40% of all crime guns, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [5](#note-3518-5 "Firearm Violence, 1993-2011, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2013") – are not in the database at all (this doesn’t reduce gun violence).

Given all of the above, streamlining a defective system doesn’t address the defect. I suspect there will be more to the story once the final wording of the proposal is complete, and it won’t be good for gun owners (though it certainly won’t impede criminals).

## Less than worthless

Newsom’s nuisances are less than worthless. Remember this if anyone asks you to sign a petition supporting the measure, because it is worthless to sign the form.

Notes:

1. *Targeting Guns*, Kleck, Aldine, 1997 [↩](#return-note-3518-1)
2. *11 Years of Police Gunfire, in Painstaking Detail*, New York Times,May 2008 [↩](#return-note-3518-2)
3. *Firearm Violence, 1993-2011*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2013 [↩](#return-note-3518-3)
4. *Firearm Violence, 1993-2011*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2013 [↩](#return-note-3518-4)
5. *Firearm Violence, 1993-2011*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2013 [↩](#return-note-3518-5)

**Categories:** California, Crime Control, Guns and Crime Prevention

**Tags:** california, gun control, newsom

---

### [Obama Bunko](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/obama-bunko/)

**Published:** October 27, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Speaking to a conclave of top cops, Barack Obama decided to promote gun control (it should be noted this was an international association of primarily politically appointed chiefs, so their opinion does not reflect that of the average patrol officer).

In his talk, Obama made several rather insane proclamations. My job is to stomp on his sound bites.

## 60% of Crime Guns (In Chicago) Come From Out Of State

Obama’s gambit was to claim that states with strict gun control laws suffer from guns imported from states with more relaxed laws. We handily disproved this was that case, but also showed that [strict states are more likely to import crime guns from other strict states](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/interstate-gun-trafficking-mythology/) … by a two-to-one ratio.

More to the point, in his home state of Illinois, a full 84% of recovered crime guns came from Illinois and another 3% came from states with strict gun control laws. That’s 87% of the problem, so Barack needs to recalibrate his thinking about priorities. Imported guns from less restrictive states is a relative non-issue.

## Cops are outgunned by Assault Weapons

Obama specifically tied so-called “assault weapons” to criminal street gangs, and stated these were a threat to police.

He should visit a police evidence locker.

According to the federal government [1](#note-3531-1 "Firearms Trace Data – 2014, BATFE") 71% of recovered and traced crime guns are either pistols or revolvers (small handguns that can be concealed, as street thugs so like to do). When you add shotguns (not typically within the “assault weapon” political classification) the number rises to 82%. Every pre-federal-assault-weapon-ban study showed that these mythical firearms were used in less than 1% of crimes.

Obama’s claim that cops were in constant and immediate danger of these guns was outright fraud.

## 400,000 Gun Violence Deaths Since 9/11

**Year****Firearm Homicides****Firearm Suicides****Percent Suicides**200111,34816,86960%200211,82917,10859%200311,92016,90759%200411,62416,75059%200512,35217,00258%200612,79116,88357%200712,63217,35258%200812,17918,22360%200911,49318,73562%201011,07819,39264%201111,06819,99064%201211,62220,66664%201311,20821,17565%In the 14 years since 9/11, 400,000 gun violence deaths would equal about 28,570 each year. But the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mortality databases show that to arrive at this 400,000 number, Obama would have to include the “gun violence” called suicide (funny how propaganda often requires blurring definitions).

In the latest CDC reporting year, a full 65% of gun deaths were suicides. More to the point, the number of gun homicides has remained relatively stable since 2001 despite the population increasing 11%.

In gun control propaganda, using big and scary sounding numbers (regardless of their validity) has been a tool to motivate low-information voters. This too has been Obama’s tool of choice.

## Why He Won’t See Action

Despite trying to scare people, despite using phony data, despite creating false police endangerment scenarios, Obama’s demand for “common sense” gun control will be ignored. Public polling shows voters favoring gun rights over gun control, in no small part because these easily dissected falsehoods become Internet fodder in mere minutes.

Barack, people understand where the gang bangers roam. They also understand that your gun control day dreams do nothing to curtail their activities. If you truly hope for change, then you need to change course.

Notes:

1. Firearms Trace Data – 2014, BATFE [↩](#return-note-3531-1)

**Categories:** Assault Weapons, Police and Guns, Propaganda, States

**Tags:** gun control, misinformation, obama, police

---

### [Politico Propaganda](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/politico-propaganda/)

**Published:** October 28, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Politico, a publication of dubious integrity, headlined an article saying “Mayors to Congress: ‘Get a Backbone’ and Pass Gun Control.”

What Politico didn’t tell you was they stacked the deck.

The survey polled highly selected mayors and asked them a few gun control questions. Now, to Politico’s credit – and perhaps the only credit we can give them – they buried in their article the statement “while not scientific …” This is akin to saying the Pope isn’t a Baptist. Here is exactly how this survey sucked.

**BIASED MAYORS:** Anti-gun zealot Michael Bloomberg had an organization called Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), which he folded into his newer AstroTurf umbrella group Everytown for Gun Safety. A quick check of the responding mayors shows that a full 71% of the cherry-picked mayors are current members of Bloomberg’s group. Another 5% head cities where a previous Mayor was a member. That last bit is important because after many [MAIG members were busted for high crimes and violent felonies](http://armsandthelaw.com/GAIM/), some mayors who favored gun control no longer wanted to be publicly associated with MAIG or Bloomberg.

**STACKED STATES:** A competent survey would cover a broad number of cities from every state. Politico only sampled 26 states (56%). This isn’t remotely scientific.

**CALI CON:** Hand picking responding states was terrible in and of itself. But a full 20% of the responding mayors are from California, the state that the Brady Campaign brags has the toughest gun control laws in the country. A full 77% of responding California mayors are MAIG members.

**MAJOR FAIL:** The list of respondents also includes some of the poster children for gun control flops – places where there was strong gun control and an utter failure to control criminals. These incompetent mayors naturally want to blame someone else for their crime problems, hence their high scores for more gun control on the national level (which is a Bloomberg/Everytown demand … funny how Politico found mayors to agree).

The gun control industry has constantly been pinged for presenting bad information. Bloomberg groups have been caught so many times they often don’t cite the source for their wild claims. Now it would appear that Bloomberg’s billions have bought a publication.

**Categories:** Everytown, Propaganda

**Tags:** eveytown, gun control, mayors against illegal guns, politico, propaganda

---

### [New York Inanity](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/new-york-inanity/)

**Published:** December 27, 2015
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Prioritize New York! You are getting things mighty backwards.

Two recent news stories show how lackadaisical thinking harms public policy. The first was the state’s Attorney general bragging that he had [eliminated the plague of realistic-looking toy guns](http://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/new-york/2015/12/15/ny-toy-gun-sales/77366888/). The other headline was that half of the shootings and [40% of the 300 homicides in New York City](http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/gangs-represent-shootings-new-york-city-article-1.2464740) alone thus far this year were gang related. Keep in mind that NYC homicides are up over 5% this year (this despite the so-called [SAFE Act of 2013](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NY_SAFE_Act#Provisions), which enacted a wealth of new gun control laws … which appear to be doing nothing).

Ponder that. It is likely that toy guns resulted in zero deaths, yet gangs resulted in at least 120, not to mention the non-fatal stabbings, shootings, beatings and other pastimes gangs enjoy. With 375 different street gangs and a rising homicide rate, gangs would be an obvious priority in New York state. The Attorney general reported 189 toy guns sold into the state – 189 toys that caused no harm, and 120 dead in just the Big Apple from gang violence.

This is an example of ideology triumphing over logic. Rational people (which evidentially excludes New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman) look at the list of things they need to attend to, and take on the most troublesome first. Only after some progress is made there do they attend to the next worrisome issue. Gang violence and homicides tied to other criminal activity are the top priorities according to the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Tables. Yet in New York State, toy guns are considered a menace.

Given that [gang membership rates and gang violence profiles](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gangs-and-guns/) dwarf other nations, New York should find a new Attorney general, one who can prioritize properly.

**Categories:** Children and Guns, Crime and Guns, Crime Control, New York

**Tags:** gangs, new york, toy guns

---

### [Missouri Misstep](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/missouri-misstep/)

**Published:** January 8, 2016
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Hokum requires a bit of magic.

A popular con circulating in the gun control debates is that when the state of Missouri repealed their law requiring a permit to buy a handgun, that homicide shot up. Sadly, nobody told the FBI and the folks there who run the Universal Crime Reporting database.

Sadly, too, few reporters have found the online portal to this data, otherwise the meme might never have lived longer than the ***Bloomberg*** School of Public Health press release.

[![Missouri Homicide Rate - before and after repeal of permit-to-purchase](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Missouri-Homicide-Rate-before-and-after-repeal-of-permit-to-purchase-400x297.jpg "Missouri Homicide Rate - before and after repeal of permit-to-purchase")](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Missouri-Homicide-Rate-before-and-after-repeal-of-permit-to-purchase.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

[![Missouri Homicide Rate - before and after repeal of permit-to-purchase - 2](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Missouri-Homicide-Rate-before-and-after-repeal-of-permit-to-purchase-2-400x297.jpg "Missouri Homicide Rate - before and after repeal of permit-to-purchase - 2")](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Missouri-Homicide-Rate-before-and-after-repeal-of-permit-to-purchase-2.jpg) 

click for a larger, sharable version

So how did this formerly illustrious school pump forth this effluvium when the raw numbers do not support the claim? It all comes down to math. In the press release for the study, they note that they too pulled data from the FBI crime database. But they also note that “the analyses controlled for changes in policing, incarceration, burglaries, unemployment, poverty, and other state laws adopted during the study period that could affect violent crime.” Indeed, the paper itself states “The association between the repeal of Missouri’s PTP handgun licensing law on homicide rates was ***estimated*** using a quasi-experimental research design …” \[emphasis mine\]

In blunter terms, they used assumptions and mathematical modeling to say that the actual homicide rate was not the actual homicide rate.

It gets worse. Though they were intent on modeling assumptions about the effects of other issue on homicides, they decided not to do so when the data was inconvenient. Missouri’s homicide rate dropped steeply before 1999, the start of this study’s analysis. But the authors did not include this in the data despite Missouri’s permit law being in effect since the early 20th century. The authors said “Periods of dramatic change … are vulnerable to omitted variable bias in estimates of policy impact.” But what variables would be omitted? After all, the authors tested for data that is commonly available over extended periods of time, such as unemployment, poverty, incarceration, burglary, and the number of law enforcement officers per capita.

It is time to squash this talking point because data is data. Missouri homicides did not rise after the permit law was repealed, mathematical wizardry aside.

**Categories:** Crime Control, Licensing and Registration, Missouri

**Tags:** handgun, homicides, missouri, permit, repeal

---

### [No Mass](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/no-mass/)

**Published:** February 1, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

If you are losing, change the definition of the argument.

![define defile image](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/define-defile-image.png)There is a classic tale about Amtrak. They had a lousy on-time record. After months of investigation and planning, they implemented changes and quickly began boasting that their on-time record was fantastic. What they changed was the definition of “on-time” from plus or minus five minutes to 30 minutes.

When empirical evidence does not support gun control, members of the gun control industry change definitions. It is a classic propaganda technique and one that has found new life in this election cycle.

The news item which brought this to mind was when several reporters blindly echoed claims that mass public shootings were sharply on the rise. A quick dig into the data these reporters failed to vet showed that the definition of “mass public shooting” was itself inaccurate. The enduring and traditional definition of a mass shooting is one where the murderer kills at least four people, not including himself, in a single episode and location. It also excludes homicides tied to a crime in commission. A mass public shooting would be the same but in an area open to the public. [1](#note-3643-1 "Serial Murder, FBI, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime")

The report some journalists aped included any instance of two or more people died, regardless of location, regardless of circumstance, and included the gunman committing suicide.

I wish I could say that this form of propaganda was rare, but it seems to be the very skeleton of the gun control industry. Whenever a suspicious sound bite erupts from Michael Bloomberg’s alleged mind, it is far too often based on an irrational reordering of concepts. Here are some of the most commonly recurring definitions that the gun control industry and politicians have corrupted:

**MASS PUBLIC SHOOTING:** As described above, mass (4+ victims) people are murdered in a public location. One source for continued confusion are web sites like the Gun Violence Archive, which does not take great care in isolating data to conform to definitions established in criminology.

**CHILDREN:** In the last election year when gun control was a hot topic (the year 2000), gun control industry groups like the long defunct Million Mom March egregiously altered the definition of “child”. A child is a human who has not yet reach puberty. Yet some gun control groups, seeing that a very tiny number of actual children die from guns, included people up to age 24 in their statistics. When cornered, they changed their claim to be “children and young people” but by that time their con was uncovered (for the whole story on that, see *Chapter 3: The Children Who Never Were* in *[Shooting The Bull](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240701/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0983240701&linkCode=as2&tag=gunfacinfo-20&linkId=QLB4ZTIPRC2FCREN)*).

**GUN DEATHS:** About 2/3rds of the people who catch bullets as their last act shoot themselves. The gun control industry routinely includes such suicides in their “gun deaths” statistics. This leads to scary sound bites like “33,000 people died from gun violence last year.” This sound bite is then followed by stories of just homicides. Combined, the goal is to fool voters into believing that over thirty thousand people were gunned down in the streets when in fact 22,000 died by their own hand.

**ASSAULT WEAPONS:** Way back in 2004, a gun control industry group admitted that there was no definition of the phrase “assault weapon”. San Francisco’s own Legal Community Against Violence (which has morphed into the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence) noted that eight different jurisdictions banned anywhere from 19 to 75 firearms, using six differing generic classification schemes and several legal systems. In short, “assault weapons” are whatever the gun control industry wanted to include on ever-expanding lists (for the whole story on that, see *Chapter 1: The Guns That Never Were* in *[Shooting The Bull](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240701/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0983240701&linkCode=as2&tag=gunfacinfo-20&linkId=QLB4ZTIPRC2FCREN)*).

**UNLICENED DEALERS:** The dictionary – a very inconvenient book for propagandists – defines a dealer as “trader or merchant, especially a wholesaler”. In other words, someone in the business of selling a product. When the gun control industry wanted to demonize the 5,000 annual gun shows in America, they devised the term “unlicensed dealer” to denote anyone who sold a gun and did not have a Federal Firearms License (a ticket specifically for people who make a living selling guns). If you ran across your Uncle Jim at a gun show and sold him your spare hunting rifle, then the gun control industry claimed you were an “unlicensed dealer”.

## How to spot it

One good rule of thumb if that is a claim doesn’t match your personal observations, it might be bogus. When you heard that 33,000 people die from gun violence each year, you likely said “Nah. Can’t be.” When they said 13 children die every day from guns, odds are you thought “That’s a lot. Doesn’t match what I’m reading in the paper.” Rational disbelief is the first step.

The next part is where the work begins (and what we do daily at the Gun Facts Project). Read the entire story. Odds are you will find no attribution to a reliable source. The story might refer to claims made by a group within the gun control industry (ignorable). It might even point to one of the bought-and-paid-for schools that create horrifically bad research (like the Johns Hopkins ***Bloomberg*** School of Public Health). Or it could be a politician who on any given day could not distinguish their arse from their elbow.

If a credible source is cited, then you have to dig (or pass the baton to the Gun Facts Project). A good deal of credible *sounding* yet utterly worthless research needs to be picked apart, to identify bad methodology, suspect data sources, or irrational conclusions.

## What to do about it

The main thing is to keep talking to your neighbors, keep posting on Facebook, keep taking the basic talking points of the gun control industry and inserting empirical data into uncomfortable places. It is the long game, but over the last 15 years that the Gun Facts Project has been around, it has worked.

Notes:

1. *Serial Murder*, FBI, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime [↩](#return-note-3643-1)

**Categories:** Assault Weapons, Children and Guns, Mass Shootings, Propaganda

**Tags:** definitions, gun control, propaganda

---

### [Reducing Rampages](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/reducing-rampages/)

**Published:** February 9, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Stopping madmen with guns is – statistically speaking – best solved by people, not police, and people with guns.

Rampage killings (which include all the common varieties of incidents where a lot of people are murdered, be it mass public shootings, active shooter events, spree killings, etc.) are what scares voters. Most people know and avoid rough neighborhoods. They also choose friends and mates wisely. This keeps mayhem low, evidenced by the fact most gun crime is isolated in a [tiny number of towns with big city gang infestations](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-city-bang-bang/). It is the ***random*** odds of dying in a rampage shooting that spooks folks.

One fellow decided to see what keeps the most people alive in such incidents, and discovered citizens – especially armed citizens – are the most effective, and vastly more so than cops (see the section below on methodology, data quality, etc.).

## Survival is the objective

The researcher specifically sought to understand what stops a rampage killer after the shooting begins. In his study he ignored instances where the murderer killed themselves without confrontation (planned suicides) or where they turned themselves in without pressure. He sought to see what ended the carnage regardless of if the spree shooter lived or died.

After all, this is what we care about. We want to ensure that when lunatics erupt, the fewest number of innocent people perish.

## Eight to one advantage

Response SourceBody CountPolice14.3Unarmed Civilians2.6Armed Civilians1.8After combing through five different timelines of mass murder events in America, and weeding out incidents that were not germane to the study’s objective, the average civilian body count for the three primary means of suppression were remarkable. In the case of armed citizens responding to a rampage shooter, fewer than two people died. When forced to wait on police to arrive, over 14 were murdered.

This really should not surprise anyone. Two inarguable facts exist in these events:

**NO RESPONSE IS FATAL:** Even lunatics respond to attacks. The more likely an attack will be fatal, the faster the rampage ends be it from a dead murderer, or the rampage killer deciding to commit suicide (and note, most rampage killers do end their own lives once the cops arrive because they already planned on dying that day).

**FAST RESPONSE PREVENTS TRIGGER PULLS:** Like cancer, the sooner you intervene the more likely it is that people will survive. Tackling or blasting a rampage killer keeps them from shooting or stabbing more humans.

Here is where we see the intersection of two other realities. In the face of an armed attacker, people are reluctant to intervene. This is pure survival instinct. But an armed citizen faces less of that fear and is more likely to put an end to the rampage. Thus, statistically speaking, ***armed citizens are the best of all alternatives to the rare but very scary rampage shooter***.

## Methodology

The author spent time considering what to study, what to exclude, and how to get the data. Any imperfection in his study results from the quality of data, and it certainly is not worse than what other outfits (say, Mother Jones) used.

The author found five different timelines of mass killings, and combined them, eliminating the duplicates. Bravo to him for finding a reasonably reliable means for assuring as many instances as possible were included in the study.

He then went to the web to study each instance. Not only did he comb through news reports, but also odd resources like the MurderPedia web site. From this he gathered details to see which events were mass murders, which were ended by police or civilians, and how the event was terminated.

The two weaknesses of this approach both involve data quality, but neither is worrisome. First, though he used five separate lists, any one or all of them may have been incomplete. But for the purposes of statistical analysis, an incomplete list is not a show stopper. It may skew results a little in favor of civilian response since these events may be covered less in the media due to the lower body count.

The other issue is quality of reporting. Reporters are not as good as they once were, and many details may or may not be accurate. But assuming that there are no gross irregularities – such as saying police confronted the shooter when in fact a civilian did – then the data quality fits the methodology well enough.

**SOURCE:** Auditing Shooting Rampage Statistics, Davi Barker, July 2013 and updated thereafter

**Categories:** Concealed Carry, Mass Shootings, Police and Guns

**Tags:** civilian, police, rampage, shootings

---

### [Female Fibs](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/female-fibs/)

**Published:** February 15, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Driving a political wedge between wives and their husbands is a pretty lame notion. But leave it to a Michael Bloomberg apparatchik and an activist media outlet to give it a try.

In one other their growingly desperate newsletters, The Trace (a agitprop pump delivering unfiltered intellectual effluvium from Bloomberg’s lips) flaunted a story about how women were in immediate peril from husbands and boyfriends and guns. Using scary sounding numbers, devoid of perspective and comparison, the article attempted to make women believe a man she knew with a gun was her mortal enemy.

That would be your hubby.

## Starting with the leading premise

The Trace used as their data source a set of spreadsheets architected by the Associated Press, an organization who drags journalism down the wrong side of the bell curve. Long known for providing an anti-gun skew, the AP doubled down by segregating data from the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide dataset. They only documented women (obscuring the fact that men are vastly more likely to be murdered in America than ladies) and only looked at firearm homicides. They then broke down the number of instances where a firearm was used to murder a woman (getting kinda narrow here kids) by the attacker.

As any researcher will attest, starting with a premise leads you to the data you want. If your goal is to measure only female victims of firearm homicides, then that is surely the data you generate. [قانون البوكر](https://www.golfcolony.com/5o6puz3wrl/) If the more intelligent question is what endangers women the most in violent crime, you get an entirely different set of numbers and more useful perspective. Which is why the AP and The Trace did just the opposite.

## Looking broadly

**Relationship****Firearm****Non-Firearm****Percent Non**Family43333944%Acquaintance49843847%Stranger884031%Total1,01981544%When we look at the murder of women in the United States, we see a few interesting facts that The Trace studiously avoided.

Foremost, nearly as many women are murdered without guns as with them. One disadvantage women have is typically being smaller, physically weaker, and rarely invigorated by testosterone poisoning. An enraged man – husband, boyfriend or not – can dispatch a woman with blunt force trauma or with a common knife, perhaps of the domestic kitchen variety.

A woman with a gun, however, tends to change the statistics.

The Gun Facts Project noticed a while back that [women are murdered at higher ratios to men in countries with strict gun control](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/worldly-women-and-guns/). Does the close-to-even ratio of firearm-to-non-firearm homicides of women in the United State show a better balance of power between the sexes? Perhaps.

[![Homicide Rates of Females by Race and Age](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Homicide-Rates-of-Females-by-Race-and-Age-400x275.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Homicide-Rates-of-Females-by-Race-and-Age.jpg)The other thing worth noting is that firearm homicides of women constitute roughly 7% of all homicides. Thus, the average American woman need worry nearly naught for she isn’t a likely target. Of the women who were shot dead, there is a vastly disproportionate number of them that are black and between the ages of 18 and 24, an intersection that coincides with inner-city gang participation. The statistics include women killed by gang member boyfriends, a huge part of The Trace’s taradiddle.

## Fear not female friends

The Trace, being a bought-and-paid-for propaganda production facility cannot be faulted for trying to make women fearful. It is their job. But, oh, what a lowly profession. The Gun Facts Project prefers to provide enlightenment, perspective and to let women know that if they are not living in the gritty inner cities, they have little fear from their men or guns.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime Control, The Trace

**Tags:** boyfriends, guns, husbands, intimates, women

---

### [Booze, Bullets and Bunk](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/booze-bullets-and-bunk/)

**Published:** February 23, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

When propagandists panic, they show their own paranoia.

![everytown panic guns in bars](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/everytown-panic-guns-in-bars-400x301.jpg)I was forwarded an email from Michael Bloomberg’s agitprop organization, Everytown. In this email, they stated with authentic dismay and dread that in some states you can order a beer in a bar while having a holstered sidearm (providing you have a concealed carry license, a.k.a. CCW).

Sane people – which evidently excludes folks working for Bloomberg – would ask “Is this a problem?” Phrased more fully, “Do CCW holders enjoying an adult beverage in their corner watering hole cause problems?”

The answer is no. In fact, stats show it might actually abate violence.

## Shots and Glasses

In our Non-Brady Scorecard project (alas, no longer being published), we reviewed both pro- and anti-gun control laws, including allowing CCW holders to pack heat in pubs. Not many states allow this, but enough have had the law in place to at least get an acid test of if a CCW holder is likely to shoot up the joint if the bartender serves her a pinot grigio instead of a pinot noir (can you tell I’ve spent too much time in Napa Valley?).

Allowing people to carry concealed weapons in bars was *negatively* associated with overall violent crime, murder, rape, assault and even firearm homicide. [1](#note-3793-1 "I’ll note that the regression analysis does not strongly support covariance in measurement from state to state, but this is expected given the small number of states that allow CCW licensees to bring firearms into bars. That being said, the negative correlation was measurable") The only violent crime it didn’t seem to reduce was robbery, but few people are mugged in bars, so this is understandable.

## Everytown’s Evasion

Given this, Everytown’s attempt to panic people is more than pathetic. It is anti-intellectual (again, correlation to Michael Bloomberg is worth noting). The bigger question is why the carnage that Everytown touts is not occurring.

Ponder the nature of violence and the nature of people with concealed carry permits. People who commit murder, rape and assault are prone to erratic behavior and immune to the fear of legal penalty for their actions. People who apply for, train for and receive CCWs are not. In fact, they tend to be just the opposite – they are quite the Steady Eddie, civic civilian, law-and-order kind of folk. Whereas an assault and battery thug will more likely thump you after having a dozen beers, the CCW holder is out of the bar after one to get home to the wife and kids.

We know this because the stats show that [CCW holders commit crimes at far below the national averages](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/concealed-carry/#ccw-crime), or even state averages for those states with in-bar carry legislation.

The flip side is how having a CCW holder in a bar might change the disposition of the violence-prone. Long ago, in a pub far away, some friends and I were having a brew when a redneck trying to shoot pool bumped into us, then started chewing us out. We let the redneck pass. But one of my friends started discussing his firearm collection, then we started discussing out favorite ammunition, the scores a buddy got in a recent shooting competition, and other related topics. When the redneck bumped into us again, he was oddly polite.

Perhaps this is why violent crime is negatively associated with CCWs in bars. Just a hunch that most ruffians change their behavior when they are uncertain of the outcome.

## Quit Wineing Everytown

Everytown is charged with generating fear. When there is no need to fear, they have to spawn it anyway – that is what they are paid to do. But CCW holders taking their sidearm into bars should trouble you no more than when they take them into restaurants that serve cocktails, or shopping malls, or sporting goods stores, or the thousands of places you have been this month where someone was legally carrying.

Notes:

1. I’ll note that the regression analysis does not strongly support covariance in measurement from state to state, but this is expected given the small number of states that allow CCW licensees to bring firearms into bars. That being said, the negative correlation was measurable [↩](#return-note-3793-1)

**Categories:** Concealed Carry, Crime and Guns, Everytown, Guns and Crime Prevention, Propaganda

**Tags:** bars, ccw, concealed carry, pubs, violence, violent crime

---

### [Over-Studied](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/over-studied/)

**Published:** February 29, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

“We need to understand gun violence,” said the gun control industry talking head. “But the gun lobby has blocked all research.”

To paraphrase Emo Philips, some days it just doesn’t pay for a propagandist to chew through their leather restraints.

## The Data Exists … everywhere

Gun violence is one of the most ridiculously over-studied topics in American criminology. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has over 800 publications that mention “firearm violence” and over 500 data collections and surveys listed (albeit, some are updates of older ones). Google Scholar lists over 500 peer reviewed criminology studies with “firearm violence” in the title published in the last decade. When the National Academy of Sciences studied gun control and gun violence, they reviewed 253 journal articles, read 99 books, ingested 43 government publications, and even did some of their own original research. And this doesn’t even touch compilations and [solo tomes published by criminologists, economists](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-books/) and other people with deep research skills.

The data is deep, compelling, and points to gun control lacking efficacy in controlling violent crime. This is a problem for the gun control industry. It is akin to Maier’s Law of Research which claims that “If the facts do not conform to the theory, the facts must be disposed of.” In this case, if the research doesn’t support gun control, then you must claim there is no research.

Why would the gun control industry make such odd assertions given that anyone with a web browser could call their bluff? Because they want more research funded by taxpayers, and thus they want research to be politicized (funny, I thought politicizing gun violence research was the job of the Johns Hopkins \[Michael\] Bloomberg School of Public Health).

There is a history here, and it is important to understanding why some politicians champion the cause of taxpayer funded gun violence “research”.

## The Politicizing of Gun Violence Research

The last president who pushed gun control was Bill Clinton. In the face of a shift in public sentiment on guns, his administration oversaw some rather quirky stunts. One was when the Centers for Disease Control recruited doctors (who are not trained in criminology, statistics, or even research methodology) to create fiction posing as science (for a sadly comical review, [see this piece](https://drgo.us/?p=285)). The nub of the story is that the “research” the U.S. Government produced was horrid and seemingly designed to support gun control initiatives.

It was so because a head of the CDC said his goal was to create a public perception of firearms as “dirty, deadly—and banned.”

Weigh the realities. We have an over-studied topic that reaches clear conclusions about firearm violence and gun control. We now have a group of politicos who advocate reviving reprehensible propaganda practices to mislead voters to false conclusions. The only way this can be done is to claim universal ignorance in an age of enlightenment.

Factor this into your election year thinking (especially folks in California, where [phony research is an issue in Sacramento](http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/state-government/legislature-moves-to-fund-firearm-violence-research/)). Any candidate calling to revive federal or state studies on gun violence either is ignorant of the research that exists, or has an agenda unfavorable to facts.

**Categories:** Propaganda

**Tags:** dearth, gun violence, research

---

### [Gangs and Guns: 60-Second Gun Facts Video](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gangs-and-guns-60-second-gun-facts-video/)

**Published:** March 2, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

As promised during last year’s Gun Facts fundraiser, we produced a series of short, 60-second videos to educate the public on the more popular gun control myths. We are releasing one of these each month during this election year just to annoy politicians running for office.

Our latest video dives into why gangs and guns are *the* core issue in gun violence, and why every common gun control proposal does nothing to fix the problem.

The link to this new video is . Please click the “share” button under the video and pass it along to your Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr … friends.

The 60-Second Gun Facts video collection can be found at  (be sure to subscribe).

**Categories:** Uncategorized

---

### [Going Underground](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/going-underground/)

**Published:** March 7, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

If the rest of the world is any indication, Americans shouldn’t be worried about registering firearms or having them confiscated. Nobody takes such laws seriously.

While spelunking through a somewhat dated version of the *Small Arms Survey*, I ran across a master table that assessed how many guns were registered in countries that had firearm registration, and how many guns were held by people without the benefit of such paperwork. The numbers are compelling in a way that would make Hillary Clinton sputter.

## The Meme and the Meat

Depending on which gun registering country you examine, the percent of unregistered guns to registered ones ranges from 1/10th to 150 fold. A large set of European nations have more unregistered guns than those the government deigns to allow (Greece, France, Germany, Belgium). Even Merry Old England has about as many guns off the books as on.

Which goes against everything gun control industry candidates say.

Take for example the meme that claims strict gun control countries have lower crime rates than the United States. Despite this being [basically wrong](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/guns-in-other-countries/), and American violence being heavily influenced by [outsized gang participation](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gangs-and-guns/) and with members showing abnormally sociopathic tendencies, we must ask “with so many unregistered guns, which by definition are in criminal hands, why would the crime rates be so low?” Greece, a rather laid back nation \[when the socialists are not rioting over austerity measures\] has a rate of unregistered guns 25 times higher than South Africa, but a homicide rate that is 1/18th. Conversely Canada has roughly the same homicide rate as Greece but a registration ratio 1/35th that of the Cradle of European Civilization.

## Meaning, Not Memes

There are several reasonable conclusions we can draw from all this:

**Country****Registered****Est. low unreg­istered****Est. high unreg­istered****Percent Unreg­istered
(average low/high)****Homicide rate**Greece100,0001,500,0001,500,0001500%1.7France2,802,05715,000,00017,000,000571%1.0New Zealand335,000850,0001,000,000276%0.9Germany7,200,00013,000,00023,000,000250%0.8Brazil5,240,00014,840,0009,600,000233%25.2Mexico4,490,00010,000,00010,000,000223%18.9Turkey3,000,0004,000,0008,000,000200%2.6Belgium870,000600,0001,200,000103%1.6England & Wales1,742,300300,0003,000,00095%1.0Montenegro86,00040,00089,00075%2.7Poland314,641200,000200,00064%0.8South Africa3,737,676500,0004,000,00060%31.0Spain3,051,5881,500,0001,500,00049%0.8Finland1,600,00050,0001,500,00048%1.6Canada7,000,000900,0005,000,00042%1.4Netherlands330,000125,000125,00038%0.9Sweden2,096,79850,0001,500,00037%0.7Australia2,500,000400,000700,00022%1.1Norway1,320,000125,000125,0009%2.2**NOBODY OBEYS:** Even our Canadian friends, a rather law abiding bunch, seem to think registration laws are merely advisory. If the human condition is one of denying government the power to know you have a gun, would registration and confiscation ever succeed in toto? We know criminals elsewhere (think Mexican cartels) get guns. People who are otherwise law abiding citizens appear to do the same.

**CRIME ISN’T:** Once again we see other variables – culture, government corruption, economics – define crime rates more than gun ownership, legal or otherwise. If registration doesn’t impede gun ownership nor affect crime, what is its purpose? Apparently none.

**NOTE OF CAUTION:**The precise nature of what needs to be registered in each country (handguns vs. long guns) and the degree of strictness in enforcement likely skew the non-registration numbers a bit. The *Small Arms Survey* did not mention in context if the adjusted for this.
**SOURCES:**
FIREARMS: Small Arms Survey, 2003
CRIME: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

**Categories:** Guns in Other Countries, Licensing and Registration

**Tags:** international, registration, statistics

---

### [90% Wrong](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/90-wrong/)

**Published:** March 23, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The news was abuzz last week with reports about yet another doctor committing criminology malpractice.

This time, The Lancet, “a major contributor to health and medical media coverage worldwide” published a piece claiming that if just three gun control laws were passed on a national level, 90% of gun deaths would disappear. In the next article, statistical proof that Santa and the Easter Bunny were shacking up in Vegas was also provided.

It is sad wonder that the media actually ran with the story, though I do favorably note that fewer reporters did than normal. It takes only a little Googleing to gain perspective on gun deaths, and the real numbers about gun violence are even spilling onto presidential debate stages. So perhaps the media, having been lambasted for a few decades for not doing their homework, has started.

There were numerous [problems with “Firearm Legislation and Firearm Mortality in the USA”](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#firearm-legislation-and-firearm-mortality-in-the-USA). Most obvious are suicides, which for the year this study covered, constituted 63% of all gun deaths (suicides, homicides, accidents).

Here is the suicide gotcha. Nearly all firearm suicides are committed with legally owned firearms. When the doctors who penned this diseased study claim that background checks on guns and ammo plus firearm identification technology will stop all firearm suicides and most of homicides, the notion fails. Interviews with suicide survivors show that they contemplate the act for a long period of time, with ample opportunity to legally obtain firearms (if they did not already legally own them before becoming depressed enough to want to die).

Things get much worse for our desperate doctors. The crimes against criminology for which they are guilty are numerous. They used non-standard measurements (common in the study of disease spread, but not in criminology), modeled predictors of legislative outcomes, made claims about death reduction rates several times larger than state-by-state comparison of the raw number show, used a single year (cross-sectional to states) instead of time series, only used one independent variable to test, etc., etc., etc.

It is worth your while to let other people know what poor science Lancet published. If we are to make policy based on science, then the basic math needs to be correct. In this “study” it is not.

**Categories:** Uncategorized

**Tags:** lancet, laws, three

---

### [Auditing Australia](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/auditing-australia/)

**Published:** March 29, 2016
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

“Australia,” said Hillary Clinton, “\[is\] a good example …” concerning gun control.

But what precisely is it a good example of? Certainly not homicide.

## Major take-aways:

- 1996/97 gun ban and confiscation had no effect on homicides
- Ban may have led to increased sexual assaults
- Unarmed robbery fell faster than armed robbery, showing a disconnect

## The history and the current political claim

In the wake of a mass shooting in Port Arthur, the Australian government orchestrated a “National Firearms Agreement” whereby all the states within Australia would enact tougher gun control (the various states within Oz largely had their own localized gun control regimes). The system banned all semi-automatic rifles, all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, and created a restrictive system of licensing and ownership which was nothing short of draconian (then again, what can you expect from a government that [censors Internet content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia)). The government was legally compelled to compensate people for the loss of their firearms, so they instituted a program to bribe people to comply.

This was a bit of a failure. In the span of a year, Australians surrendered about a million guns (from a population of over 18 million people). Unofficial estimates conclude that maybe 20% of the gun owners in Oz complied with the new law. [1](#note-3880-1 "New National Gun Laws – are they cost effective?, Lawson, Review, Institute of Public Affairs, 1999") So claims about any serious fall in crime, much less an association of such to a gun ban, strain credulity. This includes certain politicians in the current American presidential election.

[![Australian homicides 1915-1995](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Australian-homicides-1915-1995-400x317.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Australian-homicides-1915-1995.jpg)SOURCE: FACTS and Figures, 1998, Australian Institute of Criminology

It should be noted that in terms of homicides, Australians never had that much to worry about. The place is huge, the population is small, and the people are spread out. This fact of geography – paired with a rather laid-back culture and a dearth of sociopathic street gangs – contributes to subdued hostilities. Australia’s homicide rate is about half that of the USA during periods of non-prohibition (where America banned alcohol and later drugs is strongly associated with abhorrent spikes in Yank homicides).

## So, what happened (or didn’t)?

The question then is whether the gun ban in Australia had any effect. The short answer is it did, but maybe not in a good way.

First, I need to point out that though various agencies of the Australian government collect criminology statistics, it can be a challenge to gather them. The single best and consistent source for homicide stats only went back to 1989, a mere seven years before the Port Arthur massacre. But that is enough to get a sense of the before and after.

[![Australia homicide rate before and after gun ban](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/australia-homicide-rate-before-after-gun-ban-400x287.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/australia-homicide-rate-before-after-gun-ban.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

What we see is that homicides in Oz were on the decline ***before*** the Australian gun “ban.” In fact, the slope of the homicide line for seven years before and after the ban ***are identical down to four decimal places*** (a slope of -0.0286 for my fellow number nuts). If the gun ban was designed to impede homicides, then it had zero effect (it is curious to note that homicides fell sharply starting around 2002 – but we’ll discuss this a little down the page).

The important points are that:

- Homicides were falling before the gun ban.
- They were falling after the gun ban.
- The rate of decline was identical before and after.
- Even allowing for a generous lead/lag affect, no homicide decline can be attributed to the gun ban.

## Foreign perspective

Perhaps more enlightening than this time-series for Australia alone would be to compare homicides in the same period with the United States. After all, American politicians campaigning for gun control and using Oz as a model need to prove that a Down Under approach is “a good example.”

[![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - Australia and U.S. homicides rates before and after Australia gun ban](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-and-U.S.-homicides-rates-before-and-after-Australia-gun-ban-400x325.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-and-U.S.-homicides-rates-before-and-after-Australia-gun-ban.png)click for a larger, sharable version

[![Australia Homicide by Weapon Types 1989 through 2010](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Homicide-by-Weapon-Types-1989-through-2010-400x267.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Homicide-by-Weapon-Types-1989-through-2010.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

[![Australia rape rates before and after gun ban 1993-2013](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/australia-rape-rates-before-after-gun-ban-1993-2013-400x297.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/australia-rape-rates-before-after-gun-ban-1993-2013.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

Using the same +-7 year span before and after the Australian gun “ban,” all other things being equal, the theory states that America’s homicides would have gone wildly higher since Americans were continuing to buy guns in annually increasing numbers.

Hillary is not going to be happy. As the chart demonstrates, homicides fell faster and further in America than Australia. Given Oz’s relatively low starting homicide rate, they perhaps had less free fall room than the United States. But this decline occurred during a period when America went from 16 to 36 states (32% to 72%) that allowed people to carry concealed firearms in public, and for which many of the states rolled back firearm restrictions.

Guns do not appear to have been a huge swing variable in Australian homicides. But other forms of murder were. A sad secret is that murderous Ausies never resorted to guns much. They have traditionally been much fonder of using knives, bare hands, blunt objects, fire, poison and other means.

But this is where we find some meaningful insight. Recall that we could not earlier explain the dramatic drop in homicides starting around the year 2002? What we see is that homicide by something other than guns and knives dropped rapidly starting in 2002. For the years 2002 through 2011, the rate of decline for “other” means of homicide fell nearly three times faster than for guns (oddly, both gun and knife homicide rates fell at about the same pace).

This last bit is vitally important to the gun control industry. They will point to the long-term homicide rate decline and claim that the gun ban was responsible. But it was not gun control or knife control that did the trick since most of the decline came from neither of these weapons.

## Other violent crime

A good question to ask is if any other effects came from the Australian gun “ban.” Were any other forms of violence abated or encouraged? The bag is decidedly mixed.

Of all mayhem, homicide was the second ***least*** affected after the gun “ban” (the least affected was manslaughter). Armed robbery fell, but ***unarmed*** robbery fell even faster. Even kidnapping dropped on a steeper slope. However, rapes rose. This is not proof that gun control leads to rape, but one cannot claim women are safer from such assaults in a disarmed society.

## So what is a “good example”?

Let’s lay to rest a few myths about politics, policy, Australia and guns.

- Like the UK, Australia has an admirably low homicide rate. But it was that way before gun control.
- Modern gun control in Oz did not change the rate of decline in homicides.
- The entire Australian gun “ban” was at best an exercise in how to waste millions in taxpayer money, because it had no demonstrable effect.

Hillary Clinton may be right. The Australian gun “ban” is a good example of what ***not*** to do.

## Update

When a political talking point gets debunked, a propagandist will change the meme. As of this update, the revised claim about Australian gun control in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre is that “it was design to prevent mass murder”.

[![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - Australia Mass Homicides 1970 through March 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Mass-Homicides-1970-through-March-2018-400x322.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Mass-Homicides-1970-through-March-2018.png)click for a larger, sharable version

Mass Homicides in Australia
Before/After 1990s Gun Control Initiative**Incidents****Deaths**22-yearsTotalAverageTotalAverageBefore0.130.080.130.08After0.090.100.090.10Per 1,000 PopulationWell, someone should tell the mass murders in Oz.

In this chart we show the number of Australian mass homicides and and the number of people killed each year. We added a 10 year moving average to smooth-out the trend. Even casual observation shows that the alleged desired effect – to reduce mass homicides – didn’t happen.

Just be be certain of the facts, we decided to also calculate the rate of events and deaths per the changing population. This actually made the matter worse.

In the cases of ***both*** the number of incidents and the total body count, on an average annual basis, both ***increased*** instead of going down. Perhaps not by much, but clearly in the wrong direction.

To summarize: the laws did not reduce homicides (more than the established downward trend) or mass homicides (which actually increased) and may have encouraged other violent crimes.

Good going Oz politicians!

Notes:

1. *New National Gun Laws – are they cost effective?*, Lawson, Review, Institute of Public Affairs, 1999 [↩](#return-note-3880-1)

**Categories:** Crime Control, Guns and Crime Prevention, Guns in Other Countries

**Tags:** Australia, gun ban, gun control, homicides, outcome, rape, results

---

### [Physician Perspective](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/physician-perspective/)

**Published:** May 24, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

[![Compare deaths from medical mistakes and guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/deaths-medical-mistakes-guns-400x317.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/deaths-medical-mistakes-guns.jpg)Next time your doctor asks you about guns, remind him that doctors are vastly more deadly.

Once in a while, an amusing perspective on guns and gore comes about. After debunking gun control myths, providing perspective is the Gun Facts Project’s second mission and our greatest joy. Perspective is valuable, and once people have a perspective about guns, crime, violence, danger and self-defense, their attitudes toward many things change. Especially about politicians.

And now, a change of attitude about their family quack.

## The Unamusing News

Recently, Johns Hopkins – the same institute that contains the ever anti-gun Bloomberg School of Public Health – [published a report](http://www.managedcaremag.com/news/study-suggests-us-medical-errors-kill-more-250000-annually) estimating that 250,000 people are mistakenly killed by the healthcare system. This quarter of a million former humans constitutes nearly 10% of all Americans who croaked last year.

Now, this isn’t to say that your personal doctor is a careless and indifferent lout who is out to kill you. It just means he is 741% more likely to accidentally send you to your maker than you are to encounter Jesus after a traffic accident.

## Gunning for A Cure

It also means his malpractice is 2,284% more likely to terminate you than someone with a gun. In fact, he’s 1,172% more inclined to accidentally off you than you are to off yourself with a firearm (suicide).

Which brings up our first instance of irony. The gun control industry has repeatedly hijacked the medical community to campaign about the danger of guns. It isn’t just Michael Bloomberg buying the alleged minds of doctors at Johns Hopkins. It includes the somewhat faded Joyce Foundation and their perpetual canard of classifying bullets as pathogens. For quite some time, activist have lured medical professionals into committing critical thinking malpractice, doing everything from producing laughable criminology studies to asking how many guns you own, then lecturing you not to.

## Guns, and Occasionally Doctors, Save Lives

The most interesting perspective though is accidental doctor deaths versus defensive gun uses (DGUs) that save lives. Though perhaps a bit dated, research by criminologist Gary Kleck indicated in the 1990s at least, that about 400,000 DGUs prevented death or serious injury from violent assault. [1](#note-3928-1 "Also see our recent analysis of the haphazard paper that the gun control industry is using to claim that Gary Kleck’s study is wrong.") This means you are about 60% more likely to save your own skin using a gun to defend yourself than a doctor is to kill you because he was hung over during surgery, a nurse pushed the wrong pill down your throat, or the VA misdiagnosed your lung cancer for a bad cold (well, that last one is farfetched – you would never get a VA appointment soon enough to be diagnosed).

## The Best Advice

Doctors, heal thyself. Then, per your Hippocratic oath, do no harm. This includes campaigning against the ability of people to defend their own lives as they see fit. Until such time as your body count drops well below those caused by homicides, then best that you attend to gout and not guns.

Notes:

1. Also see our recent analysis of the haphazard paper that the gun control industry is using to [claim that Gary Kleck’s study is wrong](http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#survey-research-dgus-hemenway). [↩](#return-note-3928-1)

**Categories:** Uncategorized

**Tags:** deaths, doctors, guns, mistakes

---

### [Number Nuts](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/number-nuts/)

**Published:** July 12, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

When both economists and criminologists think that concealed carry either decreases or does not change homicide rates, we may have scientific consensus.

## Main take-aways:

- Survey of economists and criminologists
- Only surveyed those who have published in peer reviewed publications
- Only surveyed those who studied empirical data
- Scientific consensus is that: 
    - Guns prevent crime more than cause it
    - “Gun free” zones are dangerous
    - Guns do not change suicide risk
    - CCW licensees are very law abiding
    - CCWs decrease or do not change homicide rates

## Studying People Who Study Guns

Both economist and criminologists study crime. They take different views of it, the former examining crime as a rational response to risk and opportunity, and the latter from a legalistic and bureaucratic process.

This caused economist John Lott and criminologist Gary Mauser to team-up and survey their peers on a small set of gun related issues. [1](#note-3959-1 "Researcher Perception of Lawful, Concealed Carry of Handguns, Lott/Mauser, Criminal Justice, Summer 2016") The goal was to see if there was a general agreement about some gun policy, and if the two camps differed greatly.

The short story is that both camps largely skew in the same direction on all questions, and their joint direction shows that guns and concealed carry licensees do not create a problem, and may well decrease violence. Interestingly, economists (who, frankly are a bit better at statistical analysis than criminologists) find guns to be a net societal good, more so than criminologists. As Lott and Mauser summarized in the report:

Researchers, as a group, believe that guns are used more in self-defense than in crime; gun-free zones attract criminals; guns in the home do not increase the risk of suicide; concealed handgun permit holders are much more law-abiding than the typical American; and that permitted concealed handguns lower the murder rate. All those results were statistically significant.

## Questioning the Questioners

Lott and Mauser asked five basic questions of mainly American researchers. The questions were:

- In the United States, are guns used in self-defense more often than they are used in the commission of crime?
- Are gun-free zones, areas where civilians are banned from having guns, more likely to attract criminals than they are to deter them?
- Would you say that, in the United States, having a gun in the home causes an increase in the risk of suicide? (note, this is an inverted question, so we present the data in reverse so the charts aligns properly)
- Would you say that concealed handgun permit holders are much more law-abiding than the typical American?
- How does allowing people to carry a permitted, concealed handgun affect the murder rate?

## Numbers Don’t Lie

[![What economists and criminologists think about gun control](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/economists-criminologists-gun-control-opinion-400x230.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/economists-criminologists-gun-control-opinion.jpg)Immediately, we notice that economists and criminologists believe that concealed carry does ***not*** increase homicide. More than any other topic, the alignment between people who crunch a lot of numbers on this subject is compelling.

What this chart does not expose is that 66% of economists and 28% of criminologists believe that concealed carry ***decreases*** homicides, and that 77% and 69% respectively think it either decreases or doesn’t change homicide rates (only 3% and 10% think it increases homicides, and the rest simply don’t know).

[![concealed-carry-effects-on-homicides-economists-criminologists](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/concealed-carry-effects-on-homicides-economists-criminologists-400x272.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/concealed-carry-effects-on-homicides-economists-criminologists.jpg)Ponder that for a moment. Aggregated, 73% of these professionals believe that concealed carry is good or at least not bad, and only 7% think otherwise. A more ringing endorsement cannot be found outside of an NRA convention.

Another interesting consensus, and as important to people murdered in movie theaters and bars, is that a full 55% of these researchers know that “gun free” zones are more likely to attract the kind of people who might shoot up the joint than keep them away (another 24% think lunatics don’t care much either way). Pair this with their opinions on CCWs stopping homicides and that guns are more often used in self-defense than in crime, and we see a clear picture: not preventing people from carrying firearms in public is a good idea.

Notes:

1. *Researcher Perception of Lawful, Concealed Carry of Handguns*, Lott/Mauser, Criminal Justice, Summer 2016 [↩](#return-note-3959-1)

**Categories:** Concealed Carry, Crime Control, Guns and Crime Prevention

**Tags:** concealed carry, criminologists, economists, gun control

---

### [The Other 1%](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/the-other-1/)

**Published:** July 26, 2016
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Some cities have targeted gang members and seen significant reduction in gun deaths. By treating the disease, they are rediscovering the cure.

## Major take-aways

- About 74% of inner-city homicides (and other violence) is caused by 1% of the population
- Motivating gangs to not kill works
- The motivation can be peer pressure, intervention or incarceration

## The never ending gang backstory

Criminologists have long noted that gun violence tends to be a [Big City problem](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gangs-and-guns/). Subcultures within urban centers spawn violence committed for little good reason. This then creates a disproportionate number of homicides.

But what we have also known all along is that even though America’s gang participation rate is huge compared to non-U.S. cities, the number of gang members in the general population is small. In one report (which we discuss in more detail below) gang members account for less than 1% of the population, though they are responsible for 74% of the homicides (and presumably a similar amount of non-homicide violence). It is worth noting that only a subset of these gang members are homicidal.

The cure has always been to focus intently on that 1%. [California voters did that in 1993](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/understanding-californias-crime-collapse/), and managed to drop the Golden State’s homicide rate from 40% above national averages down to the countrywide mean (all while national violence rates were falling).

Recently, I had two case studies lobbed over the transom, and they confirm that targeting gang members works. The interesting part is that how you target them is less important than getting it done.

## Wretched Richmond

[![richmond-ca-homicides-before-after-ons](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/richmond-ca-homicides-before-after-ons-400x253.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/richmond-ca-homicides-before-after-ons.jpg)I once lived next door to Richmond, California. To put it as politely as possible, Richmond is an arm pit. It is a town located next to an oil refinery, completely urban, graffiti filled and dangerous. A great place if you are looking for either soul food or a good torta … but only during daylight.

Growing sick of non-stop violence, Richmond decided to put boots on the ground. Not cops, but direct outreach to the gang members most likely to murder someone. Incorporating a variety of incentives (including outright financial ones), the city managed to bend the curve on homicides. When compared to cities of similar size and population density, but not in California, we see Richmond homicides dropping while other cities fluctuated or followed national trends.

We have to take Richmond’s “success” with one small grain of salt, for their homicide rate had been rising while national averages were dropping. But without intervention, and without obvious alternate explanations, it is hard to imagine Richmond’s murder rate dropping on its own (really, you have to walk through the town to have an idea of how bad bad can get).

## Cincinnati’s Slide

Cincinnati had a more interesting report, given the amount of up-front data they collected before implementing their Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV). Some of the gang stats discovered included:

- 91% of gang members had prior violent crime arrests
- 84% had prior felony charges (60% had collected five or more)
- The approximately 1,000 gang members (less than 1% of the population) was responsible for 74% of the homicides
- 81% of those homicides were done with a gun

[![cincinatti-homicide-rate-before-after-cirv](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/cincinatti-homicide-rate-before-after-cirv-400x253.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/cincinatti-homicide-rate-before-after-cirv.jpg)Cincinnati took a different approach than Richmond, though it still involved targeting just thugs who were known to be instigators of violence. Cincinnati:

- Called the bad actors into a court room
- Showed them how long they could go to federal prison on a gun charge
- Told them that any homicide by any member of their gang would result in a crackdown of the entire gang (establish peer pressure)
- Offered them some social services to provide an escape alternative
- Broadcast on radio that coordinated crackdowns would occur
- Kept their promise when the next few homicides happened

Like Richmond, Cincinnati showed progress. Perhaps the most interesting Cincinnati twist was revival of the old child discipline routine: everyone gets punished if someone breaks the rules. Gangs form in part due to peer pressure, so would a band of thugs who don’t want to do jail for crimes less than murder not put pressure on their homicidal brethren?

## The important bit

Criminologist are not surprised by any of this. It has been well established, and for a very long time, that most homicides (and gun homicides) are largely inner-city issues. The Gun Facts project noted that just [20 American cities account for 21% of the nation’s homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-city-bang-bang/), but only 7% of the population. That clusters of homicides occur within street gangs presents the problem and the solution in one instant.

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** cincinatti, gangs, homicides, richmond

---

### [Target on Taradiddle](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/target-on-taradiddle/)

**Published:** October 27, 2016
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

New York’s attorney general produced a report on crime guns and their alleged rates of trafficking.

I cannot say the report is flawed. Instead I must ask “Sweet Jesus, what kind of medications was he swallowing wholesale?!?!?”

## Major Take-Aways:

- Half of the crime guns had insufficient data to complete their analysis, so they ignored it.
- Most crime guns, by an overwhelming margin, still come from New York itself. The report claims that a full half of crime guns come from inside New York.
- In-state sourced crime guns exist despite New York having so-called “[universal background checks](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/universal-isnt/)“.
- No attempt was made to study guns that enter the state via normal human relocation, instead assuming such movements were intentional trafficking.
- Used an arbitrary and statistically inept scoring system to create a “trafficking index”.
- Demonstrated that their key indicator for trafficked guns accounted for a minority of recovered crime guns.
- Brushed-over the fact that the lion’s share of crime guns are recovered in New York City and the adjoining section of Long Island, which indicates a highly isolated problem source.
- Cited ranking systems devised by a gun control group as being “objective measures”.

For a brief run-down of the major problems with the report, see the [Target on Trafficking](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#target-on-trafficking) section of the [Gun Control Research Analysis](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/) page.

## Criminal Research …

The report by the New York attorney general is criminal research, meaning the product is criminal in nature. In the world of gun control policy propaganda, there is a never ending stream of equine effluvium. What New York State produced is not the worst, but my palomino senses competition.

What the authors wanted to do was to convince the public that crime guns in New York state were the fault of other states. The report reanimated to corpse of the failed “[iron pipeline](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/nyt-fiction/)” myth, at attempted to blame every state on the southern end of the I-95 corridor (clue to Eric Schneiderman’s staff: Those pesky Appalachian Mountains, and the more rural populations west of them might explain quite a bit about natural people/firearm migrations up and down the east coast).

The problem is that they did not succeed is substantiating anything. Between having to ditch half of the BATF’s gun trace records for New York, misrepresenting the definition of “trafficking” and pulling a trafficking scoring system out of their southern most orifice, the report falls below even junk science standards.

### Score one for propaganda

The most glaring irregularity is the issue of *time to crime* (TTC herein). This is the span of time from when a gun is retailed (perhaps legally, perhaps not) and when it is recovered at a crime scene.

The report claims that a short TTC (less than three years by their arbitrary standard) is the primary measure of the *probability* that a gun was intentionally trafficked. So too is *border crossing* (BC), which means the gun was retailed outside of New York, but used in crime in New York.

Here’s the big, obvious problem. A gun must cross the border to have been trafficked, by definition. They gave BC a 10% weighting. However, a gun legally purchased in another state might legally enter New York in less than than three years, but the “researchers” gave this an 80% weighting in their ***trafficking*** index. The critical variable (BC) was discounted and the unsubstantiated variable (TCC) was lionized.

Now, this is where it gets really squirrely. Only 19% of the guns New York traced fit this report’s definition of having a short *time to crime*. Less than 1/5th. So to create a high *trafficking index* and inappropriately indict other states for New York’s woes, **they had to give short *time to crime* statistics a very heavy weighting**. Without doing this, their index would not have show what they wanted it to show.

### Ignore the people

One failure of this report is in basic math. The so-called “iron pipeline” states are large in both land and people, compared to the states that surround New York. hence, the I-95 southern states plus Penn have 85% more people, and likely at least 85% more guns, that New England turf.

With New York being a financial capital, many people are constantly moving in and out of there, including people coming and going from the “iron pipeline” states. They bring legally obtained guns with them. Since theft (after importation) is a primary path for guns to enter underground markets, this should have been part of the analysis. After all, 185% of the North East regional population is significant.

## Iron Pipeline my arse

It is inarguable that out of state crime guns in New York come mainly from southern states along the I-95 corridor. But it is also inarguable that most Big Apple crime guns come from New York state, not elsewhere. It is also inarguable that statistical analysis based on faulty baseline data, irrational modeling and a seemingly preformed conclusion should not be entertained seriously by anyone.

It is also inarguable that Eric Schneiderman should be ashamed of himself.

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, New York

**Tags:** gun trafficking, new york, target in trafficking

---

### [Suppressed Insights](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suppressed-insights/)

**Published:** January 21, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

I wonder if I can buy a suppressor for the car stereo the teenaged kid across the street has. As best as I can tell, he not only has the loudest sound system since Woodstock, but he also possesses the worst taste in music of any human. It is a terrible combination.

Which brings us to the suddenly erupting debate over suppressors for firearms. Since I am not a firearms enthusiast, but as someone who dabbles in music, technology, engineering and other forms of mayhem, the rush to modify the regulatory and tax burden for obtaining firearm suppressors is interesting.

The propaganda backlash is sadly amusing.

## A bit of background

Back in the early 20th century, when America had massive social upheavals – from bathtub gin to communist agitators – fear drove the creation of the [National Firearms Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act) (NFA), America’s first federal brush with gun control. Knowing that the Second Amendment would not allow for the outright disarming of people, the NFA sought to make various firearms and components, perceived (rightly or wrongly) as being favored by radicals and criminals, to be unaffordable and difficult to obtain. This included machine guns, short barreled shotguns and rifles, explosives and suppressors. This was achieved by extracting a high tax every time one of these devices was transferred as well as enduring a lot of paperwork. {ED: An interesting side note. The infamous and always incorrectly cited *[Miller case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Miller)* was a tax evasion case because the defendant, a rum runner, did not pay the transfer tax for his sawed-off shotgun.}

Is this sound policy? It is if you believe Hollywood.

## Suppressing “Silencer” Non-sense

There are no “silencers”. The historical origin of the term appears to be a firearm sound suppressor that used “silencer” as part of its brand name.

The fact is no firearm can be “silenced” and the *pew-pew* sounds you hear in movies is irrational (did you really believe that an industry based on fiction would accurately portray how firearms work). *[Suppressors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressor)*, on the other hand, are real devices that *reduce* the sound pressure (perceived loudness) of a firearm.

But they do not quiet-down a gun enough to change its utility for crime.

## How loud is a gun compared to a hysterical actress?

Guns are loud. Quite loud in fact. In a tidy laundry list of things that make noise, your average handgun is sneaking up on NASA rockets in terms of noise (having once worked at NASA, and having watched Space Shuttles launch from as close a distance as NASA would allow, I can attest that a high caliber revolver at close range can be obnoxiously loud compared to a space ship three miles away).

**Source****Decibels****Suppressed****Loudness****a pin dropping****10** **2****rustling leaves****20** **4****whisper****30** **8****computer****40** **16****refrigerator****50** **32****conversational speech****60** **64****dishwasher****70** **128****toilet flushing****75** **181****alarm clock****80** **256****passing diesel truck****85** **362****lawn mower****90** **512****food processor****95** **724****motorcycle****100** **1,024****rock band****110** **2,048****emergency vehicle siren****115** **2,896****thunderclap****120** **4,096****balloon popping****125** **5,793****air raid siren****135** **11,585****jet engine at takeoff****140** **16,384****firecracker****145** **23,170****.45 ACP handgun****157****131****53,232****9mm handgun****160****126****65,536****shotgun****160****137****92,682****.357 magnum revolver****165****N/A****92,682****howitzer cannon****175** **185,364****rocket launch****180** **262,144**The chart to the right lists some common noises. The typical [decibel](http://www.noisehelp.com/decibel-scale.html) level (a measure of sound pressure – the sonic push against your ear drum) for each is included. However, the physics of sound and how humans perceive its *loudness* are different. Using a handy [decibel/loudness calculator](http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm), I added the human perception of just how bloody loud things are.

The calculator could not translate how loud the neighbor kid’s car stereo is. It apparently involves hyper mathematics and produces numbers too large for computer displays.

I also borrowed data on suppressors from a number of vendors to show how little changes when you add a suppressor to a common handgun. Several things are important to note:

- Suppressors don’t reduce decibel levels much. On average, between 20-35 decibels.
- When the second favorite handgun for street criminals (the 9mm) is suppressed, it is about as loud as a balloon popping, which given the startled expressions of people at New Year’s Eve parties, is plenty loud. Larger caliber firearms with suppressors range in loudness between air raid sirens and jet aircraft.

{ED: Before any gun enthusiasts get technical with us, yes you can suppress revolvers. But it is more difficult and uncommon, so we flagged it as N/A for the sake of simplifying the policy discussion}

## Ever see a street gang member with a suppressor?

The policy question then is why suppressors should be suppressed. What is the public goal in making it (more) expensive and tedious to obtain them?

### It does not change crime prevention or investigation

The reduction in noise is insignificant enough to not matter to law enforcement. This is due to how citizens hear, perceive and react to noises … especially in different social regions.

We know from empirical data that [most gun crimes occur in the inner cities](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-city-bang-bang/). The social norms in gang turf are wildly different than in the suburbs. A gunshot in a rough neighborhood may go unreported. a slightly quieter one would as well. Suppressors also make no difference in crime investigations since the perceived loudness of a gunshot doesn’t help determine who the shooter was, from which direction the gunfire came, etc.

## Suppressors are inconvenient for criminals

Without going into the physics behind suppressors, note that a suppressor has to be relatively large and heavy.

![9mm-with-suppressor](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/9mm-with-suppressor-400x142.png)In most cases with handguns (the firearm of choice for criminals) the suppressor doubles the length of the handgun. Criminals rely on concealing their guns, and anything that makes this more difficult is undesirable. Since the average street thug isn’t bothered by his odds of being arrested and incarcerated for shooting someone, a suppressor simply makes his job harder by making concealing his gun impossible.

Suppressors are not lightweight either. A common 9mm handgun, say the Glock 17, weighs 1.4 pounds. A common suppressor for a 9mm handgun weighs slightly more than a pound. **The effect of adding a suppressor to a pistol is to make it twice as heavy, twice as long**, and thus one fourth as useful to a common criminal.

### You need to rob a bank to buy one

Prices of suppressors vary, but I grabbed a catalog from one vendor who several gun enthusiasts told me was typical. They charge between $870 and $1,000 for a suppressor. Various reports say that black market 9mm handguns go for $150 or less on the streets. Even if the cost of a black-market suppressor was cut in half, that means a crook would pay three times as much to make his handgun a little quieter (and a lot heavier, and a lot less concealable).

## So, who really wants these long, heavy, expensive things?

In two words, hobbyists and hunters.

For some people, guns are their weekend activity. It is not at all uncommon for a pistol shooter to fire 1,000 rounds of ammunition in an afternoon as they polish their skills. Even wearing hearing protection, the repeated, up-close concussive force of a gun being fired can add to cumulative hearing loss. A sports shooter may benefit – health wise – by adding a suppressor.

Hunting is an interesting situation you need to [read more](https://besthuntingadvice.com/best/hunting-face-mask/) about to understand. A suppressed rifle isn’t quiet … up close. At the distance from the hunter to the deer, and perhaps more importantly to the other deer off in the woods, it matters a lot.

The loudness of anything – except perhaps the neighbor’s kid’s car stereo – dissipates over distance. The further away the deer is from a gun, the less loud the gunshot will sound. [Sound levels decrease by 6 dB every time the distance is doubled](http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-distance.htm). Since some hunters take deer from two football fields away or more, this is important to the hunter (not so much to the deer). A common hunting rifle (30-06 caliber) will still produce about 112 decibels of sound (louder than a rock band) as the deer hears it two football fields away. With a suppressor, it would be less than 90 decibels (quieter than a passing diesel truck). Other deer, a bit further into the woods might not hear a thing, making them new targets for a hunter if his first target is missed.

## The non-problem

Any law has to serve a purpose, or it becomes a mere burden to taxpayers and citizens alike. Since common criminals don’t want suppressors, then the existing laws seem to have no bearing on crime (professional hitmen might want suppressors, but if they do, they likely can get them with ease). Since the current law does nothing to reduce crime, then it only hinders sportsmen and women.

Clearly, it is time to rethink and re-legislate.

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** firearm, silencers, suppressors

---

### [Constitutional Carry Certainty](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/constitutional-carry-certainty/)

**Published:** February 22, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Back in 1988, when Florida became the first large state to enact shall-issue concealed carry, there was a great deal of uncertainty about the outcome. But their post-passage lack of bloodshed led to all but a handful of backwards thinking states (talking to you California) to pass similar legislation.

The same thing might be happening with permitless carry (a.k.a. constitutional carry), where the whole concealed carry licensing process is jettisoned.

I got curious about the criminological realities of permitless carry when a Gun Facts fan emailed to ask what we knew about the subject, which was nearly nothing. The reason is that aside from one outlier state, this is a new phenomenon and statistics are limited at best. But curiosity is a demon, and we had to take a peek. After a little number crunching, our extremely preliminary investigation concludes that permitless carry at very least causes no mayhem.

## The State of the States

Aside from Vermont, who simply never outlawed the practice of concealed carrying of firearms, [only a handful of states](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_carry) (as of this writing) have enacted permitless carry. Eleven states to be precise, though the nature of one state’s law (Arkansas) is in dispute. Of these, only three states – Alaska, Arizona and Wyoming – have had permitless carry long enough for a reasonable before/after evaluation of what the effects might be.

Though this gives us a glimmer of an insight, I’ll wait until we have at least five viable, contemporary models, and at least one from a high population state, before making any solid evaluations. What we can say for certain is that:

## Problems Abound

We encounter a small spate of problems with analyzing the three states where permitless carry has been enacted and has been in force long enough to measure violence with any statistical trend accuracy:

- Two of the states (Alaska, Wyoming) have very low population densities. Lack of human adversarial encounter reduces the odds for violence.
- One state (Wyoming) has such low violence rates that the CDC refuses to report estimates for fear of statistical instability.
- One of the states is on the Mexican border and has reported immigration related violence.
- One state (Alaska) is geographically isolated from the others, and thus makes certain “border analysis” impossible.

But, we do have trending data and can compare the states against the whole of the United States.

*NOTE:* Two of the states allowed for reviewing crime statistics ±5 years of data, except for Wyoming which only allowed for ±4 years.

We compared the permitless carry states against all other United States. Since all other permitless carry states enacted their laws *after* the last available year of data from the CDC, it is a reasonably pure comparison, save the Pacific Island Outlier, Hawaii, which has a few peculiar aspects to gun policy.

We only had time to measure firearm homicides as the key variable. It would be interesting to contrast rape, assault and other forms of incivility, but until the Gun Facts project enrolls enough [Sustaining Donors](https://www.gunfacts.info/donate/) (hint, hint, hint) we must keep this analysis brief.

### No Statistically Meaningful Covariance

From a pure numbers standpoint, two of the three permitless carry states showed no covariance with national numbers (meaning that their firearm homicide rates did not move in unison with the rest of the country). A secondary test (R Squared) showed the national and state numbers did not model to one another. The two states were the very low population density states, so this is a large part of the explanation.

[![arizona constitutional carry firearm homicides vs. surrounding states](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/arizona-constitutional-carry-firearm-homicides-vs-surrounding-states-400x280.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/arizona-constitutional-carry-firearm-homicides-vs-surrounding-states.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

[![arizona constitutional carry firearm homicides vs. united states](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/arizona-constitutional-carry-firearm-homicides-vs-us-400x280.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/arizona-constitutional-carry-firearm-homicides-vs-us.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

[![alaska constitutional carry firearm homicides vs. united states](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/alaska-constitutional-carry-firearm-homicides-vs-us-400x288.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/alaska-constitutional-carry-firearm-homicides-vs-us.jpg)

The third showed more correlation (0.79) and a significant “coefficient of determination” (R Squared, 0.63). At worst this means Arizona trends moderately with the rest of the country despite of permitless carry.

The charts are a bit more insightful. In Arizona, firearm homicides had been on the decline *before* permitless carry was enacted, approaching levels with all non-permitless states (permits required or, functionally speaking, no carry allowed) neighboring states, sans California (excluded for a variety of reasons). But the decline continued after passage and the rate of firearm homicides is still lower than any previous year.

On a national level, the situation presents itself more vividly, with Arizona’s firearm homicide rate dropping and staying below the rest of the country.

Alaska has a somewhat volatile firearm homicide rate, which makes review a bit more tedious. When we add a moving average trendline though, we see that firearm homicide rates after passage of permitless carry were not much different, and at the end of the period were lower than before passage.

We did not chart Wyoming because 70% of the years in question had firearm homicide rates so low the CDC would not report the aggregate rates since doing so would be statistically fragile. The same applies to Vermont.

At the point, with limited data, we can safely say that passing permitless carry laws does not make firearm homicide rates increase, and may have a small but meaningful downward pressure on them.

## Constitutional Carry Conclusion

We may be seeing history repeat itself. When Florida said they were going to facilitate “shall issue” concealed carry permits, the gun control industry cried that the streets would run red with blood. Didn’t happen. With states now realizing that bad actors don’t get concealed carry permits, and that good actors don’t misuse guns, states are experimenting with bypassing bureaucracy and allowing the good actors to carry without paperwork. The gun control industry is crying that the streets will run red with blood … except that so far they aren’t.

**Categories:** Concealed Carry

**Tags:** Constitutional Carry, firearm homicides, gun control

---

### [Guest Blog: The Truth Behind the Myths of Purchasing Firearms](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/guest-blog-the-truth-behind-the-myths-of-purchasing-firearms/)

**Published:** April 27, 2017
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

*By Casea Peterson*

Barack Obama’s careless statement that “it’s easier for you to buy a handgun and clips than it is for you to buy a fresh vegetable,” is just one example of misleading rhetoric about purchasing a firearm in the United States. Sadly, it has become quite the common misconception that guns are easy to purchase, perhaps too easy, which is why so many criminals are armed with them. Unfortunately, this huge misunderstanding of the actual laws and regulations–which have been in place for years–has tainted the public’s perception of the true process that’s required of every gun manufacturer in order to avoid penalties.

The half-truths and blatant lies about gun sales and how criminals obtain firearms in the first place have either zero basis or are being partially reported to skew the public’s view of gun facts. It is unfortunate that the public has been so misled about the truth behind current gun control laws.

To form an accurate opinion on guns in this country, people should take time to research and further understand the facts behind crime rates and the actual purchasing processes of firearms before believing the assumptions handed to them. It is important to remain informed and to actively pursue understanding of the legal process behind buying a firearm, the true crime rates and statistics and what law enforcement really thinks about it.

### Gun Shows Debunked

The media has misconstrued the ease with which a citizen can buy a firearm at a gun show in order to support their claim that such conventions are supermarkets for convicts and criminals looking to obtain fire power. The Bureau of Justice Statistics show that [only 0.7 percent](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fuo.pdf) of state inmates purchased their firearms at gun shows, and that [less than one percent](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf) of “crime guns” were bought at gun shows.

Licensed gun dealers, through online sales and non-private sales, are held to [stringent rules](https://oig.justice.gov/reports/ATF/e0707/exec.htm) set by the federal government. The Office of the Inspector General reports that gun dealers with federal firearms licensees through ATF are legally permitted to manufacture, import or deal in firearms. Regardless of the venue, licensed gun dealers are legally permitted to complete the sale of a firearm with a proper background check and a gun show is no exception to this rule.

The popular misconception that 25-50 percent of vendors at gun shows are “unlicensed dealers” is a perfect example of yet another piece of false information. There is no such thing as an “unlicensed dealer,” only private sellers — people who buy and sell antique firearms as a hobby (i.e., not a business). In fact, the only conceivable way someone could come up the a 25-50 percent figure of “unlicensed dealers” would be to include all dealers and vendors at the event, not only firearm vendors. That figure includes knife makers, ammunition dealers, clothing vendors, even bumper sticker vendors.

### Purchasing Process

When licensed dealers are making off-site gun sales, they are legally obligated to abide by the federal laws and regulations set forth to deem the sale of a firearm legal. The process in-store is no different than the process at gun shows or online. To undergo a background check, prospective gun buyers are required by federal regulations to [present photo-identification](http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-01-427NI) issued by a government entity.

As for private individuals, under federal law, these individual sellers are allowed to freely sell or transfer a firearm to any person living in the same state without requiring a background check. However, federal law also states that private sellers who have any knowledge of the recipient falling into [one of the prohibited categories](https://www.atf.gov/firearms/identify-prohibited-persons) below are committing a crime and can be sentenced up to 10 years in prison.

When purchasing a firearm online, the process is the same as buying in store or at a gun-show. The person purchasing the firearm under their name will be required to complete and pass a background check in accordance with their jurisdiction. Once they are cleared and deemed legally permitted to purchase a firearm, the sale can be processed and the information can be saved. The firearm cannot be shipped to the purchaser but to a local dealer or store. For example, if you were to purchase a firearm from [Smith & Wesson](http://www.cabelas.com/category/Smith-Wesson-Brand/108972180.uts) through a reputable retailer, you would only be allowed to pick up the firearm from a local store.

As you can see, the purchasing process isn’t a walk in the park, and it is most certainly not as simple as buying groceries. There are legal steps that must be taken in order to correctly, and legally, obtain a firearm from any licensed dealer in order to limit the amount of criminals and dangerous individuals who can get their hands on guns. Guns that are obtained illegally should be the main focus of gun control in order to protect citizens.

### The View Behind the Badge

In truth, law enforcement officials do not report concerns about firearms purchased at gun shows, which shouldn’t come as a surprise when the National Institute of Justice reports the current rate for “crime guns” that were originally purchased at gun shows is 0.7 percent and steadily dropping. Consider the gun policy and law enforcement survey held in 2013 by PoliceOne stating that out of 15,000 officers, [91 percent](https://www.policeone.com/Gun-Legislation-Law-Enforcement/articles/6186552-PoliceOne-Gun-Control-Survey-Are-legally-armed-citizens-the-best-solution-to-gun-violence/) believe concealed carry should be permitted to citizens “without question and without further restrictions.”

Even the 17th Annual National Survey of Police Chiefs & Sheriffs found that 94 percent of law enforcement officials believe that citizens should be able to purchase firearms for self-defense and sporting purposes. The FBI concluded [in their 2006 study](http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/policecommission/materials/band-readahead.pdf), Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation’s Law Enforcement Officers, that in contrast to media myth, none of the “handguns connected with this study were obtained from gun shows” and zero percent of firearms acquired from gun shows were used in police killings.

*Casea Peterson is a writer and content marketing specialist in the outdoor industry. She has been writing personally and professionally since 2009, but when she doesn’t have her pen in hand she can be found somewhere in the woods hiking, hunting, or exploring the Pacific Northwest.*

**Categories:** Propaganda, Uncategorized

**Tags:** gun, law, sales

---

### [Leaden Assumptions](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/leaden-assumptions/)

**Published:** May 11, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

“If you cannot ban guns, then make shooting very expensive.”

That is not an exact quote from any of the gun control industry organizations, but a sentiment stated by many therein and [a few people who should know better](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZrFVtmRXrw).

In an ongoing attempt to find ways of making owning arms unaffordable, parts of the gun control industry have targeted shooting itself. Since nearly all common bullets are made of lead, and since lead *in sufficient quantities* can be dangerous to the health of people, there has been a concerted effort to ban lead bullets.

But, since bullets are “arms” and cannot be banned, and since there is little evidence that casual shooting causes people’s exposure to lead to be dangerous (aside from being shot), a move is afoot to do the next best thing, make recreational shooting illegal or expensive.

## Home on the range

**Number of Studies****BLL**31

> 10 μg/dL

18

> 20 μg/dL

17

> 30 μg/dL

15

> 40 μg/dL

The latest assault comes from [a study published in Environmental Health](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#lead-exposure-at-firing-ranges). In this report, the authors aggregated studies of employees at firing ranges and their blood lead levels (BLL). BLL is measured in micrograms per deciliter (μg/dL). This review of literature delivers the number of studies which the reported BLL levels as shown in the table on the right.

In the summary of this report, the authors state “Nearly all BLL measurements compiled in the reviewed studies exceed the current reference level of 5 μg/dL recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health … Thus, firing ranges, regardless of type and user classification, currently constitute a significant and unmanaged public health problem.”

Now, let’s examine the con.

## How much lead is bad?

Querying Google for “blood lead levels toxic” reveals a table from the CDC, the same source as cited in the study.

It is of interest that the CDC baseline was originally 10 μg/dL (more on this later), but that they lowered the bar after 2012. We know the previous administration was ardently environmental, to the point of absurdity. Hence, the actual negative effects of a 10 μg/dL BLL was likely a side effect of a rabid regulatory bias and not any material need.

Going back to the table above, we see the upper bounds of measurement to be 40 μg/dL. This is important because, according to the CDC web site, the “prevailing Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) lead standards allow workers removed from lead exposure to return to lead work when their BLL falls below 40 µg/dL.”

Ponder that statement. If your blood lead level was so high that medical science felt it was wise to remove you from the work place, you are good to return once your BLL slides below 40 μg/dL.

Here is where it gets even more interesting. Until 2012, the CDC felt that a BLL of 10 µg/dL was OK ***for children***. So, the bar for kids was 10, and the limit for adults was 40.

Yet in the Environmental Health published study, this range was considered so dangerous that proposals for new regulations of shooting ranges were prescribed.

## Curiouser still

The sources of the data in this study are of concern. The data was global, and in non-US countries, some BLL levels were significantly higher than average. For example, a study of shooting ranges in Taiwan showed BLLs between 22 and 60 µg/dL. Of U.S. ranges, high BLL numbers appeared in very few studies, and at first glance they seem to be measured in shooting instructors, people who spend all day around possible lead exposure. But even these people commonly had BLLs below 40 µg/dL (a handful of cases were above, and some of those appear to be not the mean BLL, but measurements taken immediately after a training session).

Oddly, “Police Small Arms Instructors” in England had high BLLs scores – 33 to 50 µg/dL. California “Firing Range and Gun Store Employees” in one study ranged between 20 and 41 µg/dL.

## The political angle

Anti-gun politicians may carry this torch with the intent of making the operation of firing ranges unprofitable or recreational shooting expensive. The report, without impact analysis, suggests “improved ventilation systems and oversight of indoor ranges, and development of airflow systems at outdoor ranges. Eliminating lead dust risk at firing ranges requires primary prevention and using lead-free primers and lead-free bullets.”

The bottom line remains. The aggregate of the domestic ranges shows BLL ranges between 16.7 and 30.3 … more than we might like but well within the range medical science has declared as safe for adults.

**Categories:** Uncategorized

**Tags:** lead, ranges, shooting, toxicity

---

### [Charting Homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/charting-homicides/)

**Published:** June 9, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

At the Gun Facts project, we like to add perspective. This is the opposite of what various gun control groups do, which is to mask perspective.

That perspective stuff can be inconvenient.

## What is the measure

One claim by the gun control industry is that more guns leads to more murder. Over the years we have demonstrated that, on an international level, there is no statistical correlation between gun ownership rates and homicides. Some of our charts have become quite popular with the media as they vividly show your odds of death are significantly higher outside of America.

But we were never happy with the measurements. Homicide rates are too abstract. We wanted a better way to display the chance of being murdered against the chance that someone you met owned a gun.

In this very brief spasm of charting, for each country that reported them, we took the homicide rates (odds of being snuffed) and divided it by the private firearm ownership rate. Murder/Stockpile.

## Fun with charts

The first chart was a standard issue world map. It is interesting in as much as the United States is in the same color bands as most of the civilized and war free world. In fact, numerically speaking, the U.S. of A. was the 16th lowest of the 170 countries we could extract data for.

[![Homicide Rate per Gun Ownership Rate - international - map](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Homicide-Rate-per-Gun-Ownership-Rate-international-map-400x264.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Homicide-Rate-per-Gun-Ownership-Rate-international-map.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

[![Homicide Rate per Gun Ownership Rate - international - treemap](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Homicide-Rate-per-Gun-Ownership-Rate-international-treemap-400x296.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Homicide-Rate-per-Gun-Ownership-Rate-international-treemap.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

That’s right. Only 15 other countries have fewer homicides per rate of gun ownership. But what do you expect when you are up against the likes of Iceland.

Knowing the numbers under the map made us realize that the story was not really being told. After all, when you are an indiscernible share of brown from 50 other countries, all distinction is lost.

Treemaps (those funny looking charts composed of different sized rectangles) are fun in that they show the relative degree of the problem more effectively. As you can see, there are certain countries where dying is very likely when owning a gun is not.

But we ran into a problem. When we charted the data, we could not locate the United States in the treemap. So we had to color code it just to find it.

It is the little green spec in the lower right corner.

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, Guns in Other Countries

**Tags:** guns, homicide, map, ownership, rates

---

### [Gun Polling Alignment and Surprises](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-polling-alignment-and-surprises/)

**Published:** July 2, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

There were two significant polls covering gun topics this week, but we’ll only focus on today. It is interesting for a few reasons, but important in part because now three of four trending polls have rough agreement concerning how many households have guns (though data indicates all these estimates are low)

## Whew, Pew

For gun owners, [Pew’s recent survey](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/americas-complex-relationship-with-guns/) work belatedly agrees with the polls taken by ABC and Gallup, noting that around 42% of households report having at least one gun. The other firms score a bit higher.

But Pew used to say that only 33% of households had guns. They changed their survey technique to ask the question twice, presumably in different ways, and they believe this explains the change. It is interesting nonetheless that there is now some general consensus, ignoring the chronic female underreporting of gun ownership (even this Pew poll shows a three-point response gap).

The unsurprising result from Pew’s survey is that “Many American gun owners exist in a social context where gun ownership is the norm. Roughly half of all gun owners (49%) say that all or most of their friends own guns. In stark contrast, among those who don’t own a gun, only one-in-ten say that all or most of their friends own guns.” Unsurprising, but it tends to prove the point pro-gun factions make: that the best way to win-over an anti-gun person is to take them to the range. Make them part of your circle of friends.

![Gun owner perception of freedom](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/pew-1.jpg)A key problem lies in the perception of “gun rights” and education. Notice that in terms of most civil rights, gun owners and non-gun owners are closely aligned in their beliefs concerning freedom. They part company over guns, with non-gun owners not believing that gun rights are essential to their own sense of freedom.

Of political note, 48% of Independents report owning, or living in a home with a gun. Independents are now the largest voting bloc in the country, outnumbering either Republicans or Democrats. Between this and the larger Republican gun owner base, I’m rather surprised that Democrat politicians would even mention gun control as it alienates nearly half of their swing votes.

The most surprising insight from the Pew survey was that a mere 33% of gun owners like the idea of permitless concealed carry, a system which is rapidly expanding in the United States. As we noted in some preliminary research, [permitless carry does not appear to change crime rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/constitutional-carry-certainty/), so the reluctance of gun owners is perplexing.

The second most surprising factoid is that a full 52% of non-gun owners “could see owning a gun in the future”. This appears to be largely skewed because many non-gun owners have owned guns in the past. These drop-outs explain the disconnection between gun ownership rates and support for gun owner rights.

![Perception of gun violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/pew-2.jpg)Pew confirmed media-influenced misperceptions about gun violence. As John Lott recently noted, [most Americans live in counties where no homicides occur](https://crimeresearch.org/2017/04/number-murders-county-54-us-counties-2014-zero-murders-69-1-murder/), with or without guns. But television news reports shootings where they do occur, broadcasting to the entire country. Entertainment media doesn’t help the misperceptions. As we noted long ago, [20 American cities have 21% of all homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-city-bang-bang/) … and only 7% of the population.

### Notes on Pew’s approach

I could complain about Pew’s methodology, but I won’t (they use a panel who do “self-administered” web surveys each month, which has a self-selection bias, but they built their panel via random-digit dialing, and that improves survey reliability).

That being said, Pew fumbled. Quoting their report “Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home.” This is odd, and answering a question like “Are there guns in your home?” might lead to a miscounting, and on the low side.

What is interesting though is that the initial contacts are made using both English and Spanish. Participants who have such weak English skills are more likely to not be citizens, and certainly not raised with American sensibilities toward constitutional issues, like gun owner rights. We covered this quite a bit in the blog post [Polling Pollution](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/polling-pollution/), which showed why the gun ownership rate among Americans is not declining.

**Categories:** Uncategorized

**Tags:** owners, pew, poll, survey

---

### [Stanford Stumble](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/stanford-stumble/)

**Published:** July 24, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

’m having doubts about Stanford University. My wife died in their care, and now they are supporting some suspect researchers who like to mathematically model non-lucid, if not outright insane, crime stats.

## Quick Take-Aways

- Paper claims right-to-carry (RTC) laws increase violent crime by 13–15 percent.
- Uses mathematical modeling to “predict” what crimes rates would have been without RTC.
- Serious methodology flaws.

## The usual suspects

The paper in question (“Right-To-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Controls Analysis”) received some press notice, but not as much as I would have expected given the paper’s outsized conclusions. Perhaps reporters are getting smarter about the quality, or lack thereof, of some gun policy research.

The list of sins in this paper are monumental. It is good that this is just a “working paper” and not published in a peer review journal, which given its lack of methodology rigor, means the paper might never be seen in such periodicals.

### Synthetic Control

Without getting into arcane details, “[synthetic control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_control_method)” methods are mathematical systems for evaluating the effects of something (e.g., right-to-carry laws) with a control group. This, in and of itself, is not bad; but done wrong, it is a handy tool for deceiving people.

In *theory*, the researcher wanted to compare a state that had passed RTC against states that had not. The problem is that the comparisons were irrational.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Map-of-Texas-Compare-400x401.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Map-of-Texas-Compare.jpg)Take Texas. Texas’s RTC law came into effect in 1996. At that time, there were 19 states that had no RTC, providing a vast range of data to use. But the researchers only paired Texas with California, Nebraska and Wisconsin. I snapped a copy of a recent county-by-county homicide maps created by the Crime Prevention Research Center to make a few points here (the three control states are in a copper hue).

- Only California has a border problem similar to Texas (unless bands of dope-smuggling Canadians are routinely entering Wisconsin).
- The homicide maps show that two of the comparison states have almost no homicides, and thus likely have similarly low rates of other violent crimes.
- Culturally, things could not be more different. Imagine if they compared Alaska with New York.

The researchers noted that they chose these states for mathematical convenience, and not for the sharing of critical dependent variables well known for association with violent crimes. The bigger question is why they did not tally Texas against all remaining non-RTC states for some reasonable pre- and post-enactment period.

### Clumping, like cat litter

There are many forms of violent crime, and each has different responses to RTC.

For example, most rape occurs in homes. RTC is very much a street-protection mechanism. Thus, RTC is not applicable to rape, by and large.

[![CCW states vs Violent Crime - 1986 through 2012](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/CCW-states-vs-Violent-Crime-1986-through-2012-400x307.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/CCW-states-vs-Violent-Crime-1986-through-2012.png)The researchers lumped all violent crime together. For some research, aggregate violent crime rates are okay to use. For RTC, which has this very public aspect to it, aggregation is inappropriate. This chart shows the great disparity between different forms of violence, with aggravated assaults leading the pack. Aggravated assaults, and robberies, tend to occur frequently in public, and expanded RTC may have contributed to their decline throughout the 1990s and early twenty-first century.

### RTC <> Really Tight Controls

RTC laws are not identical. I don’t have the time to dig into all forty-two of them, but some researchers have claimed that the variability in permitting requirements is vastly different enough, that this study should have taken into account this variable. The notion is that those states that passed RTC later on made the process more restrictive (e.g., Illinois, where in Chicago it is very difficult to obtain a permit). This would skew the stats significantly, especially with the quasi-cherry-picking synthetic control models used.

### Intrastate Effects

One huge problem is that even states that have RTC may have backyard problems that bend the curve on the overall numbers.

[![Chart showing violent crime rates between U.S. Michigan and Detroit](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/michigan-detroit-u.s.-violoent-crime-400x281.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/michigan-detroit-u.s.-violoent-crime.jpg)Let’s look at Michigan. By and large, Michigan has a violent crime rate slightly higher than the US as a whole. But it also has Detroit, major portions of which resemble a war zone … because it is one. Were Michigan not dealing with the murders in Motown, the overall state crime rate would drop dramatically.

Yet this paper does not appear to take this into account. The same could be said for Illinois, which technically speaking is an RTC state, but also has to deal with Chicago’s South Side. Likewise with Washington State and the violence cluster around the Seattle/Tacoma region.

### Crime and Time

Take the observation above, and pair it with the fact that violent crime fell from its peak in 1993 to nearly all-time lows today. If one is modeling recent RTC states against non-RTC states who have enjoyed falling crime rates as well, then we see statistical flux – small movements in crime in the RTC state amplified against a national trend.

Part of this is that along with coast-to-coast and border-to-border RTC (with a few slovenly hold-out states) came many other get-tough-on-crime bills. As we noted, much to the chagrin of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, [California’s sudden and steep drop in violent crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/understanding-californias-crime-collapse/) last century was not from gun control laws, but from two laws targeting crime, including one specifically targeting gun crime. This is non-trivial because, as California shows, a non-RTC state with a steep decline in crime due to anti-thuggery laws will pervert the comparison with RTC states. Indeed, since California’s violent crime rate was head-and-shoulders above most of the country in the early 1990s, using California in the control group of the synthetic control method produces a huge bogey.

### The Invisible Elephant

However, the one thing not mentioned in this study is the known violent crime rates of concealed carry licensees (CCW). From the states that report these details, we see CCW holders commit nearly no crimes. Statistically null. If RTC induces violence (which it does not), then it would have to do so indirectly. Any indirect association has at least one other variable involved, and this paper does not explore that.

## Index and Ignore

The gun control industry will continue to pimp this paper, so you need to index this summary of this rather bizarre paper and feed the link to anyone thinking Stanford gun policy researchers are worth further consideration.

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** ccw, RTC, stanford

---

### [Concealed Millions](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/concealed-millions/)

**Published:** July 27, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

I missed a tiny tidbit on my first pass through a recent [Pew poll covering gun issues](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/06/22/americas-complex-relationship-with-guns/). The key paragraph is:

> “Among those who own a handgun, about one-in-four (26%) say they carry their gun with them outside of their home all or most of the time, a share that rises to 41% among those who think of their local community as unsafe.”

The number was surprising to me only in that the concealed carry permit holders I know make holstering a standard part of their grooming process. If anything, I thought the rate of daily carry would have been higher.

What does this mean in terms of guns on the street? The number is rather big.

The Crime Prevention Research Center’s current CCW estimate is nearly 17 million permit holders in the United States. This, however, does not include everybody carrying in states where permits are not required, the so-called “constitutional carry” states (a growing base).

The resulting math is simple enough. At any give time of day, there are over four million private citizens carrying guns in public … and without the bloodbath so many in the gun control industry predicted.

This may explain why the [polling concerning concealed carry has recently tipped](http://www.gallup.com/poll/186263/majority-say-concealed-weapons-safer.aspx). My on-the-ground experience has been that it takes skeptics in any state that becomes a shall-issue state about 3-5 years before they collectively say “Well, nothing bad happened. Guess it is an OK/good thing after all.”

**Categories:** Concealed Carry

**Tags:** concealed carry, permits, rates

---

### [Unscientific American](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/unscientific-american/)

**Published:** October 15, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The fastest way to destroy a brand is to do the opposite of the brand’s claim. Scientific American’s brand is now hopelessly corrupted by publishing the most unscientific of screeds.

A recent piece in Scientific American titled “More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows” is a case study in the anti-science of cherry-picked data. Were I in a more charitable mood, I might assume the author, Melinda Moyer, of merely suffering from acute confirmation bias syndrome. However, the oversights were so vast and so egregious that I cannot bring myself to believe such. Hers was likely not a sloppily written article, but rather adroit agitprop.

My initial clue that Scientific American had devolved into a propaganda rag came in the first paragraph that wasn’t literary fluff (the same tired, suicide saturated misstatement about “guns took more than 36,000 U.S. lives …”). The next was when she cited …

## “The Rarity of Self-Defense”

A central theme in Melinda’s missive is that guns are not often used to prevent crime. This will come as a surprise to the L.A. Times, The Police Foundation, Gallup Poll and any criminologist not financed by Michael Bloomberg.

Melinda launches her misdirection by stating, “Claims that people frequently need guns to defend themselves from criminals usually rely on one 1996 survey.” She then pairs that one study (Kleck and Gertz) with just one other opposing study (Hemenway). This handily ignores the dozens of others that largely cluster around the same rate of defensive gun uses (DGUs) that Kleck and Gertz estimated.

One oddity about Melinda citing Kleck is that she doesn’t cite his book *[Targeting Guns](https://www.amazon.com/Targeting-Guns-Firearms-Control-Institutions/dp/0202305694/ref=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til?tag=gunfacinfo-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=4LMQAZABQZT2RUMZ&creativeASIN=0202305694)*. We’ll assume she studiously avoided reading it, because such broad perspective would not help her arguments.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Chart-of-defensive-gun-use-DGUs-studies-1-400x303.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Chart-of-defensive-gun-use-DGUs-studies-1.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

In *Targeting Guns*, Kleck included a table of a bunch of surveys – criminology, media, polling companies – and how many annual DGUs they measured. Discounting the notable outliers, we see an average of just under 2,000,000 DGUs, which is a shade below Kleck and Gertz’s 2,549,000. The notable outliers include the L.A. Times on the high end and the Ohio and Tarrance studies on the low end.

The box on the far right of the chart, the tiny little speck of blue, was not in Kleck’s book. This is the opposing piece Melinda included in Scientific American. As you can see, two things are obvious: no serious study of the subject of gun control would have omitted all these other studies, and Melinda Moyer is not a serious student.

But let’s dive into a critical issue. The low-ball study Melinda used to “refute” Kleck and Gertz’s work used a radically different and highly controversial source data, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). To give you an idea of how controversial this data is among criminologist, Kleck provided an entire discourse on the subject in *Targeting Guns*, the book I presume Melinda avoided reading. Kleck begins “The one survey that is clearly not suitable for estimating the total number of DGUs is the National Crime Victimization Survey.” Kleck then spends three pages noting that:

- Respondents are not asked about DGUs unless they respond that they had been victimized. Defensive use of a gun *prevents* victimization, so the largest group of potential respondents is excluded from the survey.
- It is well known that incidents of rape and domestic violence are underreported, so this triggers underreporting of DGUs for these events.
- Respondents are not asked specifically about DGUs, which makes direct answers a hit-or-miss proposition.
- The survey is not anonymous, which researchers well know induces response bias (people tend to be more forthcoming when their answers cannot be tied back to them).
- The survey is conducted by the government, which changes the responses from many who don’t want to admit things that could become evidence. That the NCVS is sponsored by the Justice Department, and respondents are told this up-front, is a major wrinkle.
- Creates a response bias for out-of-home defense by people lacking a CCW (since location specifics are noted).

The question then becomes “Did Melinda know about these other studies, and the major flaw in the one she chose to cite?” I cannot answer that and I suspect neither Melinda nor the editors at Scientific American will.

## The CDC’s buried history

Melinda’s article is peppered with references to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and how Congress put an end to government disease research employees studying guns as if they were pathogens.

Before exploring the CDC’s rather sinister history on this topic, and Melinda’s misreporting of it, I need to note that gun control policy and the criminology of it is one of the most insanely *over-studied* topics there is. And you don’t have to take my word for it. The Bureau of Justice Statistics lists 31 publications on the topic of just “gun violence” along with 20 data sets and surveys. Google Scholar (broad search for scholarly literature) returns 6,440 responses to the search term *“gun violence” criminology*, and another 1,250 for *“firearm violence” criminology*. Amazon lists 29 books on *gun/firearm violence* in the “public affairs and policy” category.

Thus, Melinda’s parroted claims that research is being hamstrung is evidentially not based on research.

Questions about the CDC become quite obvious, yet go unexplained by Melinda or Scientific American. Those questions, and their answers are:

- Did the CDC ever do gun policy research: Yes.
- Was it any good: Sweet Jesus, no.
- Why: Mix medical researchers with politicians to study criminology …
- Why was the CDC research discontinued?

That last question has been answer by many, but Melinda answers it in rather odd ways. Most astonishing she quotes Mark Rosenberg, a former director at the CDC who several accounts claim was sacked from the agency. Mark was on record, while temporarily employed at the CDC, as saying “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like we did with cigarettes. Now it \[sic\] is dirty, deadly and **banned**.” (emphasis mine)

There is a tidy bit to ponder there. First, it is an activist statement (“We need to …”), not a dispassionate discourse on data. Second, it is clearly opinionated (“dirty, deadly …”). Finally, it is a call for legislative action (“banned”) which most federal agencies avoid, because policy is Congress’s job. In short, Mark was attempting to set an agenda and using hyperbole to promote it.

Were he a lone propagandist at the CDC in that era, we could write off the CDCs unscientific skullduggery as a comical episode of bureaucratic hubris. But in the same year, Dr. Katherine Christoffel, the then head of the CDC-funded organization “Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan” said, “Guns are a virus that must be eradicated… They are causing an epidemic of death by gunshot, which should be treated like any epidemic…you get rid of the virus…**get rid of the guns, get rid of the bullets**, and you get rid of deaths.” (emphasis mine)

Like Scientific American, the CDC traded their brand as unbiased researchers in pursuit of the truth for the more tempting role of political zealot. Naturally, this did not end well. And what makes this a bit more amusing is …

## Arthur the doctor, not the drunk (perhaps)

Melinda repeatedly cites the works of Dr. Arthur Kellerman, a fellow with a rather tarnished reputation. This was in no small part due to the CDC employing Kellerman to do research on guns, and criminologists laughing themselves silly when they read his work. Melinda evidently didn’t get the punchline, though she did echo his poorer conclusions.

Before going too far, just note that Kellerman’s premier work (*Protection or* Peril) once garnered two separate entries at JunkScience.com, and I used to be able to cite the top six methodology problems with his research off the top of my head. It is, in a word, horrid.

Right off, Melinda cites one of Kellerman’s original doozies that concluded “a gun in the home was associated with a nearly threefold increase in the odds that someone would be killed at home by a family member or intimate acquaintance.” What Melinda did not disclose was that:

- 85% of the deaths in this tiny, tiny survey were suicides, well above the national average.
- It only looked at deaths and not at the broader crime deterrence factors (in other words, only counted justifiable homicides).
- Did not control for criminal interaction (such as a thug murdering another thug in the second’s home).

This last bit is painfully important. Kellerman and other alleged researchers never separate criminal actions from non-criminal ones. By obscuring these realities, and by routinely including suicides into the mix, they make simple and direct policy approaches disappear. Various studies show that intervention reduces criminal misuse of guns (see the [California case](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/understanding-californias-crime-collapse/)) and better mental health care would reduce the 63% of gun deaths via suicide that occurred last reporting year.

Which brings us to Melinda’s focus on guns and suicides. Citing Kellerman and others, Melinda claims that “a gun in the home was tied to a nearly fivefold increase in the odds of suicide.” Yet at the Gun Facts project, we have noted there is [no correlation between gun ownership and suicide rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/). The odds of using a gun to commit suicide goes up if there is a gun handy, but the odds of a successful suicide don’t change (as noted in our suicide review, Americans use guns, Canadians use poison, and Lithuanians use rope).

InstancesRatio to DGUsSuicides22,0181.1%Homicides12,9790.7%DGUs1,988,136100.0%She makes similar claims about home accidental shootings, assaults and homicides being much more likely than defensive gun uses (DGUs), but does not directly cite the specific research. But let’s make the math simple. Taking the average of DGUs from the non-outliers studies listed in Kleck’s book, and comparing that to the most recent gun homicide and suicide numbers available, we see that in-and-out of the home, the odds are more in favor of gun ownership than not. Odds of “home only” gun use changing this huge disparity is, for practical purposes, bupkis.

## But wait! There’s more!

I won’t dig deep any longer, but here is a brief list of other offenses to rational research in Melinda’s article:

- Says guns are not a deterrence to violence, but never notes the multiple incarcerated felon interviews conducted by criminologists wherein felons say it does.
- Holds up Donohue’s synthetic control analysis (which by its nature is assumption based) and the artificial crime numbers it creates to refute John Lott’s research using real crime numbers.
- Notes that gun ownership is sometimes correlated with high homicide rates, but never contemplates which is the cause and which is the effect (many studies show gun ownership rises *after* the crime rate does).
- Melinda litters her prose with irrational literary ad hominin, such as “wave their gun around during a bar fight” as an example of armed self-defense (our own analysis indicates that “[allowing people to carry concealed weapons in bars](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/booze-bullets-and-bunk/) was negatively associated with overall violent crime, murder, rape, assault and even firearm homicide.”)

## Unscientific, Unsubscribe

I won’t pick on the publisher and editors of Scientific American any more. Everyone can be duped, and it appears that they were. Regardless of if they were, or if they were intentionally being propagandists, you should cancel your subscription. Scientific American is no longer a scientific journal.

**Categories:** Media Mendacity

**Tags:** crime, guns, Scientific American, violence

---

### [Gun Death Trends - 1999 through 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-death-trends-1999-through-2016/)

**Published:** November 3, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

With fresh data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) causing the predictable odd media reporting, I wanted to post a mini-blog showing what is and what isn’t interesting about the numbers.

## Raw changes

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Gun-Death-Trends-1999-2016-bar-chart-2-suicide-homicide-unintentional-legal-intervention-400x328.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Gun-Death-Trends-1999-2016-bar-chart-2-suicide-homicide-unintentional-legal-intervention.jpg)Foremost, take the chart at the right with a grain or three of salt. The changes are important, but the scale is misleading.

Of note, the firearm homicide rate is not rising much. Though is went up significantly in 2016, the firearm homicide rate is still lower than from 2002 through 2007, save one year. If we prematurely assume that 2016 was a fluke year, then realistically speaking the firearm homicide rate remains at multi-decade lows.

Before the self-defense leagues get too excited about the orange bar, the 36% increase in legal interventions is of interest, but not significant. Legal intervention shooting deaths (a.k.a. justifiable or meritorious homicides) make up about 1.3% of all fatal shootings. This is a small number and thus a small increase in the raw numbers looks like a big increase.

## The trends

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Gun-Death-Trends-1999-2016-stack-chart-suicide-homicide-unintentional-legal-intervention-400x271.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Gun-Death-Trends-1999-2016-stack-chart-suicide-homicide-unintentional-legal-intervention.jpg)The stack chart makes that last point well. The rate of legal intervention firearm deaths is so small compared to other firearm death categories that it isn’t even visible on the chart.

That being said, we clearly see that suicides are where most new gun deaths occur. Hard times tend to increase suicide rates, and American suicides have steadily increased 20% since the year before the Great Recession started. But, as we have details before, the [presence of a gun does not affect the suicide rate](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/).

## Summary

Little has changed aside from suicide rates rising (and thus gun suicide rates rising in lock-step) and the accidental firearm death rate continues to plummet, down 50% from the start of the millennia.

**Categories:** Accidental Gun Deaths, Crime and Guns, Crime Control, Guns and Crime Prevention

**Tags:** deaths accidental homicides suicides

---

### [California-Nevada Gun Shows - Not What The Media Reported](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/california-nevada-gun-shows-not-what-the-media-reported/)

**Published:** November 12, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Page 10 in the appendix is a handy place to put a statement like:

> No significant relationships existed between gun shows and firearm injuries along known trafficking routes or when California’s 10-day waiting period was excluded.

That is where one of many key clues about the lack of viability of a recent piece or research was filed. That tax money from the federal (NIH) and California (U.C. Berkeley) governments was used to generate this paper and the minor media frenzy that followed should give voters something to consider at election time.

## Key takeaways

- Raw data shows lower rates of California death and injury after gun shows.
- Even after questionable adjustments to the data, rates of change in gun misuse were small, possibly within random variations.
- Controls for other influences (confounding variables) were odd and incomplete.
- Unexplained, undocumented adjustments leave the quality of the research in grave doubt.
- No verification that the misused guns were acquired at gun shows at all, much less Nevada gun shows.
- Ignored that California residents buying at Nevada gun shows must still go through the legal importation process.

## A good idea gone wrong

Many a good research project have been fouled by attempting to prove something. Such is the case with “[In-State and Interstate Associations Between Gun Shows and Firearm Deaths and Injuries](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#nevada-california-gun-shows)“. The question was interesting, namely do the strict gun laws in California, compared to the less strict laws in Nevada have any particular effect on guns deaths and injuries. For number nuts like the Gun Facts researchers, this would be of great interest.

Painfully, like any B-grade horror film, everything starts to go wrong with this research.

### Adjusting data, and leaving no trace

As confirmed by the quote above, copied directly from the study, rates of gun misuse in California did not change for the worse after a Nevada gun show. Oddly, rates of gun play fell.

[![California gun deaths and injuries rate change before and after gun shows](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/California-gun-deaths-and-injuries-rate-change-before-and-after-gun-shows-400x276.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/California-gun-deaths-and-injuries-rate-change-before-and-after-gun-shows.jpg)QUICK NOTE: For Nevada, the raw number of firearm deaths and injuries before shows was small. Over the eight-year period of the study, there were 44 within driving distance of the shows for two weeks before the shows. This is in the statistical noise realm, and thus the entire study, at least on the Nevada side, is suspect.

This is where the rather strange relationship between researchers and the media can turn one’s stomach. Using the raw data (before statistical “adjustments”), we see that all categories of California firearm misuse, in the regions under investigation, did not change *except* for firearm accidents, which went down.

That would make a very uninteresting headline. However, after applying their “adjustments”, the researchers claimed a *statistically* significant increase in California gun play, which the L.A. Times and other former dens of journalism called a “sharp rise”. The lack of inquisitiveness by L.A. Times reporters is regrettably common.

### Maladjusted?

Ignoring maladjusted reporters, we have to then ponder the adjustments to the data that researchers employed. It is not always wrong to model data, to correct for known or anticipated issues with data quality. But that isn’t the case with this work.

Troublesome are some modeling constants that are undocumented. The authors adjusted for “seasonality” without explaining it, explaining why this was an important issue, or presenting the math. They also had an “offset for the number of at-risk persons” without documenting their definition of an at-risk person or the constant employed.

### Clues buried in the text

We can dismiss any research that does not fully document their processes, and thus this one is rejected as both inaccurate and incomplete. But parts of the research are entertaining for what they reveal.

> For Nevada gun shows, changes in firearm injuries remained statistically significant for shorter (1-week) and longer (3-week) periods but were not statistically significant for smaller geographic ranges (60-minute drive), which yielded very few cases, or larger geographic ranges (120- and 180-minute drives for California and Nevada guns shows, respectively), which covered large portions of California.

Unpacking that bit of academic jargon, rates of gun misuse did not change much if you looked at short or long periods around gun shows, or if you looked at places nearer to or further away. This is a complex way of saying time and distance were not variables. Which then brings us to the paper’s main claim, that gun misuse rises (after “adjustments”) immediately after gun shows and within a moderate driving distance of the event.

The authors make some incorrect statements, such as:

> Nevada does not require background checks or documentation for private transfers and places no regulations on gun shows.

The problem with this statement is that [interstate private transfers must go through a Federal Firearm Licensee](https://www.gunlaw.com/out-of-state-gun-shows/) (FFL). Gun shows in Reno and Las Vegas, Nevada have California FFLs on-site to facilitate such. So, the regulations are indeed in place and are being observed by people in the gun show industry.

The authors then seem to contradict themselves, promoting the alleged viability of California’s 10-day waiting period. First:

> California’s regulations and 10-day waiting period motivate buyers to cross into Nevada when seeking a faster, less-regulated source of firearms.

Then:

> No significant relationships existed between gun shows and firearm injuries along known trafficking routes or when California’s 10-day waiting period was excluded.

Indecision in research is not a fault, but it is amusing.

> … few firearm injuries occurred in regions exposed to Nevada gun shows

Yet their final conclusion was that exposed regions in California saw increases in firearm injuries.

> … we did not examine associations with firearm injuries in Nevada populations

A curious omission given that they already gathered the data.

## What’s to like?

In this bit of research, there is little to like. One gets the feeling that the authors were on a mission to tag gun shows as a source of mayhem, or to promote California gun laws as a “cure”. Yet in the raw data, we see no validation of either point.

The two big problems though are not in the research. The big problems are activist in the media who avoid due diligence in reviewing research, and government agencies investing in research that is substandard. In the long run, only news consumers and voters can fix these inequities.

**Categories:** Accidental Gun Deaths, California, Nevada

**Tags:** california, gun shows, nevada

---

### [Trace, Stolen Guns, Ineptitude](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/trace-stolen-guns-ineptitude/)

**Published:** December 3, 2017
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

When 85% of your study’s data comes from 6% of the states, two of which are known as being anti-gun, you have a poor study and an even worse credibility score.

## Critique

- 85% of reporting law enforcement agencies come from just three states (6% of states).
- 51% of reporting law enforcement agencies come from just California.
- A mere 1,053 agencies participated (there are over 3,000 counties in the U.S. – multiply by the number of city agencies).

## Background

First, let’s take NBC to task. The Trace is openly backed by Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire politician with a messianic quest to enact gun control laws. For a news organization to collaborate with an established front group calls NBC’s objectivity into question, though many people doubted their objectivity to begin with.

> “Every news organization has propagandist tendencies, except for MSNBC, which is a propaganda organization with news tendencies.” — Guy Smith

What the Trace attempted was to contact law enforcement agencies and gather data on stolen guns, as well as some data on recovered crime guns. The alleged goal was to better understand the impact stolen guns have on the overall crime-gun situation.

## The disturbing details

I wish I could be more generous, but their data is not remotely close to criminology standards, or even the low standards required of freshman quantitative research students.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/trace-nbc-agency-reporting-heat-map-400x220.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/trace-nbc-agency-reporting-heat-map.jpg)Their basic approach was to ask for data, toss it into a data set, perform some fundamental data cleansing, and then report. The problem with this approach is that it has no goal. No findings. No hypothesis to test. Without such, the outcome is meaningless.

Worse yet is that they published with what can charitably be called “research data”. That more than half of all reporting agencies came from one state – a state that funds a notoriously anti-gun researcher and has the strictest gun control laws in the country – kinda skews the results. California is a model for nothing else in the United States, and that it contributes 51% of all reporting agencies makes the entire data set valueless. The heat map above shows how skewed their data gathering is.

Worse still is that nearly all (85.1%) of reporting agencies come from just three states, with Illinois (another state with a history strict gun control) being in the list.

CountiesReporting AgenciesReporting RatioTexas254166%California58538928%This leads to some rather disturbing anomalies. Take the spread between California and Texas. The table to the right shows the number of counties in both states, the number of agencies (county, city, state) that contributed to Trace, and the county/agency ratio.

Anyone who thinks this is a viable data set must work for NBC.

Though there is some breathless “reporting” in the article, there appears to be no attempt to discover how stolen guns migrate into the criminal network, or the path they take from entry to use in crime. Nor does the report examine the ratio of guns stolen from civilians and from law enforcement ( the latter group has a surprisingly high number of news reports of their guns being heisted).

### The take-away

There is none. The only mention this work should receive is that it is meaningless in understanding how stolen guns figure into crime. Log it not as debunked, but dismissed.

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, The Trace

**Tags:** guns, nbc, stolen, trace

---

### [Gun Deaths: Meaningless Metric](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-deaths-meaningless-metric/)

**Published:** January 2, 2018
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

You can get an average citizen to cross their eyes in brain damaging confusion by telling them that “gun deaths” is a meaningless statistic.

And it is, though members of the gun control industry continue to use the hollow phrase, and some members of the media never question its meaning or validity. It doesn’t stand up to domestic or international scrutiny. Since it is the job of the Gun Facts project to eradicate bad information, let’s spend a few electrons today killing off the “gun deaths” charade.

## What in the heck is a “gun death”?

This is not a caustic question. In the realm of people dying by catching bullets, there are a number of categories concerning such deaths. And many of these categories are made up of sub categories. And for each of the categories, there are ways of achieving the same result (a dead person) without a using gun.

“Gun Death”AlternativesSuicideGuns, razor blades, pills and booze, poison, rope, etc.HomicidesGuns, knives, poison, brute force, automobiles, etc.– Justifiable HomicideGuns, knives, brute force, automobilesAccidentsA list too long to provideA messy roster that gets scruffier still (more on that in a moment). The salient point is that if one says “there were 30,000 guns deaths in American last year” but doesn’t bother to note that nearly 2/3 of they were suicides, or that these “gun deaths” also include a rapidly shrinking number of accidents and a growing number of justifiable homicides, then one walks away misinformed.

Which is the likely intent.

So, let’s look at guns and deaths in well-off countries to provide perspective, because propagandists hate perspective.

## The international suicide perspective

[![AVAILABILITY OF GUNS - International Suicide and Firearm Ownership Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-International-Suicide-and-Firearm-Ownership-Rates-400x253.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-International-Suicide-and-Firearm-Ownership-Rates.png)click for larger, sharable version

![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES suicide and gun suicide rates for oecd nations](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-suicide-and-gun-suicide-rates-oecd-400x281.jpg)click for larger, sharable version

[![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES total homicide and gun homicide rates in oecd countries](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-total-homicide-and-gun-homicide-rates-oecd-400x300.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-total-homicide-and-gun-homicide-rates-oecd.jpg) 

click for larger, sharable version

[![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES gun homicides by number of gun in oecd countries](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-gun-homicides-by-number-of-gun-oecd-400x336.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-gun-homicides-by-number-of-gun-oecd.jpg)click for larger, sharable version

The Gun Facts project has written extensively on guns and suicides ([here](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-propaganda/), [here](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicide-women/), [here](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/vpc-gun-death-dumb-down/) and especially [here](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/)). In all of our number crunching, we have yet to find a consistent relationship between availability of guns and the rate of suicides. There is, at least in America, an increased likelihood that a suicidal person will use a gun to end themselves, but cross-regional studies show that firearm availability does not predict suicide rates.

Not to put too fine of a point on things, but among developed countries, the U.S. suicide rate is just slightly higher than average, despite our gun availability rate being many times higher.

NOTES: (a) we used the current list of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for our comparisons. (b) We omitted Turkey due to unavailability of some data.

## The international perspective on homicides

Interestingly, the same disconnect between gun availability and gun deaths applies to homicides.

Though the United States does have a relatively high homicide rate compared to other OEDC nations, three other countries are within one standard deviation of the U.S. Those countries have between 1/5th and 1/10th the number of guns per capita that the United States, yet residents there find alternatives for committing and equal rate of murders.

As we see in the chart above, one must take into account not only things like suicides and justifiable homicides, but they must also evaluate if the absence of guns helps to facilitate murder by other means (as we noted in our “*[Worldly Women](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/worldly-women-and-guns/)* blog post, women in strict gun control countries are more likely to be murdered as measured by the ratio of men murdered to women murdered).

This then begs a very provocative question; what does the homicide rates per number of guns look like? After all, we see that (a) guns are not a determinant variable in suicide rates, and apparently lack solid correlation in homicides. Homicide rates measure the odds of any person being killed, but what are the odds of a gun killing someone?

Apparently, the odds are weak. In terms of a gun being used to commit a homicide, America is below OECD averages, or a little above if we drop Mexico from the list (do keep in mind that Mexico has very strict gun control laws).

## Let us lay to rest …

… the term “gun deaths”. Dismiss it from your vocabulary, and challenge anyone who absentmindedly parrots the term. For the later, simply ask them “Which form of gun deaths are you talking about?” or “Is that on a per person or per gun basis?” I wager they don’t know the difference and by such mild shaming you can get them to quit using the term too.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Guns in Other Countries

**Tags:** gun deaths, homicides, international, suicides

---

### [Crossing Trends](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/crossing-trends/)

**Published:** January 6, 2018
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

While spelunking some data on the modes of gun deaths, I decided to have a look at some smaller instances, namely how often people die accidentally from gunshots, and the number of justifiable (perhaps even meritorious) homicides.

Most readers already know that accidental gun deaths have been in sharp decline for several decades, despite the number of firearms in circulation skyrocketing. This is a curious situation, and one that goes directly against claims by the gun control industry.

[![FIREARM DEATHS - accidental and legal interventions - 1981 through 2015](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/FIREARM-DEATHS-accidental-and-legal-interventions-1981-through-2015-400x289.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/FIREARM-DEATHS-accidental-and-legal-interventions-1981-through-2015.jpg)With concealed carry a fact of daily life in 42 states, one might also think justifiable homicides have gone up. They have, but only slightly. But this too also goes against the claims of gun control advocates, who maintain that concealed carry does not prevent crime (we’ll ignore the whole deterrence effect issue, which is likely contributory to the multi-decade drop in violent crime in America).

Though the number of incidents for both categories are small (489 and 484 for accidents and legal interventions respectively, in 2015) the trends remain of interest to policy makers.

**Categories:** Accidental Gun Deaths, Crime Control

**Tags:** accidental, gun deaths, justifiable homicides, legal intervention

---

### [Gifford’s Goof](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/giffords-goof/)

**Published:** March 6, 2018
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Just when you think people could not be more deceitful, they somehow manage.

And by “deceitful” I mean Giffords Law Center and their rather ridiculous state-by-state scorecard on gun control policy, wherein they attempt to convince an unwary public that guns lead to mayhem (when in fact it is Giffords lawyers that lead intellectual mayhem).

## Major Takeaways

- “Strong” gun control is associated with higher rates of violent crime (homicides, assaults and rapes).
- They handily omitted Washing D.C., which has very high violent crime rates.
- They included suicides (which we [know are not a gun issue](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/)).
- They don’t cite sources for their data.
- Their grading scheme for the “strength” of gun control laws is 100% opaque.

## The History of Scorecards, Branding and Giffords Law Center

Gun control scorecards are nothing new. The formerly important Brady Center used to annually publish their bit of intellectual fraud in scorecard format. And, every year the Gun Facts project used to chew it up, spit it out, and publicly shame the crew at Brady (our [last vivisection can be found here](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/brady-scorecard-scam/)).

When the Bradys passed away and their legacy organization fell into disrepair, the scorecarding scam was adopted by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (originally the Legal Community Against Violence). In taking over the project, they committed one of the most heinous sins against rational discourse ever seen.

When the Bradys did their scorecard, they at least documented how they graded alleged favorability of various gun control laws. Their system was nothing more than scoring highly the laws they liked (there was never any rigor in matching laws to efficacy). But they were honest enough to allow anyone to peek under the sheets.

The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence was not so burdened (perhaps due to the often commented-upon lack of intersection between lawyers and ethics). Despite my asking for their criteria twice, using different email addresses, they have refused to share their scorecard rubric; likewise, when former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords merged her Americans for Responsible Solutions with the law center to create today’s misinformation factory. There is little doubt (as you will soon see) that their approach is slightly less meaningless than a mugger’s claim of innocence.

## What They Said vs. Reality

![Giffords Law Center Con Job](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Giffords-Law-Center-Con-Job-400x659.jpg)[![Giffords Law Center Scorcard - Homicides - Assaults - Suicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Giffords-Law-Center-Scorcard-Homicides-Assaults-Suicides-400x278.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Giffords-Law-Center-Scorcard-Homicides-Assaults-Suicides.jpg)The airbrushed image that Giffords Law Center paints is that strong gun control laws lead to less death. On a professionally styled and illustrated web page, they present their rankings of states by the “strength” of each state’s gun laws, and the magically misleading “gun deaths” statistics (which we have been debunking for nearly 20 years, and which we [recently reviewed](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-deaths-meaningless-metric/)).

The problems herein are a monument to agitprop. As noted above, the scoring rubric is unpublished and likely a cherry-picked charade.

Scorecard schema aside, we encounter the first problem, which is that the law center appears to include all forms of gun deaths – legal interventions, justifiable homicides, etc. – into their “gun death” stats.

This means they also include suicides. Sigh. Here we go again.

- Cross-sectional and time-series studies show no correlation between firearm availability and successful suicides.
- This is due to “substitution of means” whereby a seriously depressed or psychotic person finds a way to die (poison, hanging, suffocation, etc.).
- Hence, suicides do not figure into gun policy at all, and should never been aggregated into data for the evaluation of gun access policy.

More appropriate metrics focus on specific categories of mayhem, such as violent crime.

## Law Center Lambasted

Which is why the Gun Facts project is here to help the Giffords Law Center out.

- We added Washington, D.C. into their list and assigned it their A+ rating (The District has such stiff gun control laws, we assume that fits Giffords’ A+ profile … but that is a guess since they don’t publish their scorecard criteria).
- We got the latest crime stats from the FBI.
- We included suicide rates (light blue) to show how including them seriously skews numbers toward states they consider to have “weak” laws.

What most people at Giffords Law Center must have known, and thus must have intentionally concealed, is that crime is seriously higher in “strong” gun control states and districts.

In A+ rated states and the District of Columbia, the homicide rate was nearly triple the average of all other states (278%), and aggravated assaults were more than double (211%). Even rapes were 40% higher.

## Policy and Agitprop

Here is the point. These topics have been openly and vigorously discussed for decades. The people at Giffords Law Center know these details, and how it impacts both policy thinking and public opinion. Yet they:

- Omit crime-plagued Washington, D.C.
- Include suicides, despite guns not being a determinant variable
- Avoid detailing violent crime as a measurement metric

I guess we have to add one more item to the list of criminal offenses – the Giffords Law Center Scorecard.

**Categories:** Gifford Law Center, LCAGV

**Tags:** gifford, giffords law center, scorecard, strong gun laws

---

### [Mental Health and Homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/)

**Published:** March 18, 2018
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

[![Gallery of Insane Mass Public Shooters](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Gallery-of-Insane-Mass-Public-Shooters-361x800.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Gallery-of-Insane-Mass-Public-Shooters.png)It is time to tap dance on landmines and begin the Gun Facts investigation of the intersection of mental health and gun violence. This will be an ongoing project, as it appears to be a determinant variable in mass homicides (and hence, mass shootings).

## Main Takeaways

- Three forms of mental impairment are tightly associated with spree and serial killers.
- 74% of mass shooters had some form of genetic or induced disorder.
- Deinstitutionalization has removed dangerous people from being closely monitored
- In-patient psychiatric care was replaced, in part, with psychotropic medications, some of which can amplify violent desires.

## Triggering the Investigation

News reports too often detail that mass public shooters had prior histories of mental health issues. One need only look at some of the twenty-first century’s mass murderers (the rogues galley at right being a representative sample) and you can tell there is something fundamentally different and dangerous about them.

But numbers matter, and here is where an odd source helps. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Massacre, which was carried out by one of the lunatics pictured here, *Mother Jones* began to compile a list of mass public shootings. Much to their credit, they investigated if the shooters had any mental health issues before the event.

NOTE: *Mother Jones* culled their list from news reports. Reporters may not have investigated the mental health angle for any given event, and thus the *Mother Jones* tally of mental illness in mass public shooters is likely low.

Their accounting for this century shows a minimum of 54% of mass and spree killers having prior histories of mental health issues. By any standard, this is a determinant variable. That in a full 26% or more of the instances reporters cannot make a determination of the mental health history of the shooter means we have a range of 54–80% of these mass murders having one or more screws loose.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Prior-Mental-Health-Signs-400x264.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Prior-Mental-Health-Signs.jpg)The obvious questions then become:

- What is the cause of their conditions?
- Why were they not put into treatment?
- If put into treatment, why did it not work?
- What policy makes sense going forward?

None of these questions have *easy* answers, but there is data to help guide investigation.

## The Brain, Genetic and Injured

My friends in the mental health fields hate it when I say this, but we are discussing brains that do not work correctly. We all have personality quirks (and if you don’t believe this, ask your spouse – they will give you a vivid description of yours). And we all get depressed from time to time. But these are not signs of a dysfunctional brain, just life and marginal variations from the norm. For the average Joe, we are sane enough to never want to kill anyone, even those who wrong us.

With mass public shooters, we see major disconnections from reality that lead to mass murder appearing to them as optional and perhaps desirable. The question is what might cause this.

When I started digging, I saw that many medical researchers had taken tiny steps into the field. One paper, *Neurodevelopmental and Psychosocial Risk Factors in Serial Killers and Mass Murderers*, was a “review of literature,” a term that means the authors read and distilled a bunch of other academic papers. This was a good starting point and a real eye opener into some of the aspects of mental disorder and mass homicide.

The short story of this paper is that:

**All Cases****All Cases with Mental Impairment****Autistic Spectrum Disorder**28%38%**Psychological Stresses**24%33%**Head Injuries**21%29%- Shooters within Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) were the most common.
- People with psychological stresses (and psychosocial stressors) were marginally second most frequent.
- Those with head injuries were almost as frequent as group #2.

In all, 74% of mass shooters had some form of genetic or induced disorder, which is in the same range as what *Mother Jones* concluded (54–80%). Naturally, some shooters have two or all three of these maladies.

### Autism a primary indicator?

![Mental health variables in mass homicides and shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/mental-health-variables-in-mass-homicides-shootings.jpg)Here is an important detail. **People with ASD make up about 1% of the population and over 28% of mass murderers**, as tallied by this paper. And the latter number is likely **low** because these are just the cases that could be reported. Medical privacy laws do not allow open source investigations into the personal backgrounds of homicidal maniacs. This may be a moot point because this disparity – 1% of the population linked to 28+% of mass murders – is, statistically speaking, not ignorable.

This does not mean everyone with ASD will be a murderer. But it is now a primary early warning indicator for mental health professionals to watch. But so too are people with medical histories of head injuries and childhood stressors. One of the legislative problems to be faced is when a medical professional should recommend institutionalization (more on that later).

### Psychosocial stressors as a covariant

One recurring theme we have seen with mass public shooters concerns marginalization. Many of the school shooters – Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland – were marginalized, outcasts, considered the weird kids, bullied and tormented. These are forms of psychosocial stress, which one mental health website defines as follows:

> It is the result of a cognitive appraisal (your mental interpretation) of what is at stake and what can be done about it. More simply put, psychosocial stress results when we look at a perceived social threat in our lives (real or even imagined) and discern that it may require resources we don’t have.

In the paper that itemized the mental health characteristics of spree and serial killers, they present an alternate definition:

> Psychosocial stressors **included** significant traumatic events during childhood such as the death of a close family member; major surgery/illness; psychological, physical, and/or sexual abuse.” (emphasis ours)

The two may well go hand in hand. As the Venn diagram above shows, the most common area of overlap lies between autism and psychological stressors. Autistic kids are maltreated by peers in school. It may be little wonder, then, that high-functioning autistics who are belittled, bullied and ostracized might well take such mistreatment as a “perceived social threat” and look for “what can be done about it.”

One study [1](#note-4602-1 "Irritability in boys with autism spectrum disorders: An investigation of physiological reactivity (Mikita, Hollocks, & Papadopoulos, 2015, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines") found boys on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum to be measurably more susceptible to irritability when exposed to physiological stressors, to the point of impairment.

## Deinstitutionalization

In the United States, we chose to not treat all the mentally ill in institutions. In the psych trade, this was called [deinstitutionalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation). There were a few good reasons to reduce the number of psych beds, some reasons that had unintended side effects, and other reasons that were a case of government short-sightedness.

In the 1970s, several factors collided which led to sharp reductions in psychiatric hospital availability:

- New drugs were developed which let the truly psychotic live more-or-less normal lives.
- Social Security Disability gave them a means of support.
- Some truly horrible institutions painted a bad public picture of psychiatric institutions.
- Governments wanted to slash costs and started shutting down institutions, moving patients to “community based” programs.

[![Psychiatric Beds and Mass Public Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Psychiatric-Beds-and-Mass-Public-Shootings-400x286.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Psychiatric-Beds-and-Mass-Public-Shootings.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

One possible side effect is that people who showed (a) unpredictable behavior and (b) made threats of violence were no longer sent to a psych hospital for evaluation, but instead treated in a hodgepodge of community outpatient situations. Often the “community” treatment failed to identify the underlying source of the threatening behavior and instead relied on psychotropic medications (more on this in a bit).

In this scenario, we have a situation where people who might be troubled enough to shoot up their school received substandard care. If so, there might be a correlation between the shrinking availability of long-term care facilities and mass public shootings. Though correlation is not causation, we must take the data seriously and use it to prompt more study. In particular, we need to:

- Allow open source medical records of all mass shooters
- Discover who diagnosed them
- Detail what the treatment plan was
- List what medications they were prescribed
- Note if they actually took them
- Discover if they quit their medications in an uncontrolled way (see next section)

## Bad medicine?

NOTE: Gun Facts researchers are working to compile a timeline of the percentage of the American population taking psychotropic medications, and we will update this blog once the data is available.

We Americans like our drugs. And from close-up observations of honkytonk cowboys on a Saturday night, we might consider putting Jack Daniels on the Schedule 1 list of dangerous narcotics.

In the panacea of mind-bending chemicals is a slate of medications designed to control chemical balances in the brain. I do not decry these drugs – they are very important for some people. But they are completely unnecessary for others. Yet, doctors over-prescribe them (a former girlfriend of mine was prescribed Prozac for her PMS symptoms – thankfully she tossed the pills).

The problem with this approach to treating seriously troubled people falls into several lines of thought:

- These patients are often unreliable, and do not always take their meds, or withdraw from the meds in an uncontrolled way.
- Side effects, especially during uncontrolled withdrawal, are known to induce many symptoms that may be associated with spree killing.

The two classes of medications most commonly at play are antidepressants and antipsychotics. The second group, antipsychotics, is of interest because two of these medications are routinely prescribed for autism patients, which we saw above are the primary psychological risk factor in spree killings.

Scanning the most popular varieties of these two classes of medications, we see the following ***known*** side effects for use and for withdrawal:

**ANTIDEPRESSANTS****ANTIPSYCHOTICS****Usage Side Effects**- Worsening depression
- Panic attack
- Agitation
- Confusion
- Risk-taking behavior
- Nervousness
- “Switching” from depression into mania
- Hallucinations
- Feelings of extreme sadness
- Suicidal thoughts

- Restlessness
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Agitation
- Hostility
- Confusion

**Withdraw Side Effects**- Anxiety
- Nervousness
- Nightmares
- Irritability
- Extreme mood swings
- Panic attacks
- Suicidal thoughts
- Paranoia

- Agitation
- Anxiety
- Panic attacks
- Delusion
- Hallucinations
- Depression
- Mood swings
- Confusion
- Suicidal thoughts
- Psychosis
- Mania

What needs consideration is if we are moving at-risk people from an “unhappy but harmless” condition to a “psychotic and dangerous” condition through either unnecessary medications or through unsupervised withdrawals. The latter is most compelling when you consider the combined effects of deinstitutionalization (closing of mental health facilities) and increased medication use. Applying psychotropic drugs to fringe patients without constant supervision likely increases the number of people ready to shoot up schools and movie theaters.

## The policy perspective

We can begin unraveling this mess by better understanding all the risk factors. We need to make the medical records – diagnosis, treatments, medications – open source so researchers can begin finding clusters of influences for mass murder. Until this happens, we do not fully understand the situation.

### Update #1:

A Facebook conversation on this article brought up the reality that most criminal violence is committed by men. No argument there. But that got us to remember that Autism is majorly associated with boys, with autism appearing in boys [four times a frequently](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5759230/) as girls. One report, albeit a little old, also mentions that [regulating of “threat detector” centers in the brain is associated with autism](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4145-sex-chromosome-clue-to-autism/).

Recognizing the over representation of autistic males in mass murder tallies, and seeing how perception of threat merged with psychosocial stressors is a key factor as well, and making a wild assumption about stressors feeding an unregulated threat-detector in the brain, we may have an interesting situation to ask forensic teams to assess.

### Update #2: Autism recurrence

We don’t have the resources to do a deep dig, but the connection between autism and mass murder is becoming more clear. Just a few of the already known instances (once not requiring deep digging):

- Alek Minassian (drove a van down a crowded sidewalk in Toronto)
- Travis Reinking, Waffle House shooting
- Nikolas Cruz, Parkland high school shooting
- Adam Lanza, Sandy Hook elementary

Medical privacy laws prevent us from learning more.

Notes:

1. Irritability in boys with autism spectrum disorders: An investigation of physiological reactivity (Mikita, Hollocks, & Papadopoulos, 2015, *Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines* [↩](#return-note-4602-1)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings, School Shootings

**Tags:** autism, deinstitutionalization, mass, mental health, psychological stressors, shootings

---

### [Good Guy with a Gun?](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/good-guy-with-a-gun/)

**Published:** March 24, 2018
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Much has been made in public discussion about a slogan popularized (though I doubt originally penned by) the National Rifle Association, namely: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

Ignoring that no such absolute statement is true (e.g., “all politicians are criminals”), it is a good slogan to ponder. What is the efficacy of armed response to an attacker? We at the Gun Facts project have covered this question quite a bit on the [*Guns and Crime Prevention*](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/guns-and-crime-prevention/) page, and there is no use going through all that again.

But in terms of mass public shootings (MPSs), and we’ll include active shooter events (ASEs) in this tally as well, the situation has better clarity due to the fact there is an indisputable violent event happening. Many defensive gun uses (DGUs) may be against unarmed attackers or have a lower urgency of response. With MSPs and ASEs, the need to intervene to prevent loss of life is clear and indisputable.

## Main Take-aways

- Armed interventions are the single largest form of event resolution.
- Armed intervention greatly reduces casualties.
- At schools, armed resources officers greatly reduce carnage (if they intervene).
- Adding concealed carry permit (CCW) holders to schools marginally improves outcomes over armed resource officers.

## How Shooting Events are Resolved

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Resolution-of-Active-Shooter-Events-400x257.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Resolution-of-Active-Shooter-Events.jpg)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shootings-resolution-of-events-2000-2010-1-400x325.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shootings-resolution-of-events-2000-2010-1.png)One of the more interesting studies of ASEs [1](#note-4641-1 "United States Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2010, Blair, Martaindale, 2014") examined how such events were stopped. The authors split their analysis into what happens before the police arrive and after. We’ll discuss this divide a bit more below as it fits into the ongoing debate about allowing teachers in K12 schools to be armed.

There are several unsurprising outcomes from their analysis.

- Armed intervention makes up a minimum of 55% of the event resolutions.
- Armed interventions make up 73% of the resolutions if you omit the instances where the attacker committed suicide before the police arrived.
- 40% of all events end with the attacker committing suicide, and this goes up to 61% if you assume “death by cop” was the attacker’s intended end game.
- Only 20% of the instances end with the attacker walking away or being subdued by people without guns.

Thus, practically speaking, the “good guy with a gun” theory is statistically sound. But when it comes to the total number of lives saved, it is only part of the story

## The Police Lag

Another study [2](#note-4641-2 "Mitigating Active Shooter Impact; Analysis for Policy Options Based on Agent/Computer Based Modeling, Kirby, Dietz, Sharevski, 2016") looked specifically at school shootings, and using the available empirical data, modeled a few things including the amount of time different defenders (cops, resource officers, people with concealed carry permits) would take to intervene and how many/few people would get hurt by the attacker.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MASS-SHOOTINGS-police-and-school-resource-officer-response-time-and-casualties-400x452.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/MASS-SHOOTINGS-police-and-school-resource-officer-response-time-and-casualties.png)Casualty ReductionResponse Time ReductionResource Officer66.4%59.5%5% of school personnel with CCW6.8%5.4%10% of school personnel with CCW23.2%16.8%Resource Officer + 5% CCW69.9%59.7%Resource Officer + 10% CCW70.2%62.7%I find little wrong with their modeling, aside from the relative dearth of school shootings available at the time with which to form their data set. Accepting that there may be some statistical noise due to limited instances of mass public shootings at schools, the authors determined that when an armed resource officer was on campus and engaging the attacker (unlike at Parkland), the response time was significantly shorter (less than half the time) and the number of casualties was significantly lower (about 40% lower).

But the authors went further. They added to the mix scenarios where a citizen with a concealed carry permit was on site, such as a teacher with a CCW and a gun. The numbers are compelling, and are in the same ranges as what we saw in the previous study when we compare the rate of armed resolutions with unarmed ones (78% vs 22% respectively).

## From the Policy and Sloganeering Perspective

The empirical data shows that armed resistance to ASEs and MPSs provides the best outcome, not only in terms of the rate of halting such events, but also in reducing the number of people wounded or killed by the attacker. The question is who should be armed, especially at schools.

Armed intervention by resource officers is very effective when, unlike at Parkland, they actually intervene. The time to response is short, and the number of people hurt is much lower. Too few schools have a significant number of armed faculty to have robust statistical evidence of efficacy, but the same dynamics are in play. Most (71%) of ASE and MPS attackers give up when confronted, by committing suicide or surrendering.

If schools have more resource officers, more armed faculty, or in the case of colleges, more CCW carrying students, then the death and injury rate is substantially reduced.

Notes:

1. *United States Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2010*, Blair, Martaindale, 2014 [↩](#return-note-4641-1)
2. *Mitigating Active Shooter Impact; Analysis for Policy Options Based on Agent/Computer Based Modeling*, Kirby, Dietz, Sharevski, 2016 [↩](#return-note-4641-2)

**Categories:** Guns and Crime Prevention, Mass Shootings, School Shootings

**Tags:** active shooter events, mass public shootings, stopping

---

### [AR-15s: Mostly Harmless](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/ar-15s-mostly-harmless/)

**Published:** March 31, 2018
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The AR-15, allegedly the most popular consumer rifle in the United States, has become the poster child of the gun control industry.

But from a homicide statistics standpoint, they are mostly harmless.

## Main Take-aways

- AR-15s constitute maybe 4% of all American firearms.
- AR-15s are used in 0.4% of firearm homicides, maximum.

## Just How Many AR-15s Are We Talking About?

There is no doubt the AR-15 is a popular rifle. The firearm industry notes this. Users note this. Even the gun control industry notes this. Knowing how many are out there is crucial for understanding if they are a problem or not.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AR-15s-and-all-Rifles-Added-to-U.S.-400x338.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AR-15s-and-all-Rifles-Added-to-U.S..png)The [AR-15 has been around since 1959](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArmaLite_AR-15), but the last eight years has seen a significant increase in its popularity.

And no wonder. The rifle is lightweight, meaning anyone can shoot it (YouTube has a bunch of videos of tiny young girls firing them). They don’t recoil much due to the mechanical design as well as the relatively anemic rounds they shoot. And, well, they are fun. If you want to learn how to use AR-15s or other firearms, you may use a [Firearms Simulator](https://www.americantigerfirearmsllc.com/).

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have never owned, not do I want to own an AR-15. Just not my thing.

Given that AR-15s have been around for nearly 60 years, knowing just how many are in circulation requires guesswork. According to one compilation of manufacturer records [1](#note-4663-1 "http://knowledgeglue.com/just-how-many-ar15s-are-out-there/") over five million have been made since the year 2000. The NRA once estimated [2](#note-4663-2 "America's rifle: Why so many people love the AR-15, NBC News") there were about 15 million in circulation as of the end of 2017. Triangulation we did from BATFE reporting [3](#note-4663-3 "Firearm Commerce in the United States, 2017") makes us believe that total is a reasonable one.

But what does 15 million AR-15s really mean? Based on estimates of the number of guns and various types of guns available, AR-15s are maybe:

- 12% of *all* rifles
- 4% of all guns (including handguns, shotguns, etc.)

From a pure market penetration standpoint, AR-15s are not that big of a deal. But when you look at AR-15s and murder …

## AR-15s Used in Mass Public Shootings

… they become even less of a problem.

Let’s start with mass public shootings (MPSs) like the recent tragedy in Parkland, Florida. Because AR-15s were used in both the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings, they appear to have an outsized role in MPSs. But, the numbers betray this a bit.

**AR-15s in Mass Public Shootings**AR-15s Involved11%AR-15s Minus Terrorist9%AR-15 and Other Guns6%Mother Jones database, normalized to FBI definition of MPSOf the MPSs since 1982, at worst AR-15s were used in a mere 11% of those events. But one of those MPSs was a terrorist attack (San Bernardino), so the effective policy number is that 9% of MPSs involved AR-15s.

But even this is overstating the case. In most MPSs, the attacker carries in more than a few guns (and the enduring fact is, most MPSs are committed with handguns and shotguns). So, if we discount AR-15 involvement due to someone shooting up a room using his handguns, shotguns *and* AR-15, then the effective number of AR-15-specific MPSs drops to 6% of the total.

Mighty slim pickings for MPSs. But, the case against AR-15s gets even weaker when one looks at all homicides, not just MPSs.

## AR-15s Used in All Homicides

Common estimates for the number of guns in circulation [4](#note-4663-4 "There are now more guns than people in the United States, Washington Post, October 2015") is between 270 million and 357 million. For our analysis we’ll use the high end because until the mid-1970s, nobody was really tracking this stuff. The stockpile of farm weapons, hunting rifles, war trophies, and so on is likely much larger than most prognosticators allow for.

Guns in Circulation357,000,000% Guns that are Rifles125,565,332 [5](#note-4663-5 "Inferred via BATFE commerce reports")AR-15s – % of Rifles11.9%AR-15s – % of all guns4%Combining this estimate with the percentage of new guns entering the national stockpile every year [6](#note-4663-6 "For this analysis we used the BATFE Firearms in Commerce report and averages the years between 1986 and 2015") we see that AR-15s make up ***at most*** 4% of all the guns in the United States. This number is way high given that the AR-15 was not introduced until 1959 and did not enjoy a massive market uptick until 2012–2017. But, we’ll stick with the ***very high*** 4% number as it makes the final figures that much more interesting (in other words, we are stacking the deck *against* the AR-15).

Rifles are not the homicide weapon of choice. Handguns are. Sixty-eight percent of firearm homicides are committed with handguns [7](#note-4663-7 "FBI Expanded Homicide Data Table 4, 2016"); and most of those are inner-city, gang related shootings. Rifles are used in 3% of homicides (soak that up for a moment – handguns 68%, *all* rifles 3%).

AR-15’s in Circulation15,000,000Homicides by Rifle252 [8](#note-4663-8 "FBI Uniform Crime Reporting")Homicides by AR-15s (max avg five years)0.1Rifles Used in Homicides3%AR-15s Used in Homicides (inferred)0.4%Since we can estimate what fraction of the number of rifles in circulation are AR-15s, we can then calculate how often they are used in homicides. All in all, AR-15s account for 0.4% of firearm homicides ***at worst***.

NOTE: The [FBI data](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-4.xls) used was from their most recently available dump, covering years 2012-2016. This, the number of rifle homicides ***includes*** the Sandy Hook Massacre where all the school victims were killed with an AR-15.

## What Not to Worry About

It has been claimed that members of the gun control industry don’t care about facts, just imagery. Their fixation on AR-15s is a case in point. One type of firearm, which accounts for 0.4% of firearm homicides, is their poster child, their scary image for the nightly news. If they really wanted to ban something to make America safer, they should start with their own rhetoric.
[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AR-15-and-Violence-infographic-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AR-15-and-Violence-infographic.png)

Notes:

1. http://knowledgeglue.com/just-how-many-ar15s-are-out-there/ [↩](#return-note-4663-1)
2. *America's rifle: Why so many people love the AR-15*, NBC News [↩](#return-note-4663-2)
3. *Firearm Commerce in the United States, 2017* [↩](#return-note-4663-3)
4. *There are now more guns than people in the United States*, Washington Post, October 2015 [↩](#return-note-4663-4)
5. Inferred via BATFE commerce reports [↩](#return-note-4663-5)
6. For this analysis we used the BATFE *Firearms in Commerce* report and averages the years between 1986 and 2015 [↩](#return-note-4663-6)
7. FBI Expanded Homicide Data Table 4, 2016 [↩](#return-note-4663-7)
8. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting [↩](#return-note-4663-8)

**Categories:** Assault Weapons, Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns, Mass Shootings

**Tags:** ar-15, gun control, mass public shootings

---

### [School Shooting Database and Propaganda](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/school-shooting-database-and-propaganda/)

**Published:** October 14, 2018
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

What you name something is very important. One might look upon their congressman and say “politician”. Someone else might look upon the same representative and say “insufferable, deranged, syphilitic git”. Both might be accurate.

Important then is the “School Shooting Database” hosted by the Federal Government as part of the Department of Homeland Defense. The phrase “school shooting” creates in the mind of the reader some very specific notions. For the average American, it means mass homicide events like Parkland, Sandy Hook and Columbine. It does not mean a stray bullet from a inter-gang confrontation two blocks away at two in the morning.

## Honest Disclosure, Noble Purpose, Clumsy Word Use

Per [the project’s web site](https://www.chds.us/ssdb/about/), “The K-12 School Shooting Database research project is a ***widely*** ***inclusive*** database that documents each and every instance a gun is ***brandished***, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time, day of the week, or reason.” (emphasis ours)

This will take some unpacking.

First, let’s note the alleged cause behind the project – the better understand a form of threat on public school children – is an honorable one. We all want to make sure kids do not face fatal situations. But two problems immediately present themselves:

**AMALGAMATION:** By capturing a broad array of situations – ranging from off hours adult suicides, to gang activity, to actual campus shootings – the project creates misleading summaries ripe for exploitation by those who lie for a living. Indeed, the propagandists at [The Trace jumped on the headline numbers](https://www.thetrace.org/rounds/school-shootings-nra-3d-guns/) without a wit of analysis to separate the sundry rows of data (such rigors would be a poor use of Michael Bloomberg’s money as it might expose a truth).

**HEADLINE ABUSE:** Reporters (as opposed to journalists) will be quite willing to echo such inaccurate headline numbers, for reporters don’t have the time or statistical chops to download the database (it is publicly available, for which I give the maintainers brownie points) and perform even simplistic sorting, pivot tables, and subsequent analysis.

The next effect is that this database will be misused, abused, miscited, misquoted, and generally buggered in order to advance political agendas. Indeed, if you do little more than read this post, [contact your congress critter](https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative) and ask them to have the project renamed so as to reduce media confusion (seriously, “School Shooting Database” is exactly the wrong name).

## Campus Calcs

**Location****Incidents****Percent**Outside on School Property66951%Inside School Building58845%School Bus353%Unknown151%Off School Property91%**Circumstance****Incidents****Percent**Escalation of Dispute35427%Gang-related16412%Accidental14911%Unknown13610%Suicide/Attempted1209%Domestic w/ Targeted Victim635%Indiscriminate Shooting534%Anger Over Grade/Suspension/Discipline383%Robbery383%Bullying363%Mental Health322%Hostage Standoff302%Murder/Suicide262%Officer Involved Shooting212%Intentional Property Damage151%Racial151%Illegal Drug Related131%Murder81%Self Defense40%Murder/Suicide10%**Category****On Campus****Off Campus****Diff**Escalation of Dispute24%33%38%Gang-related9%20%111%Unknown9%12%28%Domestic w/ Targeted Victim4%6%47%Suicide/Attempted11%5%-49%Accidental14%5%-65%Robbery2%4%74%Indiscriminate Shooting5%2%-64%Officer Involved Shooting1%2%39%Intentional Property Damage1%2%79%Murder0%2%616%Murder/Suicide2%2%-32%Anger Over Grade/Suspension/Discipline4%1%-64%Bullying4%1%-67%Illegal Drug Related1%1%49%Racial1%1%19%Self Defense0%1%616%Hostage Standoff3%1%-83%Mental Health3%1%-84%A good first look at the data would be to see if Dick and Jane are sitting ducks while in the care of your county school board.

The table at right shows that the majority of “school shootings” over the last 48 years occur outside while on school campus. When tied in with non-shooting “school shooting” definitions, such as brandishing, we get a very different picture. By this project’s definitions, if someone on the sidewalk outside the school brandished a gun, that was a “school shooting”. Three percent of “school shootings” in the database involve no shots being fired at all. And if we include single shots (regardless of from where they came, or if they were suicides, or if they were late at night, etc.) those add up to 63% of all incidents.
“Circumstances” are a well-known problem in criminology data quality. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system shows “arguments” as being the leading knowable cause of firearm homicides. But any metro-area detective will tell you the many, perhaps most of inner-city homicide “arguments” were likely gang disputes, but rules require them to log the event as an argument if shouting was heard, but nobody was *certain* about the nature of the argument.

As the “school shooting” database shows, most incidents were due to the escalation of a dispute (similar to “arguments” in UCR parlance), followed by gang involvement. How many of the escalated disputes were over inter-gang conflicts is not knowable from this database, but the ratio is likely large.

Digging a bit more, we discover that a full 30% of all entries in the database do not conform to the public perception of a “school shooting”. When we define this as (a) being on campus or on a school bus and (b) during school hours, nearly a third of the incidents become disqualified. Now, they may still have a bearing on child protection. A school in a tough neighborhood where kids get shot on the sidewalk outside during the day is a problem. But that same school and location at o-dark-thirty is a different matter.
This actually matters a lot. The most frequent outdoor “school shootings” are gang-related, and quite likely escalations involving inter-gang conflicts. Outdoors, the rate of these two categories is 38-111% higher than on campus and during school hours. Hence, any analysis using this database has to separate the two, otherwise you are mixing significantly dissimilar cause+location+time elements.

Skipping past gang related issues, we find the most common on campus and during school hours incidents to be from suicides and accidents. Other criminology reviews of kids carrying guns onto school yards shows that many or most do so for self-protection, and that is largely within inner-cities and a reaction to gang violence. With accidental shootings topping the list of on campus and during school hours shootings, we can safely assume that the rate of accidental shootings would decline if the threat of gang violence dropped first (e.g., fewer kids would take a gun to school for self-protection, and thus cause an accident with it).

Another wrinkle is *when* on campus school hour shootings occur. Since most such events occur in high schools, it helps to look at population scaled incidents by state. Our old friend Washington D.C. tops the charts (by a huge margin) for both the total number of shootings but also for gang related shootings.

[![On-campus shooting grades 9-12 1970-2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/On-campus-shooting-grade-9-12-1970-2018-b-800x459.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/On-campus-shooting-grade-9-12-1970-2018-b.jpg)

## What to do … and not to do

This database will be useful, but not in the hands of agitprop groups or any garden variety reporter suffering from innumeracy. When someone cites the Department of Homeland Defense’s School Shooting Database, immediately ask the person:

- Are those numbers on campus, off campus or both?
- Are those numbers during school hours, after or both?
- Are those students, non-students or both?
- Are those homicides, suicides, accidents, or officer shootings?
- Which spread sheet did you use when analyzing the data from this database?
- What is 2+3?

**Categories:** Children and Guns, School Shootings

**Tags:** children, guns, schools

---

### [Mass Shooting Cattle Pens](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shooting-cattle-pens/)

**Published:** October 28, 2018
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

> “The rate of mass shootings per 100,000 population has gone DOWN by an extraordinary degree.”

Though not a recurring pro-gun meme, this one was sent to the Gun Facts Project by someone from the pro-gun camp. It was an interesting claim, but incorrect. Investigating the claim then led us to dig and try to find underlying realities.

Seriously, the Gun Facts researchers need to get a life.

## Mass Shootings Increase

[![U.S. Mass Public Shootings Per Capita 1982 through 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-Per-Capita-1982-through-2016-400x296.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-Per-Capita-1982-through-2016.png)Mass shooting incidents and fatalities are on the increase (and highly covariant with reported [adverse reactions to prescription psychotropic medications](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/meds-and-mass-murder/)). When we adjust for the increasing U.S. population, we still see per capita increases in the number of instances as well as the number of fatalities and woundings.

One thing jumped out at us from the initial charts, namely several outliers. Certain years showed dramatically large spikes. The most prominent of the spikes were the years of the Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Pulse Nightclub, Texas church and Las Vegas music festival shootings. The average number of fatalities of those events are **5.4 times larger than the average for all other events in the 21 century**.

One hellish part of being a researcher is when you see an anomaly, you automatically ask “why?” This is followed by many hours of number crunching, chart making, and annoyed girlfriends.

## What Made The Five Events So Fatal?

When we look at the five major U.S. mass shootings of the 21st century, we see the following events:

- **Virginia Tech:** Students confined and purposefully trapped in classrooms – 32 dead (handguns).
- **Sandy Hook:** Students trapped in classrooms – 27 dead (handguns, rifle, shotgun).
- **Pulse Night Club:** People packed into a club with few exit paths (handgun, rifle).
- **Texas First Baptist Church:** People trapped and packed in a church (rifle).
- **Las Vegas:** People packed very tightly into a music venue with few escape paths (rifles).

As we noted in our original analysis of the [Las Vegas concert massacre](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/las-vegas-perspectives/), the shooter had a near-perfect “cattle pen” situation. Any scenario where victims are immobile offers the potential for a higher body count. The reason is that marksmanship becomes less relevant, or even irrelevant. Simply firing into the crowd will result in deaths.

DEFINITION: A cattle pen scenario is defined as follows:

- Many people in “crowded” area (required)
- Limited exits or exit capacity (this and/or the next)
- Few or no places to take cover (this and/or the previous)

[![U.S. Mass Public Shootings by Location - 1982 through 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-by-Location-1982-through-2016-400x284.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-by-Location-1982-through-2016.png) [![U.S. Mass School Shootings 1982 through 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-School-Shootings-1982-through-2018-400x274.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-School-Shootings-1982-through-2018.png) [![U.S. Mass School Shootings 1982 through 2018 sans major outlier events](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-School-Shootings-1982-through-2018-sans-major-outlier-events-400x274.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-School-Shootings-1982-through-2018-sans-major-outlier-events.png)![U.S. Mass Public Shootings - Columbine cattle-pen effect - 1982 through 2016 - version b](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-Columbine-cattle-pen-effect-1982-through-2016-version-b-400x326.png)A commonality of these events is the location. Certain locations – sadly, this includes schools – are ready made cattle pens. Indeed, when we look at just mass shootings by location, we see divergences. The chart here shows those location categories that had a significant slope calculation over the years, indicating a growing rate of fatalities (note: we dropped churches from the list because there are extended spans, as long as 15 years, with no church shootings, which confounds reliable trending analysis).

Naturally, this begs yet another question (creating more research and another highly annoyed girlfriend). What would we conclude if the spikes caused by pre-planned, cattle pen events were factored? With those major events included, we see an almost straight line escalation of fatalities in school shootings (we didn’t take the time to analyze the “other” category because the variety of such locations confounds the analysis, nor the “workplace” category since the trend in fatalities there was not significant to begin with).

When we remove the three cattle pen events from the list of school mass shootings, the trend changes substantially (and note, we left the Columbine High School massacre in the chart – the body count there was “only” twice as large as the 21 century, non-cattle pen average).

## The Problem and Policy Point

Since half of mass public shootings involve only handguns or shotguns, we can discount the innumeracy hysteria sounding “assault weapons”. Also, when factoring away outlier events, we see that though worth worrying about, the rate of mass shooting events and the resulting carnage is *not* making a major escalation.

What is happening is that homicidal maniacs are learning.

We at the Gun Facts Project have (slowly) been reading on the topic of copy cat mass shootings and the alleged “media contagion” effect. For now we will simply say that testimony from surviving shooters and forensic evidence from those who did not survive shows that they spend copious amounts of time studying previous mass shootings. The Columbine massacre is the most studied event among the shooters that followed, and one aspect is that the pre-planning of this “cattle pen” event is formative. This was the mass public shooting that became the model for others.

One of the lessons that appears to have been learned by homicidal maniacs is that people densely packed into a confined area makes for a fertile killing field. Before Columbine, at least as far as the database used in this study goes, only three mass public shootings had a higher body count, and those were also similar to cattle pen events (San Ysidro McDonald’s, Luby’s Cafeteria and a post office work area). After Columbine, and the media contagion that followed, we see several high profile, high body count cattle pen events.

Given all of the above (no specific weapon type, no central age of the shooter, no similar backgrounds) the outlier events have the commonality of the cattle pen scenario. Given our love for big events and the ease of researching their murderous heroes online, we will likely see more consistent spikes of well-planned cattle pen massacres … at least until such time as the nation examines their mental health treatment choices.

### A note on the data source:

In this analysis we used the Mother Jones database of mass shootings *after* we normalized it to conform with the criminology definition for mass public shootings, 4+ dead not including the attacker. The primary reasons for using Mother Jones’ database for this analysis was their including of a location category and that their database goes back further in time than others.

### Update #1: Common vs Exceptional events

[![U.S. Mass Public Shootings - common vs exceptional incidents - 1982 through 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-common-vs-exceptional-incidents-1982-through-2018-400x296.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-common-vs-exceptional-incidents-1982-through-2018.png)![U.S. Mass Public Shootings - escalation of fatalities post Columbine - 1982 through 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-escalation-of-fatalities-post-Columbine-1982-through-2016-400x305.png)It is useful to identify a breakpoint between a “common” or “typical” mass public shooting, and this much larger “exceptional” incidents.

For our purposes, the number of 20 fatalities is our breakpoint, which we arrived at by charting all incidents from 1989 through earlier this week. As you can see in this chart, there is a clear division between the average body count of 6.9 fatalities and the much higher average of 34 dead in the “exceptional” category.

### Update #2: A Cleaner Visualization

The original line chart in this post is quite useful, but it does not show the stark escalation of fatalities in mass public shootings in the post Columbine period.

Using spans of five years (semi-decadal) we see that before 2005, though the number of incidents rose and fell, the number of per capita fatalities stayed within a band.

After 2004, cattle penning events became more common, starting with the VA Tech massacre (32 dead), continuing in the next five-year span with Sandy Hook (27 dead) and onward into the current period with Pulse Nightclub (49), Las Vegas concert (58) and Texas church (26).

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** cattle pen, mass, public, shootings, trend

---

### [Tracing Suicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tracing-suicides/)

**Published:** November 13, 2018
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

**The Lie of Fear:** Creating a false sense of fear in order to motivate people to action while easing them past critical thinking.

This entry, from the book *[Shooting The Bull](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240701/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0983240701&linkCode=as2&tag=gunfacinfo-20&linkId=QLB4ZTIPRC2FCREN)*, was the very first items in the “Catalog of Canards”, a list of most common propaganda techniques of the modern era. That organizations favoring gun control too often employ the *Lie of Fear* is regrettably understandable.

Which brings us to The Trace and their artless attempt to scare people about suicides:

## Take-aways

- Firearm suicides growing much more slowly than overall suicides.
- Trace chose to start trend analysis during a low-point in firearm suicides.

## The interesting angle

[![The Trace Funding Disclosure Page](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Trace-Funding-Disclosure-Page-400x271.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Trace-Funding-Disclosure-Page.jpg)Depending on the year you examine, firearm suicides constitute about 60-66% of firearm deaths in the United States. For decades gun control advocacy groups (which, charitably stated, *The Trace* is one, given the legendary activist donors on their disclosure page and that Michael Bloomberg birthed *The Trace*) lumped firearm suicides and homicides into the same bucket, in order to broadcast scary sounding numbers, typically with very rigged language (e.g. “There were 33,000 gun deaths last year …”).

The problem was that this canard was routinely exposed, so often so, that even overworked journalists – who previously would have echoed the talking point without question – started badgering the gun control groups about the quality of their pitch.

In the wake of such exposure, various groups have tried to make firearm suicides a talking point. But they encounter two problems in doing so. First, the Average Joe is smart enough to know that suicide is a mental health issue, not a gun issue. The other is that the Gun Facts Project showed that [firearm availability has no bearing on successful suicide attempts](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/).

So, in order to generate a little fear, *The Trace* went ballistic \[Editor: Sorry for the pun\].

## The misleading blurb

In their newsletter was the following blurb (highlighting ours):

> **After a decade-long decline, gun deaths are on the rise in the U.S., according to a CDC report.** The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that there were a combined 72,349 gun deaths in 2015 and 2016 — 27,394 homicides and 44,955 suicides — the highest recorded levels since 2006 and 2007. Especially worrying: Gun suicides increased 21 percent between 2006 and 2016.

The goal of the blurb was to make the reader believe that firearm suicides were spiraling out of control. But were they? After all, the Great recession started in 2008 – two years after *The Trace* anchored their report – and hard economic times often push people into suicidal modes. Also, was 2016 a blip or part of a long-term trend?

We at the Gun Facts Project went to the same data source that *The Trace* used, namely the Centers for Disease Control and their popular WISQARS mortality database. Due to their fractured database, we could grab suicide data from the year 2000 through 2016 in one grab, which thankfully was enough to weed out the *Great Recession* fluctuation.

What we discovered is likely what *The Trace* wanted to not be discovered.

**2006 WAS A LOW POINT:** For firearm suicides, the year 2006 was a low point – about 5% below the previous high in 2002. By starting their analysis in 2006, they inflated the appearance of later increases. It is doubtful this was accidental.

**[![Total suicide and firearm suicide rates from 2000 through 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Total-suicide-and-firearm-suicide-rates-from-2000-through-2016-400x293.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Total-suicide-and-firearm-suicide-rates-from-2000-through-2016.jpg)OVERALL SUICIDES ARE WAY UP:** The overall suicide rate – regardless of the means used for committing suicides – rose at a swift pace starting around 2007, when headwinds of the looming *Great Recession* were first being felt. Even if firearm suicide rates rose as steeply as overall suicide rates, that would be a factor concerning psychological depression and mental health, not guns.

**FIREARM SUICIDE RATES FAR LOWER:** The ***big*** kicker is that the rate of increase in firearm suicides ***was less than half that of overall suicide rates***. Stated differently, of those people who felt a need to “end it all”, more than twice as many chose to do so without guns than with (slopes: 0.2 for overall suicide rates, 0.08 for firearm suicide rates).

## Traceable

![The Trace Media Partners](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Trace-Partners-400x328.jpg)What *The Trace* has yet to learn is that all the data is traceable. Spinning tales is not as viable as it once was because the data is available for anyone who wants to have a look (the CDC WISQARS database is online to the public, as it should be).

What is effective is their media connections.

Let’s be a little blunt. Any organization that knowingly associates or collaborates with *The Trace*, given its origin and funding, lacks journalistic integrity. Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, sundry local papers and NBC affiliates can now be safely recast as agitprop outlets, devoid of the respectability other members of the media strive to maintain.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, The Trace

**Tags:** cdc, suicides, the trace

---

### [High Gun Death Perspectives](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/high-gun-death-perspectives/)

**Published:** December 16, 2018
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Whenever you see breathless reporting of the same core story across multiple media outlets, odds are there is more to the tale. In this case, the recently recirculating headlines noting that “Gun deaths at highest level in 40 years, CDC says” and “More than 100 people killed every day in the US as gun deaths spiral to highest level in 40 years.”

Naturally, we at the Gun Facts project had to dig below the headlines to see what the heck was going on.

## The big take-aways

- Firearm suicides are up, but in the key group, the rate of suffocation suicides is growing fastest
- Homicides are up, but astoundingly so for young blacks
- The upward trends started at different times and for different reasons

## First, let’s take the long view

As is well known – because this has been rehashed more often than the corned beef at the local diner – the two primary causes of someone dying from a gun are suicides and homicides, in that order. The other categories – accidental deaths, legal interventions, etc. – have such small rates of occurrence that for today, we will simply ignore them … especialy given the [steep multi-decade decline in accidental gun deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ACCIDENTAL-GUN-DEATHS-U.S.-Accidental-Firearm-Deaths-and-Death-Rate-1981-through-2017.jpg).

[![Firearm Homicides and Suicides - United States - 1981 thru 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Firearm-Homicides-and-Suicides-United-States-1981-thru-2016-400x284.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Firearm-Homicides-and-Suicides-United-States-1981-thru-2016.png)To get past media hyperventilation, we first turn to the source data cited in the report, namely the Center for Disease Control (CDC) mortality databases. We do indeed see upticks in firearm suicides and homicides, but *they are not covariant*. Suicide rates started climbing with the onset of the Great Recession, triggered by the American housing crash crisis. This makes sense because suicide rates rise whenever there are severe psychological stresses. Suddenly being out of work and homeless certainly qualifies. It will be interesting to see if recent economic revitalization forces the suicide trendline back down in the coming years.

Firearm homicides? Well, that topic is both understandable and speculative. American firearm homicide rates started rising in 2014 – six years into the housing crisis. According to some reports [1](#note-5039-1 "How Did We Get Here? Heroin and Fentanyl Trafficking Trends A Law Enforcement Perspective, Dismukes, June 2018") 2014 was likely the inflection year for Latin American drug cartels shifting their production from marijuana (rapidly legalizing in the U.S. and thus becoming unprofitable to smugglers) and cocaine to opioids. In the following few years, old orders within the street drug distribution industry were disrupted and turf battles for new, rapidly growing and evolving distribution chains erupted.

Summarizing this a bit: people depressed over economic woes started killing themselves in 2008 and street-level drug dealers started killing each other in 2014.

## Homicides: Age, race and not-necessarily-metro

The more interesting of the two trends is the sudden and steep rise of firearm homicides starting around 2014. This is roughly when both Chinese and Mexican traffickers started making an opioid called fentanyl. It was sold in raw form as well as being added to heroin to cut costs while boosting highs.

Based on past trends with drugs and street violence, we assumed most of the new firearm homicides would be inner-city related as they had in the past with marijuana, cocaine, crack, etc. What we found were predictable manifestations concerning the race of firearm homicide victims (statistically poor, young and urban, and thus more highly associated with street gangs and retail drug trade).

Well, we got two out of three right.

**Slope –
pre 2014****Slope – 2014-2016**15-24 years-0.16**1.72**25-34 years0.09**1.58**35-44 years0.09**1.52**45-54 years-0.010.7555-64 years0.010.5765-74 years-0.010.07SOURCE: CDC WONDER database, rates averaged, firearm homicides**Black****White****Hispanic****Average**Large Central Metro**0.99**0.110.370.49Large Fringe Metro**1.08**0.110.280.49Medium metro-0.520.160.17-0.06Micropolitan**1.21**0.12-0.150.39Small metro**1.56**0.170.10.61Nonmetro**1.61**0.15-0.140.54Average0.990.140.11SOURCE: CDC WONDER database, rates averaged, firearm homicides, 2014-2017**Average Firearm Suicide Slope****Average Annual Suffocation Slope**White0.200.26Black0.090.06Hispanic0.060.14SOURCE: CDC WONDER database, rates averaged, ages 25-54Gangs and drugs are a young man’s game. When we look at years before and after, we see that before 2014, most age groups were holding relatively steady in terms of firearm homicides. But in the years following, the lower age groups had rather meteoric rises. It is the before/after contrast that is important. The 15-year trend before 2014 showed small increases in firearm homicides and even some decreases, depending on the age bracket. But starting in 2014 all non-child age brackets went up, and the bands where most street gang members come from – ages 15 to 34 – rose twice as rapidly.
Likewise, the firearm homicide spike followed recurring race lines as well. What was not following long-term trends was locality. With the exception of micropolitan regions (an urban area with a population of at least 10,000 but less than 50,000), firearm homicides rose almost uniformly, with less urban areas taking the lead. Along race lines, there was a noticeable increase among urban Hispanics but a solid jump among blacks across all degrees of urbanization.

## The suicide slopes

Before the Great Recession, suicide rates were either stable or declining among all races except for Native Americans, and for all age groups. Starting with the housing collapse, suicide rates for blacks and Hispanics did not jump skywards, but for middle aged whites it did. Significantly.

This is sadly predictable. People who have the most to lose tend to take it the hardest. During the Great Depression of the 1920s, it wasn’t the janitor who jumped out of the skyscraper – it was the well-heeled stock trader who had lost everything. Likewise, the housing bubble burst led more middle-aged whites to exit from this world.
None of that is interesting. What is interesting is how media hyperventilation concerning “firearm deaths” masked this as the relative reality of the many modes of suicide. Among those ages where income and status mattered, we see a post-crash suicide rates for suffocation rising faster than the suicide rates for firearms (the rate of other modes of suicide are small enough to ignore). What this means is that the rise in firearm suicides from 2008 to 2017 ***lagged*** the overall suicide rate for the part of the population that had the highest increase. The breathless headlines didn’t bother to look for, much less show, the underlying cause.

I don’t expect the average overworked reporter at an American news outlet to know this stuff. Though not arcane, it is neither in their area of expertise or within their deadlines. It is important though that they learn, then turn to people who can cut through the muck for them (like you). This will help slow public stampeding over horrifying and misleading headlines.

Notes:

1. *How Did We Get Here? Heroin and Fentanyl Trafficking Trends A Law Enforcement Perspective*, Dismukes, June 2018 [↩](#return-note-5039-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, Media Mendacity

**Tags:** cdc, homicides, suicides

---

### [Impractically Useless](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/impractically-useless/)

**Published:** January 13, 2019
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Legislation that does nothing is almost as bad as legislation that overtly harms. It gives people the false notion that the government is doing something for their benefit, a common enough delusion.

This is the basis for the recently proposed ‘‘Background Check Expansion Act,’’ which is the name for the Senate version of the “universal” or “comprehensive” background checks for firearm purchases and transfers.

**SIDE NOTE:** At this writing the House version has not been filed. The Senate version is the least objectionable variation of such bills. A common legislative technique is to get one body to float a bill to which fewer people would object, let the public believe that is the stated plan, then introduce something more draconian in the other chamber after the public has generally consented to the lesser bill.

At the Gun Facts project, we won’t take ideological sides, but we will see if the bill currently on the table is useful and constitutional. After all, a useless bill is about as desirable as an equally useless congressman.

## Quick take-aways

- Best case scenario, assuming high compliance, 425 gun homicides prevented per year
- Zero impact on suicide rates
- Zero impact on mass public shootings
- Most likely will increase underground gun transfers
- At least two significant constitutional questions

## The constitutional question

The proposed act is of questionable constitutionality, but this analysis gets dicey.

Two questions are on the table: (1) Can commerce be compelled? and (2) Can interpersonal transfers of firearms be regulated? We won’t try to adjudicate either question, but will gloss over the basic issue.

As the bill is written, if you wanted to sell a used rifle to your cousin, the law would require you to do so through a federal firearm licensee (FFL), AKA a “gun store.” Aside from real-world logistical issues (say, if you and your cousin were rural folk, an hour’s drive from the nearest FFL) there is the matter of having to pay the FFL to do the paperwork. This is commerce, and largely not interstate, which is the only type Congress is permitted to regulate. Hence, to sell your cousin the rifle, you are forced to engage in commerce under penalty of incarceration. This is unlike the forced commerce of Obamacare, where the Supreme Court was intellectually unable to clearly discern a tax from a fine. Prison and a tax/fine are very different things.

There is no constitutional provision for forcing people into commerce. This will be one of the multitude of litigation points should the bill ever crawl out from under Chris Murphy’s desk (and don’t even think about what Murphy does to the law under his desk).

The other question is whether Congress has the power to regulate the transfer of firearms between consenting adults. Again, there is no specific constitutional power for such, at least within a state’s borders. One would have to bow to exotic reinterpretations of the commerce clause to think this was a power vested in the government by the Constitution.

So, before we ask ourselves if the bill is at all useful, let’s just say the pro-gun factions have ample constitutional issues with the proposal (and with an increasingly Heller-friendly Supreme Court, odds are the Supremes will look upon the bill with disfavor).

## But will it work?

The bill will do next to nothing to prevent gun deaths. It fails on the criminal, accidental and suicide fronts. We are not saying zero lives would be saved. But we are saying the number will be so small as to make the bill nothing more than a legislative publicity stunt.

### What we know – the basic breakdown

[![Bureau of Justice Statistics - crime gun sources](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources-400x380.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources.jpg)

LEGAL VIA FFL: 11%
ILLEGAL/UNDERGROUND: 40%
MIXTURE VIA PERSON-TO-PERSON: 37%
UNKNOWN/OTHER: 11%

Every decade, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) produces their *Firearm Violence* report. Among the useful data therein is this handy little table that tells us from where criminals acquired their guns (we’ll get to suicides in a bit).

Looked at a bit differently (and with one tiny data blip concerning flea markets), the breakdown is basically like this:

We have to ignore the last item because BJS lacks clarity into the catch-all category. It would be nice to have 100% knowledge, but we are just mortals.

Combining the other rows, we can safely note that the third row – person-to-person transfers – is the only area where “universal” background checks might have some efficacy. But this bucket is problematic because it has a lot of junk in it, including but certainly not limited to:

- Strawman purchases (already illegal)
- Lending between some family members (permitted in the new legislation)
- Lending to a known prohibited person (already illegal)
- Gifting to a friend (generally legal, with many exceptions, including in the new bill)
- Drug dealer privately pawning a surplus gun to another dealer (illegal on every front)

And so on. The problem is that we do not know what the breakdowns really are. How many of the 37% of guns would not have been transferred to the criminal with “universal” background checks? The likely answer is “very few,” due to legal ease of transfer and illegal ease of transfer.

There are three types of transfers at play here:

**Transfers between two people with no criminal record or intent:** These are both the people who are infinitely unlikely to commit a gun crime and infinitely likely to obey a background check law.

**Transfers to known criminals:** If you are lending, giving or selling a gun to a person you know is not allowed to posses one, then you are knowingly committing a criminal act. Odds are you would not obey the background check law either.

**Transfers to presumed good actors:** You might sell or lend a gun to someone who you do not know is a prohibited person, or who is actually not prohibited but later uses the gun in a crime. For sake of argument, let’s assume (a) everyone selling/giving the gun would conduct a background check and that (b) 78% of the recipients are prohibited (we derived this number by finding the ratio between the FFL crime gun acquisition against the criminals who go straight to the black market). This also means at most only 22% of this group would be caught in a “universal” background check.

The net effect from this rather loose math is that at most 8% of gun crimes *could* be prevented by “universal” background checks. We have to emphasize *could* because there is inadequate insight into compliance with such background checks. One interesting bit of research, conducted amazingly enough by the generally anti-gun Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis, concluded that California’s “universal” background check “policies were not associated with changes in firearm suicide or homicide.” [1](#note-5083-1 "California's Comprehensive Background Check and Misdemeanor Violence Prohibition Policies and Firearm Mortality, Castillo-Carniglia / Kagawa / Cerdá / Crifasi / Vernick / Webster / Wintemute, Annals of Epidemiology, October 2018")

When distilled, this means that at *very most* we might see 1,173 fewer firearm homicides (using 2016 data). But this portion of the 14,415 firearm homicides is highly inflated because …

### Our Four Target Groups

The Gun Facts project created the “Four Target Groups” classification, which are the four types of people society does not want to have guns. Those four groups are:

- Criminals (people who actively engage in illegal pursuits)
- Terrorists
- Lunatics
- Hotheads

Let’s ponder the motivations of these shooters and if they would be caught in the snare of “universal” background checks.

**Criminals:** Very unlikely. The motivation of a criminal is to achieve something (money, sex, violence) through illegal means. As shown by the 40% of crime guns acquired through black markets, and by some unknown percentage of intentionally illegal “family and friend” transfers, criminals are not terribly interested in following the law. This would, with zero doubt, include a “universal” background check. The only way the law would indirectly impact crime would be by adding more charges to a perpetrator after arrest. But this merely extends their jail time – it does not *prevent* the crime.

**Terrorists:** As with criminals, the law is rather irrelevant to terrorists. Their goal is to generate a sense of terror in the general public, and there are likely few legal means for doing so, aside from being elected to Congress. Mass public shootings are about the only gun-related terrorist act, and these are very few and far between. The Gun Facts Mass Public Shooting database (still being refined, but to be published) lists only two such instances since 1997 – the San Bernardino Inland Regional Center event, and the Chattanooga military base event. In both those cases, the guns were legally obtained, and hence background checks were already in place.

**Lunatics:** Again, mass public shootings are a good proxy for the intersection of gun deaths. According to the database, of mass public shootings where the shooter had prior mental health indicators (62%+ of all mass public shootings), 80% of the shooters obtained their guns legally. In 13% of mass public shootings the guns were definitely obtained illegally, typically stolen from someone else (the infamous Sandy Hook Elementary shooting was done with stolen guns). This means at most 7% of lunatic gun crimes *might* be prevented with a “universal” background check.

**Mode of Acquisition****Gun Homicides**Legal252Friends and Family847Underground916**Hotheads:** Sadly, there is not (to our knowledge) a clear-cut dataset concerning people who go off their rockers and kill someone else. As such, it would be an educated guess as to what percentage of hotheads were of the already listed criminal class, and what subset acquired their guns through FLLs or private transfers. Worse yet, we do not know with precision what percentage of gun homicides were *hothead* events. Using the FBI’s expanded homicide tables, the sum of the circumstances that are organically *hothead* events (ignoring drug and alcohol fueled), this category would constitute 2,290 killings. Of these, if we use the percentages of acquisition the BJS told us about before, at worst hothead gun homicides that *might* be addressed through a “universal” background check would be 847 – and this carries the huge assumptions that the NICS database is fully populated and there is 100% compliance among the otherwise law-abiding citizenry. But we know this number to be high since most hothead shootings derive from arguments, which may be criminal in nature (e.g., gang members arguing over turf). For sake of argument, let’s assume that a full half of hothead homicides are tied to other factors (reasonable, since there were only 76 “romantic triangle” gun homicides in 2017, which gives you some perspective). So, half would be 424 hothead gun homicides.

There were 495 accidental gun deaths in 2016. In other words, the number of gun homicides that *might* be prevented by “universal” background checks is likely less than the tiny and rapidly falling number of fatal gun accidents. This makes the proposed legislation impractically useless.

## Suicide silliness

When cornered on the numbers above, some politicos will claim that background checks will prevent suicides using guns. These people need to read the Gun Facts cross-sectional studies on [guns and suicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/).

The argument for “universal” background checks goes a bit deeper than the utter non-association between gun availability and gun suicides. The proposal stumbles badly because:

- **Not all depressed people seek treatment, and thus would not be in a background database:** According to the World Health Organization, less than 50% of people with depression receive treatment. We can safely assume the numbers are similar for the United States.
- **Being depressed may not be reported:** Even if a depressed person seeks help, there are different degrees of depression, and it is a judgement call on the medical practitioner as to whether someone needs extra attention that leads to reporting.
- **Reporting is a bit of a joke:** Even if a depressed person is institutionalized, they may or may not get added to the NICS system, based on a myriad of state and federal rules as well as lackadaisical data entry at the local level.

Now it gets a bit more complicated. Depressed people quite typically deal with their depression for a long time, often years. A depressed person can legally acquire a gun before seeking treatment (if they *do* seek treatment) and may contemplate committing suicide many times over. Background checks would not affect these cases.

The bottom line is that we know guns don’t lead to suicide; they are just one of many tools depressed people might use to die. Thus, “universal” background checks will (statistically speaking) make zero difference in suicide rates.

## Ignoring the basics

So why is this impractically useless law being proffered? Because it polls well. According to Pew Research, “majorities of both Democrats (91%) and Republicans (79%) favor background checks for private gun sales and sales at gun shows.” Ignoring any complaints about Pew’s methodologies, we’ll simply state that people support the measure, which is reason enough for a politician for slap together a bill for such.

But would the public still support it if they knew it would save no lives, or so few as to be meaningless? Perhaps not.

---

## UPDATE #1: Newer data

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Gun-source-old-and-newer-report-400x151.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Gun-source-old-and-newer-report.png)An astute reader (thanks Dave) noted a more recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report [2](#note-5083-2 "Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016")on the crimes and guns, and the data therein is slightly less optimistic about the success of the any “universal” background check.

The net-net of this is that more crime guns are coming from underground sources, ande fewer are coming from person-to-person (friends and family) transfer. That latter group are the only ones to be affected by “universal” background checks and the rate of gun acquisition in that group is down 32% *less* than previously thought.

Notes:

1. *California's Comprehensive Background Check and Misdemeanor Violence Prohibition Policies and Firearm Mortality*, Castillo-Carniglia / Kagawa / Cerdá / Crifasi / Vernick / Webster / Wintemute, Annals of Epidemiology, October 2018 [↩](#return-note-5083-1)
2. *Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016* [↩](#return-note-5083-2)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns, Guns and Crime Prevention, Mass Shootings

**Tags:** background checks

---

### [Traces of a Con](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/traces-of-a-con/)

**Published:** February 15, 2019
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

“There are more gun stores in America than Starbucks and McDonalds combined.”

This was a headline from a propaganda organization within the gun control movement. As with any wild-sounding claim from either camp, the Gun Facts project took interest. A bit of data chasing and number crunching shows that the claim is marginally accurate yet totally misleading.

But what else would one expect from The Trace.

## Major Take-aways

- There are even wilder and less accurate store-vs-store claims floating about than this one.
- There are approximately 236 more gun stores than the combined total of Starbucks and McDonald’s outlets (28,382 vs 28,146); but that’s if we count pawn shops as “gun stores.” Subtract those (8,002) and the claim gets reversed.
- In addition, an unknown number of the above “gun stores” are just gunsmiths and not actual retailers.
- The ratio of gun stores to these two food franchises varies wildly from state to state.
- When contrasted with either fast-food restaurants or all restaurants, gun stores are barely measurable.

The analysis herein is a handy lesson in real-time propaganda analysis, so sit tight and enjoy the ride.

## The common data source and the complications in understanding

Just what is a “gun store”? The definition chosen by The Trace represents the first departure in reality for the more excessive claims made by policy groups.

The federal government licenses gun makers, importers, gunsmiths and retailers as Federal Firearm Licensees (FFLs) and reports all of them on the BATF website. We grabbed the 2017 database for this bit of analysis.

**Number****Percent****Description**5657371%Dealer in Firearms Other Than Destructive Devices (Includes Gunsmiths)800210%Pawnbroker in Firearms Other Than Destructive Devices0%Collector of Curios and Relics24053%Manufacturer of Ammunition for Firearms1122914%Manufacturer of Firearms Other Than Destructive Devices10901%Importer of Firearms Other Than Destructive Devices690%Dealer in Destructive Devices3340%Manufacturer of Destructive Devices2120%Importer of Destructive DevicesWhen one reviews the list of every entity that has an active FFL, we see a lot of entities who are obviously not “gun stores.” This includes importers, dealers in non-gun products that go “boom,” companies that manufacture but don’t retail guns, people who make bullets, and those who collect antiques.

What remains are 64,575 companies or individuals with an FFL. This seemingly large number includes pawn shops (12% of the alleged “gun stores,” despite many pawn shops not actively buying or selling guns) and another group which is the most interesting topic we need to discuss.

Per federal law, a person or entity – be it Bass Pro Shop or your neighbor Bob – engaged in the “business” of dealing in, manufacturing, or importing firearms (or manufacturing or importing ammunition) must obtain an FFL. This includes a significant number of people who are not dealers per se, at least not in the sense that any reasonable person would perceive them to be. And they certainly are not “gun stores.”

The government requires you to get an FFL if you are “engaged in the business of…” However, they don’t define what that really means. Sure, if Guns’R’Us sells 10,000 guns a month from a storefront on Main Street, then they are certainly a “gun store.” If your cousin Jim buys and sells two guns a quarter, but advertises them online, he is certainly *not* a “gun store,” but will likely obtain an FFL to avoid running afoul of the poorly defined law. That is why there is an FFL in this satellite image. Cousin Jim lives in that nice little three-bedroom place near the corner (this is not a joke – we fed the address of the very first FFL flagged as not being in a commercial space into Google Maps, and this is where the “gun shop” is located).

![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/sat-map-of-ffl-400x366.jpg)We took a representative sample of the FFLs (randomized, 95% confidence level, ±6% confidence interval) and fed the addresses to a “Residential Delivery Indicator” (RDI) search tool. This tool tells you if an address is residential or commercial. We discovered that of all the FFLs that were not in the aforementioned exclusion classes (curios, manufacturers, importers, etc.), ***there are more residential FFL holders than gun stores***, by a 1.1:1 ratio. A total of 28,382 FFLs had actual commercial addresses, and not all of them were stores – many were in industrial parks where manufacturing occurs.

Now, here is a big gotcha. Not everyone with an FFL and a commercial address is actually a “gun store.” For example, a real FFL location called “Like Life Taxidermy” is in our analysis a “gun store.” So is “Wes’s Reloading” (ammo), “Towlesville Craft & Shaft,” “Kloesel Garage” and “Edwards Discount Drugs” (seriously, we are not making any of those up). And these are ones we saw on just the first page of the spreadsheet, along with “Wal-Mart Supercenter #2654” and several reading “NULL.”

For now, let’s just say that in this analysis, the count of “gun stores” is *very* overestimated.

## Which is deadlier, a 9mm or a Big Mac?

Perspective is key, and the first thing you notice about The Trace’s headline is that their “perspective” is artificial. Whenever you see an artificial contrast, it is guaranteed to be hiding the true perspective.

Since everyone knows where to find a Starbucks or McDonald’s, saying that there are more gun stores than those restaurants combined makes one think there is a gun store on every corner (and there is a place on this planet where a Starbucks sits across the street from another Starbucks). But picture in your mind the last long drive you took through retailing regions of your town and how many gun stores you saw versus the number of Starbucks and McDonalds. Bet the former was zero and the latter was at least one.

[![Ratio of Gun Stores to Combined Starbucks + McDonalds](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Ratio-of-Gun-Stores-to-Combined-Starbucks-McDonalds-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Ratio-of-Gun-Stores-to-Combined-Starbucks-McDonalds.png)![Gun Stores and Eating Establishments in the United States - 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Gun-Stores-and-Eating-Establishments-in-the-United-States-2017-400x276.png)Part of the problem is regionality. There are a slightly larger number of gun stores in Dallas than Manhattan… about a gizzilion to one. This map shows the disparity. The numbers say the average ratio of “gun stores” to Starbucks+McDonalds is 2.8:1, but on a state-by-state basis the range of ratios goes from nearly 11:1 (Go Montana!) to 0:1 (yep, Washington D.C.). So even making the “gun store”-to-restaurant comparison is a bit lame. It serves no rational purpose, even if it was not misleading.

But Lordy, Lordy, Lordy it is misleading.

The national ratio of “gun stores” to fast-food restaurants (28,382 to 190,649) is 0.15:1, and the ratio of “gun stores” to all restaurants in the United States (estimated total of 660,755) is 0.04:1.

In other words, “gun stores” are outgunned \[Editor: Sorry, this punster went off half-cocked\].

## Grub and Grubbiness

Why tell people, “There are more gun stores in America than Starbucks and McDonalds combined”? To scare them. Everyone knows where there is a Starbucks and most everyone knows where there is a McDonald’s (vegans might be ignorant of the latter). So, anyone one without proper perspective now thinks there are just as many gun stores. If you don’t like guns, you don’t like gun stores and The Trace has put you into an increased state of fear… which eases people past rational thought and into political action.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Propaganda, The Trace

**Tags:** FFL, gun stores

---

### [Red Flags](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/red-flags/)

**Published:** March 12, 2019
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Are red flag laws effective, or should politicians be flagged for being offsides?

## Take-aways

- Too few data points for statistical robustness
- Largely irrelevant to homicides
- Barely effective on suicides
- For suicides, “studies” thus far count only “firearm deaths” instead of all forms of suicides, which is a grave methodology error
- Trade-off between a few lives saved and significant due process questions is out of balance

## Wave Your Flag

“Red Flag Laws” (RFL herein) are all the rage these days, with many states enacting or considering them. However, the relative newness of RFLs makes analyzing their effectiveness a little tricky.

Before 2016, only two states – Connecticut and Indiana – had RFLs. To see before-and-after effects of any law, you need a little runway (we at the Gun Facts project think ±5 years is sufficient). Most states with RFLs have less than three years of experience with these laws. So, with only two data points, we have to grab a salt shaker, because any analysis will require more than a grain or two.

What we have with the two RFL states poses a bit of a quandary. First, the states are very different in nature. Connecticut, in the Northeast, has a high population density (741 people per square mile), while Indiana is a relatively low-density state (187) in the Midwest. Very different cultures, very different neighboring states, and likely very different gun ownership rates. [1](#note-5153-1 "Many criminologists have attempted to estimate the gun ownership rates by state, and they readily admit their findings are suspect, though criminologist Gary Kleck’s paper contrasting the sundry approaches and showing some alignment of measurements shows we might be able to ballpark it.")

We also have to take into account that the laws, as enacted, are functionally very different:

**Indiana:** seizure of a person’s firearms if a *police officer* believes the person has a “mental illness” and is “dangerous,” defined as an imminent or future “risk of personal injury” to self or others.

**Connecticut:** requires an “independent investigation” by police if they believe that a person poses “a risk of imminent personal injury” to self or others; followed by a warrant request, with several formal checks on the judge’s ability to order the seizure and retention of firearms by law enforcement.

As you can see, in Indiana a person can be disarmed by the assessment of one cop, whereas in Connecticut it requires a fair bit of process. Between culture, population density and the laws themselves, we can expect some differences between these two states. But can we expect differences between these states and the rest of the country? The answer seems to be “yes,” but turns out to be “not really.”

## Let’s Be Dismissive About Homicides

The twin claims about RFLs is that they will lower suicide rates and prevent homicides by hotheads and lunatics. It is the claim about homicides that we can dismiss.

As the Gun Facts project maintains, we are interested in keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists, criminals, lunatics and hotheads. It is these last two groups who are the target of RFLs. The question is, what fraction of the gun owning population are these people? Quite small, actually.

- About 4% of the population has a severe mental illness. [2](#note-5153-2 "National Alliance on Mental Illness website")
- Common estimates are that 40­–50% of households own guns, or about 50 million households, on the low end.
- Combined, that is about 2 million severely mentally ill people *possibly* in the proximity of a gun. But … 
    - Not all mental illness results in violent behavior
    - Families with a member who is mentally ill are much more likely to avoid owning a gun; or at least they would lock it up. The rate, however, is not known.

Two million people – tops – who are mentally ill and *might* have access to a gun compares somewhat favorably to the number of street gang members in the United States – which, based on the [major metro estimates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gangs-and-guns/) we have stumbled upon, is likely around the two million mark as well. And we know street gangs have guns, know how to use them and employ them daily.

The point is that identifying a person with a violent mental illness, who has access to a gun, and who fits an RFL criteria, is a rapidly shrinking number. Hotheads are even tougher to corner because of the subjectivity of evaluation (a shrink has a standard set of tools and definitions for a severe mental illness, whereas a patrol officer lacks the same for hotheads).

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Firearm-Homicides-Before-and-After-Red-Flag-Laws-400x342.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Firearm-Homicides-Before-and-After-Red-Flag-Laws.png)But we at the Gun Facts project hate too much speculation, so we did a quick visualization of the before-and-after for our two RFL states – Connecticut and Indiana. Connecticut saw no lasting change in their homicide rate, and the temporarily lower rate of firearm homicides is more directly explained by the rapidly falling rate of such *before* the enactment of their RFL. Compared to the states without any RFL, Indiana did no better or worse. This speaks to the notion that:

- The number of lunatics and hotheads tends to be small (especially compared to gang members).
- Proactively identifying them is subjective, sporadic and loaded with false negatives (people assumed to be agitated but actually were not, or not prone to homicide when cranked).

Suicides, however, are a bit more interesting. Sadly, the science+media ecosystem has already been polluted.

## Suicide (analysis) Is Painless

First, let us take to task researchers and some members of the media for ignoring the obvious (the former intentionally, the latter from a lack of journalistic due diligence).

As the Gun Facts project has noted (again, and again, and again, and …) people are very creative in how they kill themselves. In short, if a gun isn’t available, other methods are. In the psych and criminology fields, this is called “substitution of means” and thus there is no [correlation between gun availability and suicide rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/).

Some researchers have published on how RFLs have reduced just *firearm* suicides but conveniently sidestepped the substitution-of-means equalizer. Here is a hypothetical situation, for illustration’s sake. Jim is seriously depressed. His wife left him, due to his drinking, which led to him being fired. And he’s ugly. His friends know Jim owns a gun, so call the cops, and they take his gun from him. But Jim also has his estranged wife’s prescription medication she left behind, so he cracks open a fresh bottle of gin and proceeds to swallow every pill he can find. Jim is just as dead as if he had shot himself. Given the vast variety of common substitution of means, no self-respecting researcher would publish on just firearm suicides in relationship to RFLs.

And every reporter should see through that. But the researchers debased themselves, or the reporters didn’t drink enough java to focus on the underlying elements in a press release, and thus caused too many people to believe RFLs made a significant difference.

Sigh.

Due to substitution of means, the overall suicide rate is what needs measuring. The theory at play is that the taking of the gun was not what might have stopped a suicide, but the human intervention and any mental health treatment that follows might. After all, when you are depressed and think the world has disowned you, having a few folks show up and try to rescue you might be enough. Jim might not swallow the pills after all when friends, family and cops try to help.

[![Suicide Rates - Before and After Red Flag Laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Suicide-Rates-Before-and-After-Red-Flag-Laws-400x296.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Suicide-Rates-Before-and-After-Red-Flag-Laws.png)[![Suicide Rates Before and After Red Flag Laws - slope comparison](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Suicide-Rates-Before-and-After-Red-Flag-Laws-slope-comparison-400x307.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Suicide-Rates-Before-and-After-Red-Flag-Laws-slope-comparison.png)Sadly, this is not the case, by and large. Connecticut had an admirably low suicide rate before they enacted their RFL, which kinda makes you wonder why they bothered. Indeed, were it not for the sudden drop in the state’s suicide rate two years before their RFL was enacted, there would be no downward slope at all. In fact, their suicide rate is higher after their RFL was enacted (we note that the uptick in Connecticut’s suicide rate corresponds with the start of the Great Recession – if we assume the spike is caused by that, then Connecticut’s suicide rate was fundamentally flatlined throughout the post-RFL years).

In a similar vein, Indiana’s suicide rate closely tracks those states without RFLs, both before and after the passage of the law.

There are differences, as statistically uninteresting as they may be. In the case of Connecticut, they had declining suicide rates before and after their RFL was enacted. But the rate of decline was much less *afterwards*. With suicides rising nationally after the year 2000, both RFL states saw impairment to their suicide prevention efforts.

In Connecticut, there was a 38-point shift in the slope of the line from before and after passage, and there was a 37-point shift nationally. In short, their RFL made no difference.

Indiana was a shade more hopeful, but only a shade. Whereas non-RFL states shifted 20 suicide slope points between the five years before and the five years after Indiana’s enactment of their RFL, Indiana shifted 14. Not as large of a move as nationally. But their rate of decline in suicides before their RFL was enacted was smaller than non-RFL states, and their increase after RFL enactment was lower as well. Yet the sift in the slope of the lines between Indiana and non-RFL states was significant but not huge – 14 and 20 points respectively.

What does this really mean in terms of life and death? Not much. In the year Connecticut passed their law, a little over 100 people shot themselves dead. Seventeen years later, about the same (yes, their population rose 5% during that period, so the tiny reduction means something). Likewise, Indiana’s population rose nearly 7% since they enacted their RFL law, but the number of people who killed themselves with a gun went up 45%.

**Year Enacted****2017**Connecticut111109Indiana416604Now contrast the latest total for those two states – 713 firearm suicides – with the 14,542 firearm homicides, largely gang-related, in the most recent year.

## Not entirely useless

There are significant constitutional due process issues with RFLs… expect them to be litigated for years to come. Ignoring that, we can say with safety that from an effectiveness standpoint, RFLs do little. We won’t say “nothing at all.” But the serious trade-off between a robust deference to due process and the small number of lives RFLs might save is distinct.

Notes:

1. Many criminologists have attempted to estimate the gun ownership rates by state, and they readily admit their findings are suspect, though criminologist Gary Kleck’s paper contrasting the sundry approaches and showing some alignment of measurements shows we *might* be able to ballpark it. [↩](#return-note-5153-1)
2. National Alliance on Mental Illness website [↩](#return-note-5153-2)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Guns and Crime Prevention

**Tags:** homicides, red flag, suicides

---

### [Kids, Guns and Guile](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/kids-guns-and-guile/)

**Published:** April 18, 2019
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

A congressman I met in my teens told me, “If someone mentions kids when debating politics, they are hiding behind children.”

It took time before the utter cynicism reality of his thinking manifested itself in my life. But at least nine times in ten when a politico says, “It’s for the children,” it is really for the operative’s ideology.

So, when I saw the following blurb from the propaganda wing of a policy group, I had to document the realities.

## Intermixing terms and deviants

> “Gun deaths among school-age children have increased in the last decade. A study published Thursday in the American Journal of Medicine found that 38,942 kids aged 5 to 18 were fatally shot in the U.S. between 1999 and 2017. The authors noted a steep rise among black children beginning in 2013. The study’s lead researcher put the toll in perspective: ‘In 2017, there were 144 police officers who died in the line of duty and about 1,000 active-duty military throughout the world who died, whereas 2,462 school-age children were killed by firearms.’”

This misleading paragraph is also a handy quick lesson in propaganda (or, more accurately, “agitprop”) analysis. I’ll interlace the two as we go along.

First, notice the free intermixing of the words “school-age” and children.” These are different things. As any parent can attest, the relative innocence of pre-pubescent children (the accurate definition) and hormonally crazed teens are far apart. What a teen will attempt to do ranges from the mild (staying out after curfew) to the criminal (murdering rival dealers).

 ![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Gang-Participation-by-Age-400x285.png) 

This intermixing of youngster definitions has been a long-standing tactic of some policy groups. It is well established in criminology that street gang participation starts young, as the chart here shows. [1](#note-5346-1 "Gang Membership Between Ages 5 and 17 Years in the United States, Pyrooz, Sweeten, February 2015")

The National Gang Center says that depending on the year, juveniles composed between 35% and 50% of street gang membership. [2](#note-5346-2 "Demographics, Age of Gang Members, NGC website")

Clearly, referring to both “children” and “school-age” people is willful mixing of dissimilar populations.

The other grand propaganda give-away was use of a seemingly huge number (38,942) for the number of children+teens gun fatalities. But notice that this is over an 18-year span, which means the total lowers to 2,163 people – children and teen gang members – being killed with firearms each year. Frankly, with America’s runaway street gang problem, I’m surprised it is that low. But the word *killed* includes all forms of firearm deaths, from accidents to suicides to homicides, and even a few causes the authorities could not classify.

So, let’s dive into the numbers and expose some perspective.

## The long term trends

Carnage in America peaked in 1993. Interestingly, this was also when accidental firearm deaths started their decline as well.

 [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Child-Firearm-Deaths-1979-2016-400x269.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Child-Firearm-Deaths-1979-2016.png) 

For actual children, firearm death rates have always been low (so much so that when you export data from the CDC website, they flash a warning saying that some data is unreliable due to such small numbers). Child firearm deaths plunged after 1993, though there has been an uptick in child firearm suicides in the last few years, to a rate equal to the previous peak in 1985 (one firearm suicide for every 333,333 children). But when we add a line for non-firearm suicides, it becomes clear that recent small rises in child firearm suicide rates is a side effect of rising overall suicide rates.

For children, things have never been safer. Accidental firearm deaths are 1/7th their 1979 peak, and firearm homicides are 40% of what they were in 1993. Indeed, the only way you can pollute this wonderfully improved state of affairs is by including people who are not children. You know, those “school-age” members of MS-13.

## Baseline data for teens

“Violent crime is a young man’s game,” a criminologist once told me. This is so true that many criminologists think keeping most convicted violent predators in jail past age 35 is a waste of money (I respectfully disagree, but that is for another forum).

    [![Firearm Homicides ages 0-19 1999-2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Firearm-Homicides-ages-0-19-1999-2016-400x299.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Firearm-Homicides-ages-0-19-1999-2016.jpg)   [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Firearm-Homicides-ages-15-19-urban-and-non-urban-1999-2016-400x308.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Firearm-Homicides-ages-15-19-urban-and-non-urban-1999-2016.png)   The con perpetrated by the fear-mongering politicos quoted above becomes clear when we explore firearm homicides by age bracket (and we cut off at age 19 due to the default export groupings in the CDC’s WONDER database). It is quite obvious that most non-adult firearm victims are in the teen years. Since the prime street gang entry years are between 13 and 18 (see the chart above), and since the odds of being a firearm homicide victim skyrocket when one joins a street gang, the reasons for the higher death rate for those between age 15 and 19 is not opaque.

As we know, gang activity is also highly urban in nature (not universally, but primarily). As with gang age clustering, so too does the urbanicity of the victim lean heavily toward big cities, well known for their [outsized gang membership rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-city-bang-bang/).

Let’s revisit the opening propaganda salvo that ignited our investigation. “Gun deaths among school-age children have increased in the last decade.” The CDC tells us that among children, firearm accidents – though down 67% from their peak – are unchanged in the last decade. Despite the recent spike, firearm homicides are down 20%. Propagandists could not say “Gun deaths among school-age children have increased in the last decade” without including juvenile street gang members.

## Don’t Panic

What the policy groups want is for you and your neighbor to panic. Don’t. Things, relatively speaking, are pretty good at present for kids.

### Update #1: Real tally

A reader asked the obvious question “what were the actual *child* death stats for the time span?” By this he was asking about the years 1999 through 2017, the range used by the propaganda group in question.

The answer is that we are pretty sure, though we are missing one year of data. The CDC WONDER database currently only ejects stats through 2016. But that is close enough for perspective.

Using the proper definition of “child” and the CDC age bracks of 0-14, we can make this comparison:

      Their
Claim CDC
Stats   Total deaths 38,942 7,427   Average Deaths Per Year 2,163 195   

Notes:

1. *Gang Membership Between Ages 5 and 17 Years in the United States*, Pyrooz, Sweeten, February 2015 [↩](#return-note-5346-1)
2. *Demographics, Age of Gang Members*, NGC website [↩](#return-note-5346-2)

**Categories:** Children and Guns, The Trace

**Tags:** children, deaths, gangs, guns

---

### [Concealed Carry Types and Crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/concealed-carry-types-and-crime/)

**Published:** April 27, 2019
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

We love Gun Facts readers. They ask some interesting questions.

## The Mega Warning

Do not consider this to be rigorous analysis. There are a multitude of confounding variables, and the Gun Facts project does not have the funding to tackle an exhaustive review. But we can present a quick acid test.

## CCW Types

The biggest variable is the type of concealed carry policy (“CCW” herein for brevity’s sake). There are currently three primary types:

- **May-Issue:** This is where local legislation allows local authorities to issue or not issue CCWs. California is the poster child for this, with a small number of county sheriffs having a “shall issue” policy, but most places issuing permits only to the well connected.
- **Shall-Issue:** This is where the government will issue any adult a CCW if they lack a criminal background. That being said, some states have few requirements and others require training, additional background checks, live-fire qualifications, permission from your first-grade teacher, the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time…
- **Permitless:** No permit required as long as you are not a prohibited person. Some in the pro-gun community call this “constitutional carry,” which *may* be an accurate description, but the Gun Facts project has to remain agnostic and thus use a neutral term.
 
The first two items would cause a serious headache for a full analysis. Not only would we have to weigh the rigors of the shall-issue states, but we would also need to evaluate the may-issue states for rates of actual issuance. For now, we’ll cringe and treat them as homogenous categories.

## Violent Crime Rates

 [![Violent Crime Rates and CCW Issuance Types](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/Violent Crime Rates and CCW Issuance Types-400x317.jpg)]() 

Recently someone emailed us and asked, “What are the crime stats in states with different types of concealed carry laws?” And, we were quite surprised to discover we had not done a recent cross-sectional review.

For homicides (guns or not-guns), we see statistically significant declines in homicide rates when CCWs are either given on demand or not required. Indeed, the homicide rate for Shall-Issue states is 13% lower than for May-Issue states, and 22% lower for states requiring no permits. The BIG gotcha here is that most of the May-Issue states in 2016 – California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York – are also home to cities with major street gang infestations. Hence, the homicide rates for May-Issue states may be skewed a little high.

We see even more impressive declines in robbery rates (the FBI defines robbery as “the taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of a person or persons by force or threat of force or violence and/or by putting the victim in fear.” The uncertainty principle – well documented in criminology academia – may be the primary factor in Shall-Issue states (44% less frequent) and Permitless states (66% less). Since many robberies are outdoor events (muggings, carjackings, etc.) public carry can be a deterrent.

Rape, however, is primarily an indoor crime and typically between people who know one another. This is why those columns are dimmed on the chart – CCWs come into play in public settings, not private. It is intriguing that rates of rape are higher in more liberalized CCW states.

Finally, being armed in public appears to not materially change the rate in which people will try to beat you up (aggravated assault). It might change the outcomes, but not the rates of incidences.

## Property Crime Rates

Property crimes are a bit tricky. Many, perhaps most, property crimes do not happen in public. In 2016, larceny-theft accounted for 71% of all property crimes, burglary 19% percent and motor vehicle theft 9.7%.

 [![Property Crime Rates and CCW Issuance Types](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/Property Crime Rates and CCW Issuance Types-400x317.jpg)]() 

Of these three major categories, burglary is an indoor crime, much as rape is. We expected CCWs to not be a factor and were slightly surprised to see the rate of burglary increase 43% in Shall-Issue states and 44% in Permitless states. It has often been theorized in criminology circles that criminals, being opportunistic, adapt to specific types of crime given the local cost/benefit options. The theory states that if the odds of getting shot while performing muggings is high in your state, you might decide to become a breaking-and-entering specialist. Burglary rates appear to conform to this theory.

Motor vehicle theft – “theft or attempted theft of a motor vehicle” – includes all forms, from hotwiring to carjacking. Hence, predicting how CCWs might affect the rate of motor vehicle thefts is mainly guesswork without a better breakdown of the numbers. In Shall-issue states, the rate is basically unchanged from May-Issue states. The rate drops 25% for Permitless states, but so many of the Permitless states in 2016 had low population densities, and auto theft tends to be a more urban affliction (about three times more frequent in major metro areas than suburban).

Larceny – “the unlawful taking, carrying, leading, or riding away of property from the possession or constructive possession of another” – is the most frequent property crime, but has no statistical variation between CCW type states. This makes sense given that most larceny is based on stealth, stealing when nobody is looking. Thus, having a gun on you when you bicycle is swiped while you are inside the store makes no difference.

## Caveats and Conclusions

Again, this little review is not robust, multivariate, statistically detailed research. But it gives us a rough, ballpark understanding that public carry appears to deter two major categories of violent crime … though not much else.

**Categories:** Concealed Carry, Crime and Guns, Crime Control, Guns and Crime Prevention

---

### [Suppressed Perspective](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suppressed-perspective/)

**Published:** June 25, 2019
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

“He had a suppressor? That’s unique.”

This was from a Gun Facts fan email during the breaking news cycle of the mass public shooting in Virginia Beach. The point being made was that by his reckoning, firearm suppressors were not often used in mass public shootings (MPSs).

Fact is, they are not used in crimes much at all, which makes the desire of some politicos to ban suppressors an amusing example of uninformed policy pontification.

## Major Takeaways

- BATF traced 97 suppressors in all of 2016.
- This is 0.01% of those in circulation.
- Suppressors are ignored by criminals for the same reasons they rarely use derringers or machineguns.

## What the BATF Tracked

We used 2016 for this review of suppressors for the reason that it is recent, we could get other crime data easily, and it skipped 2017 when there was a mass BATF trace of suppressors recovered in one state, which was a very atypical blip on the trend lines.

**WARNINGS:** Before going further, we need to note that comparing instances where the BATF traced the origin of a weapon – including suppressors – against crime data is a loose fit. The BATF often traces weapons ***not*** used in crimes, which makes for an imperfect match. However, for the sake of ballpark perspective, it is “good enough.”

According to the BATF, there were just shy of a million suppressors in circulation in the United States… that they know of. No doubt a few hobbyists or enterprising criminals have made their own, but the expertise, tooling, machinery and such needed to make a suppressor is more than either the typical hobbyist or criminal has time or inclination for.

Of the 902,805 suppressors in private hands in 2016, 97 were traced by the BATF. Keep in mind that some/many/all of these may not have been used in a crime – they may have been recovered under other circumstances (“Well, eccentric old Uncle Wally had a couple of licensed suppressors in his collection when the heart attack came… the BATF wanted to be sure, so they traced them”).

[![BATF Traced Weapons by Type - 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/BATF-Traced-Weapons-by-Type-2016-400x366.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/BATF-Traced-Weapons-by-Type-2016.jpg)This means that only **0.01%** of all suppressors were even remotely thought to have maybe been of criminal possession. The trace percentage for machineguns is 0**.15%** – more than 10 times as often per capita – indicating a greater rate of recovery from suspects.

This is our first clue as to why suppressors are not used very often at all in crime.

This ugly pie chart shows the 2016 BATF traces by weapon type. Of interest is the cluster of weapons types, highlighted in red, in the upper-right. We know from long-term data that these weapons are rarely used in crimes, despite millions of them being in circulation. It begs the question “What is similar about these as far as crime goes?”

The answer is cost versus utility.

## That Heater Will Cost ‘Ya

Most gun crimes are street crimes. As such, there are a few very relevant factors in the choice of weapons used:

- **It must be concealable, because street criminals move about:** According to one web site, the most popular 9mm pistol in 2016 (9mm being the most popular round for street criminals) was the Smith & Wesson M&P Shield, which has a length just over six inches (and I’ll avoid all unsavory references to other concealed six-inch weapons in pants, though the contrast might help some people visualize the realities). The first suppressor I found for that pistol measures eight inches, more than doubling the length of the gun, making it 14+ inches total, or about the length from my balled fist to my elbow (forearm+hand). That is also most of the length of my upper leg. So, a highly concealable handgun has instantly become hard to conceal (or fetch). Strike one.
- **It must get the job done:** Suppressors do not materially effect accuracy of handguns, aside from the extra weight possibly throwing off the shooter’s balance. It does not improve the gun’s operation. A suppressed 9mm is about 126 decibels, louder than a jet taking off at 200 feet away. So, criminals do not benefit from non-detection of their crimes by using a suppressor (indeed, in neighborhoods where gunfire is common, why bother muffling gunshots at all). The only possible benefit a suppressor *might* provide a criminal would be by changing the identity of the sound so that ear-witnesses might be uncertain if it were a gunshot they heard. But again, in rough neighborhoods where snitching is a life-ending move, this is a non-problem. Strike two.
- **Being a poor street thug, it has to be affordable:** Various reports say the typical price for a “hot” pistol from an underground dealer is $50–150. In reality, it is often “free” since many guns are stolen or bartered. The price of the suppressor mentioned above is $745, five times the high-end price of the gun. Strike three.

To summarize this all, for the most common forms of gun crime, suppressors add no advantage, impede concealability, and are very expensive… if you can find them at all.

## Criminal motivation guides policy

Good policy should:

- Address a specific, recurring endangerment.
- Be based on the disease, not the symptom.
- Be actionable.

The proposed bans on suppressors are none of the above.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns

**Tags:** crime, silencers, suppressors

---

### [Pediatric Agitprop](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/pediatric-agitprop/)

**Published:** July 20, 2019
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

After reading a recent study published in *Pediatrics*, I would caution parents about allowing a member pediatrician to treat their child. Looks risky.

That may be an unfair jab, but once again we see doctors – too often funded by activist groups – doing criminology research and producing deformed analytical offspring. Worse yet, many in the media picked up on the inaccurate conclusions to pen woefully inaccurate headlines:

ABC: Child gun deaths lower in states with stricter gun laws

TIME: Fewer American Kids Die in States With Tougher Gun Laws

U.S. News: Tough State Gun Laws Help Keep Kids Safe

CNN: Children in states with strict gun laws are less likely to die

None of which was (a) what the study said and (b) any reflection of reality outside the alleged minds of news editors.

## The study, such as it is

I won’t waste too much time reviewing the layered defects of the study titled [*State Gun Laws and Pediatric Firearm-Related Mortality*](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#state-laws-pediatric). Click the link if you are a punishment glutton. The summary is that, on a scale of 1–10 concerning research quality, where one is the worst of the worst, this study might actually achieve a negative score.

My snarkiness aside, the study’s two glaring defects are:

1. It uses a measure of gun control strictness that everyone agrees is completely arbitrary.
2. In includes children up to age 21, including your garden variety street gang member.

These are not trivial issues, so let’s expose them sufficiently so that even an editor at *Pediatrics* can wrap their minds around the trauma this study causes reporters at ABC, Time, CNN and other outlets.

### The Brady Scorecard

The study used a scorecard once created by the now moribund Brady Campaign to rank the strictness of state gun laws. Were the Gun Facts project the only analysts to have derided the Brady Scorecard (as [we did here](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/brady-scorecard-scam/)), you might find this a nit well picked. But just about everyone with functioning dendrites has noted that the points awarded each form of gun control listed in the Brady Scorecard was arbitrary. The Brady Campaign never published their rhyme or reason for the scores they used, and thus the list appears to be merely which laws Brady’s liked best (or wanted enacted the most).

This issue is critical. The scorecard was the denominator. This was the fundamental measure within the *State Gun Laws and Pediatric Firearm-Related Mortality* study. If the data behind a fundamental metric is bunk, then the entire study is as well. We could stop here, but the study’s overt mendacity led us to some extended digging (more on that below).

### Gang bangers, not baby buggy bumpers

People who study gangs report that the prime recruitment age for new gang members is between 13 and 18 years old. We won’t bother to detail why this is a ripe span for minting new thugs, but we cannot avoid noting that it is well within the age range of the study. In other words, the authors of *State Gun Laws and Pediatric Firearm-Related Mortality* included firearm deaths of every gangsta wannabe from age 13 through age 21. In their study they made no obvious allowance for this by weighting for urbanicity and the more relevant urban+poverty intersection.

This too is a critical bit. We know from decades of criminology that the firearm death rate is low in rural areas, and high in urban ones. Low in middle- and upper-income brackets, high in poorer brackets. Low where gang participation rates are low, high where it is high. By not controlling for this reality, the study’s authors committed criminology malpractice.

## Digging into the reality

[![Child and Teen Firearm Deaths by Brady Scorecard 2011-2015](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Child-and-Teen-Firearm-Deaths-by-Brady-Scorecard-2011-2015-c-400x278.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Child-and-Teen-Firearm-Deaths-by-Brady-Scorecard-2011-2015-c.jpg)We used the same core mortality data that the authors of the study did, pulling from the CDC’s WONDER database. We included but stopped at age 19 because this allows a clear delineation between children (slightly inaccurately framed as ages 0–14) and teenagers (in this case ages 15–19). This is the default breakpoint in the CDC WONDER database.

What we see is confirming and confounding. Two quick notes are necessary for a complete understanding.

First, the Brady Scorecard omits Washington D.C., a gang-infested place that has from time to time been the murder capital of the nation. It has been claimed that Brady omitted D.C. on purpose since it made their claims about the efficacy of gun control appear wrong. I suspect this assertion is true, but it presented us a problem – where in the spectrum of “gun law strictness” should D.C. Be placed? In the wake of the 2008 Heller decision and a series of lawsuits D.C. lost defending its draconian gun control laws (handguns were outright banned), we had to be a little arbitrary ourselves and eyeballed a position after scanning the Brady Scorecard’s 38 laws. After all, the *Pediatric*’s cited study’s period was from 2011 through 2015 (as is our review) and things were a-changin’ in the District during those years.

You will notice in the strict end of the range there is a missing column. That is for Hawaii, which has its own quirks concerning guns (the rate of residential mobility between Hawaii and other states is very low, so they do not contend with many gun-related phenomena). But their gun laws are stiff and not far afield from D.C.’s in general, so we opted to stack D.C. next to Hawaii (and for the review, the precise position does not require “three-nines” accuracy).

This decision doesn’t matter much, though. It is the left end of the chart that the authors of *State Gun Laws and Pediatric Firearm-Related Mortality* contend are effective in lowering child firearm death rates. What we see is that there is little truth to the claim. For you number nuts, the R2 regressions for both children and teens firearm death rates were 0.21 and 0.16, respectively, against the Brady Scorecard rankings. Take the oddball Hawaii out of the list and the regressions improve slightly to 0.21 and 0.24 – still largely unconvincing (for readers unacquainted with regressions, a score of zero means there is no correlation between state gun law strictness and firearm deaths, and a score of one would mean perfect correlation).

It is important to observe the red and blue parts of the columns. These are the true “children.” Red are kids up to age nine, and blue goes up to indisputable adolescence. Notice how comparatively low they are to teenagers, some of that latter group running in street gangs. This is where the story starts to get interesting.

### Homicides, suicides and accidents

The three top modes of death by bullet are homicides, suicides and accidents (though not in that order). We asked the CDC database about these mode of death vis-à-vis children and found that what is already known is again confirmed.

First, we didn’t bother to chart accidental firearm deaths. Those have been falling faster than pants at a Jeffrey Epstein pool party and doing so for decades. The CDC reported that a mere 25% of states saw any accidental firearm deaths of people under age 20 from 2011 through 2015. And those states report numbers so low that they are statistically fragile.

Suicides are also a bit suspect. Child suicide rates are, for practical purposes, zero. Teenage suicide rates are half the rate of middle-aged people, though slightly closer for firearm suicides. All in all, though, not an urgent policy point.

That leaves homicides, which brings up the rather uncomfortable question of “Who would want to shoot a child or teenager?” This fundamental query circles back to proposition posed in *State Gun Laws and Pediatric Firearm-Related Mortality*: would the relative “strictness” of state gun laws make a difference?

[![Firearm Homicides, Children and Teens per Brady Scorecard 2011-2015](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Firearm-Homicides-Children-and-Teens-per-Brady-Scorecard-2011-2015-400x294.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Firearm-Homicides-Children-and-Teens-per-Brady-Scorecard-2011-2015.png)The answer to the latter question is “no,” at least for teenagers.

There is profoundly weak correlation between the arbitrary Brady Scorecard rankings for state gun law strictness and firearm homicides (R2 of 0.015 for children and 0.002 for teens). Indeed, as the trendline suggests, for teens there is a slight lowering of the risk of being shot dead as gun laws become less strict, though we have to accept this trend is influenced by a few states with sparse populations and certain cultural values (those states being Utah, Kentucky, Kansas, Mississippi, Alaska, and Arizona).

## The big takeaways

We should not labor over this any longer. The Brady Scorecard is arbitrary, and using it for any serious investigation is nonsense. But even if we accept that perhaps it is a rough measure of how “strict” a state’s gun laws are, the inclusive data (e.g., including D.C.) does not support the conclusion the study claims, at least via unmassaged numbers. The question (already answered by criminologists) then remains, as it always has, why nearly four times as many teens are shot dead in metropolitan areas than elsewhere. We know the answer, and have for decades, but people need to be educated about this reality at the Children’s National Health System, George Washington University, and the publication called *Pediatrics*.

**Categories:** Children and Guns

**Tags:** children, guns, pediatrics, teenagers

---

### [Schools, Guns and the Secret Service](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/schools-guns-and-the-secret-service/)

**Published:** November 15, 2019
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The U.S. Secret Service released a report that exposed no real secrets but did amplify what we know or thought we knew about school shooters.

Okay, that is not quite accurate. Their report titled “Analysis of Targeted School Violence” reviews all the documented cases of when someone specifically directed violence at people in K12 schools from 2008 through 2017, almost a full decade of data. This compilation, of course, included school shooters of every variety. What the report reveals is kinda what we thought about school shooters in general, but it is good to have some solid numbers to substantiate our understanding.

Instead of boring you with all 58 pages provided by the Secret Service, I’ll run down and comment on some of the important highlights.

## A little fragile

Before diving into the numbers, the entirety of the report covers 41 incidents. This is a smallish number, and thus some of the resulting percentages derived from them are weak. I’ll point out when things get a little questionable.

## Grievances, bullying and mental health

Most of the kids who targeted schools did so because they had grievances with people on campus, typically other kids. This is unsurprising given that some of the more notorious school shooters – from Columbine to Parkland – have openly said this was their motivation.

**Primary Motivation****Secondary Motivation**Grievances (61%)Grievances (9%)Peers (37%)Peers (27%)What is also obvious, but for which we now have some real numbers, is that the intersection of bullying and accumulated grievances are key drivers. For targeted school attacks, the combination of grievances against their peers tops all. The Secret Service did something odd, though, with the tally for bullying. For “peer” conflicts, they reported the raw numbers as shown here, but off to the side in the grand total column, they claim bullying accounted for 46% of all motivations. Why they did not break this out into the primary and secondary motivations is weird. I have a FOIA request submitted to the Secret Service to get the raw data tables, which perhaps will illuminate this issue. But for now, revenge for bullying (perhaps amplified by other conditions) is the chief danger sign.

**Motivation****Percent of All Instances**Grievances83%Peers63%Bullying by peers46%Desire to kill37%Suicidal41%Psychotic symptoms12%Fame10%As the table above shows, attackers typically had more than one motivation. In terms of all motivations combined, the reasons for attacking a K12 school is in the table at right. One surprising element is that the desire for fame did not rank highly. That various mass public shooters have noted fame and getting the highest body count as a goal, among people blasting their local school, it is not that common.

## Guns, homes and safe crackers

Guns were involved in 61% of the attacks (knives in 39%). I know you are most interested in the gun aspect, sooooo…

Of the gun attacks, 76% of the attackers got their guns from home, or from a close relative. Since most junior high and high schoolers are minors, and if they are anything like I was at their age – broke – then buying their own guns was not an option. Stealing them was.

The part that will give various gun control groups some ammo (pun intended) is that, of the gun attacks, half involved guns that were not secured in a meaningful way (e.g., behind the glass in a rifle case) or that were completely unsecured (in their mom and dad’s nightstand). But in at least 16% of the cases, the attacker had to break some form of secure storage. The attackers either picked the locks, guessed the combination, or knew where the keys were stowed. There are two lessons here: first, if your kid is even a little flakey, lock up the gun. Second, if you lock up the gun, chose a different combination for your gun safe than your wedding anniversary date.

**Gun Access****Percent of Gun Attacks**From home or close relative76%Unsecured guns48%Secured guns16%## Nuts and rifle bolts

Yes, quite a few of the attackers had mental problems. One could argue that attempting mass murder over grievances is obviously crackers, but school attackers are a sleeve full of saltines.

Attackers were diagnosed at twice the national average for mental health issues. This number may be a bit off, as many people suffer from mental health problems in silence, unobserved by even close family. But per this study, young troublemakers appear to get hauled into clinics more often than their peers at large.

**Mental Health Category****Percent of Mental Health Attackers (all attackers)**Psychological69% (28%)Behavioral57% (23%)Neuro/Developmental20% (8%)Had received treatment(54%)Of just those attackers who had a mental health diagnosis, 63% had depression, 60% suicidal ideation, 29% anxiety, 26% anger management issues, and an astoundingly high 20% demonstrated outright psychosis. Overall 54% had received some form of treatment. The study did not assess how many of these attackers were on or withdrawing from psychotropic medications, but [our analysis into adverse reactions to psychotropics and mass public shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/meds-and-mass-murder/) shows it needs investigating.

The bigger point is that nearly 70% of the attackers had problems, 40% of those had been diagnosed, and none were treated in such a way as to prevent the attack. There is also the possibility of *induced* mental problems or drugs amplifying pre-existing problems. Some 20% of the attackers had reached the “abuse” level of drug or alcohol intake. An equal number were users of controlled substances (excluding marijuana) such as opiates and amphetamines. Odds are we would see significant overlaps in these groups, but the Secret Service kept those details secret.

## Plans, plots and practices

The scary bit is that 51% of these attackers planned their events. I would have speculated that a large majority were relatively spontaneous or had minimal planning. This conjecture, sadly, is not true.

**Type of Preparation****Percent of All Attackers** Weapons research32%Weapons activities17%Deceptive practices22%Lionized Columbine23%**Length of Planning****Percent of Mass Attackers**Planning < one month24%Planning 1-6 months17%Planning > six months7%Some attackers did all kinds of planning. Most chose weapons, and they went out of their way to keep their planning secret.

Columbine is still feeding school attackers. This has been noted by a number of psychology researchers, and the folks over at Langman Psychological Associates have a handy chart that shows the path of research mass shooters take when planning their own massacres. Nearly all roads lead back to Columbine.

## Tough tidbits

There is a lot more in the report, though it gets a little repetitive and tedious. But some items worth lobbing at you on my way out the door include:

- 71% came from broken homes
- 69% encountered family financial difficulties
- 54% had a parent or sibling in jail/prison
- 23% lived with family members that had mental health problems
- 23% suffered abuse or neglect

BUT! The biggie is that 100% of attackers experienced social stressors. As noted in one psychology study we covered, [psychosocial stressors were the #2 mental impairment among mass murderers and serial killers](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/). Take all of the issues above – family, drugs, bullying, etc. – and add on psychosocial stressors, and you have manufactured a timebomb.

**Categories:** Children and Guns, School Shootings

**Tags:** k12, school shootings

---

### [Fame, Media and Mass Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/fame-media-and-mass-shootings/)

**Published:** March 28, 2020
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Why people shoot herds of innocent bystanders in bars, concerts, movie theaters and schools is an area of earnest interest to the Gun Facts project, and to other researchers.

So acute is this interest that the academic journal *Criminology & Public Policy* devoted their entire February issue to 16 new papers on the topic. The Gun Facts project hopes to read all of them, but we start with a tantalizing and slightly flawed item, *Why have public mass shootings become more deadly? Assessing how perpetrators’ motives and methods have changed over time*. [1](#note-5787-1 "Why have public mass shootings become more deadly? Assessing how perpetrators’ motives and methods have changed over time.; Lankford, Silver; 2020, Criminology & Public Policy")

## Not criminology malpractice

This certainly is not a John Hopkins style selection of anti-intellectual tripe composed (allegedly) by doctors pretending to be number nuts. No, this paper is rightful criminology research and the type that the Gun Facts project prefers – namely being devoid of statistical hocus pocus and instead a solid tally of bad tidings.

In short, the authors grabbed a list of mass public shootings that fairly closely matched the one used in the Gun Facts Mass Public Shooting (MPS) database as well as those published by the Crime Prevention Research Center. It covered MPSs going back to 1966 and asked two basic questions: Are things getting worse? And if so, why?

The authors’ most interesting table shows a sudden and sharp spike in the number of MPSs in which large numbers of people were killed in this decade. This is not out of line with what the Gun Facts MPS database shows, but as always, devilish details are involved.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Table-1-400x168.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Table-1.png)click for larger, sharable version

**Years****Average Killed**2000-20097.52010-20047.42005-201912.6[![Mass Public Shootings U.S. - killed per year 1982 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Mass-Public-Shootings-U.S.-killed-per-year-1982-thru-2019-400x294.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Mass-Public-Shootings-U.S.-killed-per-year-1982-thru-2019.png)click for larger, sharable version

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Table-2-400x244.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Table-2.png)

What makes us ponder deeply is that for the preceding three decades, things were fairly static in terms of high-body count shootings – 30 stable years compared to less than nine highly volatile ones. Much has occurred between 2010 and today – climbing out of a massive recession, major shifts in drug cartel products and importing, and the continued social upheaval the Internet has wrought.

And there was Pulse Night Club, a church in Sutherland Springs, and Las Vegas.

Those and similar events occurred more tightly in the second half of this deadly decade and really skewed the curve. This is non-trivial. The average number of people killed in MPSs in the first half of this decade was slightly *less* than in the entire previous decade. But the second half of this decade has been horrific. Compare the rolling average of 7.5 people per incident before the half-decade that included Pulse Night Club (49 killed), Sutherland Springs (26) and Las Vegas (58). We have to toss in El Paso (22) as well since it is in the range of this study.

Here is a chart which shows things a bit more visually. The arc for the annual number of people killed in MPSs increases, but you can see how omitting the two most grievous years bends the curve significantly.

This bit of trivia is, well, not trivial and sadly amplifies the main point of this paper, namely that the psychology and preparation habits of mass shooters has changed.

## Motivated to murder

In this and more than a few other papers in the psychology field, it is noted that today’s young think fame is important. Not just desirable, but that one is without value unless they have fame. As many in the fields of criminology and psychology have noted, there is a blurring in the minds of today’s younger generation of definitions for “famous” and “infamous,” with the latter being substituted for the former. In other words, to get fame and attention, infamous mass murder is a viable path (especially for those harboring grudges – see our review of the [research done by the U.S. Secret Service](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/schools-guns-and-the-secret-service/)).

**Variable****Change**Explicit evidence of fame-seeking or attention-seeking124%Explicit or circumstantial evidence of fame-seeking or attention-seeking77%Attack strategy was developed to increase fatalities97%The helps to explain the 168% increase in mass public shooters under age 30 (as a percent of all shooters). That rise, paired with 77–124% increases of evidence in fame-seeking by shooters in recent history, is of keen interest.

The other factor applies to preparation in the pursuit of fame. This and other reviews of the motivations of mass shooters expose that mass shooters study one another. This provides new shooters not only motivation, but it also shows them what works or not in terms of achieving higher and higher body counts. This paper concludes that there is a 32% increase in the rate at which new shooters plan their attacks for more than a year and a 97% increase in those who planned their attacks for maximum carnage.

Recapping: Younger, fame-hungry shooters taking longer to plan, and they plan to achieve new high scores.

\[EDITOR: One quick caveat – the numbers in regard to motivations are, per email correspondence with the paper’s lead author, of just the high fatality events, not all MPS events\]

## Tail wagging the dog

Where this paper stumbled ever so slightly was at the end. The authors let the tail wag their dog when they seemingly sought to find a culprit among the weapons used in MPSs.

The authors incorrectly conclude that “assault weapons” are a major contributing factor to the recent rise in the deadliness of MPSs. But, to their credit, they also clearly state that “public mass shooters who want to produce high death tolls seem to care about having powerful weapons.” Stated a little less academically, if you take a year to plan an attack with the goal of obtaining a very high body count, you will likely plan on acquiring firearms that you think are more deadly.

Where the authors went astray was that handful of post-2014 events that skewed the calculations. As this chart shows, those post-2014 incidents – Pulse Night Club (49 killed), Sutherland Springs (26) and Las Vegas (58), El Paso (22) and others – were relatively new oddities in terms of weapon and location choices (night club, church, outdoor concert). Since guns classified as “assault weapons” have existed for a long time (the AR-15 was introduced to the consumer market in 1963), it is their very recent selection for seven MPSs that is an exception and not a rule (and at least one of those MPSs was a terrorist attack). Otherwise, they would have independently escalated along with the increased frequency if MPS events.

[![Assault Weapons Use in Mass Public Shootings - 1982 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Assault-Weapons-Use-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1982-thru-2019-400x232.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Assault-Weapons-Use-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1982-thru-2019.png)click for larger, sharable version

But is that very recent bump in “assault weapons” use meaningful? Unlikely.

The infamous Virginia Tech shooting was done with handguns and using magazines with capacities standard for the guns used. In at least two of the post-2014 MPSs “assault weapons” were below the author’s threshold for “high-fatality” events. Thus the “weapon choice = body count” argument is inconsistent. However, “cattle pen” shootings combined with “assault weapons” is a little more compelling. Of the post-2014 MPSs, the five highest body count events – between 17 and 58 killed – were well planned events where both a cattle pen scenario and a 1994 banned “assault weapon” were employed. Indeed, the authors caught wind of this when they reported:

> “The 2012 Aurora shooter wrote that he selected a particular movie theater because it would have many people “packed in \[a\] single area” and he could lock its doors, so his mass shooting would result in ‘mass casualties.’”

Planning, planning, planning.

## Bloopers

This otherwise serviceable paper brought more than a few guffaws around our office.

We won’t assume bias in the authors, but their misuse of basic technical terms is disconcerting. They refer to suppressors as “silencers” and report on the number of “assault *rifles*” being manufactured whilst discussing semi-automatic consumer rifles. These are not cardinal sins, but enough to earn a short stint in gun criminology purgatory.

## Good to know

The key value of this paper is in its extended insights into the changing demographics and motivations of mass shooters. It also adds to the ongoing understanding of the “media contagion effect,” which may be largely driven by social media.

CNN1980HLN1982Fox1996MSNBC1996Facebook2004Twitter2006Instagram2010That last point is speculative, but worth pondering. This table shows when some of the more notable “always on” media came to life. If all media contributed equally to the increased desire to commit mass murder, then large-scale killing would have scaled upwards long ago, in the 1980s. But the youngest generations are not turned on by television (and vice versa), relying instead for the peer-level stimulation of online media. Many of the recent younger killers, from Isla Vista to Parkland, used social media for advertising their grievances and manifestos. It may be this individual broadcast mode that drives some of them to plan their rampages carefully.

Notes:

1. *Why have public mass shootings become more deadly? Assessing how perpetrators’ motives and methods have changed over time*.; Lankford, Silver; 2020, Criminology & Public Policy [↩](#return-note-5787-1)

**Categories:** Assault Weapons, Mass Shootings

**Tags:** assault weapons, mass public shootings

---

### [Gun Ownership RANDomness](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gun-ownership-randomness/)

**Published:** May 2, 2020
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The Rand Corporation does a lot of interesting stuff. So, when they studied household gun ownership rates, we at the Gun Facts project took note.

And we sadly note that this is not Rand’s finest work. It really isn’t even presentable.

Normally we try not to go too deep into minutiae on the Gun Facts blog, mainly reserving it for more groundbreaking observations (such as when we untangled the “[cattle pen scenario](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shooting-cattle-pens/)” element of mass public shootings or dove deep into what, if any, impact “[high capacity magazines](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/magazine-capacity-muckraking/)” had). But today, we will have to guide you through some perspective on gun ownership rates and show how Rand seems to have muddied the political waters.

## Why we need to know state-level gun ownership rates

The lack of perfect knowledge about household gun ownership rates by state has annoyed criminologists and social scientist for decades. Since most American states do not require guns to be registered, knowing gun ownership rates requires a bit of guesswork (and given the massive [noncompliance rate for gun registration](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/going-underground/) around the world, odds are that having registration across America would be worthless in this pursuit).

But knowing the rate of gun ownership by state is valuable since the effects of gun control laws in the sundry states could be measured. There are several trending polls about national ownership rates, but that doesn’t tell us how different Florida is from New York. Those who are planning to buy their own firearms are recommended to take [gun safety classes](http://www.mauigun.com/store-info-bookings/) first.

Rand, funded by a rather [odd philanthropic cabal](https://www.arnoldventures.org/about), decided to take a stab at it. But given the data quality and research methodology weirdness in Rand’s household firearm ownership scheme, it cannot be used. Normally we at the Gun Facts project could kick their findings to the curb. The problem is that one side of the gun control policy dispute jumped on Rand’s findings (misciting them in the process) and will likely echo Rand’s bad conclusions forever.

Thus, we have to nip this bud.

## The fundamental flaw in the Rand gun ownership study

The oversimplified short story of the Rand study is that they used one survey as a fulcrum to model everything.

For three years, a project by the Centers for Disease Control called the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) included questions about household gun ownership. The studies were massive – nearly a quarter of a million contacts in the year of data we downloaded from the CDC. Normally, this is a very positive thing – the more responses, the more accurate the results are… typically.

But if the wrong person asks the right question, or the right person asks the wrong question, things quickly get murky.

The problem is that the three clustered BRFSS surveys were used by Rand as an assumed good baseline, and the rest of the study then uses other proxies in an attempt to validate such (and we won’t go into their statistical model, which has more than a few quirks).

As we noted in an earlier [review of gun ownership polls](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/polling-pollution/), what constitutes a “household” is a bit flexible. From a criminology standpoint, a household is where one or more people share housing *regardless of their citizenship or residency status*. In other words, count everybody including legal and illegal residents. From a public policy standpoint, since illegal aliens are not allowed to own guns, they should be excluded from such surveys. That one reason alone accounted for the differences we saw in ABC and Gallup polls showing steady gun ownership rates among citizens, while GSS and Pew reported declining rates of ownership (which included non-citizens).

BRFSS follows the latter definition and includes every type of household. Thus, they include an approximated 5,200,000 households where one or more people are in the country illegally and thus prohibited from owning a gun. This defect is important because it breaks any assured alignment between retail-level gun control laws and crime, and thus breaks any comparison between states for the efficacy of their gun control laws (underground guns in the hands of illegal aliens is a whole different matter).

[![Self-Reported Household Gun Ownership and Citizen Status - Gallup, ABC, GSS, Pew, BRFSS](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Self-Reported-Household-Gun-Ownership-and-Citizen-Status-Gallup-ABC-GSS-Pew-BRFSS-400x281.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Self-Reported-Household-Gun-Ownership-and-Citizen-Status-Gallup-ABC-GSS-Pew-BRFSS.png)Another problem in using the three clustered BRFSS surveys is that they create an inaccurate fulcrum point for trend observation. Whereas ABC and Gallup (steady ownership rates, citizens polled) and Pew and GSS (declining ownership rates, everyone polled) have been conducting their trend surveys longer than even this chart shows, they provide a wide basis for trending, whereas BRFSS provides an extremely narrow one.

And then there is the “I’m from the government and I’m here to ask you about possibly illegal activities” problem. The BRFSS questionnaire begins “HELLO, I’m calling for the \[state health department\] and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Now if your next question to a head of household with a felony conviction is “Do you smoke cigarettes,” you would likely get an honest answer. If the question is “Is there a gun in your house,” you will get a lie. Now, this defect exists in all surveys to some degree, but when the caller is known to be part of the government, you get a different rate of response than if Gallup phoned.

And, oddly, Rand concluded that household gun ownership rates were going down even when just the BRFSS trend was upward.

## Amplifying bad

If one begins with a poor baseline and builds an elaborate statistical model using multiple proxies to validate it, the results will still be wrong (GIGO, for all the computer gurus in the Gun Facts fan base). This error is multiplied when proxies are less than desirable.

The first set of proxies involves other surveys. Of the four used (BRFSS, Gallup, GSS and Pew) only one surveyed citizens only (as proxied by their registered voter status). Thus, three of the four surveys mapped against one another included people from those five million or so households with 1+ illegal aliens. Had Rand used Gallup and ABC as proxy polls, then the forced-fit alignment of those to the BRFSS surveys would have been difficult to impossible.

But it gets worse. Magazine subscriptions, suicides, hunting licenses and obeying the law – these were all used as validating proxies, and they all have serious problems. Let’s start with the grim topic of ….

### Suicide proxy

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Firearm-Suicides-by-Age-and-Metro-and-Non-Metro-status-400x323.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Firearm-Suicides-by-Age-and-Metro-and-Non-Metro-status.png)![Virginia population density map](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/VA-Map-Density1-400x188.jpg)Many well respected criminologists have concluded that suicide rates are fair (not precise) proxies for gun ownership rates. But we at the Gun Facts Project have our doubts.

The CDC tells us that that firearm suicide rates, as a percentage of all types of suicides, are marginally higher for men in non-metro areas. But for women, rural firearm suicides are significantly higher than for women in the cities.

This is a nagging point about firearm suicide rates as a proxy for gun ownership rates. Most people who see firearm suicides as a good proxy (including some renowned criminologists) have not fully explored this divergence. It is important, though, since at a state level, such as that presented in Rand, the linkage falls apart depending on the state.

Take Virginia as an example. Aside from three major metro areas – Norfolk, Richmond and the DC beltway – Virginia is *really* rural. Thus, to make a blanket statement about Virginia suicide rates being a fair proxy for gun ownership rates *for the entire state* is more than a bit silly. But Rand used state-level firearm/non-firearm suicide rates as a validating proxy and without apparent county-level adjustments. They did control for a generic male/female split; but as we see, that applies much more to city dwellers than people outside of metro regions.

### Hunting licenses

Likewise, Rand used hunting licenses as a validating proxy for gun ownership, which has more than a couple of problems.

[![New Jersey Population Density Map](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/New_Jersey_Population_Map-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/New_Jersey_Population_Map.png)![Estimated Handgun Supply per 1000 population](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Estimated-Handgun-Supply-per-1000-population-400x287.png)Contrast the population density map of Virginia above with this density map of New Jersey. Though not exclusive to non-metro folks, it is well understood that per capita rates of hunting licenses are higher in non-metro areas. Outside of the cities you find more people with hunting licenses and hunting rifles.

But the rate of handgun ownership might be closer, or even higher in the cities and those would not track to hunting licenses.

Rand used hunting licenses as a validating proxy, but as with suicides, this is all rather meaningless at the state level.

### Law-abiding regulations

Rand also included the rates of firearm purchase background checks, permits to purchase (in those states that require such) and background checks between private parties (AKA “universal” checks, in those states that require such). There are two fatal flaws in using these laws as a proxy for overall firearm ownership.

**NEW, NOT OLD:** First, this measures new gun acquisitions, not existing ownership. The two are not linked. According to the BATF’s annual reports, sales of guns have been increasingly brisk for several decades, with a demonstrable uptick in the most recent years. Thus Rand errs in thinking the new purchases are a reflection of existing inventory.

And this error is amplified by region. We know from other criminology literature that gun sales rise locally when the public perception of local violence rises. It is beyond the scope of this blog post, but there have been large-scale shifts in crime rates in various places around the country, with some metro regions falling and others rising. A spike in the level of perceived crime in Nashville would spike the ***new*** gun sales there but not in Memphis, and both of those musical cities are in the same state.

**LEGAL, ILLEGAL:** The laws Rand used as a proxy to gun ownership do not reflect ownership if we include illegal possession and acquisition. Every decade, the Bureau of Justice Statistics tells us that 40% of crime guns come from underground markets. Since background checks and such are only indicators of ***new*** gun sales to ***law-abiding*** citizens, we have a very imperfect proxy, but one that Rand relied upon.

### Periodicals

[![Periodicals delivered by the U.S. Postal Service by year](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/periodicals-table2-400x212.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/periodicals-table2.jpg)[![Guns & Ammo covers from 1980 and 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ga-covers-combined-400x287.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ga-covers-combined.jpg)Perhaps the oddest proxy of gun ownership rates was the use of *Guns & Ammo* magazine. Before commercialization of the Internet, this *might* have been a viable proxy. But as the U.S. Postal Service confirms in this chart, they don’t deliver many magazines these days, with the drop-off mirroring the switch to online activity.

Pile onto a falling rate of subscriptions to *Guns & Ammo* magazine with the obvious notion that *who* buys the magazine changes over time. Here are two covers of *Guns & Ammo*, chosen randomly, from the first year of the Rand study to the last (and we did notice the number of AR-15 covers in the most recent year). The “typical” *Guns & Ammo* reader may have changed significantly over time. With women making up more and more of gun owners, but presumably less of the ardent hobbyist class that *Guns & Ammo* normally attracts, odds are this is a very lousy proxy.

## The Force is strong in this one

Engineers occasionally joke, “If it doesn’t fit, force it.”

That is kind what Rand did in their estimate of household gun ownership. In multiple places in their paper, they discuss their mathematical elaborations for obtaining alignment between their poor choice of baseline measurements (the BRFFS surveys) and their proxies.

Here is an example from the Rand gun ownership study. They state, “The mean of the rate of *Guns & Ammo* subscriptions per 100 residents changes over time in a manner not explained by changes in the \[household firearm rate\], resulting in an association between the *Guns & Ammo* variable and time conditioned on the \[household firearm rate\].” This is analyst-speak for “the magazine subscription numbers don’t jibe with the gun ownership numbers.” They continue, “Specifically, we found that rates for *Guns & Ammo* subscriptions, background checks, and hunting licenses had trends that differed from rates of household firearm ownership over time.”

Which means their baseline measure is wrong, their proxies are not proxies, or both. None of these three options validates their conclusions that household firearm ownership rates are falling.

## To cite or not to cite… it’s not even a question

Why did the Gun Facts expend the effort to educate the public about the grand flaws in the Rand gun ownership study? Because activist organizations are already using the flawed conclusions to mold public opinion. It is up to you to set the record straight when you see or hear someone aping those talking points.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns

**Tags:** household firearm gun, ownership, rand corporation

---

### [Cali Suicide Calumny](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/cali-suicide-calumny/)

**Published:** June 13, 2020
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

“Bury the lede” is an old newspaper trade term for not disclosing the interesting part of the story until so late in the article that few people read it. Paragraph #1, Senator Bedfellow gave money to a shelter for battered women; paragraph 48, Senator Bedfellow was charged with wife beating in 2006.

It is a propaganda tactic, and it is used too often in gun policy research. In this case concerning suicides in California, the stunt was aided and abetted by the California government.

## Woe, thy name is Wintemute

Long ago, a doctor with zero criminology credentials started publishing on gun control topics. His early research was, in a word, hilarious. One chunk of his intellectual effluvium used “observational evidence” about people at gun shows in two states. Generalized, the assumption the doctor made was that if Bill asked his friend Ted about a firearm for sale at the gun show, and Ted nodded and Bill paid for it, then this was a strawman sale and Ted was a prohibited person.

The more likely case, that Ted was more of an expert and Bill was relying on his guidance, appears to have never penetrated the doctor’s cranium. This led his paper to receiving almost as much derision as another doctor’s paper about a gun in the home being 43 times more likely to kill a resident (that bit of criminology malpractice once had two separate entries at JunkScience.com).

So, when the name Garen Wintemute appears on a paper, it needs a vivisection (the paper, not the doctor).

## The claim

The paper [1](#note-5839-1 "Handgun Ownership and Suicide in California, Wintemute et al, New England Journal of Medicine, June 2020") asserts owning a handgun is associated with a higher rate of firearm suicide, before skating off onto even thinner ice.

Thanks to the political biases of the State of California (AKA the State of Emergency), Wintemute and company has received tax money to conduct gun violence research, and the politicians pretty much get the results they want. In this case Wintemute had access to data most people don’t, including details on the owners of registered guns (alert to civil rights attorneys: there may be a privacy case here), voter registration roles with identifying data, and more.

To their credit, the approach of the research was not entirely unsound. Simplified, they merged voter registration data (which provided street address for geolocation) with handgun purchasing and sales records (to know who allegedly did and did not have *access* to a handgun) and cause-of-death data to see if buying a gun led to killing oneself with it. We will get to some of the data and methodology inequities later. But we’ll note in passing that if the data, proxies and confounding variables had been more robust, this might have been a good approach.

## The age obfuscation

Did Wintemute and company not care about old people?

In the paper, they noted the median age of firearm owners, but not the median age or geography of people who commit suicide with a gun. Both are well known data-skewing phenomena, but the “researchers” were conspicuously reluctant to disclose their data on these topics.

Guess we’ll have to do it for them.

[![California Suicides by Age and Means, 2004-2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/California-Suicides-by-Age-and-Means-2004-2016-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/California-Suicides-by-Age-and-Means-2004-2016.png)click for larger version

[![Marin and Tulare Counties, California](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/california-counties-map-terain-400x421.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/california-counties-map-terain.jpg)click for a larger version

Thanks to the Centers for Disease Control, California suicide stats are available to anyone (you don’t have to be a tax funded propaganda organization working with insider government data). They also allow anyone to get some rather interesting breakdowns. This chart shows the mode of suicide for Californians (in the same range of years as the study on which we are performing an autopsy). As with national trends, we see that firearm suicide is heavily skewed to older people. And like the rest of the country, it is skewed toward old, white men living outside of metro areas.

This is critical to the study at hand. Recall that they used voter registration data to triangulate gun ownership, and in their paper admitted that this added up to only 61% of adult Californians. This is fairly imprecise on its own but gets much worse when you look at the individual counties (which may explain why the authors opted out of reporting geographical differences).

Here’s an example. The counties with the highest voter registration rate (coastal Marin, 85% registration rate, primarily Democrat) and the lowest (rural Tulare, 54%, largely Republican). The population density, culture differences and other demographics (including likely pre-existing gun ownership rates) are so vastly different that the lack of reporting about these differences is suspicious, given that the authors geocoded the entire study and could have noted variations in suicide rates (Marin’s suicide rate is 15.4 dead per 100,000 population; Tulare’s is 9.4, which discounts the nationally common trend of old, rural men being more likely to kill themselves).

Why is this seeming distraction important? Let us tell you.

## Immediacy vs reality

The much beloved former mayor of Alameda, California shot himself dead to avoid a protracted battle with cancer. He was 67. Older white man, prime suicide candidate and likely (unconfirmed) owned the gun in question for a long time before his tumors appeared.

His suicide was not spontaneous. It was the result of his cancer spreading and likely becoming terminal. He thought through his options – a clear-headed decision, if you will. Most people do so, even the chronically depressed. Sundry psych studies report that many (perhaps most) suicidal people think about killing themselves for months or even years before committing the act. This is an important dig at the study under our microscope because of “buy to die” cases and the excluded others.

[![Suicides by California Gun Owners per 1st Handgun Acqusition](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Suicides-by-California-Gun-Owners-per-1st-Handgun-Acqusition-400x304.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Suicides-by-California-Gun-Owners-per-1st-Handgun-Acqusition.png)click for larger version

In the study, one table (seven pages past the headline conclusions) shows the amount of time from the acquisition of a handgun to using a handgun for suicide. We do see that in terms of “people-years” (the authors did not provide the raw data) many people do buy a gun to kill themselves.

**But there is zero accounting for how long before the handgun purchase these people had been thinking about suicide.** This gets very important as the authors appear to have removed from the data people who owned handguns *before* the beginning of the study period (“excluded cohort members who had acquired one or more handguns before coming under observation during the study period”).

Let’s take the case of old men, including California mayors with metastasized cancer. Older people – who have lost spouses, friends, children, who may not have enough money to survive retirement, who may have painful debilitations or terminal diseases – may decide to die. Some of them may opt to use a gun and need to buy one for the purpose. Others, likely in the rural areas, likely already have one or more guns and may have had them long before a doctor probed their personal gun ownership data.

So, the exclusion of people who owned guns before the study period, but did not purchase one during it, artificially skews the data into the “spontaneous suicide” camps. How much flatter the bars in the previous chart might be is completely unknown, thanks to the intentional exclusion. As people age odds are they don’t buy many new guns but may already own several. Thus, this most suicide-prone group of people were mistakenly dropped out of the mix in this study for being old and on fixed incomes.

The lack of exploration of these well-known issues – the age, mental health, and metro status of the victim – makes their absence from this study highly suspicious, especially since the authors claim that they “geocoded residential addresses and then assigned them to census tracts,” and that they calculated age clusters for handgun ownership, but not handgun suicides. What is not revealed is likely interesting to voters (which may have been the motivation to obscure critical insights).

## But wait, there’s more!

As odd as this non-reporting of data is, there are many awkward and silly aspects to this study.

[![AVAILABILITY OF GUNS - International Suicide and Firearm Ownership Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-International-Suicide-and-Firearm-Ownership-Rates-400x253.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-International-Suicide-and-Firearm-Ownership-Rates.png)On the silly side is their statement, “Whether a suicide attempt is fatal depends heavily on the lethality of the method used.” As we showed in our original international review, people around the world find many lethal methods for ending their existence. Rope is just as lethal as bullets, a fact that Wintemute and his acolytes fail to grasp (and let’s hope these doctors have a better grasp on viruses and cancer, lest we all die under their “care”).

One problem is the weighting (we’ll skip the obvious jokes about doctors and waiting rooms). Because their core indexing data (voter registrations) only covered 61% of California adults, and because voter registration is highly variable from county to county, they were forced to statistically weight populations. This is not insanely bad, but it points to an area where the source data (garbage in) may lead to suspect results (garbage out).

Lastly, the authors seem to have pretended to use control proxies to test for confounding issue (other variables that might explain data trends). In particular, they used non-suicide lung cancer, endocarditis, and alcoholic liver disease to test for associations with smoking, injecting drugs, or drinking their livers into submission (indicators of other bad lifestyle choices that occasionally lead to suicide). But as our cancer-ridden mayor shows, there is a disconnect whereby people who don’t abuse themselves may develop these diseases anyway and decide to die from suicide instead of the illness.

## What not up, Doc?

How people commit suicide has been proven meaningless. In the year of the original Gun Facts international review, we found no correlation between successful suicides and firearm availability. Because of the seemingly intentional skewing of the originating data, even this study fails to prove a real correlation between purchasing handguns and killing oneself (and even if there was an unpolluted association, “substitution of means” has been proven, thus net suicides would be unchanged).

If doctors committing statistical malpractice actually cared about people, they would focus on what causes people to want to die, and defuse that bomb – instead of picking just one out of hundreds of ways suicidal people exit.

Notes:

1. Handgun Ownership and Suicide in California, Wintemute et al, New England Journal of Medicine, June 2020 [↩](#return-note-5839-1)

**Categories:** California, Suicides

**Tags:** california, handguns, suicides

---

### [Inner-city Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/inner-city-guns/)

**Published:** September 8, 2020
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

For decades, the raw data has shown that the bulk of gun crimes, woundings and deaths occur in the inner cities and are closely associated with gangs.

What we don’t have a great deal of clarity about is why and how this situation has come to dominate gun violence. Forget the statistically rare mass public shootings, the even more rare terrorist events, and even the plummeting rates of gun accidents.

If you are actually serious about “gun safety,” then you focus on what is occurring inside of major metro areas. Seventeen people died in the Parkland High School shooting. That many high school aged blacks die every week from gun violence, and these deaths are not tied to mass murders.

Thanks to the Center for Court Innovation, we have some added clarity.

## “Gotta Make Your Own Heaven”

That is the title of a solid bit of research [1](#note-5978-1 "Gotta Make Your Own Heaven; Swaner, White, Martinez, Camacho, Spate, Alexander, Webb, Evans; Center for Court Innovation; August 2020") published in August of 2020 and funded by the federal Department of Justice (errrr, what was someone saying about there being a lack of gun violence research funding?).

This is a small study of three neighborhoods in New York, so great caution needs to be taken in expanding this to national conclusions. But the study focused intently on “at risk” young people and their involvement with guns.

A point of praise goes to the researchers and anyone else who tries to do a statistically sound review of gang-centric crime. You cannot simply roll into a bad neighborhood and start polling people. The degree of distrust is high among the residents, more so for people not of their neighborhood, and positively zero for anyone who might be associated with the law. The researchers used intermediaries who knew the culture, the gangs, the music and such to get many respondents and even get inside of gang buildings.

## Some topline numbers

Let’s start with some hard numbers, and later we’ll wrap a little texture around it.

For respondents ages 16 thru 24:

**SHOOTINGS**

81%: Been shot or shot at

88%: Have a family member of friend who has been shot or shot at

70%: Have witnessed someone being shot

**GUN OWNERSHIP AND ACCESS**

[![Gun access by at-risk inner city youths in New York](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Gun-access-by-at-risk-inner-city-youths-in-New-York-400x279.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Gun-access-by-at-risk-inner-city-youths-in-New-York.jpg)87%: Have owned or carried a gun

68%: Carry guns in public, 51% at parties or social events

58%: Easy to get a gun if needed (from local networks)

63%: Acquired first gun at age 14–17 (20% under age 14)

**MOTIVATIONS**

78%: Live in areas with “a lot of crime”

44%: Hear gunshots at least weekly, 70% at least monthly

77%: Carry guns for safety, 52% feel less likely to be a victim

**GANG ELEMENTS**

95%: Aware of gangs in their neighborhood

93%: Gangs provide material and emotional support

91%: Believe gangs provide protection for their members

25%: Feel pressure to join a gang

71%: Enjoyed being a gang member

**SOCIAL DRIVERS**

78%: Reside in public housing

63%: Raised by a single parent

32%: Earn money through illicit jobs

26%: Feel that neighbors don’t trust each other

20%: Their illicit jobs “require” them to carry guns

**POLICE**

91%: Stopped by police in the last two years

88%: Have arrest records

38%: Have gun charges against them

57%: First arrest before age 16

**MISC**

Unquantified: High use of marijuana to impede violent reactions, including misusing guns

Unquantified: Sees gangs as a source of love and community they lack at home (keywords – brotherhood, family)

Let’s summarize. For these people who are prime gangs+crime+guns participants:

- Low family structure, leading to seeking such from the fraternity of gangs.
- Live in a crime-plagued neighborhood.
- Have easy access to guns via underground network, including gangs.
- Acquire guns in their early teens and carry them regularly.
- Are arrested for the first time in their mid-teens.

## Some subculture statements

Without copying and pasting, here are some of the narratives that illustrate why this has been a multi-decade problem:

Their social structure – be it family or neighborhood – is dysfunctional. Parents are dead, in jail or use drugs. Children are raised in an environment without strong affection, guidance or control.

In these neighborhoods gangs are the social and economic base. The gangs provide affection, guidance, control and a chance to earn money, albeit through criminal activity. Crime is the norm in these neighborhoods, so the resistance to becoming a gang-centered criminal is low.

Though we did not summarize the stats, there is a widespread assumption that the police are a force for harassment (over petty crimes), operate as a gang themselves, and have very little interest in protecting and serving the tough neighborhoods. This includes a belief that the police do not actually protect residents from violence.

## Unravelling

As you see, there are several vectors that lead to criminal activity, typically within gangs, solidly within inner cities. These vectors are the progenitors of most American gun violence, and thus the primary place to focus attention.

But we also see that the established underground networks for acquiring guns negates the effect of any retail-level gun control. Stated more simply, restricting retail gun sales will have no effect on the largest portion of gun violence.

Notes:

1. Gotta Make Your Own Heaven; Swaner, White, Martinez, Camacho, Spate, Alexander, Webb, Evans; Center for Court Innovation; August 2020 [↩](#return-note-5978-1)

**Categories:** Children and Guns, Crime and Guns

**Tags:** gangs, teenagers, teens

---

### [EveryCon and Youth Suicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/everycon-and-youth-suicides/)

**Published:** September 21, 2020
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

If one kid died last year from eating Tide Pods, and two died this year, then you can say there was a 100% increase in the child Tide Pod death rate. But your summary would be completely misleading.

Herein we will do an academic deconstruction of a similar propaganda move by Michael Bloomberg’s favorite charity, *Everytown for Gun Safety*.

## Statistics don’t lie but statisticians do

![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Everytown-meme-chart-400x400.png)*NOTE: This image is being used under “fair use” doctrine as an example for educational purposes*

[![Guns and Control - Suicides-3](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-3-400x309.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-3.jpg)The core claim made by *Everytown*, as shown in the social media image they created, is that kids – people age 14 and under – were the fastest-growing firearm suicide rate age group.

The two agitprop con jobs at play here involve who is being studied and when. Let’s start with “who.”

In the book [*Guns and Control*](https://amzn.to/31KeZWe) by Gun Facts project founder Guy Smith, we see that in the sundry age groups, nearly no youngsters commit suicide, regardless of the means. And firearm suicides are a subset of that.

Refer back to our Tide Pod example. If nearly no kids are committing suicide, then only a small increase in the *raw number* of suicidal kids is necessary to increase the *rate* of suicides or the *rate of increase* in the same. Given the low, low, low number of youth suicides, this is our first area in which to look.

For the most recent year that the Centers for Disease Control report via their WONDER database, a total of 443 kids (age 14 or less) committed suicide. That number is likely overstated because some murders are made to look like suicides, but we’ll have to take the number as our baseline.

These are suicides by any means – slitting wrists, drowning, jumping off Lover’s Leap, ingesting poison (including Tide Pods), suffocation and, yes, guns. Given that in the year under review there were 59,955,368 kids in America, this means there was a suicide rate of 0.7 per 100,000 population.

And that rate is much larger than 0.3/100,000, which is the youth *firearm* suicide rate.

Of the 443 youth suicides in 2016, 160 were committed with guns (and again, some murders are ascribed to suicide). With a number like 160, it doesn’t take much of a numeric increase to make the rate appear to be escalating out of control.

## The other means

Is the number 5.3 bigger than 3.7? Of course it is. Is youth suicide by suffocation bigger than by firearms? Yes. Is the rate of increase in suffocation suicides bigger than firearm suicides? Indeed –the 5.3 and 3.7 numbers were just that (slope-of-line calculations tracking the rate of increase in both modes of suicide, where the bigger the number the faster the rise).

Below is the chart showing suicides by the top three means for kids.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Suicides-ages-0-14-for-2016-400x275.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Suicides-ages-0-14-for-2016.jpg)In this chart we see two obvious things, and one that is not obvious unless you are a crafty political operative working for Everytown.

First, we see that before the Great Recession, firearm suicides were falling, and suffocation suicides were steady. Once the great recession started, ***all*** modes of suicides started going up. In other words, a general social phenomenon was causing kids (and adults for that matter) to check out. But because kids had very low suicide rates to begin with, their climb was a bit vivid as a percentage rise.

Those are the obvious observations. Now for the less notable one.

## The starting block

In the *Everytown* poster, they started their analysis in 2009, the year after the Great Recession began. Note that 2008, the year before, was the all-time low point for firearm suicides. Using our longer 1999–2016 range (*Everytown* used a different CDC database which added two years), youth suicides rose 82%, suffocation suicides 100% and firearm suicides 55%. All the other modes of suicide were infrequent enough to be statistically unstable (e.g., less than one per year on average for fire, three for falling, two for drowning).

In order to get their dramatic headline, *Everytown* had to:

- Start from the lowest rate year in order to …
- Amplify a society-wide shift, and …
- Not disclose that other modes of suicide were rising faster

## Wasted lives, wasted money

This is not to say that youth suicide isn’t appalling. But an intentional misrepresentation of the long-term statistics in order to generate undue fear is monstrous. And it was a grand waste of Michael Bloomberg’s money.

**Categories:** Everytown, Suicides

---

### [Missouri Compromised](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/missouri-compromised/)

**Published:** November 13, 2020
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

If your doctor is a member of the American Medical Association, get another doctor. *QUICKLY!*

A new low in gun research by doctors may have been reached in a recent article in the *Journal of the American Medical Association* (JAMA). [1](#note-6008-1 "Association of Changes in Missouri Firearm Laws With Adolescent and Young Adult Suicides by Firearms, Bhatt, Cheng, Morris, Beyer, Chestnut, Steigerwalt, Metzner, 2020") This now disreputable rag is allegedly “peer reviewed,” but that claim is credible only if the peers are refugees from the local sanitarium.

In their fresh assault on logic, the sundry docs and quacks concluded that changes in pistol purchase and concealed carry laws in Missouri (MO) caused suicides in younger people to rise. They did this by creating synthetic models that invented suicide statistics by incorporating erratic source data. They had to take this approach because the real numbers were not exactly in their favor.

# The Big Scary … Not

JAMA launched into their artless misdirection by saying “suicide was the second leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 10 to 24 years” in MO. The astute reader (that would be you) has already noticed that the age range here goes from kids to adults who recently graduated with worthless college degrees and a mountain of student loans, which alone would raise the suicide rate of the 22–24 year olds.

**Age****Homicide****Suicide****Uninten-tional****Non-Injury, no intent classified**1–4 years12.615.610–14 years6.712.815–19 years12.716**29**1320–24 years24.625.8**56.7**18.1Indeed, we see the first data glitch in that Missourians aged 10–14 have no suicides, according to a data dump from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from the same year that JAMA generated their claim. Even for the top age bracket, the gap between homicides and suicides was fractional, and accidental deaths were more than double the suicide rate. So not only was the game rigged by including age groups that traditionally have low suicide rates (ages 10–19), they didn’t even get the bottom-line numbers right.

Let’s hope they do better with your prescription dosage.

## The Ugly Claim Is a Shame

[![Missouri suicides rates - unreliable per CDC](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Missouri-suicides-rates-unreliable-per-CDC-400x649.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Missouri-suicides-rates-unreliable-per-CDC.png)Which gets us to the core issue. Suicides, especially among the young, are pretty rare. They are so rare, in fact, that the CDC flagged 81% of all data rows for suicides in Missouri as “unreliable,” which is their parlance for “the raw numbers are sooooooo low that our statistics enter the realm fragility.”

Real researchers—which evidently does not include those publishing in JAMA—would have known or noticed this right off and thus questioned in advance any conclusions that could be made about straightforward calculations, not to mention exotic modeling to create suicide statistics out of something thinner than air.

To give you an idea of how rare this is, in the age groups that JAMA evaluated, there were 182 suicides for all of 2017, and *firearm* suicides were a subset of that (116). Each suicide is a tragedy, so we are thankful the suicide count is that low.

## Quasi Quackery

“The synthetic Missouri provided an estimate of expected firearm suicide rates in Missouri if the laws had not changed.”

Lifted from the JAMA paper itself, the phrase “synthetic Missouri” sounds like the title of a bad Southern fried crystal meth movie. And perhaps the researchers were doing some psychotropic pharmaceutical research on themselves when they decided that synthetic modeling was a valid approach to investigating suicide rates and concealed carry of weapons (CCW).

For the uninitiated, synthetic modeling seeks to create data by defining a model of the assumed reality. This is a valid approach for some research, such as when source data is scarce, but the CDC has all the data, so it appears that another agenda was at play. What the researchers invented were suicide statistics that they *assumed* would have occurred if Missouri had not changed either or both of the pistol purchase permit (PPP) or CCW laws.

As with all models, the assumptions and source data control the intellectual viability of the outcome, which in this paper’s case is zilch.

CCWs are the most laughable of the cases. On this point, the researchers compare Missouri with 42 states whose CCW laws did not change during the study period (2008 through 2018). Sounds good until you notice that the 42 states were not those that were all “shall issue” states like Missouri was throughout most of this study’s period, but a morbid mash of everything from Alabama (155,000 CCWs per 1M residents) to New Jersey (136/1M). In this mix were total “shall issue” states (e.g., Florida) to states with many hoops to jump through (North Carolina) to “may issue” states where nobody except the rich and well-connected can get a permit (New York). Thus, the not-so-good-doctors were comparing Missouri to a Frankenstein monster of mismatched parts and trying to draw rational conclusions from it.

[![Missouri Suicide Rates, Ages 10-24](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Missouri-Suicide-Rates-Ages-10-24-400x237.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Missouri-Suicide-Rates-Ages-10-24.png)But what do the raw numbers say?

Not much.

There was a steady rise in non-firearm suicide rates in Big MO. But aside from a transient two-year spike, firearm suicides remained more or less flat. Indeed, in 2014, after both laws had changed, firearm suicides hit a nadir.

## Take Two and Don’t Call Anyone

With the AMA, always get a second opinion.

Also, print out this post and take it with you to your next doctor’s appointment. Ask your sawbones if he or she is an AMA member, and if they are, stuff this blog into their pocket before asking for referral to a new and better healer.

Notes:

1. *Association of Changes in Missouri Firearm Laws With Adolescent and Young Adult Suicides by Firearms*, Bhatt, Cheng, Morris, Beyer, Chestnut, Steigerwalt, Metzner, 2020 [↩](#return-note-6008-1)

**Categories:** Suicides

**Tags:** ama, jama, missousri, suicide, suicides

---

### [Ammo Background … Checked](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/ammo-background-checked/)

**Published:** January 16, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The Gun Facts project received a provocative question: “We’ve had a few years of California’s Prop. 63. Can we point to any numbers that show whether the ammo background check law is having the desired effect?”

The answers are: “Yes, we have numbers; no, it didn’t have an impact; but there are a lot of gotchas in the analysis.”

## The two experimental states

Both New York and California passed laws that require criminal background checks before you can buy firearms and [gun ammunition](https://popstacticalsupply.com/) from a [gun shop](https://countryboysports.com/index.php/firearms/long-guns-rifles-shotguns/). New York passed their law in 2013 and California in 2017. These two states –The State of COVID and the State of Emergency – passed these measures along with other gun control actions (California, for example, established procedures for enforcing laws prohibiting firearm possession by specified persons), so it is *technically* impossible to weed out just ammunition retailing as a factor. But we can at least measure aggregate violence stats to see if some major change occurred that could have been instigated by the laws. People can check out the [40 cal options](https://www.thegunsource.com/40-caliber-pistols) to buy the best firearm.

There wasn’t; but as you will see, the data is odd and limited on a few fronts.

## The CDC whole

Ideally, we would contrast both deaths and intentional woundings by guns, but the CDC does not track the latter past 2018, which makes measuring California impossible. So, we rely on the FBI’s homicide data as our proxy. This is imperfect since homicides can be committed using something other than a gun, but guns are the most popular mode of homicide in America (68% of homicides were by firearm in the most recent year that the CDC WONDER database reports), so this proxy is “close enough.”

## The New York exodus issue

According to the Census Bureau, New York State started to experience a significant population drop starting in 2016, the year *before* California passed their law and three years *after* New York passed theirs. Hence, comparing New York to either the US as a whole (minus California to keep comparisons sanitary) is dicey – though comparing New York, California and the US for the most recent three years is a valid review.

## The big, ugly chart and the numbers that matter

[![Effects of background checks for ammo purpchases in California and New York per homicide rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Effects-of-background-checks-for-ammo-purpchases-in-California-and-New-York-per-homicide-rates-800x561.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Effects-of-background-checks-for-ammo-purpchases-in-California-and-New-York-per-homicide-rates.jpg)Click for a larger version that you can share

Homicide rates are on the left and in solid lines; population changes are on the right in dotted lines. Sorry if this looks like colorful spaghetti, but we had a lot to look at.

Let’s start with New York since their law has been in effect the longest. Their homicide rate was falling before the law was passed. Indeed, homicide rates were falling faster *before* the ammo background check law was passed than after (six years on both sides, slope before was -0.16 and after was -0.10). This is doubly odd given that New York’s population fell by 160,000 people after the law was passed, and crime tends to fall with population. The exodus may have mainly been from light crime areas, so we’ll ignore this oddity for now. The fact that the rate of decline slowed after the law passed is the troublesome bit.

However, during their post-legislation period, the US homicide rate (sans New York and California) went up by a significant amount before starting to taper off. It is interesting to note that California echoed this up-and-down trend as well.

Given the population decline in New York (while California and the US were still growing), we have an apples-to-pineapples comparison. A better overall comparison would be the last three years, which (a) encompasses California operating under ammo background checks and (b) incorporates just New York’s population decline (i.e., avoiding up-and-down volatility).

**Comparison*****R*-Squared**Cal v US1.00NY vs US0.99NY vs Cal0.99During this 2017 thru 2019 period, we see no differences… anywhere. Using the common *R*2 covariance measurement – where the range is zero to one, zero being no covariance and one being perfect covariance – we see that New York, California and the rest of the United States had the same rate of change in homicides.

## The gotchas

Now, before holding this all as doctrine concerning ammunition background checks, here is the list of limitations on which you would be challenged:

- We explored homicide by any means, not just guns. The covariance for firearm homicides, per the CDC database (which draws from different data sources) is still high at 0.75 for New York versus everywhere else.
- California experienced a sharper drop than New York did after passing their law, which means there may be other variables involved. That being said, in terms of homicides, the sharpest drop was in the *firearm homicide* category (slope of -0.19, with the next highest category, *cut and piercing*, falling only -0.03).
- We do not have firearm wounding data going out to 2019, thus we do not know if there were impacts in California by requiring ammo background checks. The CDC’s injury database (WISQARS) does not break down data by states, making a measure of non-fatal bullet wounds impossible.

## What can be safely said

The three-year comparison shows no variation in homicide rates (*R*2 near one), and marginally less alignment specifically on firearm homicides (about 0.75). California had different results than New York, which means that there was either a specific variation in the law, or a different variable at play.

All that being said, there was no huge decline in homicide rates compared to the rest of the country, so the laws are likely ineffective.

**Categories:** California, Crime Control, New York

**Tags:** ammunition, background checks

---

### [Callous Kids](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/callous-kids/)

**Published:** February 11, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

One aspect of inner-city violence with guns

From crime statistics and criminology studies we know that:

- Gun violence is a huge problem in poor, inner-city neighborhoods.
- The prime gang recruitment ages are between 14 and 19.
- Gun carrying, almost always done illegally, is common.

An open question is “what drives these bad decisions, to associate with street gangs, acquire guns illegally, and to use them?”

Here is one element worth noting: that emotionally callous kids are more prone to gun play than others.

## What is “callousness”?

Both the dictionary and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of Mental Disorders defines this. The dictionary definition is more straightforward and says to be callous is to be “insensitive, indifferent, unsympathetic”. The DSM has a special specifier identifying people with “limited prosocial emotions”. Same thing, different wording.

A new study [1](#note-6119-1 "Callous-Unemotional Traits and Risk of Gun Carrying and Use During Crime; Robertson, Frick, Walker, Kemp, Ray, Thornton, Myers, Steinberg, Cauffman; American Journal of Psychiatry 177:9, September 2020") studied if callous kids were (a) more likely to carry a gun and (b) more likely to use it. With one interest extension, the answers were “yes”.

A quick note about numbers: I won’t bore you with the statistical evaluation they did. Let’s just say that it was done and reported properly, unlike almost any gun-related study ejected from the bowels of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at John Hopkins (they need a colonic to unclog their research methodology ethics). Our only concern with the study is that, for practical reasons, it had to be confined to three populations in different parts of the country. Yet they still tracked 1,215 youths for four years to measure if they were callous and if this made these juvenile arrestees more prone to gun stupidity later on.

## Results and questions

The results showed significantly tight association for a few variables, including callousness, with both the frequency with which kids carried guns (number nuts, there were measured *p*-values down to 0.001). Being callous, lacking impulse control, and being exposed to violence had high scores.

However, callousness (and “lifetime offending”) alone had a significant positive correlation with both carrying and using a gun.

Hence, we have one point of proof about the “why” behind inner-city gun violence, namely that being callous hurts. The natural “how” question is “how does a kid in the inner cities become callous?”

In our blog about a different [inner-city study](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/inner-city-guns/), the authors exposed that pro-social ideation is hard to come by. Some of the combining factors include:

- Lack of trust in the neighborhood in general (even excluding gang activity)
- Lack of parent care and nurturing
- Prevalence of violence and its deadening effect

To become callous – to become insensitive, indifferent, unsympathetic – is likely entirely environmental (some tiny portion of the populace may be born with defects that would organically create a callous person, but the situation in the inner cities points to the family and social environment). To oversimplify, if you are born into a welfare-dependent household, you have no resident father, your mother has issues that lead to a lack of affection and guidance, and your neighborhood is rife with violence … odds are you get callous. And, according to the numbers in this study, that means you are more likely to do dumb things with guns.

## The odd exception

The authors note that “only participants low on callous-unemotional traits demonstrated increased gun carrying as a function of their peers’ gun carrying and ownership.”

In this study, there was a correlation for gun carrying between a callous youth and peers who also carried guns. This was not as statistically true for non-callous youths who had gun-toting peers. In other words, non-callous kids are less likely to stumble down the path to illegal gun ownership, carrying and criminal use.

Notes:

1. Callous-Unemotional Traits and Risk of Gun Carrying and Use During Crime; Robertson, Frick, Walker, Kemp, Ray, Thornton, Myers, Steinberg, Cauffman; American Journal of Psychiatry 177:9, September 2020 [↩](#return-note-6119-1)

**Categories:** Children and Guns, Crime and Guns

**Tags:** gangs, guns, inner-cities, teens

---

### [Pale Background](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/pale-background/)

**Published:** March 14, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Universal background checks aren’t universal. But such things are being proposed in Congress. Ignoring how poorly the laws are drafted, we have to ask the basic question, “Will universal background checks do any good?”

The answer is that conceivably 2% of crime gun transfers might get diverted, but the more likely number is zero.

## High Level Takeaways

- 37% of crime guns fall into the realm of those that “universal” background checks would affect.
- Of those, 41% still come from unregulatable sources.
- Assuming “intimate” partners would not do background checks, at most 2% of crime gun transfers would receive background checks … and that assumes *all* “friends and family” firearm transfers obey (huge assumption).

## How the Bureau of Justice Statistics Tipped Us Off

[![Bureau of Justice Statistics - crime gun sources](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources-400x380.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources.jpg)For many years the Gun Facts project has been showing off this little graphic, compliments of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), an agency of the federal government and a band of number nuts that we admire. It reports the source for guns used in crimes. Here are the important points, using the 2004 data:

- A rock-bottom minimum of 40% of crime guns come from illegal sources.
- About 11% come from retail sources that perform background checks already (though 1.4% come from gun shows and flea markets, and they likely have more than a few non-checked transfers).
- 37% of crime guns are bought/borrowed/gifted between family and “friends,” and this is where “universal” background checks might have some effect.

It is that last bucket that causes calculation headaches. Among the reasons this has been problematic include:

- **What is a “friend”?:** Is your fellow street gang member a “friend,” or your anarchist pal a “friend of a friend”? There is a big difference between your next-door neighbor (friend) and your “we once held up a liquor store together” friend.
- **Family:** The Gambino Family is different than the Partridge Family. Background checks between members of the former would be quite rare.
- **Intimate people:** Husbands, girlfriends, casual sex partners … a pretty wide swath of people who might be open to providing a gun on the sly.

Intent and compliance are unmeasurable variables here, and thus assigning a likelihood of compliance with background checks would be iffy. That being said, asking prisoners in state pens where they got their guns helps because the residents there tend to be criminally minded, and thus tend to find ways of breaking laws, which shows “intent.”

## The Big and Ugly Dataset

Back in 2016, a survey of prison inmates [1](#note-6156-1 "Survey of Prison Inmates, United States, 2016, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2016")was conducted and published by BJS. There are 24,848 data points in the survey which makes it rather robust … except that not all inmates answered all the questions. For example, 3,902 told surveyors how they obtained guns (not all prisoners used guns) but only 2,803 told the statisticians from where they obtained them. Regardless, there is enough data to parse and estimate that mysterious “family and friends” bucket of 37% of crime guns.

## A Lot of Assumptions Need to be Made

The problem with surveys in general, and surveys of felons in particular, is that the respondents are not required to answer all questions. For example, only 41 of the 3,902 explained why they used a third party to obtain a gun despite at least 1,000 of them doing so through family, friends or intimate partners. However, they were more talkative about all third-party transfers, so we’ll run with that and make a few broad assumptions.

**Source****Background Checks****Full Share****Non-Intimate Share**Gun StoreCurrently Done3%17%Pawn ShopCurrently Done1%9%FamilyPossible Compliance0%3%FriendPossible Compliance4%25%Black marketSkipped2%10%Street/DrugSkipped4%29%BurglarySkipped0%1%InternetPossible Compliance0%3%OtherPossible Compliance0%3%IntimatesSkipped85%What we see is both interesting and a bit troubling. A full 85% of third-party crime gun transfers occurred between intimates (spouse, crack whore girlfriend … quite a range). We have to incorporate this into the overall analysis since it is apparently the overwhelming source of third-party (and hence “friends and family”) transfers. We also have to make some broad assumptions about which of these sources might comply with a background check.

Herein, we run into trouble. Would 100% of crime gun transfers between intimate partners skip background checks? No, but what is the ratio? Since this survey was of prisoners and criminality is involved, among intimates the rate would likely be high. After all, the wife of an NRA member buying him the Colt he has wanted will unlikely result in him using it to rob you at the ATM. But the street thug’s transient and drug-addled girlfriend might be happy to run guns for him. For intimates then, we leaned toward assuming they would bypass background checks.

Other categories are less clear. You will see that 4% of the crime guns via third parties came from “friends.” In one scenario, Cousin Joey knows you are a felon hiding from the mob and gives you a gun for protection. That obviously bypasses a background check. But if your Uncle Bill sells you, a non-felon, a gun (which you later commit a crime with) he might well obey a “universal” background check law. Hence, we assumed that there is “possible” compliance for friends and family (though not intimate partners), and we thus know that some subset of these will be transfers without background checks.

**Without Intimates****With Intimates**Currently Done26%4%Possible Compliance33%5%Skipped41%91%Max Crime Guns12%2%When distilled, we see a fallout that confirms that “universal” background checks are weak. At most, 5% of the friends/family/intimates cluster would conduct background checks under a “universal” background check law, and when applied to the 37% of crime guns in the BJS’s cluster that such background checks might affect, that means at most 2% of crime guns might be stopped.

## The Really Big Shift

Scroll back up to the top of this page, to the BJS table 14 which we opened this discussion with. There is a hidden-in-plain-sight reality in the two columns of data.

The left column shows the crime gun sources ***before*** the National Instant Check System (NICS) was launched, and the right column, ***after*** it became active. Notice that about 3% of gun acquisitions quit being made at retailers (where background checks occurred) and reappeared under “street” sources. In short, a number of people (likely prohibited) quit going to gun stores and instead scored their hardware from established black markets and other sources immune to background checks.

Because of this reality, even if the compliance rate for “universal” background checks were high, the 2% of crime guns that ***might*** be stopped via friends/family/intimate transfers would likely shift to black markets as well. If this holds true, then “universal” background checks could have zero effect.

## Policy vs. Propaganda

Since it has been known for decades that a minimum of 40% of crime guns come from street sources, the entire push for “universal” background checks is an exercise in stupidity. It does not address the common, recurring, and majority source of crime guns. The effort is better diverted to fixing the street problem.

Notes:

1. *Survey of Prison Inmates, United States, 2016*, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2016 [↩](#return-note-6156-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** background checks

---

### [Ghost Gun Gong Show](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/ghost-gun-gong-show/)

**Published:** April 3, 2021
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

“Criminals are taking advantage of this loophole to obtain guns that are later used in crimes.”

In California, perhaps. Elsewhere “ghost guns” are the “assault weapon” for the new millennium… rarely used, marginally worrisome, and perhaps a byproduct of strict gun control laws.

# The Summary Data

- Worst case, 1.7% of crime guns are DIY (e.g., “ghost guns”). 
    - But when the top six outlier cities (all in California) are excluded, the rate drops to 1.1%.
- 34% of agencies recovered no ghost guns.
- This compares to 8% of crime guns that have no visible serial numbers (obliterated + DIY).
- California is the primary state having DIY guns in circulation, averaging 8% of crime guns.

## What We Did to Tally DIY Guns used in crime

We sent public records requests to the top 100 police agencies in the United States and asked them to tell us for 2019:

- How many crime guns [1](#note-6338-1 "Defined as a gun used in the commission of a crime. This specifically excluded “red flag” confiscations, voluntary turn-ins, found guns, guns taken from criminals but not used in their crime, etc.") were confiscated.
- How many of the crime guns had no readable serial number. This included both DIY guns and those where serial numbers had been obliterated.
- How many of the crime guns appeared to be DIY (ghost) guns.

The goal was to see if DIY guns were a significant part of the crime gun inventory. Another study—which we’ll be happy to do once we receive a great big grant from anyone—is to find out if the percentage of DIY crime guns is growing, and if so, if it is growing rapidly. Break out your checkbook and add an extra couple of zeros… this would be a non-trivial exercise.

As of this update (2021-05-12), 47 of the 100 agencies fully complied with our request, four provided incomplete information, and several were simply snotty about the whole thing. Most notably, the Washington, DC police department sent us a canned year-end PDF which had one of the numbers we needed, then dug in their heels about providing real and complete data (it has been appealed to the mayor’s office… and appears to have died there).

Incomplete reports were not included in the analysis since that would screw up everything. But a 47% response rate is robust and enough to get started.

⇑⇑⇑**UPDATED AS NEW REPORTS ARRIVE**

The data above will be updated from time to time as more agencies complete their public records requests.

⇑⇑⇑⇓⇓⇓**ANALYSIS IS STATIC**

The analysis below, posted in 2021-04-03, will not be updated as rewriting everything will be of marginal value. So if the numbers below disagree with the numbers above, this is why.

⇓⇓⇓## What We Discovered and the Uncomfortable Perspective

Before we get into the details, an obvious anomaly appeared.

[![CRIME AND GUNS - Percent of DIY Guns Used in Crime by Agency](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Percent-of-DIY-Guns-Used-in-Crime-by-Agency-400x306.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Percent-of-DIY-Guns-Used-in-Crime-by-Agency.png)[![List of cities with the most ghost guns as a percent of crime guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/List-of-cities-with-the-most-ghost-guns-as-a-percent-of-crime-guns-c-400x485.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/List-of-cities-with-the-most-ghost-guns-as-a-percent-of-crime-guns-c.png)**All****No Outliers**% No Serial Number6.3%7.0%% DIY2.0%**1.3%**% DIYs in CA**8.0%**% DIYs in San Francisco**20.7%**Most agencies (55%) reported no DIY crime guns, or so few that spreadsheet rounding reported them as zero.

Eighty-eight percent of agencies were in the bottom quartile of the percent of crime guns that were DIY guns.

These two data points alone show the “ghost guns” are not a huge problem in terms of crime and criminals, providing we exclude whatever yammering your congress criminal is shouting this week.

What was rather stunning, though, was California \[ED: Gun Facts founder Guy Smith was exiled to California for 22 years, and thus has a special interest in their gun laws and outcomes).

Whereas DIY guns constitute 1% of crime guns in non-outlier cities, they are 8% in California cities and practically a cottage industry in both San Francisco and Bakersfield (culturally speaking, two very different towns). There is a minor issue therein, given the relatively low number of recovered crime guns (Los Angeles recovered 12 times as many crime guns… though with only 4.5 times as many people).

But Cali takes the top four spots, and 73% of the top 11 spots. In short, if there is any such thing as a “ghost gun” problem, it is in the state that both the Brady Campaign and the Giffords Law Center rank as having the ”strongest” gun law in the country.

We won’t speculate if there is a cause-and-effect situation here. But do incorporate this into your speculations: California passed laws that created an ever-dwindling list of “safe” handguns (the gun of choice for criminals). As the retail market becomes tighter and prices skyrocket, the underground supply of guns may be drying up as thugs realize they can get an ever-escalating resell price for “pre-roster” guns and are putting them *back* into legal exchange. With an ever-tighter supply of black market guns, some enterprising criminals may be making guns for their fellow felons.

Let’s make one more contrast to put California (currently headed by Gavin Newsom) and San Francisco (#2 on the DIY gun list and formerly headed by… Gavin Newsom) into perspective. Excluding outlier agencies (like Bakersfield down to Stockton), the abbreviated number of crime guns that were DIY was 1.3%. All reporting California cities came in at 8%, with San Francisco at 20.7%.

## Problems with Reporting

Records are not what we might hope for.

We had to filter out more than a few responses that provided data on all three points (total crime guns, no serial number guns, DIY guns) but had other defects. The most common problem was that some agencies did not segregate crime guns from all confiscated guns. For amenable agencies, we paid their clerks to perform a hand count of the records. For agencies that were not amenable, we did not use their reports.

Likewise, there were a couple of agencies where antique guns that came into the world before serial numbers were mandatory were in the “no serial number” pile. Thankfully these were nearly zero, and even if we had not caught and cleaned the data, it would not have made a huge difference.

Several agencies are positively archaic in their public records access, requiring sending in request via snail mail (not even via fax). We skipped those. Note to Detroit and Oklahoma City: it is the twenty-first century; get with the program.

Likewise, some agencies used any excuse they could to not report the data. The most common excuse was “You don’t live in this state, so we don’t have to help you.” Even offering to pay them to do the work was rejected. Chesapeake, VA, Memphis, TN and Pittsburgh, PA were abruptly uncooperative (so if any locals want to file a request for us, send us an email).

The biggest problem was that some agencies simply don’t track this stuff, or at least in a way that was easy to get to. Austin, TX merged crime guns and stollen guns and could not separate them. Atlanta, GA does not track guns without serial numbers. Henderson, NV, Reno, NV and St. Louis, MO simply don’t track any of it.

Several agencies are promising to send the data, but due to various reasons (typically COVID-related), some of that data won’t arrive until later in the year.

[![Washington D.C. violent crime rate 2009-2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/DC-violent-crime-rate-2009-2019-400x626.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/DC-violent-crime-rate-2009-2019.png)But the prize for being openly onery goes to… Washington, DC (not surprising). They lackadaisically sent a PDF titled “State-of-the-art Science, Safer Streets.” Someone should alert the citizens of DC about their safer streets because according to the FBI, the place is still the most deadly in the nation.

DC would not tell me how many crime guns they confiscated, but their PDF mentioned that they had examined 4,257 guns that were subject to “shooting-related investigations.” Los Angeles, with a much larger population than Washington, DC, had collected 4,988 crime guns in the same year that DC collected 4,257 *shooting-related* guns. In other words, DC has even more guns confiscated from robberies, aggravated assaults, menacing discharges, and so on. They obviously would top all of the charts, which might explain why they are sooooooo reluctant to reveal information.

But buried on that same page was an admission that (a) they had collected 84 “ghost guns” and that was a 366 percent increase” from the year before. Worst case scenario (via the undercounting of all crime guns) DC has a 2% DIY crime gun rate, which puts it in the lowest quartile. I guess you cannot score political points if you are just average, so they make their DIY gun “problem” sound worse than it is.

## Gone Like a Ghost (gun)

The rhetoric about DIY guns is pretty obvious. Humans rightly fear the unknown, and guns without a trackable pedigree are a concern. Excluding the outlier cities, 7.4% of crime guns have no visible serial number, but only 1.3% were ever DIY guns. That is tiny.

How tiny? Even including the outlier cities, there were 870 DIY guns recovered. According to the ATF, about 40,000 guns were stolen from FFLs and upwards of 360,000 are stolen each year. That means DIY guns used in crime are about 0.2% the number of stolen guns.

But don’t expect anyone with an agenda to recognize this reality, because addressing things like theft, inner-city gang violence, and other serious gun crimes is not something they want to tackle. That would require honesty and real work.

Notes:

1. Defined as a gun used in the commission of a crime. This specifically excluded “red flag” confiscations, voluntary turn-ins, found guns, guns taken from criminals but not used in their crime, etc. [↩](#return-note-6338-1)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns

**Tags:** diy guns, ghost guns

---

### [Mental Breakdown](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-breakdown-of-mass-shooters/)

**Published:** April 9, 2021
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

“You gotta be crazy to shoot a bunch of strangers dead!”

Yes. Crazy and untreated. A deeper dig into the mass public shooting (MPS) database with the most detailed mental health insights reveals that the American mental health system is ailing.

## High Level Takeaways

- 68% of MPS perpetrators have mental illness.
- Of those, 65% of them never received treatment.
- Of perpetrators who were previously suicidal, only half received treatment.
- Mood disorder medications have an outsized influence.

## The Violence Project Database

A product of government funding and greater access to medical records, the Violence Project database of MPS has the most complete accounting of the mental health status of MPS perpetrators. Their database starts in 1966 with the legendary University of Texas tower shooting and goes on through early 2020.

They also have nearly complete records of the perp’s mental health history, including rarified data such as the perp’s suicidality, their intention to die during the attack, prior mental health hospitalization, prior counseling, voluntary or mandatory counseling, if they were prescribed psychiatric medications, and if they are on the Autism spectrum (which [we have noted before is a leading indicator for both MPSs and serial killers](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/)).

The basic question herein is how big of a hole exists in the American mental health system as it relates to MPSs. Go steal a Mac truck and you can drive through it.

## Untreated and Mentally Ill Shooters

Mass public shooters are typically mentally ill and are unlikely to have received treatment.

[![MASS PUBLIC SHOOTINGS - Mental Health Background of Mass Public Shooters - 1966 thru 2020](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MASS-PUBLIC-SHOOTINGS-Mental-Health-Background-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-1966-thru-2020-400x316.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MASS-PUBLIC-SHOOTINGS-Mental-Health-Background-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-1966-thru-2020.png)[![MASS PUBLIC SHOOTINGS - Mass Public Shooters with Mental Health Issues - Did They Receive Treatment - 1966 THRU 2020-q1](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MASS-PUBLIC-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shooters-with-Mental-Health-Issues-Did-They-Receive-Treatment-1966-THRU-2020-q1-400x333.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MASS-PUBLIC-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shooters-with-Mental-Health-Issues-Did-They-Receive-Treatment-1966-THRU-2020-q1.png)[![MASS PUBLIC SHOOTINGS - Mass Public Shooters with Mental Health Issues and Were Prescribed Psychotropic Medications - 1966 thru 2020-Q1](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MASS-PUBLIC-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shooters-with-Mental-Health-Issues-and-Were-Prescribed-Psychotropic-Medications-1966-thru-2020-Q1-400x333.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MASS-PUBLIC-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shooters-with-Mental-Health-Issues-and-Were-Prescribed-Psychotropic-Medications-1966-thru-2020-Q1.png)[![MASS PUBLIC SHOOTINGS - Mental Disorders of Mass Public Shooters - 1966 thru 2020-Q1](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MASS-PUBLIC-SHOOTINGS-Mental-Disorders-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-1966-thru-2020-Q1-400x348.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/MASS-PUBLIC-SHOOTINGS-Mental-Disorders-of-Mass-Public-Shooters-1966-thru-2020-Q1.png) **On Medications****Mental Health Status****No****Yes**Mood & Thought Disorders20%**80%**Mood Disorder52%**48%**Other Diagnosis63%38%Signs, No Diagnosis96%4%Thought Disorder74%26%The Violence Project database agrees with the other major MPS databases on the mental health scorecard. Their more accurate tally is that a full 68% of MPS perpetrators were diagnosed with or showed signs of mental illness, and about half of those were suicidal to boot.

### This big divide between mentally ill mass public shooters and treatment

Our first alarming insight: though 68% of MPS perpetrators are mentally unsound, only 31% of MPS perps ever received treatment.

Digging a little deeper, we looked at just the records of MPS perps who were listed as mentally ill. A whopping 65% of them never received treatment.

This is the core of the debate for MPSs. If a large majority (68%) of MPS perps are mentally fragile but only 35% of them get help, then the American mental health system is letting the lion’s share of MPS perps slip through the cracks.

### There is medication to their madness – the role of psychotropics in mass shootings

Interestingly, and somewhat predictably, a full 34% of MPS perpetrators who had any sign of mental illness had been prescribed psychotropic medications. As we discovered in some original Gun Facts research, there is a positive (albeit bivariate) [correlation between adverse reactions to psychotropic medications and MPS](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/meds-and-mass-murder/).

Let’s do a quick recap:

- 68% of shooters had mental illness. Of those: 
    - 31% received treatment.
    - 34% had been prescribed psychotropic medications.

Those last two points are not an anomaly. Your family doctor can (but shouldn’t) prescribe psychotropics. But it does happen. Hence, there are a few entries in the database where someone (a) had signs of mental illness, but (b) never received counseling for their mental illness, and yet (c) someone prescribed mind-altering drugs to them.

\[ED: I had a girlfriend who had amazingly bad PMS. Her family doctor prescribed her Prozac. Thankfully, she was a smart lass, and after taking exactly one pill said “No, this is stupid” and flushed the rest.\]

### Degrees of derangement

We thought it may be helpful to understand what varieties of mental illness are associated with MPS perpetrators, but the data is not all that helpful.

First, the classification scheme used by the Violence Project is narrow. In our [study of psychotropic medications and mass murders](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/meds-and-mass-murder/), we identified 25 different but specific types of FDA-defined mental maladies. The Violence Project identified mood and thought disorders, as well as the two grab-bag classifications of “other” and “signs but no diagnosis.”

This leads to us seeing a nearly even mix of mood, thought and “signs” disorders (16–21% range). Hence, no greatly discernable pattern.

Now, here is where it gets a little scary. When we look at just the perpetrators who (a) had mental health issues and (b) were prescribed psychotropic medications, we see that drugs treating mood disorders are disproportionately associated with MPSs. Mood disorder medications have some well-known names and side-effects. In the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) class we find Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, Luvox (the Columbine shooter’s meds), Lexapro and Celexa. In the MAOI (monoamine oxidase inhibitors) we see Parnate and Nardil. The list under tricyclics is too long to transcribe.

## Bringing Mental Health Home

The point is, we see a descending but statistically observable chain with MPS perpetrators:

- 68% have some form of mental illness.
- 32–73% (depending on how you account) are suicidal.
- Only 35% get treatment.
- Of those treated, 34% were on medications.
- And for mood disorders, 48–80% were on medications.

Psychiatric hospitals were often not nice places. But since the 1970s, we disposed of 64% of all psych beds, and instead put at-risk people on the streets with pockets full of pills—which they may be too unreliable to take, regularly or at all, or do cold turkey withdraws from.

Incidentally, since the 1999 Columbine massacre, we jettisoned 23% of those psychiatric beds.

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

---

### [Background Checks and Homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/background-checks-and-homicides/)

**Published:** April 20, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

If retail gun purchase background checks are any indication, sales of guns may keep some crime down.

## Backgrounds Checked

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) recently released a report [1](#note-6412-1 "Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, 2016-2017, February 2021") on background checks. Though not every state was covered, the 40 reported gives of an unexpected view into homicides and recent gun sales.

But before we dive in, here is the list of caveats:

- Only looks at 2016/7 data, so a snapshot in time.
- Gun sales may lag behind changes in local violence, so there is an unspecified lead/lag issue.
- Since the BJS also tells us that a minimum of 40% of crime guns come from street sources (not subject to background checks), looking at retail checks and crime might produce weak results anyway.

## Up, Up and Away

Between 1999 and 2017, the U.S. population rose 16% while the number of background checks for gun purchases rose 99%. Clearly, America has been arming itself. Interestingly, all manner of crime, including violent crime, dropped during most of that period.

Also of interest is that the percent of rejected background checks has been declining. In 1999, 2.4% of background checks cancelled a sale, and by 2017 that was down to 1.4%, with a steady stepwise decline in between.

As the Gun Facts project has noted before, there was a 3% shift of crime guns from retail outlets to street sources before and after the national background check system came to life. Attrition might be driving street sources to be the first choice among thugs.

## Disconnected

[![Background Checks and Homicides by State, 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Background-Checks-and-Homicides-by-State-2017-400x278.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Background-Checks-and-Homicides-by-State-2017.png)[![Background Checks and Firearm Homicides by State, 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Background-Checks-and-Firearm-Homicides-by-State-2017-400x284.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Background-Checks-and-Firearm-Homicides-by-State-2017.png)*click images for larger, sharable version*First, we looked at the per capita rate of gun purchase background checks (checks per 100K adult population) and the overall homicide rate. We then did the same task but looked specifically at firearm homicides.

As you can see, there is a downward slope in homicides for higher rates of gun purchases. Now, there are many cultural factors that confound simple comparisons and are beyond this post. But as an acid test for guns in private hands and overall mayhem, there is no correlation (0.06 using a *R*2 test). In other words, higher guns sales not only do not lead to higher crime, crime tends to decline.

But this is for all forms of homicide – guns, knives, cars, etc. One might suspect that firearm homicides would tell a different story, but it did not. This is unsurprising, as most American homicides are committed with guns, so the variable (guns) in the second chart was also echoed in the first chart.

But it remains a curiosity that – generally speaking – the more retailing of guns in a state, the lower the homicide rate. This finding goes against some common political talking points.

## Uncomfortable Observations

At the far left of each chart, we have the homicide poster child, Washington, DC. They have the lowest rate of gun sales and the highest rate of murder.

And they are not alone. Though it’s a mixed bag, we see notoriously anti-gun states (Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts as well as DC) with low gun sales rates and high homicide rates. Oddly, some pro-gun states (Alaska, Mississippi, Kentucky) also report low gun sales rates, though their homicide rates are low as well.

## Bottoming Out

One hypothesis often hyped is that the “easy” availability of guns leads to more violence. Retail gun sales are a measure of “ease” of acquisition, so if the hypothesis held water (which it doesn’t), then a high background check rate would correlate to higher rates of violence. Yet, that is not the case.

For policy, facts beat theory. Herein we see theory taking a beating.

Notes:

1. Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, 2016-2017, February 2021 [↩](#return-note-6412-1)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns, States

---

### [Crime Leads Gun Buying](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/crime-leads-gun-buying/)

**Published:** June 11, 2021
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Which came first, the crime or the guns?

Statistically, crime rates appear to precede gun sales … and for some obvious reasons.

## Main take-aways

- In 29% of states, there is a significant correlation between firearm homicides and gun sales.
- In the top half of states, per raw correlations, 85% have firearm homicides preceding gun sales.
- Lead/lag times of one to three years shows 22–28% of states having crime leading gun sales, and between 6-11% of states having gun sales leading crime.

## The Basic Debate

The basic debate surrounding whether gun sales lead to gun crimes is kinda stupid.

[![Bureau of Justice Statistics - crime gun sources](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources-400x380.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources.jpg)For decades, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has produced this chart. Only 11% of crime guns come from retail, so any increase in guns sales in any given year or locality will only result in a fractional immediate increase in gun crimes. Multiply this by the average of eleven years between the retailing of a gun and its use in crime (“time-to-crime”) and the rate of retailed guns affecting crime rates becomes small and rather silly.

But this doesn’t keep some activist groups from claiming that it is so.

They trot out tables showing correlations between gun sales and crime in various cities or states before saying “AH HA!” Then, the opposition camps say, “Maybe gun sales go up in response to crime,” and the first group goes oddly silent.

At the Gun Facts project, we like to go a level or two deeper. In this case we grabbed firearm homicide data from the Centers for Disease Control mortality databases, and gun background check data from the FBI. What we discovered was slightly untidy, but nonetheless interesting.

## Crime Proceeds Gun Sales

We did a simple regression (*R*2) for each of the states and the District of Columbia (DC) and discovered that about 29% of states had a significant correlation between gun sales and firearm homicides (regardless of which led or lagged). The flip side of this is that 71% of states really don’t have a measurable problem.

One problem we had was North Dakota. Sure, it is barren, cold, and unromantic, but the real problem with North Dakota is that it didn’t have a high enough firearm homicide rate to be reliably reported for *most* of the study period (1999 thru 2016). So, though they are #1 for a correlation between gun sales and gun murders, we have to remove them from the detailed analysis as they cannot present reliable trending insights. We’ll note in passing that the fracking boom in the Dakotas has driven crime and gun sales higher in recent years as hordes of newcomers and transient workers invaded Sioux territory… before surrendering their paychecks at the Indian casinos there.

Since we see some significant raw correlation, the natural question is which one, gun sales or crime, preceded the other. The answer is, “No contest… people buy guns in response to crime.”

*R*2 of 0.5 or higher85%% 1st half crime leads56%% 1st half sales leadsLooking at states where the raw correlation is 0.5 or higher (which means that at least 50% of the instances could be explained by their association), we see that 85% of those states saw crime preceding gun sales over all of either one-, two-, three- or four-year lags (e.g., gun sales went up after crime went up in any of the following four years). Contrarywise, only 56% saw a four-year span where on aggregate gun sales started going up before crime did.

This might be compelling enough, but amalgamating four-year spans can hide things, so we spread the data out and color coded it for clarity’s sake. The table below shows states with the crime-leads-guns and guns-lead-crime situations in red where *R*2 values were at least 0.75, and yellow for the next quartile with *R*2 values of 0.5–0.75 (we also shaded the 0.25–0.5 group, though we are sinking in correlation values therein).

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Gun-Sales-and-Firearm-Homicides-by-State-with-lead-lag-analysis--800x485.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Gun-Sales-and-Firearm-Homicides-by-State-with-lead-lag-analysis-.jpg)

One can visualize quickly the disparity. If we move marginal one-year exceptions for DC and Arizona, then we see four states that consistently have crime leading gun sales regardless of the lead/lag span, when we look at those with very high raw correlations (0.75 or higher). But the situation becomes muddier when we drop that number to 0.5, with yellow dominating the “guns lead crime” upper end.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Gun-Sales-and-Gun-Homicides-with-lead-lag-analysis-1999-thru-2016-b-400x327.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Gun-Sales-and-Gun-Homicides-with-lead-lag-analysis-1999-thru-2016-b.jpg)A better way to look at it is to focus on where the correlation is highest. This gives us a cleaner view, and we see that for every lead/lag interval, firearm homicide rates lead per capita gun sales rates. The split is quite consistent, with lead/lag intervals starting to fade after the third year.

## The Safe Summary

Firearm homicides are the worst of gun crimes and may be a good proxy for other gun crimes. That’s for another day.

But for now, it is safe to say that there is statistical evidence that people buy guns in response to crime (real or imagined) and less likely that new gun purchases lead to gun homicides.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns

**Tags:** crime guns, gun sales, NICS

---

### [Targeting Firearm Homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/targeting-firearm-homicides/)

**Published:** July 26, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

To control 41% of gun homicides, target men in their early adulthood and living in metropolitan areas.

## Major Takeaways

- For victims and offenders, the concentration is in this group.
- These clusters are also closely statistically associated with blacks, though not isolated to any race.

## Limitations and Warnings

- Due to limitations within data sources, we pulled firearm homicide data from the CDC, and *total* homicide offender data from the FBI. 
    - This means there is some disassociation in the data, but since firearms figure prominently in homicides in general, and particularly in street gang homicides, variability is limited.
    - We also had to adjust for different age groups between the CDC and the FBI data.
- All race-based numbers are population adjusted (i.e., homicide rates for any race are based on the number of people of that race, not the overall population).

## Who Gets Shot, Who Does the Shooting

The fact is that gun violence is not uniform, universal, or even close. This simple statistical fact makes one-size-fits-all legislation positively inept at trying to reduce gun violence in any meaningful way.

As with any problem, it is best to break it down (eat the elephant one bite at a time) and prioritize the single worst part of the problem (do the tough thing first). Every other approach produces limited or no results.

Looking at just firearm homicides – and noting the close correlation between gun homicides and intentional gun wounding – we see some things that criminologists have been saying for decades but which no politician wants to tackle. The basics are that for gun homicides:

- Most victims and offenders are in their twenties.
- Most victims and offenders are in metropolitan areas, including abutting suburbs.
- Most are male.

In short: urban, young, male and likely running with street gangs (more on that later).

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Firearm-Homicide-Victims-and-Offenders-Urbanization-Age-Sex-Race-2016-b-400x508.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Firearm-Homicide-Victims-and-Offenders-Urbanization-Age-Sex-Race-2016-b-scaled.jpg)click to open a large, sharable version of this table

Since there is no way to do a visualization on the many data categories, we’ll instead provide this highlight chart. Each of the highlighted cells are in the top 20% of the range for their category.

What is depressingly common in the data and literature is that the highest rates of gun violence are between black offenders and victims. This is largely confined to metropolitan areas, which means a high correlation with street gang activity.

The gang aspect cannot be ignored, though concise data on the intersectionality is hard to come by. As noted before, there is a lot of inter-gang violence that \[due to reporting quality requirements\] can only be classified as “unknown,” “argument,” or some such.

That being said, the [Nation Gang Center](https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/survey-analysis/demographics) tells us that gang members are skewed on the adult side (67% above age 18) and street gang participation rates are higher in urban areas. Hence, gun homicides among young, urban men running with gangs remains the top priority.

# A Chicago Sidestep

Just as we were finishing grinding our numbers, a new study [1](#note-6482-1 "Sentences Imposed on Those Convicted of Felony Illegal Possession of a Firearm in Illinois; Olson, Stemen, Foust; Loyola University; 2021-07") hit our desk. Though we are still reviewing the paper, this pair of pies caught our eye.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Chicago-gun-possession-arrests-loyola-2021-800x439.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Chicago-gun-possession-arrests-loyola-2021.png)

This pattern in the state of Illinois echoes what we have already said. In their case the lion’s share of gun possession arrests – which is likely a good proxy for either or both gun violence and street gang activity – is concentrated into a handful of neighborhoods, in one major metropolitan area, and predominately among men between the ages 18 and 24.

## Problems With Difficult “Solutions”

*None of these shooters buys guns at retail.*

This, more than any other statement, needs pondering. Studies of poor neighborhoods and street gangs, as well as decadal felon surveys by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, show that people living in poor inner-city neighborhoods get their guns from street sources; even nationally, not just in urban centers among the poor, a minimum of 40% of crime guns come from street sources. Yet nearly all gun control proposals involve restricting access at retail sources, which account for only 11% of crime guns.

“Prioritize the single worst part of the problem (do the tough things first).” Hence, most modern gun control proposals are failing to address the single largest part of firearm violence.

The question then becomes: “What makes young urban males more likely to commit gun violence than everyone else?” We won’t explore that today, but let’s say that all factors that shape subcultures – government policy, human indifference, substance abuse, et cetera – are the analysis points. You need to address the culture, the one that condones or even encourages violence, to prevent the violence from occurring.

Notes:

1. *Sentences Imposed on Those Convicted of Felony Illegal Possession of a Firearm in Illinois*; Olson, Stemen, Foust; Loyola University; 2021-07 [↩](#return-note-6482-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

---

### [Guns Not Used in Crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/guns-not-used-in-crime/)

**Published:** August 24, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

What portion of America’s guns are used in crime?

Somewhere between 0.00001% and 0.00477%, depending on the type of gun and crime.

## Take-aways

- Due to the repeat offenders, some guns get used in multiple gun crimes.
- Omitting likely crime repetitions, the number of guns in circulation used in crime drops.
- The combination of all gun types and the two major gun crimes means a mere 0.00477% of the gun supply is being used in crime.

## Multiple Uses, One Gun

For years people have been taking estimates of the number of guns in public hands and dividing that into the number of gun crimes committed each year, to get a rough guess as to whether being “awash” in guns creates a problem. Typically, these rough takes estimate that less than 1% of guns are used in a crime any year.

The problem is that this is a radical over-estimate.

We know from sundry criminology studies that people who commit crimes tend to commit more than one. Your garden variety street gang member might murder quite a few rival gang members before being killed himself. Someone making a profession of robbing liquor stores isn’t likely to stop after the first attempt.

Thus, a significant portion of the guns used in crimes are used again … and again … and again. The question is “how often are these guns reused, and how does that impact the guns-to-inventory ratio?”

The answer is that we don’t and can’t know. Not fully, anyhow. But we can approximate two types of violent crime and at least get a ballpark idea.

## Precautions

This study has many limitations, so you should use these numbers as SWAGs (scientific wild ass guesses). Here are some of the issues we faced:

**CRIMINALS DON’T TELL:** Various small studies have estimated some levels of repeat crimes. But the bigger the crime, the less likely the offender will be to admit other crimes they committed (e.g., a jaywalker may brag about 100 offenses, but a street gang member goes silent when interrogated about homicides they are suspected of committing).

**ONE GUN, TWO GUN, THREE GUNS?** Likewise, the odds of keeping a gun you committed murder with might drop, while a gun used for an ATM robbery might be kept. Hence, the actual “gun repetition” rate is variable.

**SOME STATS DON’T EXIST:** The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting system will tell you how many aggravated assaults involved a gun (about 18% of them) but nobody has a handle on how many people who commit an aggravated assault on Tuesday did so on any other day of the year (we pinged a well-known and respected criminologist while hunting for such data and he had nada).

But buried in files both dusty and digital, we at least had some data to triangulate *likely* repeated gun use for homicides and robberies (assaults had no data, and guns are so seldom used for rapes that we omitted it from the analysis). We also had to make a few assumptions along the way, but nothing as radical as policy groups do while pushing their agendas. Ahhh, the luxury of being non-aligned, as the Gun Facts project is …

## Cut to the Chase

The table at right shows steps and assumptions, which we’ll explain as we go.

[![Guns not used in crime - homicides and robberies scaled per repeat offender estimates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Guns-not-used-in-crime-homicides-and-robberies-scaled-per-repeat-offender-estimates-800x509.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Guns-not-used-in-crime-homicides-and-robberies-scaled-per-repeat-offender-estimates.jpg)click to enlarge and share

Foremost, and perhaps most important, are the estimates of the number of guns in circulation. In the United States, we do not know. Since gun registration – outside of a few states – is anathema to Americans, there is no tracking. At the Gun Facts project, we lean on previous criminology estimates [1](#note-6531-1 "Handgun supply: Kleck, Targeting Guns, Table 3.1") and those generated by the U.S. Government [2](#note-6531-2 "Rifle and shotguns starting in 2009: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Firearms Commerce in the United States 2011, August 2011, pp. 11, 13, and 15.") and augment those annually with fresh data from the BATF’s *Firearms in Commerce* reports.

As a sanity check, we compared our tracking estimates with a somewhat outdated estimate from the Small Arms Survey. Their guess came in at about 93% of our data. Imperfect, but at least in the same minefield.

The bigger problem was knowing how often a hoodlum repeated their offenses with a gun.

One academic study [3](#note-6531-3 "Who will kill again? The forensic value of 1st degree murder convictions; DeLisi, Ruelas, Kruse; 2019") helps, though their data was compiled by convictions. It is a sad fact that some people get away with murder. Happy fact, some murderers get murdered themselves (spend five seconds studying street gang beefs and you’ll see this is common). When weighted for the number of additional homicides committed by a prisoner, we see shy of +1 homicides for each. However, that is for all homicide prisoners. As we know from gang studies, many gang members never make it to prison, taking the express route to the grave. Law enforcement in some gang-heavy regions have estimated that every gang member arrested for a homicide is the prime suspect in three other homicides. So, we at the Gun Facts project split the difference between these two boundaries and assumed that on average, everyone who committed one homicide committed another (two total).

The data on robberies was a bit clearer, but the study we found [4](#note-6531-4 "Relationship Between the Offending Frequency of Imprisoned and Free Offenders; Canela-Cacho, Blumstein, Cohen; 1997") was from only three states, albeit large ones (California, Texas, Michigan). In this study, they found robbers to be quite prolific, committing an aggregate of over 33 robberies in a year. Hence, we assumed that this rate translates well for all 50 states (and given that the spread for these three states was between 14 and 44 robberies per inmate, it isn’t too terrible of an assumption).

The top row (TOTAL) are the raw numbers for guns used in crime for 2018. Next are the triangulated aggregate repetition rates for these crimes (e.g., how many times did the average murderer or robber commit a murder or robbery in a year). The next row (TOTAL MINUS REPETITIONS) factors the repetition rate into the total “gun used” numbers to estimate how many unique guns were likely used in crime (assuming the same thug uses the same gun for each of their crimes). Lastly, we divide the unique crime gun use rate by the estimated stockpile of each type of gun to see what percentage of the American private arsenal is involved in crime.

Kinda tiny, eh?

Notes:

1. Handgun supply: Kleck, Targeting Guns, Table 3.1 [↩](#return-note-6531-1)
2. Rifle and shotguns starting in 2009: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Firearms Commerce in the United States 2011, August 2011, pp. 11, 13, and 15. [↩](#return-note-6531-2)
3. *Who will kill again? The forensic value of 1st degree murder convictions*; DeLisi, Ruelas, Kruse; 2019 [↩](#return-note-6531-3)
4. *Relationship Between the Offending Frequency of Imprisoned and Free Offenders*; Canela-Cacho, Blumstein, Cohen; 1997 [↩](#return-note-6531-4)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns

---

### [Permit Punditry](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/permit-punditry/)

**Published:** September 19, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

North Carolina is thinking about ending its Jim Crow era law requiring a permit to purchase a handgun.

Naturally one side claims that an Armageddon of gun play will follow. The other side is saying “Oh, calm down, you Dixiecrats.”

Who is right can be demonstrated with surprising ease.

## Major Take-Aways

- Purchase permits do not impede gun violence and might encourage it.
- Lack of such permits do not increase gun violence.

## The Purpose and Unspoken Purpose of Handgun Purchase Permits

The common justification for purchase permits is so that the local constabulary (typically the county sheriff) can ensure that only non-criminal types can obtain a permit and thus buy a handgun at retail outlets (gun stores today, hardware stores back when many of these laws were originally enacted). Most states went further and disallowed private sales of handguns without a permit, often enforced by also requiring the private sales to be facilitated by a federally licensed firearm dealer (FFL).

But we also have to accept that in many instances the laws were enforced mainly upon anyone of color or recent immigration status. In North Carolina, the state currently considering abandoning purchase permits in favor of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the degree of post-Civil War racism was a tad high, as handily demonstrated by the [Confederate governor after the war](https://mountainx.com/news/asheville-archives-zebulon-vance-argues-against-civil-rights-1874/). And it was not restricted to the south – historian Clayton Cramer possesses a California curiosity, an opinion piece that noted the lack of a “keep and bear arms” clause in California’s constitution was intended so that Mexicans and Chinese people could be controlled.

[![Bureau of Justice Statistics - crime gun sources](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources-400x380.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources.jpg)But back to the cause and effect of permitting laws. The stated purpose was to reduce gun crime by keeping bad people from buying guns. A nice theory, but one that has never held up due to the non-retail means for acquiring firearms. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports every decade or so, a rock-bottom 40% of crime guns come from “street” sources, which are completely immune to permits, background checks and racist interventions. Contrarywise, a mere 11% of crime guns are acquired as retail purchases.

But let’s not speculate. Let’s look at firearm homicides – the best indicator of gun violence – comparing states that have purchase permit laws and those that do not.

**MINOR CAUITIONARY NOTE:** Rhode Island has such a law, but our researchers, a friendly lawyer, and three Rhode Island state representatives could not determine the year in which The Plantation State enacted their law. Considering that Rhode Island has a mere 0.3% of the nation’s population, it is not a statistical sin to drop them from the analysis.

## Handgun Purchase Permit Data Drop

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Firearm-Homicide-Rates-in-Permit-to-Purchase-and-Other-States-800x631.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Firearm-Homicide-Rates-in-Permit-to-Purchase-and-Other-States.jpg)click to enlarge and share

The ***lack*** of efficacy for handgun purchase permits is hard to understate. But we have to factor in one major external element to fully understand the situation.

Before the year when violent crime peaked in the United States (1993 for all forms of violence) there was a clear divide between states with and without handgun purchase permits. The chart here incorporates each state in one or the other category for each year, as some states enacted their permit laws within the period. Up to the pivot year of 1993, states lacking handgun purchase permits saw firearm homicide rates dropping while nationally they were going up, and specifically going up in states with handgun purchase permit requirements. Handgun purchase permit states had an *upward* firearm homicide slope of 0.29, while all the other states had a *downward* slope of 0.08 between 1972 and 1992 (1972 was used as the start so it aligns with the moving average presented in the chart).

This data alone is fairly compelling because there were 42 and 44 states lacking handgun purchase permits, and many of these states were high-population states, which had major metro areas and other factors associated with violent crime.

Between 1992 and 1995, 24 states enacted “habitual offender” laws. Some were gun violence specific (e.g., 10-20-Life laws) and others were more general (e.g., Three-Strike laws). The suppression of violence by these laws is inarguable, but it makes post-1993 analysis a little tedious. What can be said is that it took 20 years for states with handgun purchase permit laws to catch up to the already low and gradually falling firearm homicide rates of states lacking those permit laws.

In short, handgun purchase permits appear to do nothing to reduce firearm homicides, and it could be argued that they might well encourage them. I won’t argue that, because the case of North Carolina shows us something different and compelling.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Firearm-Homicide-Rates-in-North-Caolina-and-Surrounding-States-800x631.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Firearm-Homicide-Rates-in-North-Caolina-and-Surrounding-States.jpg)click to enlarge and share

Since regional culture is more indicative of attitudes toward violence than mere handgun possession, comparing North Carolina to its neighboring states is illuminating.

As we see, the rates of firearm homicides between North Carolina (handgun purchase permit) and each state it touches (no permits) are closely aligned (an R2 value of 0.91 for the statistics junkies). If permits made any significant difference, the data would show wide gaps. And this analysis is a little loaded in favor of North Carolina since Virginia is a neighboring state and northern Virginia endures bleed-over violence from Washington, DC, which is routinely America’s murder capital.

## No Ignorance Permitted

The good people of North Carolina will suffer no harm by eliminating the handgun purchase permit laws because, statistically speaking, it has done them no good.

**Categories:** Licensing and Registration, North Carolina

---

### [Mass Global Mix-up](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-global-mix-up/)

**Published:** October 3, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

“Mass public shootings are rising faster around the world than in the United States!”

“Mass public shootings are rising faster in the United States than the rest of the world!”

Stuff like this makes me dislike Twitter even more than I normally do. That I saw these contradictory statements, each citing “real data,” within 60 seconds of one another was my first clue that the pro- and anti-gun camps were shouting past one another and that somebody was not paying attention.

Why the division? It comes down to definitions and data sources.

## The Data Disagreement

Two academics – John Lott and Adam Lankford – have published papers that calculate the number of mass public shootings (MPSs) around the globe. These papers come to different conclusions and have caused one of these two to abandon the normal congenial language normally bandied by studied men and women.

Geek smarminess aside, we see that these gents presented:

- Different papers
- Taking different approaches
- Using different datasets and
- Using different definitions of MPS

By doing so, they provided ideologues everything they need to keep the public confused about guns and violence. That’s why the Gun Facts project exists – to eradicate confusion.

## In This Corner …..

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Summaries-from-two-different-studies-of-global-mass-public-shootings-Lott-and-Lankford-400x291.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Summaries-from-two-different-studies-of-global-mass-public-shootings-Lott-and-Lankford.jpg)

John Lott at the Crime Prevention Research Center published his paper [1](#note-6582-1 "Comparing the Global Rate of Mass Public Shootings to the U.S.’s Rate and Comparing their Change Over Time; Lott; Crime Prevention Research Center; 2020"), which basically concluded that MPSs were globally more frequent elsewhere and that their rate on a per population basis was rising faster outside of the US \[ED: We’ll note that in an earlier paper [2](#note-6582-2 "How a Botched Study Fooled the World About the U.S. Share of Mass Public Shootings — U.S. Rate is Lower than Global Average; Lott; Crime Prevention Research Center; 2018") he concluded the same; but the Gun Facts project noted that on a per capita basis, American MPSs were producing more deaths per instance over time – in other words, American mass murderers were getting better at their craft\].

In 2016, Adam Lankford published his paper [3](#note-6582-3 "Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries; Lankford; Violence and Victims, Volume 31, Number 2; 2016") and later produced an updated version \[2019, though we could not obtain that document\]. He concluded that private gun ownership was a primary driver in MPSs and that the US was the most common place for MPSs.

How far off were they? Lott’s data had the US with about 2.2% of the planet’s MPSs and Lankford said 31%. In other words, Lankford’s data said the US rate was 14 times higher than Lott did.

That’s a big gulf. Here’s why:

## What You Count and How You Count It

These studies are very different, with one key difference that… well… makes all the difference.

**Lott****Lankford**USA % of Global Mass Shootings2%31%PerpetratorsAnyOneSpan1998-20151966-2012SourcesUniversity of Maryland Global Terrorism Database

Nexus

Web

New York City Police Department’s 2012 Active Shooter report

FBI’s 2014 active shooter report

Languages61Total MPSs reviewed2,834292LocalePublic PlacesHybridGang/drug/crime nexusExcludesExcludes SomeScope4+ dead, single location4+ dead, single or multiple locationsTerrorism RelatedIncludesExcludesHere is a brief table of the notable differences between the two. There is much to discuss, but let’s start with the pachyderm in the parlor.

The data sources are about as different as one could imagine. Lott used data sources with global reach and for a study period that included mass global adoption of the internet by the media (MSNBC was launched in 1996). Contrarywise, Lankford used two files from strictly American sources, neither of which were tasked specifically with tabulating global shootings. In the case of the NYPD report, they used English-only websites. To quote the NYPD report, “The NYPD chose to restrict quantitative analysis to cases that took place within the United States because the NYPD limited its internet searches to English-language sites, *creating a strong sampling bias against international incidents*.” \[emphasis ours\]

The FBI report uses American data only. They didn’t bother to look outside the borders.

This alone makes the Lankford study quite useless for making multinational comparisons. But believe it or not, the matter gets even worse.

Both of Lankford’s data sources are English-only. Pulling from websites that are in English (as the NYPD report did) would address readers that are at best at 7% of the world’s population. There is some multination leakage given parts of the world where English is the most common second language (e.g., India) but it is still quite limited. Lott, on the other hand, hired people with six different languages to search non-English websites. By including Chinese (1.4 billion people) and Spanish (nearly all of Latin America) the scope was greatly expanded. Had Lott included Hindi, his coverage would have been even better than the 35% of the global population his language choices did cover.

Another big variable was locale. Lankford relied on “active shooter” datasets. Active shooters include people who kill at multiple locations. A madman who shoots his neighbor, then crosses town and shoots his boss, then drops by his in-law’s and kills both of them is an active shooter with four dead. However, the common definition of “mass public shooting,” and the one Lott uses, is an event at a single location. Note that both of Lankford’s data sources were “active shooter” reports and not “mass public shooting” databases.

There is also the issue of definition about MPS. The common and enduring definition of a MPS [4](#note-6582-4 "Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder; Fox, Levin; Crime and Justice, Vol. 23;  1998") does not discriminate on the number of perpetrators. In all common MPS databases, there are instances of MPS where there was more than a single attacker (e.g., Columbine, Jonesboro, San Bernardino, Orinda, Kansas City). Lankford appears to restrict his analysis to single shooters, thus creating a new and uncommon definition of MPS and an apples to pineapples comparison with just about every other MPS research effort.

Lastly, and a bit of a picked nit, is that the NYPD active shooter report upon which Lankford based his study goes back to 1966, long before the internet existed, much less had been commercialized. To rely on web searches for ancient data is much more hit-and-miss than doing so for recent news reports. Lott confined his research to post-Internet periods and thus had a more pristine dataset.

## And The Winner Is …

Both pro- and anti-gun factions have grabbed one or the other report to justify their biases. At the Gun Facts project, the only side we take is accuracy’s.

To be blunt, the Lankford study leaves nearly everything to be desired. The data sources are insanely restricted and woefully incomplete. In a perfect world, a researcher could hire speakers of every language to search for every known MPS, but Lott’s study did cover 35% of global language use and thus his dataset ain’t shabby.

Research accuracy is based on two primary elements: data quality and methodology. The data quality in Lott’s research is clearly superior. Likewise, Lott’s methodology for data identification and collection is far \[far, far, far\] better. Though neither report suffers from computation inadequacies, with Lankford’s we face the old computer programmers’ lament of “garbage in, garbage out” – namely, if the data quality stinks, so do the conclusions.

Notes:

1. *Comparing the Global Rate of Mass Public Shootings to the U.S.’s Rate and Comparing their Change Over Time*; Lott; Crime Prevention Research Center; 2020 [↩](#return-note-6582-1)
2. *How a Botched Study Fooled the World About the U.S. Share of Mass Public Shootings — U.S. Rate is Lower than Global Average*; Lott; Crime Prevention Research Center; 2018 [↩](#return-note-6582-2)
3. *Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries; Lankford; Violence and Victims, Volume 31, Number 2; 2016* [↩](#return-note-6582-3)
4. *Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder*; Fox, Levin; Crime and Justice, Vol. 23; 1998 [↩](#return-note-6582-4)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass public shootings

---

### [Fed Fail on Guns?](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/fed-fail-on-guns/)

**Published:** October 21, 2021
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

“What is the use of having sentencing guidelines if judges don’t follow them?”

This is a common refrain from people of a “law and order” mindset, which included most of America in the early 1990s after the country endured a multi-decade, stratospheric climb in violent crime.

To summarize this and related positions, the public believed that “locking up violent predators for extended periods works.” A recent report sheds a little more light on the subject and may well certify the notion.

## Take-aways:

- Firearm homicides increase when referrals for federal gun crimes decrease.
- Likewise, reducing the number of people charged with gun crimes is associated with an increase in firearm homicides.
- Reducing sentencing for gun crimes is associated with an increase in firearm homicides.
- This might be via a political shift that led to changes in referring, charging and sentencing for gun crimes and the associated higher penalties.

## Get-Tough Laws

Starting in 1992, just before violent crime peaked in America, states and the Federal government all jumped on the “get tough on crime” legislative spree. Overall, [this suppressed violent crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/incarceration-handguns-and-homicides/). But violence started creeping up around 2015, which got many people wondering why – given that all the “get tough” laws were still in effect.

Or were they?

Laws are often written with wiggle room. For example, “sentencing guidelines” are just that – guidelines. They are not chiseled in stone down to two decimal places. The same caveat applies to how government agencies interpret rules and set priorities. For example, in the year 2000, 1.3% of suspects that the federal government declined to prosecute for guns crimes were declined because of “alternatives,” such as “pretrial diversion” or “administrative disciplinary options.” In 2016, the rate was over 11%.

A new data survey [1](#note-6626-1 "Prosecution of Federal Firearms Offenses, 2000–16; Tiry, Freeman, Adams; Bureau of Justice Statistics; 2021") covered a healthy period of 16 years and studied what has happened at the federal level vis-à-vis gun crime prosecution.

The BIG warning here is that we are exploring the relationship between gun crimes and those that the federal government did or did not take action on. All states have various gun crime laws, and if the sentences are tougher there, often the crimes do not get referred to federal attorneys. However, where the feds have stiffer sentencing guidelines and a suspect is “worth” imprisoning for a long time, their case often does get kicked up a level. Hence, what we cover below is only *part* of the enchilada.

That being said, in the most recent year there were over 10,000 firearm referrals to federal attorneys and 9,700 of them were for possession by prohibited people. Given that 91% of prohibited persons investigated were prohibited by prior felony convictions, and there being 14,415 firearm homicides that year, it is close to universal that those referred for firearm crimes were felons (keeping in mind the number of unsolved murders will disproportionately fall within the felon class as well).

## Referred or Deferred?

If a gun crime is not referred to federal attorneys, then it will never earn a federal conviction and sentence. [ادن هازارد](https://paintconc.com/rdc7gfnqjlw/) Likewise, if the feds decline to take a case, federal penalties will not apply.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Gun-Crime-Referals-to-U.S.-Attorney-vs-Firearm-Homicide-Rate-2000-thru-2016-400x305.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Gun-Crime-Referals-to-U.S.-Attorney-vs-Firearm-Homicide-Rate-2000-thru-2016.jpg)click to enlarge

In the study period, referrals of gun crimes went up and then back down, which helps in visualizing possible cause-and-effect relationships in both directions.

This slightly complicated chart shows the relationships between referral rates [2](#note-6626-2 "In this report cited, they did not provide annual referrals, opting  for semi-decadal numbers. But they did provide annualized criminal charge counts, so we messily merged them here as a sanity check.") resulting in charges for gun crimes for which the feds will charge people, and firearm homicide rates.

What we see is that charges filed were rapidly escalating until 2006. They steadily declined from there. The green line separates two 8-year presidential administrations (Bush, Obama).

Offhandedly, and assuming some lead-lag effect, at a certain rate federal prosecutions suppress firearm homicides (to a degree) and when relaxed enough, firearm homicide rates rise. But this has a lot of windage because of the different sentencing guidelines. Most (about 91%) of the federal prosecutions are for possession of a gun by a prohibited person (typically, a felon), and they can get up to 5 years for the crime. However, for repeat offenders charged under the Armed Career Criminal Act, the average sentence is 16 years. As such, for a 16-year study, and given the rise and decline of charges well exceeds 5 years, the cause-and-effect is likely.

## Avoiding Action

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Firearm-Cime-Sentencing-and-Firearm-Homicides-via-Armed-Career-Criminal-Act-2000-thru-2016-400x273.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Firearm-Cime-Sentencing-and-Firearm-Homicides-via-Armed-Career-Criminal-Act-2000-thru-2016.jpg)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Firearm-Cime-Sentencing-Duration-and-Firearm-Homicides-via-Armed-Career-Criminal-Act-2000-thru-2016-400x270.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Firearm-Cime-Sentencing-Duration-and-Firearm-Homicides-via-Armed-Career-Criminal-Act-2000-thru-2016.jpg)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Declined-Firearm-Prosecution-by-US-Attorneys-by-Reason-2000-thru-2016-400x262.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Declined-Firearm-Prosecution-by-US-Attorneys-by-Reason-2000-thru-2016.jpg)click any chart to enlargeThe declining rate of referrals to federal attorneys is troubling enough, but even when prosecutors do win a case, judges can skew the long-term outcomes and indirectly affect gun crime rates.

A subset of gun crimes are prosecuted under the federal Armed Career Criminals Act (AACA), which has existed since 1984. Though a subset of all gun crime charges, it is a ***small*** subset. At its peak in 2009, ACCA convictions made up only 6% of all referred cases.

Yet, the number of ACCA sentences and the length of those sentences started dropping steeply after 2015, and there was an immediate rise in the firearm homicide rate. Though the cause-and-effect relationship cannot be clearly identified, there is a possible explanation, and it involves the U.S. government declining cases.

There are a number of reasons why a federal attorney would decline a case. But the reasons change with priorities over time and administrations. It is common enough for any president to tell his Department of Justice to change priorities for practical or ideological reasons. What we see around the same time as the \[a\] drop in people sentenced, \[b\] drop in the length of the sentencing, and \[c\] rise in firearm homicides is a rather sudden change in the number of cases declined for believing that an “alternative to Federal prosecution” was appropriate. The study says these “alternatives” include “pretrial diversion” and “administrative disciplinary options,” not prison time.

Allow us to put a ribbon around this. At a specific point in time:

- Total referrals to federal attorneys fell.
- Prosecutions under the Armed Career Criminals Act fell.
- Deferrals for “alternatives” went from 1.3% of declines to 11.1%.
- Firearms homicides jumped.

This trend is provocative and worrisome for the future. Since there was previously a high rate of ACCA convictions, the drop will have multi-year echoing effects – firearm homicides will continue to rise until such time as the newly created surplus of armed career criminals is reduced.

## Ratio of Crimes

You might be wonder, oh ever curious Gun Facts reader, what the ratio of sundry firearm crimes may be. To wrap-up this review, a pair of pies.

Note that overwhelmingly \[a\] most charges are against people who are not allowed to possess firearms and of those, most are disbarred for having prior criminal activities. Multiplied together, they account for 84% of the people that the federal government used to prosecute.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Firearm-Crime-Prosecutions-by-Type-and-Subsection-2016-800x399.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Firearm-Crime-Prosecutions-by-Type-and-Subsection-2016.jpg)click to enlarge

Notes:

1. *Prosecution of Federal Firearms Offenses, 2000–16*; Tiry, Freeman, Adams; Bureau of Justice Statistics; 2021 [↩](#return-note-6626-1)
2. In this report cited, they did *not* provide annual referrals, opting for semi-decadal numbers. But they did provide annualized criminal charge counts, so we messily merged them here as a sanity check. [↩](#return-note-6626-2)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** crime, homicides, sentencing

---

### [Illegal Guns and ”Disadvantage”](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/illegal-guns-and-disadvantage/)

**Published:** January 29, 2022
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

It is not news that “illegal guns” are the bulk of crime guns and that they are endemic in poor, inner-city neighborhoods. But it is good to have another datapoint.

# Take-Aways

- **Legal availability** of firearms is not correlated with firearm homicides.
- However, **illegal firearm** availability is.
- The number of firearm laws is not associated with firearm homicides either.
- Firearm homicide rates are amplified by economic and social disadvantages and family disruption.

# The Study and Proxy Paranoia

A 2021 study, [1](#note-6694-1 "Firearm Availability, Homicide, and the Context of Structural Disadvantage; Semenza , Stansfield, Steidley, Mancik; SagePub; 2021") attempted to gauge legal and illegal firearm availability and measure those against firearm homicides. The authors also examined social factors including family disruption, economic disadvantage, youth disengagement, and more.

The study represents an innovative approach to segregating misuse of legally obtained guns and illegally obtained guns. ![Bureau of Justice Statistics - crime gun sources](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources-400x380.jpg)For decades the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has been reporting that 40% of crime guns come from “street” sources, and some portion of the 37% are via friends and family members (see table to the right); so for this new study to confirm that illegally obtained guns are *the* problem is expected.

But validation never hurts.

The problem is that there is no direct way to measure the number of illegal guns in circulation, nationally or locally. That’s because criminals are notoriously uncooperative in admitting to their unlawful activities. Borderline antisocial, they are. But via some proxies, the study authors could estimate the rate of legal gun availability (via the concentration of Federal Firearm Licensees, or FFLs) in a region and the localized rate of firearm theft and loss. Stolen guns are a portion of those used in crimes, including homicides, and thus this is not a horrible proxy.

But getting the source data from cops, indirectly through an anti-gun activist group might be horrid.

The Trace is a mouthpiece for the anti-gun lobby. If memory servers correctly, they got their start via the largesse of Michael Bloomberg, the walking bank vault of many anti-gun organizations (which would include the Bloomberg School Of Public Health at Johns Hopkins, given their third-rate criminology work). That the authors referred to The Trace as “an independent nonprofit news organization” borders on comedic.

That said, the Trace scraped crime gun data from law enforcement agencies via public records requests. *Assuming* that The Trace did not massage and edit the raw data, it is likely serviceable.

# Poverty, Crime, and Violence

The authors calculated the incidence rate ratio (IRR) for a number of variables against firearm homicide rates. An incidence rate ratio is the ratio of two incidence rates (say, dividing the rate of firearm homicides by the rate of illegal firearms). In short, the higher the number, the more likely the one variable is contributive. In this example, the higher the rate of illegal guns in circulation, the higher the firearm homicide rate.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Legal-and-Illegal-IRR-Against-Firearm-Homicide-Rates-2010-thru-2017-b-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Legal-and-Illegal-IRR-Against-Firearm-Homicide-Rates-2010-thru-2017-b.jpg)click for largerr sharable version

Reducing the authors’ sundry tables, we see a number of interesting things. Foremost, the concentration of legal guns at retail (the proxy being the various types of FFLs, shown in green bars) is basically static with the exception of “big box stores” that also sell guns. But the IRR for illegal guns is significantly high. The argument could be made that existing regulated retailing of guns is inconsequential to firearm homicide rates (and likely other gun crimes).

Where this gets a bit more depressing is the intersection of poverty and illegal guns. As we [reported from another study](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/inner-city-guns/), American inner cities are places of low trust and high violence. As such, getting a gun for both criminal use and self-defense is common. But the primary source for such is off the streets, as the BJS report shows us for every decade.

# The Other Interesting Bits

To quote the study authors, “The index of state-level firearm laws is not significantly associated with firearm homicides, although it does correspond to greater non-firearm homicide.” Stated a bit more plainly, gun laws don’t prevent firearm homicides but may prevent self-defense from non-firearm murders. Unsurprising, really. With crime guns coming from the streets and self-defense guns coming from retails, not being able to restrict the former but restricting the latter would expectedly have this effect.

Also, as would be expected, there is an inverse relationship to the size of a local police community and the firearm homicide rate. Not as statistically compelling as the illegal gun availability rate, but it gives pause as to why the authors didn’t go one step further and discuss the specific intersection of high illegal gun availability and high police presence. Our curiosity is stoked.

# Gun Sources and Laws

Notably, multiple different sources (BJS, Semenza et al., etc.) are pointing to the disconnect between legal and illegal guns, and their use in crime. Thus, proposed legislation to limit legal retail sales of guns would produce no results, and the failure to focus on illegal guns will only force poor inner city people to continue to live in the crossfire.

Notes:

1. *Firearm Availability, Homicide, and the Context of Structural Disadvantage*; Semenza , Stansfield, Steidley, Mancik; SagePub; 2021 [↩](#return-note-6694-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** crime, illegal guns, retail guns

---

### [D.C. Guns and Gangs](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/d-c-guns-and-gangs/)

**Published:** February 28, 2022
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

If Washington, D.C. is an indicator, criminal justice reform should start with reforming criminals. A recent dive into gun homicides in the nation’s capital shows that gun violence there remains a street gang problem, as is the case in most metro areas.

## Take-aways

- Most gun homicides are committed by “gang age” males.
- Half of suspects have been in the criminal judicial system since their juvenile ages.
- All (on average) had prior charges of firearm violence.
- A likely minimum of 52% of homicides are gang or gang nexus related.

## Guns in D.C. after decades of banning guns

Let’s start by noting that D.C. is the per capita murder capital as well as the nation’s capital.

[![Firearm Homicide Rate - District of Columbia and average for all other states, 1999 thru 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-District-of-Columbia-and-average-for-all-other-states-1999-thru-2016-400x305.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-District-of-Columbia-and-average-for-all-other-states-1999-thru-2016.png)click for a larger, sharable chart

In the most recent CDC reporting year (in their most useful database), D.C. had a firearm homicide rate of 14.4 victims per 100,000 residents. Two of the “swamp states,” Alabama and Louisiana, come in high (9.3 and 11.2 respectively) but are significantly lower than D.C. The average for all non-D.C. states is 4.3, including the mosquito-ridden states just mentioned (ED: Yes, we know D.C. is not nor should be a state, but we’re streamlining the language for the sake of our worn-out keyboards.)

Though there is no supporting cause-and-effect evidence, it is interesting to note that D.C.’s gun murder rate switched from a downward drift to a steeper drop when the Supreme Court said that outlawing gun ownership in D.C. was unconstitutional.

A recent study [1](#note-6711-1 "Gun Violence Problem Analysis Summary Report; National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform; 2021") dug into firearm homicides for all of 2019 and 2020. Normally we at the Gun Facts project would reject studies that included the first pandemic year, which was also the year of the George Floyd riots, but since this is (a) not a time series study and (b) only documents the statistical homicide factors, it is worth a read.

## D.C. Data Dig

[![Firearm Homicide Suspects in D.C.](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Firearm-Homicide-Suspects-in-D.C.-400x332.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Firearm-Homicide-Suspects-in-D.C..png)click for a larger, sharable chart

The most important aspect of this study was the demographic and criminal justice system tallies. Neither are encouraging.

As seen nationally, most firearm homicides are committed by males in age groups that the National Gang Center notes are primarily gang activity years (though the age bands traditionally extend from ages 14 to 30, we’ll use the bands in this report covering 18 through 34).

The report notes that 57% of the suspects were involved in “groups,” a handy euphemism for “gangs.” But this tally is per law enforcement determination, not admissions by the suspect. And there are additional people who are gang members, and those who are not actual gang members but are aligned with one or another street gang. Thus, the “group involvement” statistic is likely low.

A serious concern is the judicial system, which appears to have a weak effect on reforming criminals. Nearly half of suspects had been previously incarcerated, 39% were at one time or another under juvenile supervision, and about 14% were under judicial supervision *when they committed the homicide*. To quote the study, “at least 76% of homicide suspects had active or prior supervision.”

[![D.C. Firearm Homicide - Prior Offenses](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/D.C.-Firearm-Homicide-Prior-Offenses-400x188.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/D.C.-Firearm-Homicide-Prior-Offenses.png)click for a larger, sharable chart

Now, if previous encounters with the law were for minor offenses such as petty theft, we might be lenient on the justice system. But on average, each suspect had more than one previous “armed violent” offence, one non-violent firearm offense (e.g., carrying or felon in possession), and more than two strikes for unarmed violence. In other words, despite their prior armed and unarmed violent tendencies, they were back on the streets and killed someone.

## Repeating What Criminologists Have Said

“This small number of very high-risk individuals are identifiable, their violence is predictable, and therefore it is preventable.” This is not a new insight. Repeat offenders are common. Sundry studies have pegged a typical street gang homicide suspect as the lead suspect in 2–3 other homicides, and they may have been involved in more but there is no strong evidence.

The primary public policy point has, for decades, been to identify and incarcerate known bad actors so that they do not commit more murders or pass along their violent tendencies to others.

Notes:

1. Gun Violence Problem Analysis Summary Report; National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform; 2021 [↩](#return-note-6711-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** D.C., gangs

---

### [Trends in Mass Public Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/trends-in-mass-public-shootings/)

**Published:** June 13, 2022
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

The largest multilingual international database of mass public shootings (MPS) tells us that they are increasing globally, less rapidly in the United States, but the average number of deaths in American MPSs is rising faster than the world at large.

Let us then look at some of the factors that may contribute to mass shootings and see if there are rising rates of underlying causes.

## Main Take-aways

- 41% of mass public shooters with mental health issues got their guns legally, and the rate is rising.
- MPSs are on the rise, but not steeply.
- Handguns are outpacing all other weapon types, including “assault weapons.”
- Higher capacity magazines are radically increasing in use.
- The rate of legally acquired guns is rising much faster than illegally obtained guns.

## Precautions and Notes

Repeat after me… mass public shootings are statistically rare events, and as such, trends and isolating causes are of a fragile nature. Now keep repeating that, because reading too much into the following data opens you to incorrect beliefs. That being said, the data will illustrate areas of concern.

For most of the data, we relied on the Violence Project’s MPS database, which is the most complete with data going back to 1966, and unprecedented access to background and medical information about the shooters. But it lacks a couple of important data elements – namely, granularity on magazine capacities used in MPSs, and “[cattle pen scenarios](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shooting-cattle-pens/),” a concern identified by the Gun Facts project.

## Incidents, Deaths and Injuries

[![Kill and injured in Mass Public Shootings 1966 thru 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Kill-and-injured-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1966-thru-2021-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Kill-and-injured-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1966-thru-2021.jpg)[![Kill and injured in Mass Public Shootings 1966 thru 2021 without Las Vegas Country Music massacre](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Kill-and-injured-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1966-thru-2021-without-Las-Vegas-Country-Music-massacre-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Kill-and-injured-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1966-thru-2021-without-Las-Vegas-Country-Music-massacre.jpg)[![Weapons Used in Mass Public Shootings 1966 thru 2021 without Las Vegas Country Music massacre](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Weapons-Used-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1966-thru-2021-without-Las-Vegas-Country-Music-massacre-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Weapons-Used-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1966-thru-2021-without-Las-Vegas-Country-Music-massacre.jpg)[![Magazine Capacity used in Mass Public Shootings 1998 thru 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Magazine-Capacity-used-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1998-thru-2021-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Magazine-Capacity-used-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1998-thru-2021.jpg)[![Legal and Illegal Firearm Acquisitions used in Mass Public Shootings 1996 thru 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Legal-and-Illegal-Firearm-Acquisitions-used-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1996-thru-2021-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Legal-and-Illegal-Firearm-Acquisitions-used-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1996-thru-2021.jpg)[![Leading Mental Health Issues among Mass Public Shooters 1966 thru 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Leading-Mental-Health-Issues-among-Mass-Public-Shooters-1966-thru-2021-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Leading-Mental-Health-Issues-among-Mass-Public-Shooters-1966-thru-2021.jpg)[![Legal Weapon Acquisition by Mass Public Shooters with Mental Illnesses 1996 thru 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Legal-Wepon-Acquisition-by-Mass-Public-Shooters-with-Mental-Illnesses-1996-thru-2021-400x280.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Legal-Wepon-Acquisition-by-Mass-Public-Shooters-with-Mental-Illnesses-1996-thru-2021.jpg)The number of incidents a year, and the number of people killed is indeed rising. Not steeply, but steadily, even when we compensate for unusual elements.

By unusual, I mean 2017 and 2018, two years where we saw seven and eight MPSs respectively, when the average for the twenty-first century is four per year. Also, there were multiple high fatality “competition killings,” such as Parkland Highschool (17 dead), Sutherland Springs (25) and the mother of all MPS, Las Vegas (58).

Yet, when we compensate just a bit by removing the ghastly Las Vegas tragedy, we still see upward trends. Not as steep, but still rising.

Given what we know or believe about the motivations of mass shooters and the ongoing problem with the “[media contagion effect](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/fame-media-and-mass-shootings/),” a steady rise is to be expected.

## Firearms Used

Likewise, compensating for Las Vegas is important when looking at what firearm types are used in MPS. The murderer in that event employed 14 different guns that the 1994 federal “assault weapons” ban would have classified as such. On average, shooters bring 1.5 guns to their MPS, so clearly Las Vegas is a major exception.

When we exclude that one event, we see rifles (sans rifles that are defined as 1994 “assault weapons”) declining in use. Shotguns, too, appear to show a declining preference. Handguns remain the all-time favorite tool for MPSs, but “assault weapons” are showing a steady rise.

This last bit may be important, though not compelling. As the average annual number of MPSs is rising, a steady rise in the use of “assault weapons” is more a lockstep move than killers preferring them over other means.

## Magazine Capacity

There are some minor data quality issues in regard to trending for magazine capacities used in MPS. A little less than half of the rows in the Gun Facts MPS database have no data on magazine capacity. This is understandable, as it is the most under-reported element in news stories. But this makes understanding trends in magazine capacity selection by mass shooters a little iffy.

That being said, we see one element that goes against one of the common misconceptions about MPS. Most shooters don’t carry “large” capacity magazines. The two obvious trends are the leveling off of 15+ round magazines and the steady rise of <=10 round mags. Since most MPSs are carried out with handguns, and since most handguns don’t hold 15+ round mags, this is understandable.

## Legality of Gun Acquisition

Interestingly, the rate of illegal gun acquisition peaked a few years back. Please note that the Violence Project database has a few missing elements in recent events, so the downward arc in both illegal acquisitions might be understated.

But that makes the case worse for legal acquisitions, which are clearly rising and may also be under-represented. This is concerning given the next set of trends.

## Mental Health

Since the modern age of psychiatric [*deinstitutionalization*](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/) (e.g., don’t lock up people on the edges of madness), the covariances between mass public shooters with mental health issues is compelling. But these people also often don’t have prohibitions against them – no criminal record that would flag them in background check systems and prevent them from legally acquiring a gun \[ED: We don’t know how many of these people would then turn to underground sources. Keep in mind the Columbine killers were underage and used strawman purchases to buy guns illegally\].

68 of the 163 guns (41%) used in MPSs by people with mental illnesses were obtained legally. And the trend is rising.

Forty-one percent is a really big number. Of all the intersections that the Gun Facts project has explored in MPSs, this is one of the most compelling. In previous articles (see [*Mental Health and Homicides*](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/)) we have seen how mental fragility plays a distinct role in MPSs. With deinstitutionalization came a prejudice against “marginalizing” patients and thus more than a few holes in the sieve of reporting dangerous people to the authorities. It would be a short stretch to assume that there will be little adding of the names of people under care, but who have *yet* to harm someone, to the NICS database. We won’t argue policy here, but simply state that creative minds need to focus on how to keep legal guns away from people with mental health issues.

## Some Non-Trend Observations

When we kicked off this review, we started not with trends, but asked simply this: Of all the variables, which ones presented themselves more frequently, and thus should be warning signs (perhaps to be factored into the mental health evaluations, or the watch list you have for your Cousin Bruce)? In no specific order, here are the issues that are warning flags for possible mass public shooters:

- Lack of community involvement (isolation): 52%
- Criminal record: 57%
- Signs of being in crisis (recent break-up, employment stressor, economic stressor, family issue, legal issue): 80%
- Increased agitation: 67%

People who are becoming withdrawn, facing crisis and showing signs of agitations are prime candidates for “lashing out” behaviors. For most, it might just be yelling at the kids or kicking the family dog. For others, it means shooting up a school.

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass public shootings

---

### [Permitless Murders](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/permitless-murders/)

**Published:** June 17, 2022
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

In August of 2022, half of the states in America will (or *did*, depending on when you read this) switch to “permitless carry,” which means residents (and, depending on the state, occasionally non-residents) can carry firearms concealed in public and not have to obtain a permit first.

Naturally, this scares some people. So, with seven states currently having been permitless long enough for analysis, it’s worth seeing if the fear is warranted.

## Main Take-Aways

- Compared to states that made no changes in concealed carry laws, there was no change in homicide rates.
- When we remove one outlier state, there is a drop in homicides in the permitless states compared to states that made no change.
- When we eliminate a sparsely populated frontier state, most trends are flat or downward.

## Comparing Apples and Pineapples

Our objective is to see if states switching to permitless carry have a noticeable change in the homicide rates.

- We use overall homicide rates, instead of gun homicide rates, since public carry is intended, in part, to prevent public homicides of any means (e.g., a knife attack)
- We compare each permitless state against all other states that had no change in the permitting system for the preceding and succeeding five years.

[![Public Carry Legislative History Chart - 1994 thu 2021](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Public-Carry-Legislative-History-Chart-1994-thu-2021-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Public-Carry-Legislative-History-Chart-1994-thu-2021.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

This may sound like the picking of nits, but as this chart shows, the public carry mix is constantly churning. As such, a newly minted permitless state might be compared to a different number of “shall issue” and “may issue” states, than the next state that adopted permitess carry.

For newcomers, this is the breakdown of public carry types:

**MAY ISSUE:** You can get a public carry permit if the police let you, but it is up to them.

**SHALL ISSUE:** If you don’t have a criminal record, they must issue you a permit (some states have prerequisites, such as safety training, but there is no veto power held by the constabulary).

**PERMITLESS:** You can publicly carry if you have no criminal record, and you don’t need to get a permit first.

**NO ISSUE:** Doesn’t exist anymore, but refers to when a state government simply disallowed public carry to everyone.

Our evaluation looked at the annual difference in the homicide rates for each permitless state against the average homicide rates of states that had no change in their permitting legislation. The operational theory is that the difference over time would indicate if the permitless law was a net positive or negative compared to not changing anything.

## The 1st Cut Results

[![Homicide Rates for States Switching to Permitless Carry vs. No-change States](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Homicide-Rates-for-States-Switching-to-Permitless-Carry-vs.-No-change-States-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Homicide-Rates-for-States-Switching-to-Permitless-Carry-vs.-No-change-States.jpg)[![Homicide Rates for States Switching to Permitless Carry vs. No-change States - sans Alaska](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Homicide-Rates-for-States-Switching-to-Permitless-Carry-vs.-No-change-States-sans-Alaska-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Homicide-Rates-for-States-Switching-to-Permitless-Carry-vs.-No-change-States-sans-Alaska.jpg)click for a larger, sharable version

It was neither a net positive nor negative. It was a null.

The slope of the line for states adopting permitless carry was identical for five years before and after the switch to permitless… down to two decimal places. Homicide rates (measured in murders per 100,000 population) were increasing at a slope line of 0.07 before and 0.07 after enactment.

But there was an odd uptick at the end of the five-year spans, caused by one state, Alaska. You will note that Alaska’s annual homicide rate leaps up and down. This erratic fluctuation is due to Alaska having the lowest population density of all states, and thus any small change in their total number of homicides produces a large change in their homicide *rate*.

Keep in mind, though, that with Alaska in the mix, the aggregate before-and-after homicide differential rate was dead even. Let’s treat Alaska as a very odd outlier and take them out of the equation.

When we do that, the pre-permitless homicide difference with states that didn’t change is 0.06 before the switch, and after it is -0.02, a net murder reduction. Notice that the average of all the differences (the fat, red line) is basically flat and would have been flatter still had it not been for single year rise in Arizona and Kansas in their fourth year of permitless carry.

## In Danger of Boredom

It appears that permitless carry makes no meaningful difference in aggregate, though the diving lines for Mississippi and Missouri are of interest. There have been periods of unrest in Missouri, and with them switching to permitless a mere four years ago, we may be seeing the effects of broader social change there. But Mississippi is a head scratcher. They switched just one year before Missouri but have a great and downward rate of change. Perhaps global warming has made it too hot in Mississippi for anyone to have the energy to murder anyone else.

*Many thanks to Gun Facts volunteer Chris C. for the laborious task of scraping together the crime data.*

**Categories:** Concealed Carry

**Tags:** concealed carry, permitless

---

### [Single Parent Gun Violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/single-parent-gun-violence/)

**Published:** July 16, 2022
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Does not having a father in the home increase the odds of committing a homicide?

It appears so, though there are a few factors that complicate things. But leave it to say that fatherless homes might be manufacturing more murders.

## Major Take-aways

- Both homicide and firearm homicide rates are well associated with fatherless homes.
- This matches with nonmarital birth rates by some demographics.

## A Bit-o-Background

Any number of studies have focused on race, urbanization, and poverty as contributing factors to young men murdering. For decades criminologists have noted that the odds of being a murder victim or perpetrator is vastly higher if you are poor, live in a metropolitan area, and are black.

Many people openly speculate that part of the puzzle might be the disruption of traditional family structures within the inner cities. [![CRIME AND GUNS - Firearm Homicides in the U.S. by age, race, urbanization - 2016 - c](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-c-400x324.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-c.png)But fractured homes exist everywhere, in major metropolitan cities and smaller communities (there is an astoundingly low 0.03 *R*2 correlation between the total number of households and those without a father present, for counties ranging from 20,000 to 3.3 million households, indicating urbanization is not a factor in single-parent families). [1](#note-6955-1 "Source of all population data comes from the Census Department for 2017. Homicide data comes from the CDC WONDER mortality database for the same year.")

All other things being equal (which they never are) the absence of a father or strong father figure might be associated with young men seeking fraternity with non-family males. This is the core of gang affiliation, and we see that street gangs are the volcanic source of gun play nationwide. We at the Gun Facts project triangulated the data and concluded that [85% of gun homicides are street gang related or nexus](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/). Fatherless households should, in theory, produce higher homicide rates (and thus gun homicide rates) even in more lightly populated areas with less gang activity.

This appears to be the case.

## The Necessary Cautions Before We Dump the Details

What drives someone to murder is multifaceted. We can look at multivariate correlations day and night, but we must accept there are variation to everything. For example, it has long been noted that being poor, black and urban is highly associated with being shot dead or shooting someone else. But if you contrast Oakland, California and Atlanta, Georgia, the city with a higher concentration of poverty and blacks has a lower violence rate.

For this review, we are doing a univariant look-see for the question of whether a lack of a father in a home might lead a male child toward risky behaviors, such as homicide.

Finally, due to data availability limitations from the Census Bureau, this study only looks at 327 counties that reported data on household parenting. That being said, it covers 43 states and locations from Apache County, Arizona (20,550 households) to Los Angeles, California (3.3 million).

## Urbanization Doesn’t Matter, But Fathers Do

[![Fatherless Households, Poverty and Homicide Rates 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Fatherless-Households-Poverty-and-Homicide-Rates-2017-400x284.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Fatherless-Households-Poverty-and-Homicide-Rates-2017.png)[![Nonmarital Birth Rates United States,1940-2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States_1940-2014-400x190.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States_1940-2014.png)The correlation between total households (a rough proxy for urbanization) and homicides is a flimsy 0.02, where zero is no correlation at all, and 1.0 is perfect correlation. However, when we match homicide rates to the percentage of fatherless households with children in each county, we see a correlation of 0.46, meaning almost half of all homicides can be explained in part by the rate of fatherless households.

For comparison’s sake, we also measured homicide rates against poverty rates. As you can see, the rate of fatherless households is much more strongly correlated to homicides than poverty.

Let’s go back to the chart at the top of this page, where we see that the rate of homicides among young black makes is astronomical compared to other groups. If the theory of fatherless homes holds true, then we might expect the high homicide rates among young black males to be caused (in part) if there was a high rate of fatherless households for blacks. According to the National Vital Statistics System, this is the case, and one that has been worsening for decades.

## “My Dad Would Knock Me into the Middle of Next Week if I Did That!”

One of the reasons there is only a 46% correlation between fatherless households and homicides is that not all households without fathers are devoid of strong, older male guidance, which has the byproduct of enforced discipline. Young men are notorious for lacking self-discipline, as displayed by their sexual overdrive, amateur stunt driving, and way too many “hold my beer” moments. Strong elder males – fathers, uncles, grandfathers, older brothers, preachers – can supply some external discipline, which might stop some stupid activities such as joining a street gang.

The problem we face is addressing what causes any family to lack a father. In poor neighborhoods, the causes are manifest. Some parents never wed due to social safety net support (e.g., welfare). Some fathers die, especially if they are involved with street gangs. Others are in the state penitentiary (also strongly associated with street gang activity). To change the rate of homicides (and thus gun homicides) may require getting more sires to be fathers, and that requires a frank look at the sundry motivations to not be a dad.

Notes:

1. Source of all population data comes from the Census Department for 2017. Homicide data comes from the CDC WONDER mortality database for the same year. [↩](#return-note-6955-1)

**Categories:** Crime and Guns

**Tags:** family, guns, homicides

---

### [California Con](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/california-con/)

**Published:** July 24, 2022
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

There must be an election coming. The current California governor is making presidential maneuvers and the New York Times appears to be propping up his (inaccurate) statements about guns.

I lived in that politician’s home turf for 22 years, during his political rise, so I have a deeper than average interest – and knowledge – of what the reality is, and in which alternate reality the politician resides.

## Main Take-aways

- California’s gun homicide rate is exactly the national average.
- Their overall suicide rate is rising, but is 29% lower that national averages, which bends the curve on gun suicide rates.
- For mass public shootings, California has 17% more incidents and 60% more deaths than the national average.

## The New York Times agitprop

In a rather choice bit of partisan hackery, the *New York Times* (NYT) makes the following assertions about California and guns.

> California’s gun laws are among America’s strictest, helping the state deliver one of the nation’s lowest rates of gun deaths. In 2020, the state’s rate of firearm mortality was about 40 percent lower than the national average, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Public Policy Institute of California has determined that Californians are about 25 percent less likely to die in mass shootings, compared with residents of other states.

Having poured though reams of data over 25 years, most of that while residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, I knew something was amiss. Oakland, Richmond, Los Angeles, Bakersfield are all shooting galleries and street homicides are so common that entire subcultures celebrate it. Hence, there was something within the data that the NYT was concealing, out of their ignorance (a crime for which the NYT is often guilty) or political skullduggery (for which they are constantly guilty).

Let’s tackle the two claims separately.

## California Homicides, Suicides, and Non-gun Suicides

[![Firearm Deaths by Intent and State 2010-2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Firearm-Deaths-by-Intent-and-State-2010-2019-400x295.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Firearm-Deaths-by-Intent-and-State-2010-2019.jpg)click for larger, sharable chart

[![California Suicide Rates by Race and Means - 2010 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/California-Suicide-Rates-by-Race-and-Means-2010-thru-2019-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/California-Suicide-Rates-by-Race-and-Means-2010-thru-2019.jpg)click for larger, sharable chart

In terms of gun homicides, California is no different than the rest of the country. The horizontal blue line is the median national gun homicide rate for nine years we reviewed. [1](#note-6986-1 "We chose a starting point past the full crime reduction span of California Three-Strikes in 1993 and 10-20-Life law enacted in 1997, and before the COVID pandemic.") Notice how it rests precisely atop California’s gun homicide column, at 3.5 gun homicides for every 100,000 people.

What is different are gun suicides. This is where the NYT masked the underlying realities.

California’s overall suicide rate by any means, not just guns, is 29% lower than the median for all other states. That’s good, but we see that their gun suicide rate is half the national figures. That 21% gap is provocative.

We know from all kinds of analysis (for example, our original [international review of gun ownership and suicide rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicides-and-guns/)), that “substitution of means” – using different means for committing suicides – varies from culture to culture. California has many cultures, and each has certain “preferences” for the means to commit suicide. As such, people in some cultures will not shoot themselves as often as others, and this is atop the lesser probability that Californians will commit suicide at all. For example, in the chart above, Asians will use a gun only 27% as often as whites, but Asians drown themselves twice as often.

Here is the chain reaction of all this data:

- California gun homicide rates are the same as the rest of the country.
- California’s suicide rate is lower, and this skews gun suicide “gun deaths” lower.
- Cultural difference in California’s very diverse population causes gun suicides to lower further.

In short, the NYT claim is smoke, which they likely inhaled for breakfast. By ignoring the homicide/suicide/cultural realities, they present a non-reality.

For the morbidly curious, California’s rate for suicide by cutting/piercing is 50% above national averages, and suicide by falling is 67% above. Given that jumping off the Golden Gate bridge is practically an Olympic sport, the latter is not surprising.

# California, The Mass Public Shooting Champion

The NYT claims that the “Public Policy Institute of California has determined that Californians are about 25 percent less likely to die in mass shootings.”

Sooooooo many problems here, but the take-away is that California is significantly above average for both the number of mass public shootings (MPS) and deaths in MPS. So, let’s unravel the NYT misinformation.

The study cited by the NYT had two grave malfunctions, namely using inappropriate definitions of “mass shooting” and not using a gold-standard database. The “policy institute,” which is a common phrase for “partisan propaganda factory,” used the Gun Violence Archives as a data source. Though improved from its origins, in the early days the database had problems – duplicate entries, missing entries, inaccurate data capture. Such is the nature of crowd-sourced internet data mining without expert leadership from the git-go.

But the bigger problem is one of definitions. Mass PUBLIC shootings have a multi-decade-long, criminologist-derived definition, upon which mountains of scholarship has been built. The recent phrase “mass shooting” has many different definitions depending on what party/newsroom/politician needs to convince the public of something. Indeed, in the policy institute’s post that the NYT references, they don’t bother to define “mass shooting.” If we assume the author used the definition provided by the not-gold-standard data source, then we see a big problem:

**BLESSED CRIMINOLOGY DEFINITION:** 4+ killed not including the perpetrator(s), public venue, not part of another crime.

**NYT REFERENCE:** Four shot, either injured or killed, anywhere, and possibly part of a crime.

[![Mass Public Shooting Incidents and Deaths per 1M Population](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Mass-Public-Shooting-Incidents-and-Deaths-per-1M-Population-400x283.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Mass-Public-Shooting-Incidents-and-Deaths-per-1M-Population.jpg)click for larger, sharable chart

Unlike the NYT and their cherry-picked “policy institute” we’ll stick to the criminology definition and have a look at how California is doing.

It isn’t doing all that well. At #12 down the list of states that have had MPS, [2](#note-6986-2 "We excluded Nevada because their 2017 Las Vegas country music festival incident skews numbers wildly") California is 17% higher in the number of incidents over the median for all states, and 60% higher for the number of MPS deaths.

Ponder again, the NYT claims 25% fewer, and the MPS databases say 60% higher.

## Guns, Politics or Perversity

For decades California politicians have bought into their self-induced imbecility about guns and violence, while only once having done something productive about it (the 1993 pair of laws that addressed both lawlessness in general and gun crime in particular). But the numbers never support their claims. Hence, they and their acolytes employ many of the standard propaganda tactics – most notably, lying with numbers.

What these discount geniuses have not figured out is that the data is available to anyone, and their masquerade ends rapidly.

## UPDATE: More about California Suicides and Guns

[![California Suicide rates for Guns and Suffocation](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/California-Suicide-rates-for-Guns-and-Suffocation-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/California-Suicide-rates-for-Guns-and-Suffocation.jpg)click for larger, sharable chart

I wondered if there have been changes in California suicides over time that might contribute some knowledge. Indeed, there have been.

In our study period, we see that:

- California’s total suicide rate has gone up 22%.
- The gun suicide rate is basically flat (slope of -0.01).
- Suffocation suicides are climbing steadily (slope of 0.1).

Together, this means gun laws either are having no effect on gun suicide rates, or possibly that they capped them, but people are substituting means.

Notes:

1. We chose a starting point past the full crime reduction span of California Three-Strikes in 1993 and 10-20-Life law enacted in 1997, and before the COVID pandemic. [↩](#return-note-6986-1)
2. We excluded Nevada because their 2017 Las Vegas country music festival incident skews numbers wildly [↩](#return-note-6986-2)

**Categories:** California, Crime and Guns, Mass Shootings

**Tags:** california, gun control, homicides, mass pulic shootings, suicides

---

### [Culture, Homicides and Violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/culture-homicides-and-violence/)

**Published:** August 1, 2022
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Who is more likely to shoot you, an NRA member or a member of the Crips?

The primary difference between these two groups is culture. NRA members tend to be law-and-order types, whereas Crips (or members of any garden variety American street gang) are rather indifferent or openly hostile to laws.

It is the adherence to a social norm – in this case, obeying or not obeying the law – that influences one’s probability to act violently, which in tern means using a gun to commit unilateral violence (e.g., not self-defense). We [saw this in one study](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/inner-city-guns/) that details the propensity of people in poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods to get and use guns for criminal activities.

But what cultural norms influence such behavior? We found a cross-national survey of culture and wanted to see if we could map similarities between nations concerning culture, violence and guns.

## The Main Take-Aways

- Gun ownership does not corelate to homicide rates of violent crime.
- Cultural factors, ranging from mistrust to political oppression, do
- The United States situation within the inner cities mirrors some international factors associated with violence.

## The Survey

The World Values Survey is impressive in its goal. They ask over 290 questions of people in 59 countries ranging from Nigeria (median annual income $825) to the United States, China, Canada, and more.

In their survey we isolated 80 questions dealing with cultural beliefs that might influence violence. After testing each, we found 15 that correlated with either a high violent crime or high homicide rate, or both.

Then we added gun ownership rates to dig a bit deeper.

The areas of culture fell into many groups, but only four of them survived analysis by showing statistically significant correlation to violence in general and homicide in particular. This also reduced the number of relevant culture questions down to 15. Three of those questions, all within the classification of “close culture,” had only 15% of countries responding, though those that did produced high correlations to homicides or violent crime.

But that makes this kinda interesting. Over 37 questions mapping cultural attitudes we have 15 that may facilitate violence.

### The Final 15

Now for the nitty and the gritty.

**Category of Culture****Ques-tion****Question Text****R2 Homi-cide****R2 Violent Crime****Close Culture**Q58Trust of family0.11**0.74**Q59Trust your neighborhood**0.41**0.00Q60Trust people you know**0.46**0.00**Societal Culture**Q17Child obedience importance**0.26**0.00Q19Neighbors of different race0.00**0.21**Q22Homosexuals as neighbors0.02**0.28**Q190Beating children is justified**0.20**0.01**Political Culture**Q224Votes are fairly counted**0.29**0.00Q231Voters threatened with violence at the polls**0.34**0.00Q253Respect for individual human rights nowadays in country**0.21**0.04**Violence Culture**Q52Felt unsafe from crime in your own home0.16**0.21**Q69Confidence in police**0.31**0.05Q70Confidence in courts**0.20**0.11Q144Have been a crime victim**0.36****0.23**Q145Family member has been a crime victim**0.32****0.37****Firearm Ownership**N/AGuns per every 100 people0.010.00For the uninitiated, an *R*2 measurement shows the degree of correlation between two variables (e.g., gun ownership and homicides) in a range from 0 to 1, where zero means no correlation and one means complete correlation.

First, there is an elephant lurking in the bottom of this table, namely that for this group of countries, there is no correlation between owning guns and violence. This result is compelling because the list includes modern, democratic nations high on any socioeconomic index (USA, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Taiwan), low on such indices (Zimbabwe, Tajikistan, Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh), and places in between with their own set of circumstances (Bolivia, Colombia, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Turkey). They all also have very, very, very different degrees of gun ownership, ranging from 1 to 68 guns for every 100 people). [1](#note-7025-1 "We used estimates from the Small Arms Survey for consistency across nations, though their estimates for the United States differ from some American criminology guesses.")

For there to be no correlations between gun availability and either homicides or violent crime goes against many slogans by many politicians. But let’s leave professional propagandists out of this and get back to culture.

Do pay attention to the column on violent crime, but know that we could not find comprehensive and normalized data for every country. Even the UN Drug and Crime office lacked all the data points, and they try to normalize definitions for crimes across countries. The violent crime correlations are compelling but need to be taken with reservations about robustness.

That said, notice that the highest degree of correlation for homicides and violent crime are all in the “close culture” category and involve trust. “Close culture” was our designation and means that the culture dictates relations with the people you are close to – family, friends, people who live on your street.

This is compelling to the issue of American inner cities and street gangs. The study we noted above, one that mapped [guns, violence and trust in poor neighborhoods](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/inner-city-guns/), showed a general lack of trust between everybody. Lack of trust for neighbors, police, even family. The hypothesis is that a lack of trust, especially trusting the other person will not hurt you, creates a mentality of, “I’m on my own and will do whatever I must to survive”– here in America or in Ecuador, the nation with the most distrustful population.

*The big caution here is that very few nations (15%) responded to the Close Culture* *questions*, *making these correlations less than robust*.

Next, we see that both being exposed to violence and lacking trust in police amplify distrust, which in turn may amplify violence (we accept that high correlation between being a victim of violence and the overall violence rate is obvious). The question is whether being surrounded by a culture of violence disposes one toward violence, or at least to accept that being violent is an alternative. This certainly is at play with American street gangs, so one would expect similar inhumane responses elsewhere.

The cluster for “societal culture” may give us some answers. In this cluster, we measured how people related to others, and we see some interesting divergences. For example, America scores relatively high for not wanting homosexuals or people of a different race as neighbors (scoring 1.87 where the international median was 1.5), but had homicide and violent crime rates that were above the median, but very far below the high end.

One split may be instructive. America scored a bit above the median in thinking obedient children were important (1.8 over the median of 1.7) but low on thinking that it is justifiable for parents to beat their children (2.0, below the median of 2.6). One could interpret this to mean that Americans generally will seek disciplined children, but “spare the rod” in doing so.

The last cluster is “political culture,” where votes being counted unfairly, experiencing violence at the polls, and lacking respect for human rights correlate with more homicides but not more generalized violent crime (in each of these, America scored at or well below the median … though all USA surveys were done before the 2020 election year, so these numbers are from pre-riot days). This finding makes intuitive sense in that being politically wronged is different than both being personally wronged or resorting to general criminality. People who think the government is abusing them have a tendency to retaliate (King George was familiar with this) and a government seeking to oppress people will resort to violence when all else fails.

## What to Make of This Tidy Mess?

The important pair of observations are that gun availability does not correlate with homicides or violent crime, but select cultural attitudes and realities do.

If a community lacks interpersonal trust, the members become more violent and deadly (which typifies American inner cities). Where politics is oppressive (as many in the inner cities believe it is), violence becomes more common. Where a lack of faith in courts and cops exists, homicides spike. Where intolerance thrives, so does mayhem.

The important, and quite obvious, reality is that guns only matter when the culture makes people angry, distrustful, and oppressed. Otherwise, guns (and other means) are not used.

## UPDATE #1:

We tested homicides and violent crime against both income and income disparity, per the Gini Index. The conclusions were interesting in that violence did not correlate with poverty but did when there was a large gap between the rich and poor.

## Many Cautions About All of This

This review is not without problems and limitations, as all studies are. But you need to be aware of them, so take our conclusions from a perspective of this being “helpful insights without the desired robustness.”

- Not all countries had enough survey responses to include in the analysis.
- There were six of 825 remaining cells that lacked data, so we filled them with the average score for their region (e.g., Iran got an aggregate score for the Middle East).
- Though homicide data was available for all countries, a consistent definition for “violent crime” only allowed for one data source (the U.S. Drug and Crime office) and they lacked violent crime data for 29% of the countries, which disallowed for a deeper dive into generalized violence.

The countries that had cultural responses to the survey include:

- Andorra
- Argentina
- Armenia
- Australia
- Bangladesh
- Bolivia
- Brazil
- Canada
- Chile
- China
- Colombia
- Cyprus
- Ecuador
- Egypt
- Ethiopia
- Germany
- Greece
- Guatemala
- Hong Kong SAR, China
- Indonesia
- Iran
- Iraq
- Japan
- Jordan
- Kazakhstan
- Kenya
- Kyrgyzstan
- Lebanon
- Libya
- Macao SAR, China
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Mexico
- Mongolia
- Morocco
- Myanmar
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Nicaragua
- Nigeria
- Pakistan
- Peru
- Philippines
- Puerto Rico
- Romania
- Russia
- Serbia
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Taiwan ROC
- Tajikistan
- Thailand
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Ukraine
- United States of America
- Venezuela
- Vietnam

Zimbabwe

Notes:

1. We used estimates from the Small Arms Survey for consistency across nations, though their estimates for the United States differ from some American criminology guesses. [↩](#return-note-7025-1)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns, Guns in Other Countries

**Tags:** guns, homicides, international, violent crime

---

### [Big Gun Data](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-gun-data/)

**Published:** September 15, 2022
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

We normally don’t post a blog entry for a single academic paper, but this one is important because it is the largest well-conducted survey concerning gun ownership and self-defense with guns (as well as other topics) to date. [1](#note-7084-1 "2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022") The survey size makes most of the data unassailable, and thus “gold standard.”

## Take-aways

- 54,000 people contacted, 16,708 gun owners within that group.
- Low-side concurrence with other surveys concerning defensive gun use (DGU).
- New insight into public carry and self-defense, both public and private.
- Scale data for assault weapons (AR-15s specifically) and magazine capacities more than 10 rounds.

## Why this paper matters

Much of what we know about guns has some limitations:

**ESTIMATES FROM MIXED SOURCES:** The best estimates we have had traditionally about the number of guns in private hands came from (a) estimating the “original” stockpile from dusty manufacturing records and (b) adding import/export/manufacturing records the federal government started keeping in the late twentieth century. In short, this was a very educated guess, but a guess nonetheless.

**SMALL SURVEYS:** It costs money to survey people. Underfunded criminologists traditionally have conducted surveys with the smallest viable sample size to gain insight. A typical survey might include 2,500 people, whereas this survey covers nearly seven times that amount, which adds precision.

**INDIRECT MEASURMENTS:** Suicidal Americans principally use guns (though the USA suicide rate is only slightly above the international mean). As such, for state-by-state gun ownership estimates, the suicide rate was used as a proxy for gun ownership rates. Now we have much more solid state-level estimates about all varieties of guns.

The point here is that this work will likely be a cornerstone of research going forward. Anyone not using it as reference data might be trying to conceal something.

## Gun ownership

There is a difference between *individual* and *household* gun ownership rates.

Criminologists traditionally have measured *household* gun ownership rates (“does one of more people in your household own a gun”). The reason was that for home self-defense, the primary motivation for gun buyers, one gun could be used by anyone in the household.

This study measures *individual* gun ownership rates, ignoring households. Currently in the United States, there are about two adults age 21 or over in each household, so we could do some guesswork about household rates, but that is for another day.

*individuals who own each type of firearm*Any Gun31.9%Handguns82.7%Rifles68.8%Shotguns58.4%AR-15s30.2%Magazines > 10 rounds48.0%What we see is that nearly 32% of all adults in the USA own one or more guns. Naturally, some own more and some own many.

The question is, does this agree with measures of household gun ownership rates? One example, provided by the paper’s author, was: “If you have two households, each with a husband and wife, and only one of those four people owns a gun, then if you polled them all you would find 25% individual ownership and 50% household ownership.” He also opined that his data would likely lead to a roughly 45% household gun ownership rate, which is aligned with those recorded by Pew, Gallup, ABC, and other sources.

*total in private hands*All Guns415 millionHandguns171 millionRifles146 millionShotguns98 millionThe author polled for how many of each type of firearm people owned, and we’ll just say the range goes from one gun to over 100. What’s important is that the tally of the public stockpile of guns can be well estimated. At least for handguns, this closely aligns with the estimates the Gun Facts project has been tracking for a number of years (our latest estimate was 173 million).

The last ownership item to mention, because it feeds into the next section, is magazine capacities. Forty-eight percent of gun owners have, *at one time or another*, owned magazines that hold more than 10 rounds; that’s about 39 million people. Additionally, for handguns at least, about two thirds of the magazines owned by any given individual held above 10 rounds.

This is a little slippery because some states have banned magazines with larger than 10 rounds capacity. Some people may have surrendered or destroyed them, while others may have stored them out of state. The author suggests, and we agree, the 48% figure for 10+ round magazine capacities might be an upper bound.

So why do so many people own magazines with higher capacities? It is because of…

## Self-defense

They want larger capacity magazines for self-defense purposes, thanks to the uncertainty of what they might face, and the extremes that some do face.

*Number of assailants in a DGU*One assailant48.8%Two30.8%Three11.9%Four3.9%Five or more3.2%About half (51.2%) of the surveyed gun owners who have performed a DGU faced more than one perpetrator/assailant. This is quite profound in terms of preparedness for self-defense. Americans appear to sense that in the face of both uncertainty and a demonstrated recurrence of multiple attackers, it is better to have and not need extra rounds of ammunition, than to need and not have the same.

As seen in other polls on the subject, the number of DGUs and the lack of bloodshed in them is why there may be a public misperception of the net-positive effect of guns vis-à-vis crime. In this survey, 31.1% of gun owners (25 million people) have performed a DGU, but in 81.9% of the cases they never pulled the trigger.

*mode of DGU*Showed the gun without firing50.9%Other non-fire (said they had a gun)31.0%Fired their gun18.1%This agrees with an older and respected survey of DGUs [2](#note-7084-2 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, from the National Self-Defense Survey")that estimated 92% of DGUs involved merely brandishing or firing a warning shot. Likewise, another older study [3](#note-7084-3 "Guns in America: Police Foundation; 1996") showed that 68.7% of the time brandishing scared off a perpetrator, and if that didn’t work, 32.4% of the time pointing the gun at the perp, but not pulling the trigger, did the job (most people who did the latter, first did the former).

[![GUNS AND CRIME PREVENTION - Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) studies](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs-studies-2022-09-400x287.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs-studies-2022-09.png)click to enlarge

The author’s estimate for annual DGUs is 1.67 million, which is a little lower than the previous aggregate two million DGUs in previous studies. However, the author notes that this is a conservative estimate due to the way the question was asked (“Have you ever defended yourself or your property with a firearm, even if it was not fired or displayed? Please do not include military service, police work, or work as a security guard.”). They then estimate the annual rate from the lifetime number of DGUs.

This is our only nit to pick with this study. A detour question after this, asking about DGUs in the past 12 months, would have avoided the calculations required to derive their 1.67 million estimate. In their calculation they had to adjust for age issues, but most importantly, the responses only came from current gun owners. This makes their estimate low by some undeterminable degree. But that this estimate falls in the center of all other studies helps confirm the general rate of annual DGUs in America.

Interestingly, only 66% of the respondents who had performed a DGU did it more than once in their lives. Nearly 33% had done so twice, 12.6% thrice, and 7.8% five or more times. That said, while most people (68.9%) have never performed a DGU, most of those who have performed a DGU (44.1%) have done so only once.

The big surprise was women. They are not far off from men in DGUs, with 27.3% of them having performed a DGU compared to 33.8% of men – meaning men perform DGUs a mere 24% more often than women. And while we are on demographics, somewhat unsurprising given the conditions within American inner cities, blacks performed DGUs at a rate of 44.3% compared to whites at 29.7%.

Where DGUs occurred is also informative. A full 83.9% occurred in the home or on personal property, or the the homes and property of someone else. But 53.9% occurred outside of the home but on one’s own property. This is a difference with no meaning because a homeowner, in most states, can step out of their house to initiate a self-defense intervention. Likewise, someone who gets jumped after pulling into their driveway fits this category of DGU location.

One the flip side, 9.1% of DGUs occurred in public. If we take the older aggregate of studies that showed two million DGUs per year, this equates to 182,000 public DGUs annually. That alone is an astounding statistic inasmuch as this rarely enters the public perception. Likewise, the public is largely unaware of…

## Public carry

… how many people legally carry guns in public. This study concludes that 20.7 million people carry handguns in public. Of gun owners, 56.2% indicate they carry/carried at some point. An interesting addendum is that of those who carry, and ignoring incidents where a gun was used, 31.8% felt that the mere presence of the gun deterred a crime. Ponder that – no brandishing, no pointing the gun at a perpetrator, no firing the gun. Maybe the gun “printing” under a shirt or just showing that a gun was in a waistband was enough.

The whole DGU issue gets to the last interesting datum. Of all the motivations recorded for owning larger capacity magazines, and aside from a barely larger vote for recreational shooting, defense in and out of the home topped the list – 41.7% for outside the home and 62.4% for at home. This result aligns with other studies about why people buy guns at all.

## A note about methodology

The author used an outside polling company to do the work, which is good. They constructed the survey instrument well and tested it on one state before going nationwide.

This company has an online “panel” of respondents who can ignore requests to take a survey in the same way someone can ignore a “random digit dialing” call from a survey taker. However, people who join panels for survey companies are likely not in low-income brackets or disadvantaged neighborhoods. This might seem like a flaw, but those same people don’t often take telephone surveys, so this might be a wash.

It is the panel approach and conducting the survey online, instead of on the phone, that makes this a more robust approach… though some will disagree. The panel has the time to take long surveys at their leisure, which produces a very low drop-out rate (less than 1%).

Factors combined, this allowed for a comparatively huge sample size, which makes the outcome both more robust and the numbers for ownership or DGUs to be slightly conservative.

## A final note

[![CRIME AND GUNS - Firearm Homicide and Ownership Rates by State 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicide-and-Ownership-Rates-by-State-2019-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicide-and-Ownership-Rates-by-State-2019.jpg)click to enlarge

We pulled the state-by-state gun ownership data from the paper and fetched gun homicide rates from the CDC. The covariance calculation of gun ownership rates and gun homicide rates shows there is none (*R*2 of 0.01, where 1.0 is complete covariance and 0.0 is no covariance).

Notes:

1. 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022 [↩](#return-note-7084-1)
2. Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, from the National Self-Defense Survey [↩](#return-note-7084-2)
3. Guns in America: Police Foundation; 1996 [↩](#return-note-7084-3)

**Categories:** Assault Weapons, Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns, Guns and Crime Prevention

---

### [Mass Shootings, Private and Public](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shootings-private-and-public/)

**Published:** September 26, 2022
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Even sullied terms can be analyzed. We came across a quality study that looks at “mass \[not-just-public\] shootings” and paints a not-quite-alarming story.

## Main Take-aways

As defined more broadly herein:

- Mass shootings are not steadily increasing and are decreasing as a function of population.
- Most mass shootings are in private residences and are “family related.”
- Assault weapons are a minority share of guns used.
- A third of assailants had mental health issues, higher than the general population but lower than mass *public.*

Mass shootings can have a profound impact on an individual’s mental health, whether directly affected or not. The senseless violence and loss of life can cause individuals to feel anxious, depressed, or traumatized. For some, it may trigger feelings of grief, anger, and helplessness. In the aftermath of a mass shooting, it’s important to seek professional help if you are experiencing any of these symptoms. Many [detox locations near me](https://trupathrecovery.com/drug-and-alcohol-detox/) offer resources for individuals to seek professional help to deal with the effects of mass shootings on their mental health. These detox locations provide a supportive and safe environment to help individuals process their emotions and develop coping strategies.

## Public and non-public

The term “mass ***public*** shooting” has had a multi-decade, criminology-derived definition (4+ dead, not including the perp, in a single public place). These events, tragic as they are, are very rare; and in terms of dead people, they account for a fraction of a fraction of gun homicides each year.

This fact has proved so inconvenient to some activist groups (including some activist media) that they started inventing their own definition of “mass shooting” – notice the omission of the word “public”– for they would have been virtually pilloried if they had used the full phrase.

“Mass shooting,” as opposed to “mass ***public*** shooting,” had no fixed criminology definition… until now. A new paper [1](#note-7114-1 "A Comprehensive Assessment of Deadly Mass Shootings, 1980-2018 - Turanovic, Pratt, Neville, La Tosa - 2022") circulated by the federal government studied all mass shootings, public and non-public, using a standardized definition (4+ dead, not including the perpetrator, within a 24-hour period). This definition might reduce the unintentional confusion the public has about “mass shootings,” though we fear it will not reduce the intentional confusion.

## The interesting bits

[![Mass Shootings 1980 thru 2018 by Circumstance](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Mass-Shootings-1980-thru-2018-by-Circumstance-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Mass-Shootings-1980-thru-2018-by-Circumstance.png)CircumstancesSlopeAll+0.1Family Related+0.3Felony Related-0.1Mass PUBLIC Shootings+0.1Other-0.02The first (and perhaps most enlightening) conclusion is, “There are no stark increases or decreases in the frequency of deadly mass shooting incidents (overall).”

We ground some numbers and were surprised by the slope of increase and *decrease*, in some of the circumstances. Total mass shootings are going upwards at an anemic rate of +0.1 (slope of line), felony related events are going *down* by -0.1, and mass public shootings (e.g., Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, etc.) are rising +0.1.
The troubling bit is that family shootings where four or more people die is going up at a slope rate of +0.3, the highest category and 3X that of all instances. There may be a bit of insight into the “why” of that later on, but for now our observation is that things are not really getting worse because even though the number of instances rose 11% (first five years, and last five years of the study averaged) the American population rose 44%.

Looked at differently, the rate of mass shootings per one million people in the country dropped from a five-year average of 0.08 to 0.06, a drop of 33%. For the statistical junkies, there is an *R*2 value of 0.12, a correlation too weak to entertain.

The issue is that most “family-related” mass shootings occur on private property, not in public. Hence, the correct divisor to use for family-related mass shootings is the number of *households* in the USA (as opposed to the number of people) because families inhabit households. Between 1980 and 2018, the number of households went up 58% to meet the 44% increase in the population. But the number of family-related mass shootings “only” went up 5% in the same span. That being said, the *R*2 correlation (where zero is no correlation and one is perfect correlation) is 0.4, which is significant. Summarized more simply, family mass shootings do rise with the number of households, but at a slower rate (some of this may be due to the aging population and the number of “grandparent-only households,” but we are not doing that deep dive today).

[![Family Related Mass Shootings 1980 thru 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Family-Related-Mass-Shootings-1980-thru-2018-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Family-Related-Mass-Shootings-1980-thru-2018.png)The other problem is that this rising rate is both a twenty-first-century problem and a “spikey data” one. Years 2008 thru 2011 had significantly higher family-related mass shootings than in previous or subsequent years. These were the years of the “Great recession” unemployment gloom in the wake of the 2008 subprime housing bust. It is not irrational to think that disrupted households (mortgages foreclosed, jobs lost, etc.) led to higher rates of family violence.

This is the case. When we exclude those spikey recession years, the *R*2 for family mass shootings drops from 0.3 to 0.06. In short, the rate of family mass shootings doesn’t rise when we remove the data during global economic crisis.

### The children

The most interesting (and in a way obvious) statement in the paper is, “Most of the victims of deadly mass shootings that are excluded from existing \[mass PUBLIC shooting\] research and dialogue are women and children, and individuals killed in high-crime communities.” As we see, there is skewing of mass shooting in family circumstances.

For all years 1980 through 2018, 65.3% of mass shootings occurred in private residences, but only 41.3% were family-related. Though falling, the overall rate of felony-related mass shootings was 33.5%. Given the nature of inner-city gang life, drug use, gang associations, et cetera, it is reasonable to assume that a significant number of residential mass shootings were due to felony circumstances. Women and children trapped in these neighborhoods or living gang-related lifestyles are part of the victim body count for in-residence mass shootings.

## Miscellaneous data

Some other data points worth pondering from this report:

- 46% of mass shooters had a history of violence, 45% had prior arrest records, and 34% had mental health issues.
- 72% of the time, a handgun was used, whereas rifles (including “assault weapons”) accounted for 20%.
- The number of mass shootings is not controlled by urbanization, with urban shootings being 31%, suburban 40% and rural 30% (rounded, so they don’t add squarely to 100%). That said, “suburban” includes “metro fringe” areas [which also have high street gang penetration rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/).
- 70% of perpetrators “underwent recent stress or crisis.” Connect this fact to family-related mass shootings and the Great recession effect, and we see some interesting likely covariances.
- Only 17% communicated any intent for killing anyone, which makes sense if most mass shootings are in-residence, family-related reactions to stress and crisis.

## More to come?

We have reached out to the authors, and with luck they will share the entire database with us, which would give us some juicy multivariate correlation studies to make.

For now, any activist organization that is claiming a crisis of growing mass shootings simply doesn’t know what they are talking about, because, as is their practice, they do not use gold-standard data or perform rigorous analysis.

Let’s contrast this. Many of these activists rely on the Gun Violence Archive, which is largely a crowdsourced database from news reports back to 2013 (given that all US major news organizations had a web presence by 1996, a cutoff year of 2013 seems odd). As the authors of this paper note:

- The Gun Violence Archive uses an incorrect definition of mass shooting (“four or more ***shot and/or killed*** in a single event (incident), at the same general time and location, not including the shooter”).
- “The Gun Violence Archive drew exclusively from early reports that emerged immediately after the crime, which did not always contain correct or complete information on victim count or weapon types.”
- We’ll also note that, at least early on, they did not correct early info as the news stories developed.

The authors of this paper correlated data from multiple sources (see below) and validated each using additional resources, such as filing public record requests to clarify details.

For now, in terms of “mass shootings” in total, this is the gold standard data.

---

- FBI Supplemental Homicide Reports
- FBI Active Shooter Reports
- Florida Homicide Reports
- Supplemental State Homicide Data (Arkansas, California, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia, Kansas)
- Associated Press/USA Today/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database
- The Violence Project Mass Shooter Database
- Mother Jones Mass Shootings Database
- Gun Violence Archive
- Mass Shooting Tracker
- Everytown for Gun Safety
- Mass Shootings in America – Stanford Geospatial Center
- K-12 School Shooting Database – Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security
- U.S. Secret Service Mass Attacks in Public Spaces Reports
- Final Report and Findings of the Safe Schools Initiative – U.S. Secret Service and Department of Education
- Washington Post Mass Shooting Data
- Washington Post School Shooting Data
- Mass Murder with Firearms: Incidents and Victims, 1999–2013 – Congressional Research Service
- Large-Capacity Magazines and Causality Counts in Mass Shootings – Data Provided by Gary Kleck
- Mass Shooting Incidents in America – Citizens Crime Commission of New York
- Active Shooter Analysis – New York Police Department
- Mass Violence in America – National Council for Behavioral Health

Notes:

1. A Comprehensive Assessment of Deadly Mass Shootings, 1980-2018 - Turanovic, Pratt, Neville, La Tosa - 2022 [↩](#return-note-7114-1)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass shootings

---

### [Carry Calculations](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/carry-calculations/)

**Published:** November 27, 2022
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

You have very likely stood next to someone in line at the grocery store who was carrying a concealed handgun. Multiple times. Perhaps in the same day.

A tally from the largest survey of gun ownership and usage produced some surprising data, including how people in may-issue states ignore a lack of permits.

## Takeaways

- 4% of all adults in America carry daily. About 6M, or nearly 120,000 in each state.
- 30% of all handgun owners carry once or more a month.
- In may-issue and shall-issue states, a sizable number of people carry without permits.
- Nine times as many people carry daily than there are on-duty police.
- Carry rate is *lower* in permitless states than shall-issue states.

## The Source

We recently reported about the [largest modern survey of gun ownership](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-gun-data/). From that, other researchers extracted data on public carry of firearms. [1](#note-7146-1 "Trend in Loaded Handgun Carrying Among Adult Handgun Owners in the United States, 2015–2019; Rowhani-Rahbar, Gallagher, Azrael, Miller; American Journal of Public Health; 2022")

Key is that there is not presently a larger, more comprehensive collection of this information. And given its scope (55,000 member panel, over 4,000 respondents), it is the most accurate data available.

## Daily Carry and Not-So-Daily Carry

[![Days per Month People Carry Firearms in Public](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Days-per-Month-People-Carry-Firearms-in-Public-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Days-per-Month-People-Carry-Firearms-in-Public.png)click for larger, sharable version

Interestingly, but unsurprisingly, most people who do carry don’t carry daily. They likely carry when the perception of public violence is high, or if they are traveling into either unknown territory or turf known to be dangerous. Though not covered in the study, I suspect more than a few people carry occationally just to remain proficient in wearing gear.

The resulting math, however, is quite revealing about the magnitude of public carry. The authors note that on any given day, about 30% of handgun owners carry. Those who make a daily practice of it is higher still at 38%.

Grinding these numbers and stats from the Census Bureau, we see that:

- 4% of all adults carry daily.
- 6,000,000 adults carry daily.
- 120,000 in each state (on average) carry daily.

For contrast’s sake, there are only 665,380 patrol officers in the United States. [2](#note-7146-2 "U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021") Given three daily shifts, and not bothering to factor in weekends, vacations, sick leave, time spent in courts, et cetera, that makes 221,793 officers, max, on the streets at any time. Also ignoring similar variables for civilians, the daily concealed carry community is about nine times larger than the police.

As one would expect, the rate of carry varies depending on the (pre-Bruen) permitting scheme for each state. It also depends on who gives a damn about the law.

[![Percent of Handgun Owners Carrying per State Law](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Percent-of-Handgun-Owners-Carrying-per-State-Law-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Percent-of-Handgun-Owners-Carrying-per-State-Law.png)click for larger, sharable version

[![Percent Concealed Carry by Urbanality](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Percent-Concealed-Carry-by-Urbanality-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Percent-Concealed-Carry-by-Urbanality.png)click for larger, sharable version

[![Percent Concealed Carry by Sex](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Percent-Concealed-Carry-by-Sex-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Percent-Concealed-Carry-by-Sex.png)click for larger, sharable version

The first surprising bit is that concealed carry in shall-issue states is *higher* than in permitless states (33.1% vs. 29.7%). One would instinctively (and incorrectly) assume that the lack of needing a permit would facilitate more people carrying. But many of the states that were early adopters of permitless carry were sparsely populated states with wide ranges of rural living, where cattle outnumber humans by orders of magnitude and crime rates are very low.

That gets us into the first …

## Demographic Data

People in non-metro areas don’t carry as often, presumably because of a perceived low crime rate. Most carry is done by people in and around cities (and we note population density matters in measuring this, so metro densities likely skew the data).

ASIDE: Some activist groups bemoan gun sales and public carry. The single best thing they could do to discourage both is to fund the police and reduce crime rates, because it is the perception of violent crime that motivates both gun purchases and public carry.

Women do not carry as often as men, but nobody debating policy can ignore that nearly a quarter of all people who do carry are ladies.

Also, a person’s education does not matter in who carries, except for those who never graduated high school. The carrying population is nearly evenly distributed among high school grads (29.2%), those with some college (35.5%), or with a bachelor’s degree or higher (30.1%). Aside from those who didn’t get out of high school, the percent who carry is largely aligned with the portion of the population that has each educational attainment level.

One exception is that people who have some college but no degree, or those who have an associate’s degree. They carry guns at rates higher than the population at large with that level of education (35.% carry and 28% have some college). No clear explanation but we *might* assume that they engage in livelihoods that put them in more compromising situations, or that lower finances have them living in more sketchy neighborhoods.

## Refuse, Not

One valuable aspect of this survey is that the rate of people refusing to answer questions was low. Only one person refused to answer whether they did or didn’t carry. Others may have lied, but the data makes us think otherwise.

Slide up the chart about who carries in which state, and note that in both shall-issue and may-issue states, a lot of people admitted to carrying without having a permit (11.5% and 7.5% respectively). This is illegal activity, but they ‘fessed to doing it. When paired with the low rate of people (28 total) who declined to answer whether they did or did not have a permit, we can safely assume the responses are valid, and the response rates are very high.

## Carry On

Other research using crime data from states shows that people with carry permits almost never commit crimes, and their rate of violent crimes is statistical noise. Extrapolated, this means the 6,000,000 people who legally carry guns in public have *nada* do to with the 10,258 firearm homicides (2019). We know from data triangulation that [85% of gun homicides are street gang related or nexus](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/). From a policy perspective, the priorities are clear.

Notes:

1. Trend in Loaded Handgun Carrying Among Adult Handgun Owners in the United States, 2015–2019; Rowhani-Rahbar, Gallagher, Azrael, Miller; American Journal of Public Health; 2022 [↩](#return-note-7146-1)
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021 [↩](#return-note-7146-2)

**Categories:** Concealed Carry

**Tags:** concealed carry

---

### [Misleading Cause of Child Deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/misleading-cause-of-child-deaths/)

**Published:** December 20, 2022
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

When it comes to children and guns, both the *New York Times* and California Governor Gavin Newsom seem to lack both honesty and basic math skills. The former created a misleading meme using bad definitions and incorrect analysis. The latter, being a politician of the craven variety, aped bad data without even a cursory fact check.

## The Equine Effluvium

- Conflates different age groups
- Omits many rows of data about child and teen deaths that are higher than gun deaths
- Portrays teen age street gang members as “children”
- Ignores age-related issues or the underlying causes of deaths

## The Data is Raw

[![Gavin Newsome post via the New York Times making false claims about child gun deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gavin-Newsome-post-via-the-Times-400x500.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Gavin-Newsome-post-via-the-Times.jpg)[![CDC causes of death for children and for teens 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/CDC-causes-of-death-for-children-and-for-teens-2019-400x221.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/CDC-causes-of-death-for-children-and-for-teens-2019.jpg)click for larger, sharable version

[![Teen Gun Deaths by Intent and Age - 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Teen-Gun-Deaths-by-Intent-and-Age-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Teen-Gun-Deaths-by-Intent-and-Age-2019.png)click for larger, sharable version

The *Times* perpetrated intellectual fraud by using a subset of the causes of death common to children and to teens (two different groups) and amalgamating them into one entirely inaccurate meme.

The fallacious point they want you to believe is that guns are now the leading cause of death among children.

Which they aren’t. In fact, for children, guns are number 19 on the list with a rate lower than drowning, meningitis, suffocation and heart disease.

To understand their canard, you have to understand what they don’t want you to understand. Compare their chart to the unedited table here that shows data for the year 2019 (pre-pandemic, to avoid any pandemic-related anomalies). We truncate the table after firearm deaths to keep you from drowning in numbers.

Notice that:

1. The *Times* was pretty shady by omitting 15 causes of deaths with rates higher than guns.
2. This obscured the fact that for children (pre-puberty), the firearm death rate is low and in the statistical noise range. There were 510 gun deaths for children (ages 0–14), including all murders, accidents and suicides. That is less that one child per state per month.
3. The rate is 16 times higher for teenagers. This demonstrates gun availability is not a determinate variable.

## Teens, Gangs and Guns

This gets important because teens join street gangs, and homicide is a way of life in gangs.

According to the National Gang Center, depending on the year, between 35 and 50% of gang members are juveniles. And that excludes the 18- and 19-year-olds who are classified as adults.

This chart shows the increasing probability of a teen being murdered with a gun (and a smaller, more slowly growing probability of suicide with a gun).

The Gang Center notes that street gang recruitment begins at age 14. The longer one stays in a gang and the more active within the gang they become over time, the higher the rate of gun homicide. As the CDC data verifies, this is a reality with the gun homicide rate rising 20-fold from age 13 to age 19.

## Journalism Dies in Dubiousness

If these were new issues, a *Times* reporter might be forgiven for producing the disingenuous meme they did. But these factors have been known for decades by criminologists and social scientists. Such common knowledge escaping both the *Times* and Gavin Newsom indicates that honesty is not their virtue.

**Categories:** Children and Guns, Propaganda

**Tags:** child gun deaths, gavin newsom, teen gun deaths

---

### [Ranking Redux](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/ranking-redux/)

**Published:** January 6, 2023
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Everytown for Gun Safety is rank. And by that, we mean their state gun control law ranking system is rank(ed at the top of the silliness scale).

## Takeaways

Everytown’s state law ranking system:

- Is arbitrary, lacking any criminological basis.
- Shows very little gun violence variability between states based on their gun laws.
- Omits the most violent district, which has stringent gun laws.
- Includes suicides, which are inappropriate in such an analysis.

## Echoing the Brady Campaign

The moribund Brady Campaign (or whatever they are calling themselves this week) used to produce a state gun law scorecard every year. It was, in a word, a gun control wish list and nothing more. We keep their last scorecard criteria to reference their arbitrary scoring system for reference and a few laughs (whichever laws they were promoting that year tended get a higher score).

[![Brady Campaign State Scorecard vs Violent Crime Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ASSORTED-GUN-CONTROL-MYTHS-Brady-Campaign-State-Scorecard-vs-Violent-Crime-Rates-400x301.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ASSORTED-GUN-CONTROL-MYTHS-Brady-Campaign-State-Scorecard-vs-Violent-Crime-Rates.png)click for larger, sharable version

[![Everytown Gun Law Ranking and Homicide Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Everytown-Gun-Law-Ranking-and-Homicide-Rates-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Everytown-Gun-Law-Ranking-and-Homicide-Rates.png)click for larger, sharable version

We would dutifully produce a scatter diagram each year showing the utter lack of correlation between the Brady Campaign scorecard and any variety of crime.

The Brady Campaign quit producing their scorecard some time after we demonstrated that the states with “strongest” and most “lax” gun laws had identical rates of violent crime (in this last chart we made, blue California on the left and red Arizona on the right).

With the Brady Campaign largely forgotten, Everytown for Gun Safety picked up the slack and started producing their own “ranking” system

Same game, new player.

## Blighted Everytown

The headline element of note is that Everytown’s ranking system doesn’t actually prove their point. Quite the opposite.

Here we took their ranking and graphed it against both gun homicides and all modes of homicides. Though the slope of the line does rise as Everytown’s arbitrary rankings drop (left-to-right, “strongest” to most “lax”) the rise is minuscule.

More importantly, the vertical scattering of points shows high volatility all the way from California to Mississippi. For the statistics junkies, that’s an *R*2 of 0.02 for gun homicides, which basically means no correlation between Everytown’s gun law rankings and actual gun violence.

Let’s list some of the “research” sins Everytown committed:

- They omitted Washington, DC, which year in and year out is the murder capital as well as of the nation. The District also has stringent gun control laws, so this omission is blatant data rigging.
- In their analysis, Everytown included suicides. We have shown, using a more appropriate international scale, that there is no correlation between gun availability and suicide rates. This is because the probability of someone wanting to commit suicide is based instead on external factors and cultural attitudes about suicide.

Let’s score their scorecard:

- No criminology basis.
- Excludes important datapoint.
- Includes inappropriate data.
- Composed via an arbitrary wish list.

In short, meaningless equine effluvium.

## Everytown Dumbs Things Down

We expect advocacy groups (Everytown, NRA… doesn’t matter) to promote their causes. But to present the public with wantonly dubious and disastrously constructed “research” only helps to destroy their own brand and weaken their mission.

**Categories:** Everytown

**Tags:** everytown, laws, ranking, scorecard

---

### [Guns Not Leading Cause of Child Deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/guns-not-leading-cause-of-child-deaths/)

**Published:** February 10, 2023
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

“Do it for the children,” my California friend used to say in a bad Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation.

Her point was that any time a politician mentioned children, they were trying to sneak something past you. She was right.

The meme “guns are the leading cause of death for children” is popular but wrong, and it should be uttered in a thick Austrian accent.

# Define “child”

[![CDC mortality for children 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/CDC-mortality-for-children-2019-400x521.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/CDC-mortality-for-children-2019.png)click for larger, sharable version

A key problem with the English language is that one word can have many definitions. Add political opportunism, and there can be hundreds.

Common dictionaries define “child” as “a person between birth and puberty.” This is why we tend to speak of “children” and “teenagers” and “adults” as distinctly different groups. And anyone who has raised a child from birth to beyond age 14 will attest that their darling little angels turn into disgusting little devils once hormones take command of their brains and bodies.

That said, some dictionaries also say that “child” means “a person between birth and puberty or full growth,” the latter being rather vague.

If we look at the traditional definition of “child,” the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mortality database tells us that firearms are tied with heart disease and parasitic infections for child deaths. How many kids do you personally know who have died from any of these?

In criminology, “child” typically means people under age 14. Indeed, many laws exist that prevent police from taking statements from children under 14 years of age unless accompanied by a guardian, because of the assumed inability of such youngsters to intelligently navigate interrogation (though, truth be told, many adults can’t cope with the same).

The reasons for this are based in the social changes young people go through starting at puberty. They become more independent, less obedient, more social outside of the home, and take ever greater risks.

Hence, for the terrible meme “guns are the leading cause of death for children” we have to ask, “What definition of *children* do you use?”

That is when it starts to fall apart, because in some neighborhoods social systems have fallen apart for young men.

## Teenage gang members

[![CRIME AND GUNS - Firearm Homicides in the U.S. by age, race, urbanization - 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-d-400x304.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-d.png)click for larger, sharable version

[![Firearm and Non-Firearm Death Rates, Ages 1 thru 19, 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-and-Non-Firearm-Death-Rates-Ages-1-thru-19-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-and-Non-Firearm-Death-Rates-Ages-1-thru-19-2019.png)click for larger, sharable version

The National Gang Center (NGC), a function of the federal government, tells us that in recent years, between 35 and 41% of street gang members are under age 18. They also note that street gang recruitment begins at age 14, when the social effects of puberty take control (as well as early onset testosterone poisoning).

Ponder that: criminology separates teens from traditional children due to changing behaviors and capacities for risk. For guns, those demarcations should be enforced as well.

The CDC table above showed that for ages 0–14, guns were not a major risk. Hence, the inaccurate claim that “guns are the leading cause of death for children” includes teens, which means it has to include *teenage street gang members*.

Given what the NGC says about entry into street gangs (age 14), the percentages of gang members that are teens (minimum 35%), and that American street gangs are stupendously violent, you would expect to see gun homicides rise steeply in the teen years.

And it does. Factor in that street gangs are largely metropolitan and that gun play between black street gangs is the worst of gang violence, and the rest of this chart makes even more sense.

## Let’s get granular

As you would anticipate, the rate of firearm death is low for actual “children” and starts to climb into the teen years.

The CDC confirms this.

Though some firearm deaths creep in slightly before puberty (an equal mix of homicides and suicides; though truth be told, some of those “suicides” aren’t), we see that rate shift sharply upwards at age 14.

Which fits the NGC’s demographic profile of street gang members.

Though combined, all the other causes of death outpace firearms, that includes *every* other way of dying, from automobile collisions to bungie jumping accidents.

For some races, some degrees or urbanization, and *especially* some combinations of those, firearms do top the list. But not for all combinations and not for children.

[![Cause of death, ages 14 thru 19, 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Cause-of-death-ages-14-thru-19-2019-800x271.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Cause-of-death-ages-14-thru-19-2019.png)click for larger, sharable version

Looking at just teens and their races, we see that blacks have very high rates of firearm deaths. But this masks two additional points, namely urbanization (you are more likely to be murdered in city street gang violence while in town) and the CDC’s combining or both Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites into one group. That last point masks the fact that people in lower economic groups (e.g., urban Hispanics) are more likely to be gang members).

[![Firearm homicide table, by race and urbanization, ages 14 thru 19, 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-homicide-table-by-race-and-urbanization-ages-14-thru-19-2019-800x188.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-homicide-table-by-race-and-urbanization-ages-14-thru-19-2019.png)click for larger, sharable version

When we map firearm homicides to the same 14–19-year-olds and to their urbanization, and split out Hispanics, we see the clearest of pictures about “guns are the leading cause of death for children.” In short, to be a teenage male in a city (which conforms to the NGC’s demographics for street gang members) sharply increases the odds of catching bullets.

## Let’s not be childish

When activists say “guns are the leading cause of death for children,” they mask some serious problems, and by doing so keep us from fixing those problems.

**Categories:** Children and Guns, Crime and Guns

**Tags:** children, gangs, street gangs

---

### [Newsom's Gun Gaff](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/newsoms-gun-gaff/)

**Published:** February 24, 2023
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

*“California has the toughest gun safety laws in the nation.”*
—Gavin Newsom

Problem is, it has made no difference.

## Take-aways

- California’s suicide rate is low due to demographics.
- California’s gun homicide rate is slightly below average and tied with states with nearly no gun laws.
- Gun laws and gun homicide rates do not correlate at all, denuding claims about “toughest gun safety laws.”

## The suicide slide

**Means****California****USA Average****Diff**All means11.214.5-3.3Cut/Pierce0.40.30.4Drowning0.20.20.1Fall0.50.50.0Firearm4.08.9-0.5Other land trans-port0.10.10.0Other specified0.40.30.4Other0.10.10.0Poisoning1.62.1-0.3Suffocation3.94.7-0.2[![Firearm Suicides by age, sex, race and metro status - 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Suicides-by-age-sex-race-and-metro-status-2016-400x315.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Suicides-by-age-sex-race-and-metro-status-2016.png)click for a larger, sharable version

[![Firearm Homicide and Suicide Ratio 1999 thru 2020](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-Homicide-and-Suicide-Ratio-1999-thru-2020-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-Homicide-and-Suicide-Ratio-1999-thru-2020.png)click for a larger, sharable version

**Rank****State****Rate**26Arizona3.927Nevada3.828Kansas3.429California3.230Colorado2.831Wisconsin2.632Montana2.2[![Firearm Homicide Rate (deaths per 100K population) 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-per-State-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-Homicide-Rate-per-State-2019.png)click for a larger, sharable version

[![Firearm Homicides Rates and Giffords State Law Strength Rating](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-Homicides-Rates-and-Giffords-State-Law-Strength-Rating-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-Homicides-Rates-and-Giffords-State-Law-Strength-Rating.png)click for a larger, sharable version

California has a lack of old, rural, white men which is a prime demographic for gun suicides.

That said, California has a lower than average suicide rate via poisoning and suffocation as well.

The short of it is that California has a lower overall suicide rate than the country as a whole (11.2 people per 100,000 population for California, 14.5 for the nation in 2019, which is our pre-pandemic reference year throughout unless stated otherwise).

Guns are a popular means of suicide, but not universal. And their use in suicides is associated with race, age and how rural the victim is.

Rural white men account for the bulk of firearm suicides nationally. So it is little surprise that with California being #43 on the list of states as a percentage of the population that are white, the firearm suicide rate would fall simply by demographic correlations. Consider also that California ranks #45 on the list of states with people age 65+, and has several major urban centers (four urban counties make up 40% of California’s population, those being Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, and Sacramento).

All this background data is important is because suicides make up about 60% of “gun deaths” year-in and year-out. Hence, when Gavin Newsom talks about California’s low “gun death” rate, the major portion of that is driven by the State of Disaster having a dearth of old, white, rural men.

## The homicide ho-hum

If California’s gun laws, as Gavin Newsom incorrectly claims, caused a lower “gun death” rate, contrasting Cali with other states would show the divide.

It shows the opposite.

We already learned how demographics lowers California’s gun suicide rates, so that leaves homicides (nationally, gun accident fatalities have been falling faster than pants at a San Francisco bath house, so we can ignore those for now). That leaves homicides, and in this respect:

- California is unremarkable.
- California is basically tied with states with “lax” gun control laws.

All of which exposes a not-so-clever con job by an activist group with which we suspect Newsom maintains ties.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, California ranks #29 in terms of gun homicides. But they are basically tied with Colorado and Kansas, who have relatively little gun control laws. For example, Colorado is a shall-issue concealed carry state with no purchase permitting or registration. Kansas is a permitless carry state that doesn’t restrict National Firearms Act (NFA) controlled weapons (machine guns, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, heavy weapons, explosive ordnance, silencers, etc.) as Colorado does.

Yet all three have about the same gun homicide rates.

The situation for California is even more mundane when you remove some radical outliers from the comparison.

Washington, DC remains America’s murder capital. It has always been an outlier. Lower by 32%, but still very high, is Mississippi, and closely trailing them is Louisiana. If you remove just DC from the comparison (its unique form of government and high rate of urbanization being distinct variables), then the California/Kansas/Colorado gun homicide rate slims to 4.7:3.1. But that pales in comparison to Iowa and Utah (1.6 gun homicides per 100K) who basically have no gun control laws worth mentioning.

An intelligent person, which appears to not include Gavin Newsom, would rapidly conclude that “the toughest gun safety laws in the nation” are not a determinate variable.

And a gun control group proves this case.

## The Giffords grift

One activist group (Giffords Law Center, based in Newsom’s San Francisco) annually has published a “state law scorecard” in which they “graded state gun laws, revealing an undeniable correlation between strong laws and low gun death rates.”

However, it oddly has no correlation to gun homicides (for the number nuts, its *R*2 measure of 0.04 basically means no correlation whatsoever).

The Giffords ranking system, like its predecessor the Brady Campaign Scorecard, appears on the surface to be a gun control wish list and not any sort of sufficient academic review of the efficacy of gun control laws.

It is concerning then that Giffords claims “revealing an ***undeniable correlation*** between strong laws and low gun death rates” when it demonstrably does not \[emphasis ours\]. Even worse was Giffords’s curious omission of Washington, DC from their rankings. For a region that has the highest gun homicide rate in the country, and until recently banned private ownership of handguns, this is a rather stunning oversight.

## Newsom’s numbness

We don‘t expect politicians to know everything. We don’t even expect them to be smart, due to circumstantial evidence.

But Gavin Newsom’s ipso facto fallacy concerning California’s gun laws and “gun death rates” leads to at least two possibilities: he doesn’t know what he is talking about or he is a con man.

\[GUN FACTS FOUNDER’S INPUT: I spent 22 years in the San Francisco Bay area during Gavin Newsom’s political ascension. He has two talents, being smug and propagandizing. He exercises both on this topic.\]

**Categories:** California, Crime and Guns, Gifford Law Center, Propaganda, Suicides

**Tags:** california, gavin newsom, gun control, gun safety

---

### [School Shootings Stats](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/school-shootings-stats/)

**Published:** March 8, 2023
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

***“We don’t live in more violent times. We live in more televised times.”* – Marilyn Manson**

He is right and wrong, and one influences another. And such influences affect what happens in schools. A *really* long-term study has some clues.

## Take-aways

- Television bent the curve on the frequency of mass school shootings around 1966.
- Average death rates in school shootings has doubled since 1966.
- High school males are the top problem spot.

## 175 years of “data”

A recent (2017) academic paper [1](#note-7306-1 "SOURCE: An Analysis of US School Shooting Data (1840-2015); Paradice; Institute of Educational Sciences; 2017") sought to dig into school shootings going all the way back to 1840. Audacious, but we have to accept that mining data before the advent of modern national media is a bit risky. A school shooting might have only made county news in 1899, but it’s national news today.

Before wee dive in, we’ll note that the definition used in this paper was broad. Specifically, “An event is included in the data set as long as a firearm was discharged in an educational institution or on its grounds, regardless of the number of people wounded or killed, with a few exceptions.” Hence, this includes accidental discharges by people permitted to carry on campus, but also events like Sandy Hook.

That aside, we’ll accept that this work is at least informative, and especially so for a key moment in history that may have changed everything.

In 1966, 93% of American households had a television and America had its first nationally covered mass shooting, which occurred on a college campus – a “school shooting.”

That event was the University of Texas tower massacre, notable at the time for the perp shooting random, innocent people walking on campus (and also notable for the under-reporting about how citizens got rifles out of their trucks and provided “suppressive fire” to stop the perp from being effective).

[![School Shooting Incidents and Deaths 1840 thru 2015](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/School-Shooting-Incidents-and-Deaths-1840-thru-2015-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/School-Shooting-Incidents-and-Deaths-1840-thru-2015.png)click for a larger, sharable version

[![School Shooting Locations 1840 thru 2015](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/School-Shooting-Locations-1840-thru-2015-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/School-Shooting-Locations-1840-thru-2015.png)click for a larger, sharable version

[![Perpetrators of School Shootings 1840 thru 2015](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Perpetrators-of-School-Shootings-1840-thru-2015-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Perpetrators-of-School-Shootings-1840-thru-2015.png)click for a larger, sharable version

[![School Shooting Circumstances 1840 thru 2015](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/School-Shooting-Circumstances-1840-thru-2015-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/School-Shooting-Circumstances-1840-thru-2015.png)click for a larger, sharable version

[![CHILDREN AND GUNS - School Shootings - K12 and College - 1980 thru 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-School-Shootings-K12-and-College-1980-thru-2017-400x308.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-School-Shootings-K12-and-College-1980-thru-2017.png)click for a larger, sharable version

Television is the reason this mass shooting is important. With 93% of homes watching, it changed public perceptions and gave future perps the notion that mass murder was “notable” (something the Columbine perps thrived on 33 years later).

Before this event, there were three documented mass school shootings (average 0.02 a year, from 1840). Afterwards there have been 17 (average 0.35 per year). As we have noted [elsewhere](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/fame-media-and-mass-shootings/), media enables future perps to better plan their attacks; and the better planned the attack, the higher the body count. This is part of the reason why the average number of people killed in a mass school shooting has doubled since 1966.

In terms of all school shootings (not just mass murders), high schools are the hot spot, which makes sense. High school males often have little self-restraint, whereas college students – due to cultures that promote higher education and have the means to acquire it – filter out people who lack restraint.

But from a public policy standpoint, this gets into some uncomfortable data. Since high school students (for sake of illustration, under age 18) are prohibited from buying rifles (aside from one state), let alone handguns, high school shooters are either (a) obtaining guns illegally or (b) were gifted a gun by an adult. For mass shootings (something the Gun Facts project maintains a database for) guns for K12 shootings are primarily acquired illegally.

All that said, students are not always the issue. Yes, they make up 65% of the perpetrators of school shootings, but adults on campus make up 26% of the incidents, and most of them appear not to be associated with the school. The authors didn’t break this down by K12 and universities, so we suspect the lion’s share of that 19% of adults who appear unconnected to the school were likely college instances since on-campus parties attract off-campus miscreants.

As important as “who” is “why.” What would make a person bring guns onto any campus (ignoring licensed carriers) and discharge a weapon? Most of the reasons are predictable, and one is surprising.

Interestingly, a full 8% of “school shootings” (remember the author’s broad definition) were accidents. Without their dataset, it is impossible to get a perp and campus breakdown, but it would not be unreasonable to assume that a few inner-city street gang members had accidental discharges while being school thugs.

After that, we get back to testosterone-soaked young males and their generally irresponsible behaviors. “Getting into fights at school” is an age-old trope based in reality. Young males have yet to fully learn restraint. If they have access to a gun, they might react to their angry disagreements with other students using something much worse that a left hook.

## Gun-Free Schools, My Arse

Which brings up two touchy subjects: laws and responsibility.

As with street gangs, people who want to do harm find a way. Laws prohibiting felons in possession, strawman purchases, and murder have done nada in controlling inner-city mayhem.

Gun-free school laws had no effect either. Well intended, they ignored the fundamental problem with murderers, namely that they don’t care… about people, about human life, about laws.

They certainly don’t care about “gun-free schools.”

Given that laws don’t stop bad behavior, the other angle to explore is how children get guns (college adults, who can legally acquire a gun at retail, are a different set of issues). We noted that children most often obtain guns used in school shootings illegally. The two likely sources are from “street sources,” which make up 43% of crime guns [2](#note-7306-2 "Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016; Bureau of Justice Statistics") or from family (likely stolen).

It is incumbent upon adults to control access to their guns. One Gun Facts researcher speaks of when he was a kid, and that he knew (a) where his father kept guns and (b) that he wouldn’t wake up until next Thursday if he ever touched them. That is one form of access control. So are gun safes, trigger locks and when necessary, getting them out of the house.

We don’t have definitive numbers about kids swiping guns from parents and taking them to school. But we know of instances of mass public shootings at K12 schools where the perp swiped the guns from family members (i.e., Sandy Hook, Red Lake, Maryville, Santa Fe, etc.). In these cases there was “insufficient” access control, and it led to kids being murdered.

That said, tracking surveys say that 43% of households have one or more guns. There are about 49 million households with kids under 18 years of age. That would roughly equate to 21,000,000 households that have kids and guns, which indicates that most kids are not murderers, most parents secure their guns, or both.

Notes:

1. SOURCE: An Analysis of US School Shooting Data (1840-2015); Paradice; Institute of Educational Sciences; 2017 [↩](#return-note-7306-1)
2. Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016; Bureau of Justice Statistics [↩](#return-note-7306-2)

**Categories:** Children and Guns, School Shootings

**Tags:** children, school shootings

---

### [Mass Attacks – Broadly Reviewed](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-attacks-broadly-reviewed/)

**Published:** April 24, 2023
**Author:** Editorial Team

**Content:**

Mass stabbings don’t get as much media attention as mass shootings.

Likewise for mass burnings, drownings or hit-and-runs.

Since guns are the weapon in 73% of mass attacks, understanding mass attacks of all types might be key to preventing mass shootings. The federal government has studied this.

## Take-aways

- Non-gun mass attackers are not different than gun mass attackers.
- Changes in behavior precede stressors, the latter triggering attacks.
- The mental health community is letting at-risk people fail.

## Mass public attack stats

The National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC), oddly a function of the Secret Service, cataloged five years of mass public attacks [1](#note-7390-1 "Mass Attacks in Public Spaces: 2016-2020"), which they define as when three or more people (not including perpetrators) were harmed in public or semi-public places.

Like the Violence Project’s work on mass public shootings, NTAC looked deeply into the perpetrators’ lives, motives, modus operandi and more. It is important research for two reasons: motives of mass attackers mirror mass public shooters, and we have basic prescriptions for identifying potential perps without focusing on just gun perps. This is akin to saying we want to understand muggers regardless of whether they use a knife or a gun to mug you.

## Warning signs

The similarities between mass public shooters (MPS) and all mass attackers is consistent. Yes, because 73% of mass attacks are MPS, the overall stat is polluted. But non-gun mass attackers share the same traits, so understanding attackers as a group, regardless of weapon use, adds clarity.

Most important are the warning signs – how to spot a mass murderer before they start stabbing, shooting, or torching. Warning signs fall into two categories: long-term traits (i.e., mental health) and near-event issues (i.e., major life stressors). The former may often be the foundation for the latter (i.e., long-term alcoholism followed by getting fired).

Let’s start with the triggers (near-event issues) that are highly visible warning signs, then list instances where intervention might mute the effects of triggering events.

### Near-event triggers

Three factors arise: general behavior changes, concerning behaviors, and severe stressors.

**Behavioral changes:** Nearly half (46%) of perpetrators (perps) showed behavioral changes; and of those, 65% showed changes within a year of the attack. Of those with behavioral changes, a full 68% showed signs of mental health issues, well above general behavior changes (24%) and uncharacteristic actions (17%). The key is not necessarily that they display threatening behaviors, but that their “new” behaviors have no obvious source.

**Concerning behaviors:** Interestingly, a higher percentage (76%) of perps displayed behaviors that concerned people who knew them. A full 57% of that group reported their concerns (though we have no data on the number of similar reports that stopped a potential perp). Critical, though, is that 64% of all perps showed behaviors that “should have been met with an immediate response” because they were “objectively concerning or prohibited,” including threats, harassment and violence.

[![Common stressors that trigger perpetrators of mass attacks](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mass-attack-stressors-400x395.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mass-attack-stressors.png)Common stressors that trigger perpetrators of mass attacks

**Stressors:** These budding behavioral concerns lay groundwork for when the perp encounters a significant stressor, of which 93% or perps do, 77% within a year of their attack. As you can see from the chart, perps often have multiple stressors, which is understandable. If, for example, a perp has substance abuse issues, they can cause both family and employment troubles. Of perps who had significant stressors, 49% had them within 30 days of their attack.

These near-event triggers are perhaps the most important thing people should watch for, as they are signs that a tragedy might soon come to pass. But like a healthy lifestyle, prevention is preferable. So, let’s look at the long-term conditions that help lay a foundation for mass attacks.

### Long-term traits

**Criminality:** That 64% of perps dabbled in crime is unsurprising. People with one bad behavior often have more bad behaviors (i.e., the ex-con drunk who picks fights in bars over drug deals gone bad). An accumulation of negative life events from bad behavior might instigate mental health and/or anti-social reactions. Hence, being a crook might be a stepping stone for being a mass murderer.

**Substance abuse:** About 34% of perps had drug and booze problems, and 12% were drunk, high or tripping during their attack. There is some likely overlap here with mental health, given that 24% of mass public shooters took psychiatric medications and may well have abused those. Which brings us to…

[![Mental health conditions of mass attack perpetrators](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mental-health-of-mass-attackers-400x307.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Mental-health-of-mass-attackers.png)Mental health conditions of mass attack perpetrators

**Mental health:** A minimum of 34% of perps had mental health issues (we say minimum because some perps may have serious, yet undiagnosed, mental health problems). That 28% are psychotic amplifies what we have noted before, that [deinstitutionalization strongly correlates with mass public shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-health-and-homicides/). When 20% of perps are paranoid and 13% are outright hallucinating, then our mental health system is letting some dangerous folks fall through cracks.

**Social isolation:** When one detaches from reality (drugs, booze, mental health issues) they can isolate from society (see the Isla Vista spree shooter’s manifesto for a detailed account about how violent video games facilitated his social isolation). As least 29% of perps were identified as “withdrawn, loners, or anti-social.”

## “Where” is often “why”

At least 47% of attackers had some affiliation with the location of their assault. Given that significant stressors and grievances trigger attacks, it is understandable why attackers target specific locations (the remaining 53% may have some unknown affiliation, at least in the attacker’s mind). For MPSs, we have any number of instances where this is well documented.

Of concern is that 68% of perps were not targeting specific people. Given that more than half of them have grievances, the randomness of their victims indicates an uncorked rage at the location of their perceived grievances.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Motivations-of-mass-attackers-800x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Motivations-of-mass-attackers.png)

All of this leads to perps…

## Planning mass attacks

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Planning-modes-of-mass-attackers-400x331.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Planning-modes-of-mass-attackers.png)“Only” 31% of perps planned their attacks (that 69% did not demonstrates the “uncorked rage” theory).

Most frequently (by a hair) they planned the venue (studied entry points, security, etc.). After that, they researched weapons.

We know from the sundry MPS databases that well-planned attacks achieve the highest body counts. Someone who displays outsized interest in location minutiae, or having never shown interest in weapons before is suddenly web surfing “flame throwers” and “drum magazines,” might have flipped their grievance switch and be in planning mode for an attack.

For guns, about 23% of attackers acquired them illegally, which disagrees with the longer running Violence Project Database that says about 13% of perps obtains guns illegally. However, the Violence Project database covers 56 years, and this USSS study only a recent five years. Yet, there does *not* appear to be an increasing frequency of illegally obtained guns in mass attacks over time.

## The endings before we end

Though it would be better to have no stressed-out attackers murdering masses, the “good” news is that they generally save us the effort of arresting and imprisoning them.

[![How mass attacks are ended](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/How-mass-attacks-are-ended-400x394.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/How-mass-attacks-are-ended.png)How mass attacks are ended

Of passing note is that in 10% of the cases, it was plain folk like you who stopped the carnage. Keep up the good work!

Notes:

1. Mass Attacks in Public Spaces: 2016-2020 [↩](#return-note-7390-1)

**Categories:** Mass Shootings

**Tags:** mass attacks, mass shootings

---

### [Rust Pipeline](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/rust-pipeline/)

**Published:** April 29, 2023
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

There is no “iron pipeline” of guns trafficked from low gun control states to high ones.

There is a rust pipeline of legally migrating guns mainly between neighboring states.

## Take-aways

- Most crime guns are retailed in the state where they were recovered, including in high gun control states.
- Most intrastate guns come from neighboring states, including other high gun control states.
- Most guns legally follow owners when they move between states, which frequently are neighboring states.
- Approximately 6,000,000 guns at *minimum* move legally between states each, and of these, 433,000 move between neighboring states

## Crime guns are largely local

[![Percent intrastate traced guns 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Percent-intrastate-traced-guns-2019-400x157.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Percent-intrastate-traced-guns-2019.png)One reality is that most crime guns are retailed in the same state where they were recovered. Across all states, 68% of traced guns were retailed in the same state where they were recovered.

But there are significant variations. Due to decades of restrictions, Washington, DC (not a state, but worth including since it has the highest gun homicide rates in the nation) had only 5% of its traced guns originating there. Little wonder, since for a long time there were no DC gun stores per se. The next lowest is 20% (New Jersey, also highly restrictive) and the highest is 85% (Texas).

This is where things get odd and where politicians launch irrational agitprop. And it gets odd on two vectors: where crime guns come from and how long it takes for those guns to be used in crime.

The short story is that it takes a very long time for a retailed gun to be used in a crime, regardless of whether it was retailed in or outside of a state. If “iron pipelines” existed, you would see a very short interval (“time to crime,” or TTC) and it would be consistent among states with strict gun retailing laws.

Neither is true.

[![Percent Traced Guns that Retailed in Recovery State 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Percent-Traced-Guns-that-Retailed-in-Recovery-State-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Percent-Traced-Guns-that-Retailed-in-Recovery-State-2019.png)click for a larger, sharable version

![Weapons trafficking - 2019 BATF](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Weapons-trafficking-2019-BATF-400x118.png)Nationally, only six of the 50 states and DC have more crime guns being imported than are retailed within the state (herein we’ll include DC in the mix).

The claim proffered by politicians and other disreputable types is that “iron pipelines” are trafficking networks actively bringing guns from states with fewer gun laws to states with strict gun laws.

That claim fails on two basic points:

**RETAIL:** Federal law requires handguns (most often used in crime) to be retailed only to residents of the state. A person from New Jersey cannot drive to Georgia and buy a gun at retail. They might buy such on the black market, but “strict gun laws” are almost universally about retailing of guns. So, gun running from retail to street crime isn’t an interstate reality aside from a scant number of strawman sales (and given that the price of street-sourced guns is about half that of retail, it would also be unprofitable).

 **TRACE REPORTS:** Were “iron pipelines” a thing, there would be a significant number of arrests for gun trafficking and traces conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). But for the year of our review (2019), it was among the lowest of circumstances, 0.6% of all traces. Heck, “found firearms” accounted for 9.8%, and those recovered after suicides were 2.0%

Hence, there is no top-line evidence for gun running into states with stricter gun laws. But let’s dive deep because we have a few problem states, where more crime guns are imported than sourced locally, and we have an average of 13.4 years from when a gun is retailed out of state and when it is recovered in crime.

## Time *is* of the essence

You read that right. From the time a person passes a background check in a gun store, plops down cash, and takes a gun home with them, to when it is recovered at a crime scene in another state, enough years have passed for your newborn to become a surly teenager.

But aside from outliers (Alaska and Hawaii, who border no other states), the TTC for interstate guns is no different between intra- and interstate gun movement – 13.4 years. This is an interesting data point in and of itself, which indicates that most interstate crime guns are old, and thus unlikely to have been illegally trafficked.

Some studies [1](#note-7403-1 "Gangs and Guns: A Task Force Report From The National Gang Crime Research Center; Knox, Houston, Laskey, McCurrie, Tromanhauser; 2995") show that the time span from when a *criminal* gets a gun and when the cops get it from them is very short – about two months. If “iron pipelines” existed, then the TTC would not be 13.4 years but something closer to 0.17 years (two months). Why the 964:1 ratio nationally, and does it differ greatly from state to state?

Looking at just guns that come from other states (to test the “iron pipeline” notion), we see that the TTC is highly erratic (for the single year we explored). But across the board, there is no statistical correlation between the percentage of crime guns that were imported and how quickly they were used in crime.

[![Intrastate Crime Guns and Time to Crime 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Intrastate-Crime-Guns-and-Time-to-Crime-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Intrastate-Crime-Guns-and-Time-to-Crime-2019.png)click for a larger, sharable version

**Intra-state****Inter-state****Ratio****All Traces**262,18173,3783.6:1**<=1yr**44,3217,4755.9:1Looked at nationally, we see that the ratio of crime guns traced is nearly 4:1 for intrastate (retailed within the same state as it was used in crime) and interstate guns (imported from other states). But for guns recovered in under a year from retail sale, the time period where you most likely would find trafficked guns, the ratio rises to 6:1. The younger the crime gun, the more likely it was bought in the state in which it was used for crime.
The question then is, why do imported crime guns take sooooooo long (13.4 years) to be used in crime?

The answer is that they migrated legally.

## America, on the move

Americans are a mobile people, and they relocate frequently. The Census Bureau tells us that about 11% of Yanks move every year. (ED: This astounds me. If I have to move more than once a decade, I get grumpy.) Given the number of gun owning households (roughly 43%), that’s around 5% of gun owning households packing up and heading on each year. That divides out to just under six million (minimum) guns legally crossing state lines every 365 days.

You have to be one heck of an enterprising gun trafficker to move six million guns from Texas to New York.

The other element is that people don’t move very far. About 60% move less than 100 miles away and only 15% move to a different state entirely. That pattern would suggest that most interstate guns move legally between neighboring states.

The Census Bureau also tells us that 7% of households that moved in our analysis year moved to a neighboring state. This means that at a rock-bottom minimum – since some gun owning households have more than one gun – 433,000 guns crossed borders between adjacent states.

[![All Traced Gun in California - 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/All-Traced-Gun-in-California-2019-400x255.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/All-Traced-Gun-in-California-2019.png)[![All Traced Gun in Kansas - 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/All-Traced-Gun-in-Kansas-2019-400x255.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/All-Traced-Gun-in-Kansas-2019.png)[![Percent of Traced Guns Retailed in recovery State - 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Percent-of-Traced-Guns-Retailed-in-recovery-State-2019-400x283.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Percent-of-Traced-Guns-Retailed-in-recovery-State-2019.png)click for a larger, sharable version

For first-look sake, here is California, which according to one gun control group [2](#note-7403-2 "Everytown Gun Law Rankings, 2023") has the “strongest” gun laws in the country. Compare them with Kansas, chosen for being in the middle of the contiguous 48 states and thus able to import guns from the broadest range of source states. In both states, most of the traced guns were retailed in the same state (California 62%, Kansas 67%) for all guns.

But notice the lighter shaded states. The next largest source is a neighboring state, and this plays out with most of the other states as well (geography makes Alaska and Hawaii relatively immune from short-jump relocations and thus the bulk of interstate guns).

But let us not forget the six stragglers, the states where more than half of traced crime guns were imported, regardless of how they got there. We instantly see something odd, namely that those states tend to be clustered together. Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey are wedged up in the northeast and quite some distance from allegedly “lax gun law states.” You might think that perhaps guns are moving between those states, perhaps as part of normal relocations of households.

You might be right.

But tellingly, for guns that were retailed a year or less before they were traced by the ATF, most came from neighboring states. California complains their imported crime guns are due to lax laws in Nevada and Arizona. But most of Kansas’s imported guns come from neighboring Missouri, which has the same degree of gun control. Hence, the strength or weakness of laws in other states does not immediately appear to be a determinate variable, but proximity does.

So, key questions include, “Do guns migrate?,” “Do they migrate in patterns?,” and “Do migrated guns end up being used in crimes?”

This is where it gets complicated and comical.

## Guns just don’t walk across country

Legal owners relocating to a new and typically neighboring state explains why the top-line ATF trace numbers look big and are mistakenly used to assert gun trafficking. In trafficking, the goal is to get guns to criminal hands, which is a fast process. How fast? Less than a year, according to one localized study of criminal gun acquisition [3](#note-7403-3 "The Last Link: from Gun Acquisition to Criminal Use; Cook, Pollack, White; Journal of Urban Health; 2019") But guns moving into a new state legally might not leak into the underground for years. The TTC between all sources (intra- and interstate) is about the same, but for guns retailed in the same state where they end up in crime, it is *much shorter*.

[![Time to Crime, Intra- and Interstate Guns 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Time-to-Crime-Intra-and-Interstate-Guns-2019-400x287.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Time-to-Crime-Intra-and-Interstate-Guns-2019.png)click for a larger, sharable version

![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Kansas-map-400x207.png)Naturally, there are variations among states, but not much. The ratio of intra- and interstate TTC is between 1.2 and 2.9 (with the average being 1.8) to 1. As the chart shows, whether a gun was retailed in a state or imported, it is unlikely to rapidly fall into criminal hands.

And therein lies the key to unscrambling these numbers. Someone relocating with a legally owned firearm is far less likely to sell it, lose it or have it stolen in the first year than a gun which was trafficked on purpose. Which brings us back to the migrating citizens who don’t migrate far.

Recall that of the 11% of people who move every year, most move less than 100 miles. For those who move into a new state, it would thus be highly probable that they left counties that bordered their new home state. Often cities on state borders are disproportionately large relative to the state population. Thus, the population of state-border counties might be covariant to the number of immigrants into a neighboring state.

According to a 2006 Census Bureau report, there is a 74% correlation between border county populations in neighboring states and relocation into a state. In other words, three quarters of legally migrated guns can be explained just by people moving less than 100 miles into a neighboring state.

The astute reader (that would be you) might be asking, “Why are you using 2006 relocation data?” Because there is a 13-year average TTC gap between when a gun was retailed (2006) and when it was recovered in another state (2019). What we are comparing are those people who moved in 2006 and when their guns were recovered in crimes in whatever state they moved to, which is typically next door.

Where the numbers break down (and federal law prevents us from getting the details) is exactly how many of the traced guns come from those border counties that have a 74% correlation with nominal relocation of citizens. We can tell that on average (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) about 32% of traced interstate guns come from neighboring states. We added an additional data element to gain further insight: the percent of traced guns from neighboring states.

[![Imported Traced Crime Guns from Neighboring States - 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Imported-Traced-Crime-Guns-from-Neighboring-States-2019-400x285.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Imported-Traced-Crime-Guns-from-Neighboring-States-2019.png)click for a larger, sharable version

[![Interstate Crime Guns, Neighboring States, 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Interstate-Crime-Guns-Neighboring-States-2019-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Interstate-Crime-Guns-Neighboring-States-2019.png)click for a larger, sharable version

We can see that the spread is broad, ranging from 8% to 65% of interstate crime guns coming from border states. For the top 75% [4](#note-7403-4 "The lower the population, the less likely border counties make a difference") of states by population, we see about a 25% correlation (*R*2 = 0.25) of interstate crime guns coming from next door. Not a tremendous correlation, but statistically significant.

Aside from Alaska and Hawaii, about 43% of interstate guns come from (on average) five neighboring states, and thus 57% come from 45 other states, which is compelling.

But, alas, this is also incomplete. Recall that the ***average*** TTC is over 13 years. That means some crime guns entered the states much earlier. Comparing the migration patterns of one year (2006) with the crime gun traces conducted 13 years later (2019) only shows the most obvious parts of the puzzle, namely that:

- Neighboring states are the key source for interstate guns.
- Most (perhaps nearly all) came via normal household relocations.
- The “iron pipeline” meme is rusting apart.

## But, what about New Jersey?

(ED: We have removed the author’s snide remarks in reply to “What about New Jersey?,” which did not translate well without the associated accent.)

In the northeast, there are a knot of states that claim they are on the receiving end of the rapidly disintegrating “iron pipeline.” What we notice right away is that the percent of intrastate crime guns traced in those states is low. In other words, an abnormally low number of crime guns were retailed in those northeastern states.

How low? Of the states where politicians gripe about the decomposing “iron pipeline” – Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut – they average a 19% gun ownership rate compared to a national 35% rate. [5](#note-7403-5 "2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022") That is nearly half the rate of ownership and can be attributed in part to the historical hostility those states had to guns, with the laws there making ownership difficult. This has two interesting effects:

1. Lower gun ownership rates means the ratio of interstate guns is artificially inflated.
2. People moving to adjacent states are less likely to bring guns with them since they own fewer than average.

These two effects, mapped to this tight cluster of northeastern states, makes it look like there is trafficking when there is not. It makes ordinary relocation of legal guns from nonadjacent states look as if something unusual is occurring, though there is nothing unusual about the 13 years it takes these legally relocated interstate guns to become crime guns in those states.

Notes:

1. Gangs and Guns: A Task Force Report From The National Gang Crime Research Center; Knox, Houston, Laskey, McCurrie, Tromanhauser; 2995 [↩](#return-note-7403-1)
2. Everytown Gun Law Rankings, 2023 [↩](#return-note-7403-2)
3. The Last Link: from Gun Acquisition to Criminal Use; Cook, Pollack, White; Journal of Urban Health; 2019 [↩](#return-note-7403-3)
4. The lower the population, the less likely border counties make a difference [↩](#return-note-7403-4)
5. 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022 [↩](#return-note-7403-5)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns

**Tags:** gun trafficking, iron pipeline

---

### [Worldly Women and Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/worldly-women-and-guns/)

**Published:** October 5, 2014
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

The gun control industry has made much of an obscure study concerning firearm fatalities in high-income countries. Because all politics (by low minded people) is wedge politics, they grabbed the one horrible sound bite from the study, namely that “86% of all women *killed* by firearms were US women.” [1](#note-2352-1 "Homicide, Suicide, and Unintentional Firearm Fatality: Comparing the United States With Other High-Income Countries, 2003, Richardson, Hemenway, The Journal of TRAUMA, 2011") (emphasis mine)

We have already covered … endlessly … that though America’s suicide rate is not high, the preferred means for American suicide is with a gun (Canadians have an identical suicide rate, but own fewer guns, and thus tend to poison themselves more often). Thus, it is of little surprise that more suicidal American women die by guns and thus more American women are “*killed* by firearms.” Even this study noted that “the US firearm suicide rate … for females … was 14.4 times higher.”

But the gun control industry spin goes deeper. They like contrasting America with other “high-income” countries because they know as well as anyone that the rest of the world routinely sinks into homicidal chaos. And the worst of the worst nations – Rwanda, Somalia, Syria – they don’t even ***report*** their homicide statistics, which makes well-heeled nations look downright saintly by comparison.

When we dig a bit, we find that American women are ***much better off*** than ladies in other rich nations. My first clue was in the same study when they showed negligible difference in both gun and non-gun female homicides in the U.S. (2.1 and 1.8 per 100,000 population). This indicates that guns are not a direct determinant when it comes to someone wanting to kill an American woman. The gun homicide rate for men however is seven times larger. So if anything, the gun control industry should be screaming about how guns are a greater threat to men in America.

Country/territoryMalesFemalesHigher
Than USAIceland0.0%100.0%355%Japan47.1%52.9%140%New Zealand48.8%51.2%133%Germany52.7%47.3%115%Norway53.2%46.8%113%Finland53.9%46.1%110%Czech Republic54.3%45.7%108%Belgium56.6%43.4%97%Hungary58.3%41.7%90%France62.1%37.9%72%Netherlands65.0%35.0%59%Spain65.7%34.3%56%Australia67.3%32.7%49%Slovakia68.0%32.0%45%Sweden68.1%31.9%45%Canada69.8%30.2%37%Italy69.9%30.1%37%Portugal70.2%29.8%35%United Kingdom70.3%29.7%35%Luxembourg100.0%0.0%-100%All this falderal made me curious, so I dug-up international homicide numbers for men and women. One interesting table comes from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and lists the percentage of homicides by sex. Over all, the world kills women 11% more often than in the United States, making women here a safe lot. I whittled down the list to the same set of high income countries as in the study cited by the gun control industry.

Guess what?

In high income countries, America was on the bottom of the list for female homicides, with the exception of Luxembourg (I have been to Luxembourg, and the place is so small and pleasant, homicides are statistically impractical and culturally unlikely). In fact, other high income countries have an 82% higher female to male homicide ratio than the United States (of murdered members of the American populace, 22% of victims are women, whereas in Japan 53% are).

One possible explanation is that American women are armed, and female victims in New Zealand, Germany, Norway, Finland, etc. are not. Criminologists have shown that when a thug believes their victims are armed, they don’t attack. Perhaps Japanese women should hit the underground markets and acquire the best pistol they can find there. Might raise their longevity numbers a bit.

Notes:

1. *Homicide, Suicide, and Unintentional Firearm Fatality: Comparing the United States With Other High-Income Countries, 2003*, Richardson, Hemenway, The Journal of TRAUMA, 2011 [↩](#return-note-2352-1)

**Categories:** Uncategorized

---

### [LCPGV: The 20 Year Canard](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/lcpgv-the-20-year-canard/)

**Published:** March 19, 2014
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

The new anti-gun agitprop masters are in the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. I’ll be writing about them frequently because they are:

[![LCPGV - The 20 Year Canard - chart 1](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LCPGV-The-20-Year-Canard-chart-1-400x242.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LCPGV-The-20-Year-Canard-chart-1.jpg)[![California homicide rates and three-strike laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LCPGV-The-20-Year-Canard-chart-2-400x242.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LCPGV-The-20-Year-Canard-chart-2.jpg)[![California and U.S. Homicide rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LCPGV-The-20-Year-Canard-chart-3-400x242.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/LCPGV-The-20-Year-Canard-chart-3.jpg)1. Getting good at creating falsehoods.
2. Are drafting laws and getting them passed in California.
3. Have money … and lots of it.

Their most recent con is claiming that California’s 20 year drop in gun deaths is due to gun control laws. “Proof in the Data: Thousands of Lives Saved” is their tag line and is accompanied by a chart showing the firearm death rate in the Golden State.

There are a number of major problems with their numbers (mainly Cal’s fast falling suicide rate) but more importantly is what they omit, namely criminal control laws.

Their chart begins in 1993, a year with no significant gun control laws in California and the year when violent crime nationwide was peaking. If anything Cal rode a national wave.

But in fact, Cal started a national trend in 1993 with the first “three strikes” law. For those unacquainted with such, a three strike law puts repeat offenders in jail for life if they commit three crimes, one of which is serious. It removes sociopathic people from your neighborhood.

More significantly though is that in 1997, Cal passed their 10-20-Life law which *specifically targets people who repeatedly misuse guns in crime*, which the Bureau of Justice Statistics has repeatedly told us is the source of most gun crime. California’s steep decline in violence occurs when this law is enacted.

The result is even more interesting. By removing violent predators from high-crime neighborhoods, Cal’s homicide rate – which was much higher than the rest of the country – has finally come down to national levels.

Keep your eyes open for any sound bite coming from the LCPGV. They are the new spin meisters, and they are cunning.

**Categories:** California, Crime Control, LCAGV

**Tags:** california, gun control, homicides, law center to prevent gun violence, propaganda

---

### [Polling Pollution](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/polling-pollution/)

**Published:** May 7, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

The gun control industry claims that firearm ownership is on the decline. Then again they also claimed that gun control works, and that has been roundly debunked.

Members of the gun control industry like to bandy two tracking polls that show a downward trend in the number of households in which respondents claim someone there owns a gun. Yet two other tracking poll say gun ownership has remained steady over the decades and even ticked-up in recent years.

The difference in the polls is telling.

## The four gun ownership polls

**Poll****Gun Ownership Trend****Registered Voter Isolation**ABC/PostSteadyYesGallupSteadyYesPewDecliningNoGSSDecliningNoPew Research and the General Social Survey (GSS) report declining household gun ownership rates. ABC/Post Polls and Gallup show steady gun ownership rates (in the data and resulting chart, we averaged years in which the various organizations did not conduct gun surveys to smooth the relative jumpiness of the lines).

Of great interest is how and to whom the questions are asked, or reported. The two polls that the gun control industry touts do not either (a) ask if the respondent is a citizen or a registered voter (and you have to be a citizen to vote in federal elections). The other polls do ask the voter/citizenship question, and report responses accordingly.

In the United States, over the time span of this comparison, the non-citizen population has risen nearly 40% (this includes legal and illegal aliens). According to the gun control industry’s favored polls, household gun ownership has fallen a bit less than 10%. Making some assumptions about the number of people in an immigrant household, reluctance of immigrants to admit to owning a gun, and other rational considerations, much and perhaps all of the “decline” in gun ownership can be explained with changing national demographics and the percent of households owning guns.

## Specific problems with polls

[![gun household ownership rates - results from four poll](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/gun-ownership-rates-poll-400x285.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/gun-ownership-rates-poll.jpg)Both gun control friendly polls have problems.

Pew phrases their question concerning household gun ownership oddly. They specifically ask the respondents if they own a rifle or pistol. Knowledgeable gun owners (which are most of them) know the difference between a pistol and a revolver. Since revolvers are the most popular home self-defense handgun, an increasingly sophisticated gun owning population might accurately claim they do not own a rifle or a pistol when all they have is a .38 ***revolver*** in their nightstand.

That comic bit of survey hilarity aside, the GSS offers us more worrisome issues. Foremost, is that the GSS is done face-to-face, surveyor to respondent. This is all but guaranteed to cause people to respond differently, especially if their immigration status is questionable.

## More or less

We know from the BATFE’s annual *Firearms in Commerce* reports that gun sales keep climbing and climbing. The gun control industry thus falsely claims that just utter “gun nuts” are hording gear. But for this to be true, every hobbyist shooter would likely need to quadruple his armory in order to keep up with the pace of new gun sales. That is unlikely at the best of times. But given long and deep recessions, an aging population and the sheer volume of new firepower, this simply isn’t the case.

Instead the problem lies not with the polls but with the pollsters. Poorly phrased questions and uncommon surveying techniques, paired with an American immigration flood, means you need to dig under the headlines to find the truth.

**Categories:** Propaganda

---

### [Kids, Carrying and Con Jobs](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/kids-carrying-and-con-jobs/)

**Published:** September 30, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

The media was lightly abuzz, echoing without critical review a study [1](#note-3449-1 "State Gun Law Environment and Youth Gun Carrying in the United States, Xuan, Hemenway, JAMA Pediatrics online September 2015") that said states with strict gun control laws had fewer kids carrying guns.

As with all studies the media fails to study, there is far less here than meets the eye. The report itself has too many lapses to even consider it worthwhile, except perhaps as a case study in poor research methodology.

The major defects to this study include:

- Raw data source and its collection are suspect.
- Major omissions of U.S. states and territories.
- Selection of specific years that ignore trends in juvenile gun misuse.

## Raw Data, Unintentionally Cooked

Let’s ignore using the Brady Campaign Scorecard – unlike the authors of the study currently under my microscope – as the definition of good/strict gun control laws. We have repeatedly shown that Brady scores have no correlation to violent crime.

The real problem is less with the Brady Scorecard and more with how the rate of juveniles “carrying” guns was made.

This study turned to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a product of the Center for Disease Control (CDC). This ongoing survey attempts to identify risky behaviors in young people (which if my childhood was any indication includes just about everything I did). This research involves sending a questionnaire to school students. In terms of knowing if kids are carrying guns in an endangering way, this methodology has several defects:

**ATTENDENCE:** School attendance varies greatly by urbanization and economics. In other words the truancy and drop-out rates are much higher in cities with inner-city street gangs. These also happen to include states with stricter gun control laws. Hence, there is a built-in measurement problem when it comes to guns.

**QUESTION:** Does the question “on how many days did you carry a weapon such as a gun” have a different meaning to a gang-banging juvenile and a rural kid who frequently goes hunting? Yes, it does. So the ambiguous question creates problems all on its own.

**TRUTHINESS:** Do students answer surveys honestly, especially school administered questions concerning illegal activities? Someone with a pistol in their pocket might answer a question about carrying firearms quite differently that a 16 year old from Arkansas who just bagged his first white tail deer.

Since the study under scrutiny treats this survey as a gold standard, and uses no other basis for measuring how often juveniles carry guns illegally or recklessly, the study rapidly becomes farcical. Indeed, one of the biggest gripes about this study is why the authors studiously avoided crime statistics, such as the number of arrests or convictions of juveniles for illegal firearm carry or use (more on this below). Being arrested for weapons violations is a very direct and statistically robust endangering behavior (unless you wish to count shooting bucks during hunting season endangering, which to the buck I suppose it is). This is what the authors should have used, which is likely why they didn’t.

## MIA States and Districts

Even if the raw data collected from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey was sound for this purpose, it is glaring that only 38 states are reported in the cherry picked years this study used. Among the missing is California, which includes LA County, which is home of the original Gangster Paradise and the well hole of wholesale homicide with guns, including homicide by juvenile gang members.

This is important because California ranks as #1 for strict gun control laws.

Ponder this a bit more. The state with the strictest gun control laws – and which includes Los Angeles, a city in the [top 20 U.S. cities for homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/big-city-bang-bang/) – is not represented in this study. Neither is Washington D.C., which retains the title of the nation’s homicide capital. That the Youth Risk Behavior Survey doesn’t capture this data is not the fault of the authors of the study I dissect. But using this data is their fault, and a glaring (perhaps intentional) one.

## Declining Juvenile Gun Crime

What the study does not measure is if this is a growing problem (not that this study could, given the reprehensible methodology). The good news is that juvenile weapons crime is a *shrinking* problem.

[![Bureau of Justice Statistics: weapons violation arrest rate by age](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bjs-weapons-violation-arrest-rate-by-age-400x376.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bjs-weapons-violation-arrest-rate-by-age.png)Recall that I suggested using crime statistics instead of survey data. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has a lot of gooey numbers concerning crimes and guns. As expected, they even note what the trends are concerning weapons and juveniles, and show that the rate of firearm law violations (such as carrying in public) is on the decline [2](#note-3449-2 "Arrest in the United States, 1990-2010, Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 2012"). In fact, in the last six years of available data, the rate of weapons offenses for juveniles has fallen almost 50%. Things are getting better on a national basis … except in California (the reduction was only 41%). *D.C. doesn’t report those numbers at all*.

Interestingly, the authors of this rapidly fading “study” selected survey years 2007, 2009 and 2011. Yet the survey was also conducted in 2013. This is important because over time, more and more states have participated in this somewhat crippled survey. Had the authors used the last three years, their data would have been much more robust though no less inaccurate.

So let’s be clear: The goal is to measure endangerment. Actual, real, occurring firearm misuse. This data is collected daily by law enforcement across the country and has been for decades. It is available to anyone. Yet the authors sought data that inaccurately and indirectly measured nothing of the sort. Speaking of crime, I think we saw one committed in this study.

## What Does Crime Tell Us

Had the authors used juvenile weapons crime data instead of inaccurate, limited and indirect survey methods, they would likely have come to a different conclusion.

Funding limits do not permit a full analysis at this time (send Gun Facts some money and we’ll add it to the project list). So we quickly grabbed data for the states with the strictest and least strict Brady Campaign scores, and for the United States as a whole, and the juvenile arrest rates for weapons charges from the FBI. We also looked at annual data covering 12 years, up to the most recent FBI reporting year their online database presented.

[![BJS: juvenile weapons arrest rates for california arizona and the united states](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/juvenile-weapons-arrest-rates-california-arizona-united-states-400x276.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/juvenile-weapons-arrest-rates-california-arizona-united-states.jpg)Surprise.

California, with the strictest gun control laws in the land, has a substantially higher juvenile arrest rate for weapons offenses. By substantially higher, I mean nearly 70% higher than the United States and nearly 400% higher than Arizona, the state with allegedly the most lax gun control in the nation. Instantly we see not only the original sin the media missed (e.g., omitting big problem states like California) but also that the basic hypothesis of the study appears to be inaccurate when exposed to the harsh light of hard data.

A quick aside about this chart: Please take note that after years of national decline in such offenses, California has yet to have a juvenile weapons arrest rate as low as Arizona did a decade and a half ago.

## Another to Ignore

This is yet another study worth ignoring because the study was defective from birth, crippled by congenital defects in the source data, the assumptions about strict gun control laws, and even the nature about what was being measured. I just wish the media was wise enough to ignore bad research.

Notes:

1. *State Gun Law Environment and Youth Gun Carrying in the United States*, Xuan, Hemenway, JAMA Pediatrics online September 2015 [↩](#return-note-3449-1)
2. *Arrest in the United States, 1990-2010*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 2012 [↩](#return-note-3449-2)

**Categories:** California, Children and Guns, Propaganda

**Tags:** carry, gun control, guns, juvenile, laws

---

### [Pondering Parkland](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/pondering-parkland/)

**Published:** February 19, 2018
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Now that details of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida have emerged, we can begin to explore causes and potential cures (unlike members of the gun control industry who didn’t hesitate a moment before proffering legislation of dubious efficacy). In this article we review:

- The high-level notes about the event
- Mental health and its recurrence in such incidents
- Legal intervention failures – Parkland and Virginia Tech (VT)
- Mass shootings as a policy priority
- What to watch in the political arena
- Legislative options and realities

## The high-level notes about the event

- The shooter was [autistic](http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-school-shooting-cruz-20180214-story.html), as was the Sandy Hook shooter. 
    - He had regular behavioral problems to the point that his mother would sometimes call the police to come over and talk to him.
    - He had been treated at a local mental health center and had been on [medications](http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-school-shooting-cruz-20180214-story.html)
    - He was in a degrading mental state.
- He had a set of disruptive personal setbacks, including: 
    - Expulsion from high school for making threats against other students
    - Recent loss of his adoptive mother
- The assault had been planned from the approach to exposing victims, to his escape plan.
- The shooter had sought public attention, posting online that he would be a “[professional school shooter](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43071710).”

## The sundry issues

### Mental health and the recurrence of such

The mental health issue is both the most complicated, but also the one most likely to tick people off. So, let’s get it out of the way first.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Prior-Mental-Health-Signs-400x264.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Prior-Mental-Health-Signs.jpg)When it comes to mass public shootings, mental health may be ***the*** common denominator. Using one database [1](#note-4529-1 "We used the ongoing mass shooting database maintained by Mother Jones, but extracted only events that conform to the FBI’s definition of a mass public shooting. The Mother Jones database has well-known limitations, but it is a good enough resource for ballpark analysis.") [2](#note-4529-2 "We extracted from the Mother Jones database those events that fit the FBI’s definition of mass public shooting. We also retained only records for the twenty-first century, since Internet content before that time, even for news organizations, is of unreliable consistency.") of public shootings, and another one that investigates clues as to the mental condition of the shooters, we see that at a minimum, 54% of mass public shooters had prior signs of mental health issues. The actual (and currently unknowable) ratio is likely much higher.

In the Parkland shooting, the mental state of the shooter appears to be deranged. In police confessions he claimed that [voices in his head](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/02/15/florida-high-school-suspect-nikolas-cruz-confessed-was-shooter-affidavit-says.html) directed his actions. This follows a history of behavior problems seemingly linked to his autism.

NOTE: Before anyone bashes me for insensitivity for diving into autism, know I have a nephew with autism and associated behaviors.

Some places on the autism spectrum are known for erratic and occasionally violent episodes. This makes certain events unpredictable. Though not universal to mass shooters, we did see autism in America’s two most notorious public school massacres (Parkland and [Sandy Hook](http://time.com/19957/adam-lanzas-violence-wasnt-typical-of-aspergers/)). Autism does not cover all mental disorders of mass public shooters, but it has recurred often enough to be of interest. Enough so that some mental [health researcher are exploring the topic](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/21/study-finds-significant-portion-of-mass-murderers-and-serial-killers-had-neurological-disorders-including-autism/?utm_term=.3545bc1750de) more deeply.

There are several complicating factors to devising meaningful policy from the mental health angle (though I do have a proposal to get the ball rolling).

- There are two general categories for such murderers: sociopaths (who have a lack of empathy for victims) and psychopaths (who have an overt desire to harm others). This factor may help us identify two (or more) policies.
- The motivations of such persons to kill are, by definition, irrational. Applying a rational policy for a small group of irrational people is difficult.
- Any policy that controls this tiny subset of the population, yet leaves everyone else alone, is really tricky.

My research into this realm indicates that we really don’t know enough about the psychology of mass murderers. This is due in part to medical privacy laws that prevent researchers from aggregating profiles of shooters. State and federal law needs to change to mandate public disclosure of all medical records of these shooters. This is a necessary first step for us to have a real handle on such a killer’s motivations.

This would include their pharmacology histories. Family members of the Parkland shooter note that he was under treatment at a mental health facility for his sundry issues. Once relative of the Parkland shooter claims he had been [medicated to deal with his eroding emotional state](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article200126034.html). An open question, then, is what medications he was taking or withdrawing from. Various classes of medications used for mental health patients have well-known, violence-associated side effects. Two of the most frequently used medications for autism – selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and antipsychotic medicines such as haloperidol or risperidone – have established withdrawal side effects related to violence.

Since the Parkland shooter admitted to hearing voices, the antipsychotic medications become of immediate interest. For [haloperidol, some withdrawal symptoms](http://www.drugsdb.com/rx/haldol/haldol-withdrawal/) include agitation or aggression, hallucinations and delusions. For [risperidone](https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2014/06/23/risperdal-risperidone-withdrawal-symptoms-how-long-do-they-last/), they include anxiety, confusion, hallucinations, delusions, depersonalization, irritability, mood swings and psychosis. Yet, due to current medical privacy laws, we will likely never know the Parkland shooter’s pharmacology history even after he is executed.

### Legal intervention failures – Parkland and VT

Laws are only as good as law enforcement. With Parkland, we see critical failures at both the local and national level.

The Parkland shooter was on [law enforcement’s radar since 2016](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-florida-shooting/florida-school-massacre-suspect-on-authorities-radar-in-2016-media-idUSKCN1G10BI). Local police had been called twenty times to tame him. School officials were engaged, and even the FBI had been alerted due to a social media post in which he said he would be a school shooter. Local law enforcement, alerted, did not or could not intervene. Federal agents were alerted, but did not forward notification to the local office.

In short, law enforcement failed.

It has been confirmed that the Parkland shooter was at least recently under the care of government mental health services. They, more than law enforcement, should have had a handle on any potentially endangering behaviors. Thus far I have found no evidence of these mental health services reporting endangering behaviors to law enforcement. Again, due to medical privacy laws, this may never be disclosed.

## Mass shootings as a policy priority, and the realities therein

Now, time for some perspective.

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Firearm-homicides-v-mass-shooting-victims-400x265.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Firearm-homicides-v-mass-shooting-victims.jpg)First, this classifies as a “mass public shooting” using the established definition honed by the FBI (though social media posts show that people are quite content to make up their own definitions of “mass public shooting” to fit their sundry prejudices). Horrific as it is, we must keep in mind that such events are numerically rare and constitute a small part of firearm homicides.

This brings two elements of public policy to the forefront. First, why is that the larger problem – mainly gang-related homicides in poor neighborhoods with victims being people of color – captures little public attention? There have been fits and spurts of spending on gang intervention, but with little effect. Tough solutions should be sought for both kinds of violence; but people tend to focus on the highly publicized mass shootings because those events happen in their more affluent neighborhoods, not the poorer parts of town where they dare not venture.

**Venue****Count****Fatalities**Other50%49%School19%24%Workplace17%11%Religious7%10%Military6%6%Airport2%1%SOURCE: Mother Jones mass shooting database normalized to FBI definitions, 2000-2018That being said, we see one curious problem vis-à-vis schools. Due to numerous factors (densely packed and confined spaces, high people count, inexperienced victims unable to react well, lack of armed security, and, yes, “gun free zone” policies) the body count for mass public shootings is higher than other venues.

**NOTE:** One grain of salt is required here. Mass public school shootings are statistically rare. That means tallies are statistically fragile. Given that the years 2000–2018 in this analysis include Parkland and Sandy Hook, the fatality rates for school shootings are abnormally skewed. But, this is out of necessity. Since the *Mother Jones* database is derived from news reports, the year 2000 is the first year in which I am reasonably sure most major news organizations at the metropolitan level had a fully formed online presence. Anything before then begs incomplete reporting.

The questions on the table come down to:

- Are school mass shootings a topic that requires special attention because they are inherently different?
- What would be an effective solution?

The answer to the first question is “yes.” When the Columbine Massacre occurred, I said that the fame angle would cause copycat shootings by socially disenfranchised kids. This was the case at Sandy Hook and Parkland as well as some college shootings. Schools are also a special case due to the different physical aspects of the venues – lots of people packed into small rooms, few exit paths (especially in multi-story schools like Columbine and Parkland). Like the recent Las Vegas concert shooting or even the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, packed places create high body counts.

Turning to the second question, what legislation (aside from redesigning our schools to make them less packed) would be effective? Of the four public school mass shootings since the year 2000, we see these factors:

- Three of the shooters had prior signs of mental health issues, and for the fourth the case is uncertain.
- Only one acquired the firearms legally.
- The Red Lake and Marysville-Pilchuck shootings had ten or fewer fatalities, making the other two – Sandy Hook and Parkland – radical outliers.
- Handguns and shotguns were the only weapons used in half of the events (handguns and an AR-15 were used in one, and an AR-15 in the other).

Given these realities, we see that there is no statistical common denominator on weapon type. We do see a significantly higher student enrolment for Parkland (making it a better killing zone), which is undoubtedly a factor. Due to their young ages, the students at Sandy Hook elementary were ill-equipped for evasion.

Perhaps most interesting is the subject of weapons acquisition and mental health (a narrow intersection of topics). We see three quarters of the guns were acquired illegally and three quarters or more of the shooters had prior signs of mental health issues. There may be a legislative fix to deny sales of guns to people suffering mental illness, but it is clear that will not stop the problem. At Sandy Hook, the shooter murdered his mother before stealing her guns. At Red Lake, the killer murdered his grandfather before stealing his police-issued handgun and shotguns. At Marysville, the guns were taken from someone who had acquired them illegally.

Given this pairing – mentally unstable people who will steal guns to commit massacres – there appear to be few viable legislative fixes to how guns are acquired. This then devolves the problem to the other side of the coin – mental health intervention.

### What to watch in the political arena

Sadly, some factions have quite adroitly hijacked this tragedy.

![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/gun-rally-art-400x522.jpg)Two days after the shooting, there was a highly televised rally where students very specifically attacked the NRA and politicians who receive NRA contributions (DISCLOSURE: I am not a member of any group, including the NRA). From the flyer for the event, we see it was sponsored/organized at least in part by two gun-control groups. Additionally, browsing the websites of some of the other groups shows histories of advocating for gun control, even outside of school campus issues.

I admire the ability of twenty-first-century high school students to self-organize, but this rally was a top-down exploitation of the situation – driven, I would bet, by Michael Bloomberg’s front groups. They likely had sketched out plans for PR well in advance of such events; pre-funded them; and established liaisons with like-minded state and local groups; then created the flyer you see above and rented the sound systems when the opportunity presented itself.

Part of this response, too, were the speeches and television interviews given by kids from Parkland. Their very specific and targeted rhetoric is far above the pay grade of a high school student. The constant repetition of anti-NRA memes indicates message coaching. In short, they were likely co-opted by Moms Demand Action (note the similarity in font choices for Moms and the event flyer) then spoon-fed their talking points. Hijacking children for political positioning is now the new normal.

## Legislative options and realities

The above campaign aside, let discuss legislation, from an efficacy standpoint.

- **ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN:** Foremost, most mass public shootings are done with handguns, and a full half of the twenty-first-century mass school shootings were done with handguns and shotguns. An assault weapons ban, even if it involved mass confiscation, would have no effects since the ease of substitution with handguns would be instant.
- **“HIGH CAPACITY” MAGAZINE BAN:** The Columbine killers murdered almost as many high schoolers as did the shooter in Parkland, but did not have anything like an AR-15 (they had a TEC-9, but that is a glorified handgun). Most of the Columbine bloodshed came from two 12-gauge shotguns. Cops keep “riot guns” in their squad cars for a reason – they move a lot of flesh with few shells. Combine all this with the fact that doing rapid magazine changes with a handgun takes very little practice, and that mass murders typically plan their assaults well in advance, and any magazine ban (even with confiscation) is easily mooted by using handguns instead.
- **“UNIVERSAL” BACKGROUND CHECKS:** As noted above, three quarters of mass school shootings were done with stolen guns, and half of these instances occurred with guns stolen after the owners were murdered.
- **AGE FOR BUYERS:** One of the four twenty-first-century public school mass shooters bought their own guns (the rest stole them). Currently, someone of high school age cannot buy a handgun. We could raise the age to buy a rifle, but at best that solves precisely one quarter of the problem, and given that three quarters of mass school shootings used stolen guns, even this is unlikely to make any progress.
- **MENTAL ILLNESS BLACKLIST:** Oddly, everyone – pro-gun and anti-gun – favors keeping guns out of the hands of lunatics. But adding the mentally ill to a no-sell list presents several problems: 
    - **Who defines what is mentally ill?** It wasn’t so many years ago that the *Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders* listed homosexuality as a psychiatric disease. If America were to create an all-encompassing database of the mentally ill, the definition of who is added would be hotly debated.
    - **The theft problem.** As noted above, crazy people stealing guns is the most common mode for mass school shooters, so the efficacy of the blacklist approach is low. That being said, the authorities being alerted to a crazy person attempting to buy a gun would be a useful notification.
    - **Getting off the list.** Some people will be misclassified (Senator Ted Kennedy was once on the terrorist watch list, and despite his political power, it took a long time for his name to be removed). Other people may be ill, but eventually get better. Civil libertarians will want the delisting process streamlined from the start.
- **EMERGENCY CONFISCATION:** A couple of states have passed laws (poorly written) to allow judges to order the confiscation of guns owned by someone alleged to be a danger to others. Only one of the twenty-first-century mass school shooters bought his gun. It was in a state with no firearm registration (and nearly no states register rifles), so the effectiveness of such laws is restricted to when a person is reported to be of unstable mental health and owns a gun. People may not know the latter even if the former s obvious.
- **MENTAL HEALTH CONTAINMENT:** [Deinstitutionalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation) is a decades-old process of reducing involuntary psychiatric confinement. It has been blamed for the explosion in the number of crazy street people. But we have seen two cases – Virginia Tech and Parkland – where people with obvious and ongoing mental health issues, as well as violence-tinged social media posts, flirted with public mental health services and later shot up campuses. Since 75–100% of the recent mass school shooters were unstable, this might be a ***quick and effective***
- **PSYCHIATRICS DRUGS AND THEIR CONTROL:** Medical privacy laws preclude true understanding of how often psychiatric medications create mass shooters. It is an area of research that needs to begin, and this starts with rewriting medical privacy laws so that the full medical history of mass public shooters is publicly disclosed upon death or conviction.

**UPDATE 2018-02-25:** It appears that there is a significant possibility that autism is one likely factor in events such as Parkland. One tally in [an academic paper](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178914000305) notes that of 239 killers evaluated, 28% had or likely had autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Autistic people make up about 1% of the population. Statistically, this is of high interest.

Notes:

1. We used the ongoing mass shooting database maintained by *Mother Jones*, but extracted only events that conform to the FBI’s definition of a mass public shooting. The *Mother Jones* database has well-known limitations, but it is a good enough resource for ballpark analysis. [↩](#return-note-4529-1)
2. We extracted from the Mother Jones database those events that fit the FBI’s definition of mass public shooting. We also retained only records for the twenty-first century, since Internet content before that time, even for news organizations, is of unreliable consistency. [↩](#return-note-4529-2)

**Categories:** Children and Guns, Mass Shootings

**Tags:** Florida, mass public, Parkland, school, shooting, statistics

---

### [Suicide Women](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/suicide-women/)

**Published:** February 17, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

[![bogus headlines women gun deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/bogus-headlines-women-gun-deaths-400x300.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/bogus-headlines-women-gun-deaths.png)“86% of all women killed by firearms are U.S. women,” says a disturbingly biased medical journal article. Shame that the same research shows that the “problem” isn’t guns but mental health.

“Homicide, Suicide, and Unintentional Firearm Fatality: Comparing the United States With Other High-Income Countries, 2003” is a somewhat outdated piece of gun control industry funded effluvium (the give-away was in the footnotes, one of which reads “David Hemenway received partial support from the Joyce Foundation”). Any study that begins with a conclusion – in this case the assumption that guns are a problem, and a unique problem in the United States – is instantly invalid. Had the authors studied what causes people to die, then slowly dug to discover which mode of demise were statistically important, the research would be allowed. This academic sanitary paper will not.

What the gun control industry bought and published are a number of scary sounding stats, such as “86% of all women killed by firearms are U.S. women.” The goal was to find ways of frightening women. But we know from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that [women are less likely than men to be murdered in the United States](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/worldly-women-and-guns/ "Women in U.S. far less likely to be murdered than men in industrialized countries") than other industrialized countries. Since this is the case, how then can nearly 90% of shot women be only in the U.S. of A.?

The issue is mainly suicide.

Buried in the same article, yet never formed into a headline or aped by the gun control industry, is the simple fact that more women shoot themselves than get shot by someone else. Almost twice as many. In the same article one table revealed that in 2003 17% more women plugged themselves than were assassinated by other people. That the numbers presented in the paper do not agree with the Center for Disease Control’s mortality database by virtue of the authors averaging all ages (including the low, low, low accidental gun deaths for youngsters) increases the dubious nature of this industrial grade canard.

That women murdered with guns occur 1/5th as often as for men adds to the obfuscation that the Joyce Foundation invested in.

But that got our investigative juices flowing. The key questions include:

- Is this consistent? Do women more often commit firearm suicides than are firearm homicide victims?
- Is the rate changing as more guns enter public ownership?

[![women suicides homicides guns trend](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/women-suicides-homicides-guns-trend-400x297.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/women-suicides-homicides-guns-trend.jpg)The suicide situation has gotten worse and the homicide rates have gotten better.

Over the latest 15 years (2013 being the most recent year in which data was available) the firearm homicide rate has fallen 14%, as has most violent crime. However, the total female suicide rate has been rising. Of all suicidal women, twice as many chose other means to kill themselves as they do with guns.

Wrap your head around these separate data points. Women are nearly half less likely to get be murdered with a gun than to murder themselves with one. And they are half as likely to use a gun to kill themselves that some other method, such as poison, hanging and overdosing on Häagen-Dazs.

Would you have understood that when you read “86% of all women killed by firearms are U.S. women”?

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Joyce Foundation

**Tags:** guns, homicide, suicide, women

---

### [Everytown Agitprop](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/everytown-agitprop/)

**Published:** December 30, 2014
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Michael Bloomberg, the avenging fallen angel for the gun control industry, is a progenitor of Everytown, the new gun control juggernaut. This organization has been the subject of scathing reviews given their habit of making statistical claims for which they do not cite their sources, or citing sources that are in effect gun control organizations.

In short, they are con(wo)men.

People interested in honesty concerning gun control (the Gun Facts mission) forward me Everytown emails. Of late, emails emanating from Everytown have devolved into the absurd. So, as a public service to those who like debunking political fraud (and have yet to read *[the book on modern propaganda analysis](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240701/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0983240701&linkCode=as2&tag=frethimed-20 "Shooting The Bull | Propaganda Analysis")*), here are some selected snippets from Everytown emails and a bit of backlash.

> A world where it’s fine to **shoot first** and ask questions later. A world where **anyone can carry a gun anywhere** — schools, churches, bars. A world where **criminals and the severely mentally ill can buy guns with no questions asked**.
> 
> Make no mistake: They’re putting you, me, and an entire generation of **our children** at risk.

Bloomberg, consider hiring some better copywriters. I doubt even Sarah Brady would buy this bunk. Let’s break it down for everyone who might.

**SHOOT FIRST:** This is a veiled reference to stand-your-ground laws, which merely state that you are under no obligation to flee if attacked in public (which is the law of the land for when you are at home). That they assume self-defense is strictly a firearm issue shows Everytown’s political myopia. But nowhere in any stand-your-ground law is permission granted to “shoot first and ask questions later.” Indeed, people have gone to prison for doing so even when they had concealed carry permits (CCWs) and lived in stand-your-ground states.

Since the primary politico tool is fear, the very phrasing of this passage (and their other email missives) is to incite fear in the population, despite the ever declining rate of violence in America. !!! chart VC crime rate fall !!!

**ANYONE CAN CARRY A GUN ANYWHERE:** “Anyone” is a big group of people that includes felons (barred from possessing guns at all), lunatics (barred from possessing guns at all) and former New York City mayors (who should be barred from possessing guns at all). Right away the ploy is obvious – make the uninformed voter believe that every stranger is a danger. “Anywhere” is equally absurd given that even in CCW friendly states, citizens are routinely prohibited from carrying firearms in courthouses, stadiums, schools and bars (though the [experiment in Virginia](http://www.wnd.com/2011/08/334117/ "Guns in bars may reduce violent crimes") shows this isn’t the problem that many of the drinking class thought it might be).

**CRIMINALS AND THE SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL CAN BUY GUNS WITH NO QUESTIONS ASKED:** Do I even need to comment on this? Does anyone support arming thugs and nuts? No, not even the routinely vilified NRA. How can anyone with functioning dendra make this claim (they can’t, which says something about the inner-cranial malfunctions of Everytown’s digital media managers).

**[![Child firearm accidental death rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Child-accidental-death-rates-400x264.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Child-accidental-death-rates.jpg)PUTTING YOU, ME, AND AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF OUR CHILDREN AT RISK:** It is an ancient adage that anyone hiding behind children is either a coward or a conman. It is a political stunt as old as kissing babies, but with the opposite intention. The agitprop at play involves activating your millions of years of mammalian instincts to protect children by asserting (without evidence) that gun rights leads to child deaths. Thankfully, the Center for Disease Control – the official tally takers for all things fatal – tells us that child firearm death rates have been plunging while gun owner rights have been expanding.

In another mailer, with text I believe is attributed to the fellow who coined the slogan “not one more”) we are forced to read:

> My son was shot and killed at UC Santa Barbara in May of this year. He died because of **craven, irresponsible politicians** and the NRA.

[![updated-golden-age-chart-2](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/updated-golden-age-chart-2-400x288.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/updated-golden-age-chart-2.jpg)What this linguistic reprobate willingly omits is that support for gun control has been fading over the past few decades. Having experimented with the stuff for over two decades, and having seen violent crime soar during the same period, people got fed up with restrictions of their rights (as codified by the Second Amendment) and demanded them back. In effect, this craven front man for the gun control industry is telling everyone that politicians should ignore the will of their constituents. Correct me if I am wrong, but that is an oligarchy, not a democracy (how much do you want to bet he has a “Democracy Now” bumper sticker on his BMW?)

In yet another fundraising email, Everytown said:

> There have been **nearly 100 school shootings** since the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, and I’m pretty sure you’d agree that we can’t accept this as the norm**. No other developed country** in the world faces this challenge — and we don’t have to either!

The first bit about “nearly 100 school shootings” has been over-analyzed using Everytown’s own data. Among the offenses to science, their roster of “school” shootings includes:

- Incidents where people are going to or away from school, but are not at school
- Suicide attempts on college campuses
- People who are not students (one case where a perp used the school parking lot as a rendezvous point to murder some other non-student)

**Cause****Deaths**Transportation3,683Poisoning653Firearm (minus homicides)81SOURCE: CDC WISQARS using 2012 data[Even the U.S. government doesn’t buy Everytown’s effluvium](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/74-school-shootings-bunk/) concerning school shootings. But what about those other developed countries? I rebut with one simple question: since these numbers are so low, into the statistical noise realm, why is Everytown worried about this? When you exclude death from when guns are misused (intentional homicides including gang warfare, suicides, a scant number of undeterminable causes) and properly used (legal interventions) we see only 81 people of public school years die from guns, regardless of the location. Accidents involving transportation kill 45 times as many kids, many near schools, but Everytown is campaigning for better traffic enforcement?

If people respect science and the truth, they need to shutdown Everytown, for they are not interested in the same.

**Categories:** Everytown, Propaganda, School Shootings

**Tags:** everytown, gun control, propaganda

---

### [Child Gun Deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/child-gun-deaths/)

**Published:** April 20, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

When the gun control industry mentions children, it’s time to hunt for bunk.

Our species would not have survived for long had we not acquired a knee-jerk response to keep kids safe. Politicos know this, which is why they hoist kids a high for everything from gun control to Head Start. Our communal desire to protect kids is used by the gun control industry to create fear that children are endangered by guns on every street corner.

As with most gun control industry pronouncements, it is far from the truth.

## Age is the first thing

First off, over time the gun control industry has modified their public utterance. They used to claim 13 children die each day from firearms, but that statistic included active gang members up to age 24 … not what you think of a “children”. In adult conversations, a “child” is one who has not yet reached puberty. So the gun control industry has modified their lingo to phrases like “children and teenagers” or “children and young adults.”

Fair enough, but we have to remember that gang recruitment has been reported at the early age of 10. Testosterone poisoning starts at around age 13-14, and this is when at-risk youths start lives of crime and violence.

The Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) databases set this breakpoint for children at age 14 and below. Given the definition of “child” and the influence of gang affiliation starting at around this age, all discussions of “children and guns” will be confined to ages 0-14. Any members of the gun control industry watching this blog, obey this.

## Perspective

**TOTAL****FIREARM****RATIO**HOMICIDES8961935:1PARENTAL HOMICIDES5383814:1ACCIDENTS & ADVERSE EFFECTS4,0456959:1The CDC database reports every form of death, and can do so by age groups. Thus it is easy to show the perspective concerning firearms and other modes of demise for children.

Accidents are easy to evaluate. Homicides are a bit tricky. Aside from the rare instance of someone murdering a kid with a gun, then claiming it was an accident, the unintentional death toll for children is small – 69 victims in 2013, or a little more than on per state for the entire year. When compared to all forms of accidental death for children, we see that firearms make-up about 1/59th of the number. This shouldn’t be surprising since the rate of accidental firearm fatalities has been plunging for decades, and children were not frequent victims of gun accidents to begin with.

Firearm homicides of children include gang-related activities. In the past couple of years, in Oakland, California alone, there were a few reports of children slain in broad daylight as rival gangs shot-it-out on the streets. Toss in the few kids already actively running with gangs or in the company of gang members, and we see that unraveling child murders with firearms gets tricky. The FBI’s Expanded Homicide tables don’t help much \[unless I missed a table somewhere\] as they do no matrix who was murdered by age and circumstance, though they do note the #1 mode for murdering children – 33% of all deaths in the most recent reporting year [1](#note-3117-1 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 2012, Expanded Homicide Data Table 9") –is the category Personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.).

According to one study, [2](#note-3117-2 "Homicides of Children and Youth, U.S. Department of Justice, 2001") most murdered children were suffocated, which validates the FBI’s numbers above. That study noted “When parents killed their offspring under age 12, they rarely used a firearm or knife. Firearms or knives were responsible for the deaths of 7% of offspring victims under 12.” Sadly, year-over-year, about 60% of murdered/suffocated children were killed by their mothers and fathers … though nobody in the gun control industry is calling for the licensing and registration of parents.

The perspective is that as tragic as a child’s death may be, the number of kids being gunned down is small. Subtract gang activity, and the firearm death rate for kids becomes statistical noise. The accidental firearm death rate for children is about 1/10th of a child per every 100,000 people, or literally one in a million.

CauseRatioSuffocation24:1Transportation-Related21:1Homicides (non-firearm)11:1Drowning10:1Fire/burning5:1Residential fires4:1Poisoning3:1Natural/environmental2:1Striking (blunt force)2:1Firearms accidents1:1Falls1:1Adverse effects – Medical Care0.7:1Cut / Pierce0.6:1Adverse effects – Drugs0.2:1Ratio accidental deaths to accidental firearm deaths for children (SOURCE: CDC WISQARS, 2013)To ram a little more perspective into uncomfortable places on the body politic, we have to see just how urgent accidental firearm deaths are to children given the roster of other preventable forms of pre-adolescent annihilation. What we see is that accidental firearm deaths are near the bottom of the list, and the gap to the lowest forms of death is fractional. All told, your kid is over 99 times more likely to accidentally die from anything else other than guns, and even that number is over-stated for a variety of reasons.

## Save the kids … and the sanity

Given the amazingly low accidental and homicide firearm death rates for children, our time and political anger is better spent on the two big problems: gangs (that recruit adolescents into dangerous life styles) and the 99+% of ways kids get killed other than firearms. If it saves just one child’s life, should we ban plastic bags (suffocation), cars (transportation-related), swimming pools (drowning), fire and nature (anything wild at a camp site)? These forms of death are avoidable too.

Notes:

1. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 2012, Expanded Homicide Data Table 9 [↩](#return-note-3117-1)
2. *Homicides of Children and Youth*, U.S. Department of Justice, 2001 [↩](#return-note-3117-2)

**Categories:** Accidental Gun Deaths, Children and Guns

**Tags:** accidental, child, children, gun deaths, homicide

---

### [Cali Crossroads](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/cali-crossroads/)

**Published:** August 6, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Are gangs on the run in Los Angeles?

No, but their violence may be abating, and it has nothing to do with gun control.

The state of California (a.k.a. the State of Emergency) recently published a pair of decadal crime reports. Buried in the data is evidence that despite a backward-thinking mania, California has enjoyed a drop in violence without an increase in gun control. At first blush, the decline appears to be uniquely tied to Los Angeles County, and to a brace of 1993 era laws that targeted criminals.

The big take away is that from 2005 through 2012 (the latest date for which we can compare Cali stats against the rest of the nation) California violent crime has shrunk impressively. Part of this is due to the fact that the rest of America is not the violent cesspool known as L.A.! SoCal can only improve, edging ever closer to the low violence rates of the remaining American terrain. But improve it has.

## Gun control didn’t

Foremost, we have to recognize that gun control did nothing. With state-level preemption, the only thing Los Angeles or any other district could do between 2005 and 2012 was buy guns from citizens, which study after study shows has no effect what-so-ever (for newcomers, guns brought to so-called “buy backs” are almost entirely antiques and rifles, none of which have ever been used in crimes, and hence not part of the problem).

Yet during this period, there was little in the way of new gun control. According to the [Cal Guns Foundation timeline](http://wiki.calgunsfoundation.org/index.php?title=Time_Line_of_California_Firearms_Laws), the Golden State only banned open carry of handguns (which nearly nobody was doing). That law, passing in 2011, would not have bent the curve at the end of the 2005-2012 period. One might argue that a 2003 bill to revise the Handgun Safety Certificate program made a difference, but given that the Bureau of Justice Statistics confirms most crime guns come from unregulated street sources, this is nonsensical.

So, we have a period of seven years with no meaningful new gun control laws, but a sharp drop in crime compared to the rest of the nation. The question is “WTF?”

## Los Angeles … where all angels are lost

To understand California crime (and guns) you have to understand L.A.

**Homicides 2005****Reduction****2005 Rate****2014 Rate**Statewide total250337%7.04.4Los Angeles1068**52%****10.9**5.2San Diego9830%3.32.3Orange7727%2.61.9Riverside10927%5.64.1San Bernardino174**41%**95.3Santa Clara4316%2.52.1Alameda12626%8.66.4Sacramento11032%8.15.5Contra Costa80**46%**8.04.3Fresno7731%8.86.1Homicides and homicide rates for the top-ten California counties by 2005 population estimatesThough L.A. experienced an impressive 52% decline in homicides over 10 years, at the beginning it accounted for 43% of California murders with only 27% of the state’s population.

From a policy perspective, controlling L.A. violence was a priority. But missing from the political rhetoric was the fact that gun laws were uniform across the state. If the citizens of Los Angeles had to jump through just as many gun control hoops as the residents of Amador City (population 185), then the violent crime rate should be lower in both places. But it isn’t, even after nine years of improvement (in 2014, L.A. county had 31% of the state’s homicides).

## What happened in la-la-land?

Our first big clue then is what changed in the state and in Los Angeles. Sadly, the reports from the California Department of Justice did not break down all crime categories by county. But given L.A.’s outsized population and crime rate, and the reduction in L.A. homicides, the state-wide changes in violence are likely a result from L.A.

**2005****2013/2014****Reduction***California*Rape, robbery, burglary1518444%Gangs and Drugs75634155%Gangs only65331552%Arguments (non-domestic)63129753%All homicides2503169732%*United States*Gangs only85072215%Arguments36922,88922%U.S. – all homicides16,69213,71618%Homicides by Contributing Circumstance, California and U.S., Cal DOJ
and FBI Homicide Supplemental TablesWhiteHispanicBlackOtherRape, robbery, burglary1120Rape, robbery, burglary (%)25%25%50%0%Argument (non-domestic)771177924Argument (non-domestic)(%)**26%****39%****27%**8%Gang (non-drug)121591359Gang (non-drug)(%)4%**50%****43%**3%**2005****2014****Reduction**Firearm1,8451,16937%Non-firearm63649123%Firearm %/all74%70%-4%Non-firearm %/all26%30%4%California homicide by weapon typeThis becomes apparent when three major groupings of violent crimes are broken-down across an arbitrary metric, in this case the race of the victim. The rate of ***arguments*** that result in homicides is relatively flat across the three primary races. But the rate of ***gang*** homicides across races is not. Since gang activity is economically and geographically aligned (poor people in inner cities are more likely to become gang members), the over representation of California Hispanics and blacks committing and being victims of gang homicides is staggeringly high.

First, homicide numbers *are* available by county. As you see in the table above, L.A. had a homicide rate over six times higher than the next most violent county in the top-ten (by population) list. Gun control mavens claim California’s strict gun control is the answer, but since results are not state-wide and since this silliness has been [debunked before](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/understanding-californias-crime-collapse/), we can skip past that. But let’s take a look at one interesting indicator.
Though all categories of violent crime in California fell, we see the most significant reductions in gang/drug related crimes and from arguments. Yet one poorly kept secret in criminology is that the Uniform Crime Statistics do not break down what fatal arguments were about. If a gangster from the Crips starts an argument with a member of the Bloods, and they gun one another down, it is recorded as a homicide by argument, not gang related. For the sake of keeping things clean, we have to accept that “argument” is too broad of a classification. Hence, gangs represent the largest decline in violence.
It is no secret that gangs like using guns, but they also routinely use knives and baseball bats. One would expect to see a decline in gun homicides if there was a reduction in gang homicides. They did decline, but so too did non-firearm homicides, though at a lower rate.

Summarizing: L.A. is a hideously violent place, but it has gotten better, homicides (and especially gang homicides) are dropping ***regardless of the weapon used***, and this occurred during a period of no significant gun control legislation.

## Falling, gang-busters

There are two primarily approaches to reducing gang violence: make people not want to be in gangs, and put gangsters in jail for very long periods of time.

I only had a moment to look into the former, but it did not appear promising. A [gang reduction program for Los Angeles](https://www.crimesolutions.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?ID=275) showed lackluster results. From the study we see:

- … Gang Reduction Program (GRP) was a targeted multiyear (2003-08) initiative to reduce crime and violence associated with youth street gangs in a select group of cities throughout the United States (including L.A. from which the following were reported)
- … no significant differences were found for calls to report vandalism, serious violence incidents, and gang-related serious violence incidents.
- … nonsignificant decreases in the number of gang-related serious violence incidents were reported in the target and displacement areas …

In brief, a program designed to keep people out of L.A. gangs during the period in which gang violence was dropping had no measurable results. Conning kids to stay out of gangs didn’t slow the blood flow.

But as we saw with the first decadal report on [California’s three strikes law](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/understanding-californias-crime-collapse/), putting former gangsters in the slammer does. The interesting thing about Three Strikes and the 10-20-Life laws, which specifically target criminal misuse of guns, is that the effects are perpetual as long as the courts enforce them.

## The right control

In L.A., controlling gang members has proven to be the right way to control violent crime (or at least the largest buckets of it). In the absence of significant gun control legislation, the L.A. commissioners’ recent decision to become NRA lawsuit bait by passing meaningless local gun control laws is at best a misinformed effort, and at worst a cynical ploy by corrupt politicians … err … this is L.A. we are talking about, right? Perhaps I am being redundant.

**Categories:** California, Crime Control

**Tags:** california, gun control, los angeles, violent crime

---

### [NYT Fiction](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/nyt-fiction/)

**Published:** November 23, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

## Main Take-aways

- The “Iron Pipeline” doesn’t exist.
- Most guns that move from one state to another do so as part of normal human relocation, not trafficking.
- The time it takes for a gun to slip into criminal use is so long that the problem is local crime control and not interstate gun control.

When it comes to gun control, nobody has ever accused the New York Times of honesty or accuracy.

I won’t break their losing streak.

In a recent bit of editorial effluvium and journalistic malpractice, the NYT penned perilous prose concerning the mythical “Iron Pipeline” of guns migrating into states with strict gun control from states without. The Gun Facts Project has already run the numbers and shown the [Iron Pipeline](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/interstate-gun-trafficking-mythology/) to be both a con job as well as demonstrating the inverse is actually true. In brief, states with strict gun control laws are more likely to import crime guns from other strict states than those with more libertarian laws.

Yet the NYT leaned upon ageless canards to make it appear as if local gun control laws were a meaningful determinate for gun crimes in strict law states. Since I enjoy [propaganda analysis as well as debunking gun control misinformation](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240701/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0983240701&linkCode=as2&tag=gunfacinfo-20&linkId=H5SLOS7RWC7JXIO3), the NYT piece provides a delightful case study in both (Gregor Aisch and Josh Keller might want to read this breakdown to avoid making such amateur mistakes again).

## Big, Scary Numbers

“About 50,000 guns are found to be diverted to criminals across state lines every year …” was one of the first factless factoids proffered by the NYT. According to the [Catalog of Canards](https://www.facebook.com/notes/446734418674546/), the NYT was using the **Lie of Intimidation** (triggering instinctive reactions to create unfounded fears) and the **Lie of Statistics** (the use of numbers that present misleading information and distort perspective) to scare readers into believing southern hicks were endangering urban sophisticates (I’ve been to New York … often … it ain’t as sophisticated as their branding leads some to believe).

To create bogus bona fides, the authors link to a web page at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). Readers get dumped onto a page of links to various data, but not to a specific set of numbers that relates to the story. Having visited the same page while preparing our [Iron Pipeline myth](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/interstate-gun-trafficking-mythology/) study, I know where the NYT did not deeply dive.

Buried on that page are the “time to crime” statistics. The BATF shows that the average time from a gun being sold at retail to when it is recovered in crime is around eleven years. Any alleged Iron Pipeline would get guns into criminal hands much faster than that. Hence, most of the guns migrated slowly into strict law states, and not via any “pipeline”.

More to the point though was the seemingly intentional merging of two unrelated assertions, namely guns being diverted, and guns crossing state lines (the **Lie of Non Sequiturs**, combining vaguely related, or completely unrelated, information to create a false impression or conclusion). Incorrectly citing a BATF report from the year 2000, they said that as many as 50,000 guns per year are misdirected into the criminal underground, but not all (or even most) migrate to other states. There is no mention in that BATF report of what fraction of the estimated number of diverted guns cross state lines, much less how many are in the mythical south-to-north “pipeline”.

## Complete Non-analysis

The NYT continues the canard by stating “In New York and New Jersey, which have some of the strictest laws in the country, more than two-thirds of guns tied to criminal activity were traced to out-of-state purchases in 2014 …”

Define “out of state”.

Without a bridge, the article’s ham-handed construct leads from the bank of “southern states being the problem” to the opposite shore of “for state like New York and New Jersey.” New Jersey is “out of state” for New York, as is Pennsylvania, Ohio and other nearby locations from where people migrate for jobs, family and regional preference. The goal of the authors was to make an impression without showing the reality (the **Lie of Definition**, using purposefully vague or misleading definitions to create political or legislative leverage, especially when it splits the opposing faction). In this instance, the fact that many crime guns came from *nearby* states is carefully omitted.

Using the detailed BATF state-by-state numbers, for New Jersey we see that after New Jersey itself, Pennsylvania is the top state for crime guns (about 73% as many as the Garden State). In fact, Pennsylvania is the source for as many New Jersey crime guns as the next two states combined (Virginia, which though southern is spitting distance away, and North Carolina, just one more below). New York fared a little better, getting marginally more from Virginia than from Pennsylvania. However, the number of New York crime guns that came from New York is as much as the next four states combined.

**Lax
States****Strict
States****Strict State
Excess****New Jersey**3%23%7.6X**New York**4%12%3.0XBut let me simplify this. If we look at the ten states with the “toughest” gun control laws (sans Hawaii, which has peculiar geographical barriers) and the ten states with the least restrictive laws, we see New York and New Jersey have much to fear … from other strict law states. If you are getting gunned down in New Jersey, odds are you were nearly eight times more likely to have been shot from a gun ***imported*** from a state with strict gun control laws that a state with lax ones.

# Blaming Ghosts

“Law enforcement officials express frequent frustration that they are not able to track every gun that crosses state lines …”

Some lies never die. In this fiction we see the **Lie of Omission** (purposefully excluding information to inappropriately change beliefs about an issue).

According to the BATF’s pamphlet titled “Disclosure of Firearm Trace Data”, the BATF provides gun origin traces to ***every*** law enforcement agency for ***every*** bona fide investigation, regardless of the origin of the weapon. This includes joint investigations, investigations where the nexus to crime is uncertain, and for just about any other crime investigation reason.

What the BATF is prohibited from doing is helping politicians create false and misleading data, which the BATF was once in the business of doing. Desperados like Michael Bloomberg once obtained BATF trace data for political reasons, routinely misinterpreting and cherry picking data for their causes. Congress put a stop to that while leaving law enforcement free to get the information they needed on demand (for the curious, see the [Tiahrt Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiahrt_Amendment)).

The propaganda element here is that the NYT paints law enforcement as hamstrung when they are not, and then links the non-existent hamstringing to the mythical Iron Pipeline. Simplistic agitprop, and likely plays well in Brooklyn, at least near 6th Avenue and West 38th.

## Unreliable Sources

“Most guns are originally bought from retail stores, but people who can’t pass a background check typically obtain guns from friends, family or illegal dealers …” was the NYTs almost honest, but utterly misleading claim.

About 40% of crime guns come from completely underground sources, such as trading guns for drugs, stealing them, or from street weapons dealers who vend recirculated crime guns (Bureau of Justice Statistics, *Firearm Violence*). Another 38% are acquired from “family or friends” but the definition of “friend” is extremely flexible, and includes fellow junkies and gangbangers. The NYT amalgamated two groups into one composite sketch, and by doing so obfuscated the true nature of the way guns get into criminal hands (the **Lie of Association**, Using invalid associations to demonize a person or position). Indeed, nearly a third of the guns in this “family and friends” category occurred via “unknown” exchanges, making the true source even less transparent than an NYT headline.

But the NYT doubles down on this con by citing a small, city-wide study in Chicago (while hiding the national numbers) by saying “Many inmates reported obtaining guns from friends who had bought them legally and then reported them stolen, or from locals who had brought the guns from out of state.” A non-specific claim, from a single city survey of convicts, without any linkage to the article’s “iron pipeline” myth thread, yet positioned as if it somehow was part of the plot. I’m not sure this can even be classified as journalism.

## All the News That’s Unfit to Print

The bottom line is that the Iron Pipeline doesn’t exist, most guns that move from one state to another do so as part of normal human relocation, that the time it takes for a gun to make these moves and to slip into the criminal underground is so long that the problem is likely local crime control and not interstate gun control.

But don’t bother telling Gregor Aisch, Josh Keller or Jill Abramson this. They are the old media, dying a slow and painful financial death through their own comedy of canards and con jobs. The fifth estate has supplanted the fourth, and for good reason.

[![Source states for guns, strict and lax gun control laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/strict-vs-lax-gun-control-source-states-2-1024w-800x600.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/strict-vs-lax-gun-control-source-states-2-1024w.jpg)

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns, Propaganda

**Tags:** iron pipeline, myth, new york times

---

### [Research Resilience](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/research-resilience/)

**Published:** March 17, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Gun Facts started due to bad research.

Having a degree in quantitative management, and thus having better-than-average knowledge about research methodologies, I was keen to spotting when a “research report” was likely a propaganda piece. It wasn’t until I started exploring gun control that I saw the perfect exploitation of rigged research and politics. The gun control industry is adept at sponsoring research designed to reach a conclusion and rightfully assuming the average voter lacked the diligence to determine if the research was sound or not.

![ponzi-research](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ponzi-research.jpg)Sadly, the gun control industry has not stopped this unsavory practice.

A recent [review of gun control related studies](http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/03/review_strongest_research_shows_no_link_between_gun_ownership_rates_and_higher_crime.html) by Gary Kleck – the best in the business and a criminologist at Florida State University – shows quite plainly that the gun control industry con job still works, and why the media (a profession not known for their statistical prowess) parrots gun control industry headlines.

Kleck’s approach was simple and elegant:

- Gather up various gun control research reports
- Tally their results without judging the research’s validity
- Devise a criteria for eliminating studies with suspect methodologies
- Score them again
- Describe the difference

Without filtering, 52% of the studies identified a link between gun ownership and homicide. When the bum studies were omitted, none of the remaining studies showed a gun/homicide correlation. As Kleck mildly phrased the results “The more methodologically adequate research is, the less likely it is to support the more guns-more crime hypothesis.”

There are many ways research is rigged. Some of the inappropriate processes I have witnessed include:

**Inappropriate Raw Data:** My favorite example is the KIDS database, which the gun control industry uses to tally children who get shot (the rest of the country uses the CDC injury and mortality databases, the gold standard in epidemiology). The KIDS database is voluntary, and the number of participating hospitals grows every year. Thus the raw number of reported incidents grows every year as more and more of the population is covered by participating hospitals. This makes it look like more and more children are victims on gun play, when in fact the numbers have been falling over the past decades.

**Lack of Control:** A lot of things can cause crime to go up or down. Controlling for as many variables as possible reduces the chance that your findings are purely coincidental. This is why the gun control industry backed studies rarely control for anything, or pick “control” variables they know in advance are meaningless. I can show that air conditioners cause rape because the rate of AC usage parallels the rate of rape … providing I don’t include any other controls.

**Outcome Based Objectives:** I recently deconstructed a bit of research popular within the gun control industry that studied gun death rates in industrialized countries. Not death rates by all means, just guns. Thus the study was polluted from the start as the tool of violence and suicide was assumed to be a determinate variable. Incidentally, this study was also a victim of too few control variables as well.

**Irrational Methods:** If you were studying a subject where things change over time, would you look at a point-in-time? You would if you wanted to obfuscate reality and perspective. The gun control industry is famous for applying the wrong mode of analysis to fit their desired propaganda.

**Obfuscating Details:** That study on international gun deaths was sadly amusing because (a) it claimed that 85% of women killed with guns are U.S. women, but inside the report noted that this was mainly a suicide issue. Maier’s Law of Research states that “If the facts do not conform to the theory, the facts must be disposed of.” This is what the gun control industry does daily. They would have Mister and Missus America believe violence is spiraling out of control due to a lack of gun control, when in fact violence has been rapidly *falling* since 1993 during a period of *less* gun control.

Incidentally, Kleck’s filtering was very modest. First he looked for valid measures of gun ownership rates (appropriate raw data), causality procedures (rational methodologies) and if the study controlled for five or more confounding variables (proper control variables). That it took only three common criteria to eradicate gun control industry claims that more guns leads to more crime shows how utterly fragile most gun control “research” really is … because it isn’t really research … it is propaganda in academic journals.

If you want to know more about gun control industry agitprop, get a copy of *[Shooting The Bull](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240701/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0983240701&linkCode=as2&tag=frethimed-20)*. I cover a lot of ground therein.

**Categories:** Propaganda

**Tags:** bunk, gun control, methodology, research

---

### [Universal Isn’t](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/universal-isnt/)

**Published:** September 2, 2015
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

Universal background checks aren’t and cannot be, which makes them a horrible ruse and a social abuse.

## How “universal” background checks are sold to the public

Akin to the now completely discredited “gun show loophole” canard, “universal” background checks are sold as a crime prevention measure. Various gun control groups have made it their current cause because it polls well with voters … until voters are presented with the perspective about guns and violent crime.

The idea being sold is that (a) every firearm transaction needs to be approved by the government using (b) a personal background check to assure the buyer isn’t a felon or other prohibited person. This allegedly will (c) reduce violence with guns.

The problems, as you will shortly see, are that (1) the solution is nowhere close to being universal, (2) will have no impact on gun violence, (3) is ripe for governmental abuse and (4) can’t work without one extra component … one that polls show voters openly reject.

## Who wouldn’t comply

“Universal” background checks require universal participation. So an intelligent person would first ask “who would not participate once this law is passed?”

The answer is at least 40% of people who misuse guns, and upwards of 78%.

![Bureau of Justice Statistics - crime gun sources](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources-400x380.jpg)The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) tallies crimes involving guns in their decadal reports titled “Firearm Violence.” In that report, the BJS lists how offenders got their guns. This is our first clue to the non-universal nature of passing background checks.

According to the BJS, a full 40% of crime guns are acquired from completely off-the-radar sources. Most (25%) come from “drug dealer/off street” sources, at the nexus of street gang culture. Another big chunk (7%+) are stolen directly by thugs, and an equal amount are from street dealers, the fellows who vend hot guns from the trunk of their cars.

Ponder this for a moment: 40% of crime guns are acquired from and by people who have zero interest in obeying any law whatsoever. None. Zip. Nada. This is the largest category for crime gun sources according to the BJS, and it is the one that “universal” background checks will have zero impact upon. At best such laws would be impotent.

But the news gets worse.

The next 38% of crime guns come from people classified as “family or friend.” The definition of “friend” in such transactions is *very* broad and includes such buddies as:

- Drug users or dealer swapping contraband for weapons
- Women who knowingly perform strawman purchases and give guns to felon boyfriends
- Relatives who loan a gun to a felon for “self-protection”

Again we must ask how many of these people would drop whatever they are doing, drive untold miles to a gun store, file paperwork, and wait for a background check before handing a revolver to the other person. Since BJS does not itemize which type of “family” or “friends” are involved, we’ll have to assume some portion of this 38% of crime guns are not tied directly to nefarious people. But since we know from other criminology literature that people within criminal enclaves, or who routinely associate with violent criminals will bend the rules more readily than others, I suspect the majority of this 38% of crime guns come from people who also won’t bother with “universal” background checks.

So, the ***best*** case scenario is that 40% of crime guns won’t be caught with “universal” background checks and as much as 78% will slide by undetected. Incidentally, less than 1% of crime guns are acquired at gun shows … likely due to the high presence of cops and ornery NRA types at such events.

## The expected outcome vs. the advertised one

We have a disconnect between the advertised purpose of “universal” background checks and what will actually occur.

The advertised purpose is to end transfers of guns to criminals, but we see that a minimum of 40% of such transfers come completely from black market operations. Hence, the proposals are impotent – they cannot achieve what they propose. Given that upwards of 78% of crime guns would not be impacted by “universal” background checks, such laws become a monumental waste of time …

Unless there are other objectives.

## Define “prohibited” person or “transfer”

In much of the language of these bills, which differ from state to state, the definition of who is a “prohibited person” and a “firearm transfer” is ill defined on purpose.

It is obvious that prohibited persons would include people with felony convictions for violent crime. But the San Francisco Sherriff is apparently [guilty of violent spouse abuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Mirkarimi#Domestic_violence_conviction). In many places he would be on the prohibited persons list.

Another example may hit closer to home. A friend of mine volunteered to be part of a mutual restraining order after his ex-wife committed assault on him. Yet under the laws of his state today, he would not be allowed to borrow his father’s hunting rifle due to this ancient restraining order.

Danger lies is *who* is defined as a prohibited person. The definition can be lax, fluid, amended, open to judicial interpretation and vary across county borders. This may be the intent of some gun control groups who have a stated purpose of making gun ownership as complicated, difficult and expensive as possible.

The other intentional gotcha is what the definition of “transfer” may be. In the first state to pass “universal” background check legislation, the wording was such that if a friend admired your new Glock while standing in the adjoining alley at the firing range, and you handed it to him for inspection, then you became an instant felon. Gun control advocates claimed that would never happen, but they also claimed firearm registration would never lead to confiscation before the confiscations began in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago and California. Poorly worded legislation is an endangerment to decent people and no barrier to evil ones.

In the case of Michael Bloomberg, it is downright helpful.

Lastly, such “universal” background check laws are useless without universal run registration. Some contend this is the end game of the “universal” background check movement. Since the public openly rebel at the suggestion of gun registration (voters are smarter than politicians give them credit for), one gambit might be to pass the otherwise popular “universal” background check law and either (a) turn it into a state-level registration process or (b) later claim the background check law is not working “well enough” and that a tiny additional piece of legislation is needed, and it won’t be called “registration” though in reality it is.

## Legislation must have efficacy, otherwise it is abuse

For a law to be of any use it must be effective and enforceable. If 40%+ of crime guns come from unregulatable sources, “universal” background checks have no efficacy at all. The only enforcement then comes from add-on charges after a crime (“You are charged with first degree murder and not filing background check paperwork … how do you plea?”). It is also enforced in order to harass honest people who simply want to lend a gun to a daughter in danger or an uncle who wants to go hunting, or to sell a spare revolver to the same neighbor who baby sits your kids.

This is not of what America is made.

**Categories:** Availability of Guns, Crime and Guns

**Tags:** background, checks, crime, guns, universal

---

### [Negligent Discharge and CCWs](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/negligent-discharge-and-ccws/)

**Published:** March 24, 2014
**Author:** Guy Smith

**Content:**

A Gun Facts fan asked what we know about concealed carry licencees and negligent discharges (accidental discharges).

Frankly, there isn’t much out there. I wish there were concise statistics on this subject, but such events are rare enough that nobody in government, criminology or epidemiology finds it worth the trouble to investigate.

The best we can do is triangulate some other numbers.

a) According to the CDC, in the most recent reporting year, there were 606 accidental firearm deaths. Not all of these were really accidents and not all were negligent discharges. There is no breakdown, but Gary Kleck’s [*Targeting Guns*](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0202305694?tag=frethimed-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0202305694&adid=1HSV86HWAFF34ZB2JEPA&&ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gunfacts.info%2Fgun-control-books%2F) cites one set of studies (investigative reports by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company) that note most accidental gun deaths were due to dumb behavior (not negligent discharge) – people drunk, playing with guns, walking into a hunter’s line of fire, etc.

b) There are about 11 million CCW holders in the USA and an adult population of around 240 million. So ***worst case possibility*** would be that CCW holders (4.5% of the adult population) could have caused 28 accidental deaths. But as noted, the percentage of deaths by negligent discharge is unknown and a tiny fraction of all gun deaths.

Offhand, I’d say this is a real non-problem. There are no wide-spread news reports of CCW negligent discharges. This is likely due to the fact that CCW holders are largely law abiders, safety nuts, NRA types … people who know and are routinely safe with guns.

If anyone does happen across solid negligent discharge data, I’d love to see it.

**Categories:** Accidental Gun Deaths, Concealed Carry

**Tags:** accidental, ccw, discharge, negligent

---


## Pages

### [Gun Facts](https://www.gunfacts.info/)

**Published:** September 16, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Gun FactsTM
Returning honesty to the gun control debate

**Gun Facts**™ debunks common myths about guns, violence and gun control policy. It is intended as a reference guide for journalists, politicians and anyone interested in learning about guns policy and restoring honesty to the debate.

The menu links above provide detailed information with full citations. Divided into chapters based on gun control topics (assault weapons, ballistic finger printing, firearm availability, etc.), Gun Facts makes finding information about gun control policy quick and easy.

Each chapter lists common gun myths (both pro- and anti-gun), then lists a number of documented and cited facts from high quality, independent sources including government databases, peer reviewed studies, and more. Thus when a neighbor, pundit or politician repeats some sound bite about gun policy, you can quickly find that myth then rebuke with accurate information.

**Gun control facts in Gun Facts include (but are in no way limited to)**

- - Gun Shows
    - Assault Weapons
    - Sniping Rifles – Sniper Rifles
    - Handguns For Women Handgun Sales
    - Violence and Violent Crime
    - 2nd Amendment
    - “Pocket Rockets” and “Saturday Night Specials”
    - Concealed Carry and Concealed Weapons Permits
    - Licensing and Registration
    - Firearm Deaths (Homicide, Accidents)
    - Social Costs of Guns
    - Children and Guns
    - Automatic Weapons
    - 50 Caliber Rifles
    - Microstamping
    - Ballistic Fingerprinting
    - Assault Weapons Ban
    - Crime Gun Traces
    - International Gun Ownership and Crime
    - Gun Dealers
    - Gun Control Statistics
    - Deadly Force Encounters
    - Guns, Crime, Criminology and Crime Prevention (Self Defense)
    - Firearm Availability
    - Guns and Police (Law Enforcement/LEO)

#####  Gun Control Facts | Datos de control de armas | Gun Control Fakten
Contrôle des armes Faits | Controlo de armas Fatos | حقائق الرقابة على السلاح | 枪支管制的事实

---

### [Issues Under Debate](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-issues-under-debate-and-what-is-known/)

**Published:** November 5, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

# Issues under debate and what is known

Below we list some issues within the public debate about guns and violence and some notes about what to watch out for.

## Leading cause of death for “children”

Both the criminology and epidemiology fields maintain separate classifications for “children” and “teens” (the former typically divides at 12/13 years of age and the latter at 13/14).

They do so for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. The main factor on the criminology/sociology side is that the teen years involve increasing degrees of away-from-home independence and associated risk taking.

[![Firearm and Non-Firearm Death Rates, Ages 1 thru 19, 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-and-Non-Firearm-Death-Rates-Ages-1-thru-19-2019-800x565.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Firearm-and-Non-Firearm-Death-Rates-Ages-1-thru-19-2019.png)click to enlarge

Because of this (and some complex social aspects to street gang life) firearm death rates among “children” are nearly zero and steadily increase among teens. Thus, any advocacy organization amalgamating the two is making a serious data quality error.

If offered a study or data that amalgamates both children and teens, ask for the data to be segregated so you can understand and explain things well to your audience.

## Assault weapon contribution to deaths

Foremost, know that “assault weapon” is a legislative term, not a technical one. Before the year 2000, the Department of Defense did not classify the term at all (they have since, but we don’t know the year that changed). When the 1994 Assault Weapon ban expired, there were eight different legislative definitions, which banned anywhere from 17 to 75 different models of guns.

This has led to great confusion about their degree of use or lack thereof. For example, for all years 1982 through October of 2023, only 21% of guns used in mass public shootings (MPS) matched the 1994 Federal ban definition. The rate is far less for street crimes since concealability is impossible or impractical with assault weapons.

## [](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ASSAULT-WEAPONS-Assault-weapons-used-in-mass-public-shootings-1986-thru-July-of-2025.png)[![ASSAULT WEAPONS - Assault weapons used in mass public shootings 1986 thru July of 2025](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ASSAULT-WEAPONS-Assault-weapons-used-in-mass-public-shootings-1986-thru-July-of-2025-800x800.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ASSAULT-WEAPONS-Assault-weapons-used-in-mass-public-shootings-1986-thru-July-of-2025.png)Rates of Concealed Carry

from a small but adequate survey in 2026, we see that about 30% of people surveyed carry a firearm in public at least upon occation.

[![Concealed Carry Frequency by Region, 2026 from Mclaughlin & Associates survey, May 2026](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Concealed-Carry-Frequency-by-Region-2026-from-Mclaughlin-Associates-survey-May-2026.xlsx-800x565.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Concealed-Carry-Frequency-by-Region-2026-from-Mclaughlin-Associates-survey-May-2026.xlsx.png)

---

### [Guns and Crime Prevention](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/guns-and-crime-prevention/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: Private ownership of guns is not effective in preventing crime

**Fact:** “Victims who have and use guns have both lower losses and lesser injury rates from violent crime.” [1](#note-97-1 "Self-defense with guns The consequences; Southwick; Journal of Criminal Justice; 2000")

[![GUNS AND CRIME PREVENTION - Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) studies 2023-09](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs-studies-2023-09-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs-studies-2023-09.png)[![GUNS AND CRIME PREVENTION - Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) studies](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs-studies-1-400x304.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs-studies-1.png)[![GUNS AND CRIME PREVENTION - Rates of Modes of defensive gun uses (DGUs) and projected incident count](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Rates-of-Modes-of-defensive-gun-uses-DGUs-and-projected-incident-count-400x354.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Rates-of-Modes-of-defensive-gun-uses-DGUs-and-projected-incident-count.png)[![GUNS AND CRIME PREVENTION - Armed Felon Attitudes toward Armed Victims](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Armed-Felon-Attitudes-toward-Armed-Victims-400x300.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Armed-Felon-Attitudes-toward-Armed-Victims.png)[![Modes of Defensive Gun Use](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Modes-of-Defensive-Gun-Use-400x398.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Modes-of-Defensive-Gun-Use.png)**Fact:** Every year, people in the United States use guns to defend themselves against criminals an estimated 2,500,000 times – more than 6,500 people a day, or once every 13 seconds. [2](#note-97-2 "Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Kleck and Gertz, Fall 1995") Of these instances, 15.7% of the people using firearms defensively stated that they “almost certainly” saved their lives by doing so.

**Fact:** Even the government’s estimate, which has a major methodology problem, [3](#note-97-3 "This ongoing victimization survey involved people from the government personally interviewing victims in person. Some criminologists believe this induces self-reporting biases (e.g., people don't like to tell the government they own a gun). Thus, this low number from the National Crime Victimization Survey is considered to be an outlier and not reliable.") estimates people defend themselves 235,700 times each year with guns. [4](#note-97-4 "Firearm Violence, 1993-2011, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2013")

**Fact:** Victims with guns “would reduce … the criminals’ incentives to commit violent crimes and to be armed.” [5](#note-97-5 "Self-defense with guns The consequences; Southwick; Journal of Criminal Justice; 2000")

**Fact:** The number of times per year an American uses a firearm to deter a home invasion alone is 498,000. [6](#note-97-6 "Estimating intruder-related firearm retrievals in U.S. households, 1994. Robin M. Ikeda, Violence and Victims, Winter 1997")

**Fact:** In 83.5% (2,087,500) of these successful gun defenses, the attacker either threatened or used force first, proving that guns are very well suited for self-defense. [7](#note-97-7 "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun, Kleck, Gertz, 1995")

**Fact:** There are approximately 182,000 defensive gun uses in public each year. [8](#note-97-8 "2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022")

**Fact:** The rate of defensive gun use (DGU) is six times that of criminal gun use. [9](#note-97-9 "Crime statistics: Bureau of Justice Statistics - National Crime Victimization Survey (2005).  DGU statistics: Targeting Guns, Kleck (average of 15 major surveys where DGUs were reported)")

**Fact:** Of the 2,500,000 times citizens use guns to defend themselves, 92% merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. [10](#note-97-10 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, from the National Self-Defense Survey")

**Fact:** In most of the remaining 8% of defensive gun uses, a citizen never wounds his or her attacker (they fire warning shots), and in less than one in a thousand instances is the attacker killed. [11](#note-97-11 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, from the National Self-Defense Survey")

**Fact:** 41% of justifiable homicides using a gun were by private citizens, the others by law enforcement. [12](#note-97-12 "FBI Expanded Homicide Tables 14 and 15, 2017")

**Fact:** In one local review of firearm homicide, more than 12% were civilian legal defensive homicides. [13](#note-97-13 "Death by Gun: One Year Later, Time Magazine, May 14, 1990")

**Fact:** For every accidental death (802), suicide (16,869) or homicide (11,348) [14](#note-97-14 "Unintentional Firearm Deaths, 2001, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control") with a firearm (29,019), 13 lives (390,000) [15](#note-97-15 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997") are preserved through defensive use.

**Fact:** When using guns in self-defense, 91.1% of the time, not a single shot is fired. [16](#note-97-16 "National Crime Victimization Survey, 2000")

**Fact:** After the implementation of Canada’s 1977 gun controls prohibiting handgun possession for protection, the “breaking and entering” crime rate rose 25%, surpassing the American rate. [17](#note-97-17 "Residential Burglary: A Comparison of the United States, Canada and England and Wales, Pat Mayhew, National Institute of Justice., Wash., D.C., 1987")

## Myth: The small number of self-defense killings shows that private gun ownership does nothing

**Fact:** Most DGUs do not involve firing a gun. The average private gun owner who uses guns for self defense take non-fatal actions, such as brandishing the weapon. In other instances, they may fire a warning shot or intentionally would their attacker. [18](#note-97-18 "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 86, No.1, 1995")

## Myth: Armed civilians have no effect an mass shootings

**Fact:** One tracking database [19](#note-97-19 "Massive errors in FBI’s Active Shooting Reports from 2014-2022 regarding cases where civilians stop attacks; Crime Prevention Research Center; 2023") shows that 41.3% of “active shooter events” were terminated by armed civilians. Outside of “gun free zones” the rate climbs to 63.5%.

## Myth: Only police should have guns

**Fact:** “Most criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.” [20](#note-97-20 "Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms, Wright and Rossi, 1986")

**Fact:** For kids in schools, police end such attacks only 27% of the time. [21](#note-97-21 "Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks, United States Secret Service and United States Department of Education, 2002")

**Fact:** 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person — about 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent person. [22](#note-97-22 "Shall issue: the new wave of concealed handgun permit laws, Clayton Cramer, David Kopel, Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994")

**Fact:** Police have trouble keeping their own guns. Hundreds of firearms are missing from the FBI and 449 of them have been involved in crimes. [23](#note-97-23 "ABC News, July 17, 2001")

**Fact:** People who saw the helplessness of the L.A. Police Department during the 1992 King Riots or the looting and violence in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina know that citizens need guns to defend themselves.

**Fact:** “In actual shootings, citizens do far better than law enforcement on hit potential. They hit their targets and they don’t hit other people. I wish I could say the same for cops. We train more, they do better.” [24](#note-97-24 "Sheriff Greg White, Cole County, Missouri, Guns to be allowed on campus?, KRCG News, July 31, 2009")

## [![GUNS AND CRIME PREVENTION - Injury Rates by Self Protection Method](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Injury-Rates-by-Self-Protection-Method-400x284.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Injury-Rates-by-Self-Protection-Method.png)Myth: You are more likely to be injured or killed using a gun for self-defense

**Fact:** You are far more likely to survive violent assault if you defend yourself with a gun. [25](#note-97-25 "The Value of Civilian Handgun Possession as a Deterrent to Crime or a Defense Against Crime, Don B. Kates, 1991 American Journal of Criminal Law")

## Myth: Guns are not effective in preventing crime against women

**Fact:** Of the 2,500,000 annual self-defense cases using guns, more than 7.7% (192,500) are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse.

**Fact:** When a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of rape attacks were completed, compared to 32% when the woman was unarmed. [26](#note-97-26 "Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Rape Victimization in 26 American Cities, U.S. Department of Justice, 1979")

**Reported Rape Rates 1995–2003 (per 100,000 pop.)19952003% ChangeAustralia72.591.7+26.5United Kingdom43.369.2+59.8United States37.132.1-13.5**Fact:** The probability of serious injury from an attack is 2.5 times greater for women offering no resistance than for women resisting with guns. Men also benefit from using guns, but the benefits are smaller: Men are 1.4 times more likely to receive a serious injury. [27](#note-97-27 "National Crime Victimization Survey, Department of Justice")

**Fact:** 28.5% of women have one or more guns in the house. [28](#note-97-28 "2001 National Gun Policy Survey of the National Opinion Research Center: Research Findings, Smith, T, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, December 2001.")

**Fact:** 41.7% of women either own or have convenient access to guns. [29](#note-97-29 "2001 National Gun Policy Survey of the National Opinion Research Center: Research Findings, Smith, T, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, December 2001.")

**Fact:** In 1966, the city of Orlando responded to a wave of sexual assaults by offering firearms training classes to women. Rapes dropped by nearly 90% the following year.

**[![GUNS AND CRIME PREVENTION - Rape Rate in England and Wales before and after major gun control acts](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Rape-Rate-in-England-and-Wales-before-and-after-major-gun-control-acts-400x303.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Rape-Rate-in-England-and-Wales-before-and-after-major-gun-control-acts.png)Fact:** Firearm availability appears to be particularly useful in avoiding rape. The United Kingdom virtually banned handgun ownership. During the same period handgun ownership in the United States steadily rose. Yet the rate of rape decreased in the United States and skyrocketed in the other countries, as shown in the table.

**Fact:** More Americans believe having a gun in the home makes them safer. This belief grows every year the survey is taken. [30](#note-97-30 "Americans by Slight Margin Say Gun in the Home Makes It Safer, Gallup Poll, October 20, 2006")

**Fact:** Arthur Kellerman, a researcher whose work is often cited by gun control groups, said “If you’ve got to resist, your chances of being hurt are less the more lethal your weapon. If that were my wife, would I want her to have a .38 Special in her hand? Yeah.” [31](#note-97-31 "Gun Crazy, S.F. Examiner, April 3, 1994")

---

Notes:

1. Self-defense with guns The consequences; Southwick; Journal of Criminal Justice; 2000 [↩](#return-note-97-1)
2. *Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology*, Kleck and Gertz, Fall 1995 [↩](#return-note-97-2)
3. This ongoing victimization survey involved people from the government personally interviewing victims in person. Some criminologists believe this induces self-reporting biases (e.g., people don't like to tell the government they own a gun). Thus, this low number from the National Crime Victimization Survey is considered to be an outlier and not reliable. [↩](#return-note-97-3)
4. *Firearm Violence, 1993-2011*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2013 [↩](#return-note-97-4)
5. Self-defense with guns The consequences; Southwick; Journal of Criminal Justice; 2000 [↩](#return-note-97-5)
6. *Estimating intruder-related firearm retrievals in U.S. households, 1994*. Robin M. Ikeda, *Violence and Victims*, Winter 1997 [↩](#return-note-97-6)
7. *Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun*, Kleck, Gertz, 1995 [↩](#return-note-97-7)
8. 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022 [↩](#return-note-97-8)
9. Crime statistics: Bureau of Justice Statistics - *National Crime Victimization Survey* (2005). DGU statistics: *Targeting Guns*, Kleck (average of 15 major surveys where DGUs were reported) [↩](#return-note-97-9)
10. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, from the National Self-Defense Survey [↩](#return-note-97-10)
11. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, from the National Self-Defense Survey [↩](#return-note-97-11)
12. FBI Expanded Homicide Tables 14 and 15, 2017 [↩](#return-note-97-12)
13. *Death by Gun: One Year Later*, Time Magazine, May 14, 1990 [↩](#return-note-97-13)
14. *Unintentional Firearm Deaths, 2001*, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control [↩](#return-note-97-14)
15. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997 [↩](#return-note-97-15)
16. *National Crime Victimization Survey*, 2000 [↩](#return-note-97-16)
17. *Residential Burglary: A Comparison of the United States, Canada and England and Wales*, Pat Mayhew, National Institute of Justice., Wash., D.C., 1987 [↩](#return-note-97-17)
18. *Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun*, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 86, No.1, 1995 [↩](#return-note-97-18)
19. Massive errors in FBI’s Active Shooting Reports from 2014-2022 regarding cases where civilians stop attacks; Crime Prevention Research Center; 2023 [↩](#return-note-97-19)
20. *Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms*, Wright and Rossi, 1986 [↩](#return-note-97-20)
21. *Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks*, United States Secret Service and United States Department of Education, 2002 [↩](#return-note-97-21)
22. *Shall issue: the new wave of concealed handgun permit laws*, Clayton Cramer, David Kopel, Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994 [↩](#return-note-97-22)
23. ABC News, July 17, 2001 [↩](#return-note-97-23)
24. Sheriff Greg White, Cole County, Missouri, *Guns to be allowed on campus?*, KRCG News, July 31, 2009 [↩](#return-note-97-24)
25. *The Value of Civilian Handgun Possession as a Deterrent to Crime or a Defense Against Crime*, Don B. Kates, 1991 American Journal of Criminal Law [↩](#return-note-97-25)
26. *Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Rape Victimization in 26 American Cities, U.S. Department of Justice, 1979 [↩](#return-note-97-26)*
27. *National Crime Victimization Survey*, Department of Justice [↩](#return-note-97-27)
28. *2001 National Gun Policy Survey of the National Opinion Research Center: Research Findings*, Smith, T, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, December 2001. [↩](#return-note-97-28)
29. *2001 National Gun Policy Survey of the National Opinion Research Center: Research Findings*, Smith, T, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, December 2001. [↩](#return-note-97-29)
30. *Americans by Slight Margin Say Gun in the Home Makes It Safer*, Gallup Poll, October 20, 2006 [↩](#return-note-97-30)
31. *Gun Crazy*, S.F. Examiner, April 3, 1994 [↩](#return-note-97-31)

---

### [Crime and Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/crime-and-guns/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Basic to the debates on gun control is the fact that most violent crime is committed by repeat offenders. Dealing with recidivism is key to solving violence.

- 71% of gunshot victims had previous arrest records.
- 64% had been convicted of a crime.
- Victims had an average of 11 prior arrests. [1](#note-93-1 "City of Charlotte Gunshot Study, Department of Criminal Justice, Lumb, Friday,1994"), [2](#note-93-2 "Homicides and Non-Fatal Shootings: A Report on the First 6 Months Of 2009, Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission, July 13, 2009")
- 63% of *victims* had criminal histories and 73% of that group knew their assailant (twice as often as victims without criminal histories). [3](#note-93-3 "Firearm-related Injury Incidents in 1999 – Annual Report, San Francisco Department of Public Health and San Francisco Injury Center, February 2002")
- 74% of homicides during the commission of a felony involve guns. [4](#note-93-4 "Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2011")
- Only 25% of victims and 13% of perps did ***not*** show any evidence of engaging in criminal/deviant lifestyles (i.e., prior arrests, gang mem­bership, and/or drug dealing) prior the homicide. [5](#note-93-5 "Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type; Pizarro, Zgoba, Jennings; Journal of Criminal Justice; 2011")
- Recidivism is exceptionally high among criminals with previous gun-related charges, 70% higher than for non-gun first offenders. [6](#note-93-6 "Examining the Recidivism of Firearm Offenders Using State Criminal History and Mortality Data; Westley, Kang; 2018; Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority")

***Most gun violence is between criminals with collateral damage. This should be the public policy focus.***

## Myth: Gun violence is widespread in America

[![Gang, drug and prior violence for perpetrators and victims in crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Gang-drug-and-prior-violence-for-perpetrators-and-victims-in-crime-400x417.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Gang-drug-and-prior-violence-for-perpetrators-and-victims-in-crime.png)From “Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type.”

[![CRIME AND GUNS - Firearm Homicides in the U.S. by age, race, urbanization - 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-d-400x304.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-d.png)**![Bureau of Justice Statistics - crime gun sources](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/bjs-crime-gun-sources-400x380.jpg)**[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Retail-gun-sources-used-in-crime-BJS-2019-400x130.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Retail-gun-sources-used-in-crime-BJS-2019.png)[![CRIME AND GUNS - Firearm Homicide and Ownership Rates by State 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicide-and-Ownership-Rates-by-State-2019-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicide-and-Ownership-Rates-by-State-2019.jpg)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BJS-table-from-2016-felon-survey-400x251.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/BJS-table-from-2016-felon-survey.png)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Crime-data-based-against-gun-sales-1999-thru-2015-400x255.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Crime-data-based-against-gun-sales-1999-thru-2015.png)**Fact:** Misuse of guns is highly centralized in a few major metro areas. [Fifteen out of 3,124 counties account for 25% of the gun homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/). And within these counties, violence is highly concentrated within specific neighborhoods that typically are street gang territories.

**Fact:** Gang related/nexus gun homicides account for 50% of all homicides when estimated from police reports [7](#note-93-7 "Taking Stock of Gang Violence: An Overview of the Literature; Valasik, Reid; 2019") and [upwards of 85% when estimated from street gang demographics and CDC mortality data](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/).

**Fact:** “Gang homicides are more likely to occur in public settings, to involve a firearm … domestic homicides are more likely to occur in the residence of the victim and/or offender, are less likely to be committed with a gun.” [8](#note-93-8 "Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type - Pizarro, Zgoba, Jennings - Journal of Criminal Justice - 2011")

**Fact:** “At least 75 percent of the \[homicide\] victims and 87 percent of the offenders engaged in some type of criminal/deviant lifestyle.” hence, only 25% of victims and 13% of offenders did *not* show any evidence of engaging in criminal/deviant lifestyles prior the homicide. [9](#note-93-9 "Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type - Pizarro, Zgoba, Jennings - Journal of Criminal Justice - 2011")

**Fact:** 52% of homicide victims and 50% of offenders had a history of violent/weapons offenses and drug arrests. [10](#note-93-10 "Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type - Pizarro, Zgoba, Jennings - Journal of Criminal Justice - 2011")

## Myth: Criminals buy guns at gun stores and gun shows

**Fact:** Less than 1% of crime guns are acquired at gun shows, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. [11](#note-93-11 "Firearm Violence, 1993-2011, BJS")

**Fact:** In total, about 10-11% of crime guns come from retail sources [12](#note-93-12 "Ongoing Bureau of Justice Statistics incarcerated felon interview process, with variability in the years the interviews were conducted."), where background checks are conducted. About 2.3% of guns used in violent crime come from retail sources. [13](#note-93-13 "Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2016")

**Fact:** Only 7.3% of traced guns were recovered from the individual who first bought the gun. [14](#note-93-14 "The Last Link: from Gun Acquisition to Criminal Use, Cook, Pollack, White, 2019")

**Fact:** One study [15](#note-93-15 "Sources of guns to dangerous people: What we learn by asking them, Cook, Parker, Pollack, Preventive Medicine, Volume 79, October 2015")of adult offenders living in Chicago or nearby determined that criminals obtain most of their guns through their social network and personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or even theft. This agrees with other, broader studies of incarcerated felons.

**Fact:** Another city-wide study, [16](#note-93-16 "Gaps continue in firearm Surveillance: Evidence from a large U.S. city Bureau of Police, Fabio, Duell, Creppage, O'Donnell and Laporte, Social Medicine, Vol 1, 2016") this one in Pittsburgh, showed that 80% of people illegally carrying guns were prohibited from possessing guns, and that a minimum of 30% of the guns were stolen.

**Fact:** Other common arrangements include sharing guns and holding guns for others. [17](#note-93-17 "Sources of guns to dangerous people: What we learn by asking them, Cook, Parker, Pollack, Preventive Medicine, Volume 79, October 2015")

## Myth: Crime guns come from retail

**Fact:** The Bureau of Justice statistics concludes that only 10% of crime guns come from retail (purchased by the perpetrator) while 43% come from street sources.

**Fact:** One academic analysis [18](#note-93-18 "Legal Firearm Sales at State Level and Rates of Violent Crime, Property Crime, and Homicides; Hamill, Hernandez, Bailey, Cutherell, Zielinski, Jenkins, Naylor, Matos, Collier, Schiller; August 2022") could find no state level association between retail sales of guns or changes in crime rates.

## Myth: Crime guns are trafficked

**Fact:** Most guns recovered in crime were retailed in the same state in which they were retailed, and those that move between states mainly do so via household relocation (moving to a neighboring state). [19](#note-93-19 "BATF trace records and Census Bureau for 2006, summarized in blog post Rust Pipeline")

**Fact:** The time from acquisition to crime is short (two months) but the “time to crime” for recovered guns is typically 9.2 years. [20](#note-93-20 "The Last Link: from Gun Acquisition to Criminal Use; Cook, Pollack, White; Journal of Urban Health; 2019") This shows the delay as guns migrate from legal to illegal, and/or from state to state.

## Myth: Crime guns mainly come from private transactions

**Fact:** Private party transfers we significantly less likely to result in firearm related violence than guns acquired from other means including retail (aside from pawn shop purchases). [21](#note-93-21 "Individual, firearm, and purchasing characteristics associated with risk of firearm-related violent crime arrest: a nested case-control study; Laqueur, Schleimer, Shev, Kagawa; Injury Epidemiology; 2024")

## Myth: Guns are not a good deterrent to crime

**Fact:** Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year or 6,849 every day. [22](#note-93-22 "Targeting Guns, Dr. Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University, Aldine, 1997") Most often, the gun is never fired and no blood (including the criminal’s) is shed.

**Fact:** Property crime rates are dropping (especially burglaries). The chart shows the legal handgun supply in America (mainly in civilian hands) relative to the property crime rate. [23](#note-93-23 "National Crime Victimization Survey, 2000, Bureau of Justice Statistics, BATF estimates on handgun supply")

**Fact:** Every year 400,000 life-threatening violent crimes are prevented using firearms.

**Fact:** 60% of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they knew the victim was armed. 40% of convicted felons admitted that they avoided committing crimes when they thought the victim might be armed. [24](#note-93-24 "Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms, James Wright and Peter Rossi, Aldine, 1986")

**Fact:** Felons report that they avoid entering houses where people are at home because they fear being shot. [25](#note-93-25 "Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms, James Wright and Peter Rossi, Aldine, 1986")

**Fact:** 59% of the burglaries in Britain, which has tough gun control laws, are “hot burglaries” [26](#note-93-26 "A “hot burglary” is when the burglar enters a home while the residents are there") which are burglaries committed while the home is occupied by the owner/renter. By contrast, the U.S., with more lenient gun control laws, has a “hot burglary” rate of only 13%. [27](#note-93-27 "Dr. Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University (1997) and Kopel (1992 and 1999)")

**Fact:** Washington DC has essentially banned gun ownership since 1976 [28](#note-93-28 "The Supreme Court invalidated the D.C. handgun ban in the Heller case (2008), but the city has made obtaining a handgun very difficult via local legislation") and has a murder rate of 56.9 per 100,000. Across the river in Arlington, Virginia, gun ownership is less restricted. There, the murder rate is just 1.6 per 100,000, less than three percent of the Washington, DC rate. [29](#note-93-29 "Crime in the United States, FBI, 1998")

**Fact:** 26% of all retail businesses report keeping a gun on the premises for crime control. [30](#note-93-30 "Crime Against Small Business, U.S. Small Business Administration, Senate Document No. 91-14, 1969")

**Fact:** In 1982, Kennesaw, GA passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate dropped 89% the following year. [31](#note-93-31 "Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force, Dr. Gary Kleck, Social Problems, February 1988")

**Fact:** A survey of felons revealed the following: [32](#note-93-32 "The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Federal Firearms Offenders study, 1997: National Institute of Justice, Research Report, July 1985, Department of Justice")

- 74% of felons agreed that, “One reason burglars avoid houses when people are at home is that they fear being shot during the crime.”
- 57% of felons polled agreed, “Criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.”

## Myth: Guns instigate lethal domestic violence

**Maladaptive Behavior****Estimated Co-occurrence with Domestic Abuse****Alcohol Abuse**45% – 60% of incidents**General Criminality**70% – 80% of offenders (prior records)**Animal Cruelty**71% – 83% of high-conflict households**Illicit Drug Use**25% – 50% of offenders in treatment**Child Maltreatment**30% – 60% overlap in homes with children**Fact:** Domestic abusers have high rates of a variety of other maladaptive behaviors. Someone who is willing to abuse a spouse or domestic partner is very frequently suffering from substance abuse, committing child abuse and/or animal cruelty, and committing crimes in general. As such, misusing a gun during a domestic tirade is a byproduct of a large set of behavioral disorders and the violence is not instigated by the presence of a gun. [33](#note-93-33 "Barrett, B. J., Fitzgerald, A., Stevenson, R., & Cheung, C. H. (2017). Animal Maltreatment as a Risk Marker of More Frequent and Severe Forms of Intimate Partner Violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 35(23-24), 5131-5156.

Doswell, A., Kazmir, S., Segal, R., & Tiyyagura, G. (2025). Impact of Intimate Partner Violence on Children. Pediatric Clinics of North America.

Jegatheesan, B., Enders-Slegers, M.-J., Ormerod, E., & Boyden, P. (2020). Understanding the Link between Animal Cruelty and Family Violence: The Bioecological Systems Model. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(9), 3116.

Jordan, C. E., Pritchard, A. J., Duckett, D., & Charnigo, R. (2010). Criminal Offending Among Respondents to Protective Orders: Crime Types and Patterns That Predict Victim Risk. Violence Against Women, 16(12), 1396-1411.

Moylan, C. A., Herrenkohl, T. I., Sousa, C., Tajima, E. A., Herrenkohl, R. C., & Russo, M. J. (2009). The Effects of Child Abuse and Exposure to Domestic Violence on Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems. Journal of Family Violence, 25(1), 53-63.

Smith, P. H., Homish, G. G., Leonard, K. E., & Cornelius, J. R. (2012). Intimate partner violence and specific substance use disorders: Findings from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 26(2), 236-245.")

## Myth: Gun availability encourages crime

**Fact: “**The largest risk factor \[for using a gun in crime\] was prior criminal record: compared to purchasers with no criminal history, those with an arrest within three years prior to purchase had 6.8 times the risk of arrest for a \[firearm related violence\] crime and four times the risk if their prior arrest was more than three years before the index purchase.” [34](#note-93-34 "Individual, firearm, and purchasing characteristics associated with risk of firearm-related violent crime arrest: a nested case-control study; Laqueur, Schleimer, Shev, Kagawa; Injury Epidemiology; 2024")

## Myth: “Ghost guns” are widely used by criminals

**Fact:** A [survey of the top 100 police agencies for calendar year 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/ghost-gun-gong-show/) showed that at most 1.3% of crime guns were DIY guns (when outlier agencies were removed) and maybe 2% with outlier agencies included.

## Myth: Private guns are used to commit violent crimes

[![CRIME AND GUNS - Homicides and Handgun Supply by State with high-population cities compared](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Homicides-and-Handgun-Supply-by-State-400x271.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Homicides-and-Handgun-Supply-by-State.png)[![Handgun use in crime as a percentage of handgun supply - 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Handgun-use-in-crime-as-a-percentage-of-handgun-supply-2017-400x311.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Handgun-use-in-crime-as-a-percentage-of-handgun-supply-2017.jpg)[![Gang Violent Crime vs Gang Population, 2011](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gang-Violent-Crime-vs-Gang-Population-2011-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gang-Violent-Crime-vs-Gang-Population-2011.png)**Fact:** 90% of all violent crimes in the U.S. do not involve firearms of any type. [35](#note-93-35 "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 1998")

**Fact:** Even in crimes where the offender possessed a gun during the commission of the crime, 83% did not use or threaten to use the gun. [36](#note-93-36 "National Crime Victimization Survey, 1994, Bureau of Justice Statistics")

**Fact:** Fewer than 1% of firearms will ever be used in the commission of a crime. [37](#note-93-37 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1994")

**Fact:** Two-thirds of the people who die each year from gunfire are criminals being shot by other criminals. [38](#note-93-38 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1994")

**Fact:** Cincinnati’s review of their gang problem revealed that 74% of homicides were committed by less than 1% of the population. [39](#note-93-39 "Implementation of the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV), University of Cincinnati Policing Institute, 2008")

**Fact:** 92% of gang murders are committed with guns. [40](#note-93-40 "Homicide trends in the United States, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2011") Gangs are responsible for between 48% and 90% of all violent crimes. [41](#note-93-41 "2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, FBI, September 2011")

**Fact:** When the estimates of gang violent crime are averaged, we see that over 10% of those crimes are caused by gang members, but that they compose only 0.4% of the population. [42](#note-93-42 "2011 National Gang Threat Assessment, FBI, September 2011")

**Fact:** Most gun crimes are gang related, and as such are big-city issues. In fact, if mayors in larger cities were more diligent about controlling gang warfare, state and nationwide gun violence rates would fall dramatically.

## Myth: 40% of Americans have been or personally know a gun violence victim

**Fact:** This data was from an unpublished survey conducted by a political research organization. Their own footnote reads “Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for the New Venture Fund (Aug. 2011). Note, this is not publicly available data.” [43](#note-93-43 "Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging, OMP, KNP Communications, 2012")

## Myth: Interstate transportation of guns defeats local gun control

**Fact:** The BATF reports that the average age of a traced gun is 11 years [44](#note-93-44 "BATF report #133664, California Tracing Reports for 2012"), meaning that most guns moving from state to state were transported when legal owners moved.

**Fact:** Fewer than 5% of traced guns in California, many of which were not crime guns, came from neighboring Nevada and Arizona. [45](#note-93-45 "BATF report #133664, California Tracing Reports for 2012")

## Myth: High-capacity, semi-automatics are preferred by criminals

**Fact:** The use of semi-automatic handguns in crimes is slightly lower than the ratio of semi-automatic handguns owned by private citizens. Any increase in style and capacity simply reflects the overall supply of the various types of firearms. [46](#note-93-46 "Targeting Guns, Dr. Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University, Aldine, 1997")

## Myth: Banning “Saturday Night Specials” reduces crime

**Fact:** This was the conclusion of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Policy and Research – and it is wrong. They studied firearm homicide rates from Maryland after passage of a “Saturday Night Special” ban in 1998. It seems the firearm homicide rate has not subsided and remained between 68-94% higher than the national average through 2008. [47](#note-93-47 "Injury Mortality Reports 1999-2008, Center for Disease Control, online database")

**Fact:** Even banning guns does not slow down criminals. In the U.K., where private ownership of firearms is practically forbidden, criminals have and use guns regularly, and even build their own. One enterprising fellow converted 170 starter pistols to functioning firearms and sold them to gangs. Hundreds of such underground gun factories have been established, contributing to a 35% jump in gun violence. [48](#note-93-48 "Gun crime spreads 'like a cancer' across Britain, The Guardian, Oct 5, 2003")

## Myth: Criminals prefer “Saturday Night Specials” [49](#note-93-49 "“Saturday Night Special” is a term, with racist origin, describing an inexpensive firearm.  Part of the origin of the term came from “suicide special”, describing an inexpensive handgun purchased specifically for committing suicide.  The racist origins are too detestable to repeat here.")

**Fact:** “Saturday Night Specials” were used in fewer than 3% of crimes involving guns. [50](#note-93-50 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1994")

**Fact:** Fewer than 2% of all “Saturday Night Specials” made are used in crimes.

**Fact:** “What was available was the overriding factor in weapon choice \[by criminals\].” [51](#note-93-51 "Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006")

## Myth: Gun shows are supermarkets for criminals

**Fact:** Only 0.8% of convicts bought their firearms at gun shows. 39.2% obtained them from illegal street dealers. [52](#note-93-52 "Firearm Violence, 1993-2011, BJS")

**Fact:** Fewer than 1% of “crime guns” were obtained at gun shows. [53](#note-93-53 "Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006") This is a reduction from a 1997 study that found 2% of guns used in criminal offenses were purchased at gun shows. [54](#note-93-54 "Homicide in Eight U.S. Cities, National Institute of Justice, December 1997")

**Fact:** The FBI concluded in one study that no firearms acquired at gun shows were used to kill police. “In contrast to media myth, none of the firearms in the study were obtained from gun shows.” [55](#note-93-55 "Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006")

**Fact:** Only 5% of metropolitan police departments believe gun shows are a problem. [56](#note-93-56 "On the Front Line: Making Gun Interdiction Work, Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, February 1998, survey of 37 police departments in large cities")

**Fact:** Only 3.5% of youthful offenders reported that they obtained their last handgun at a gun show. [57](#note-93-57 "Patterns in Gun Acquisition and Use by Youthful Offenders in Michigan, Timothy S. Bynum, Todd G. Beitzel, Tracy A. O’Connell & Sean P. Varano, 1999")

**Fact:** 93% of guns used in crimes are obtained illegally (i.e., not at gun stores or gun shows). [58](#note-93-58 "BATF, 1999")

**Fact:** At most, 14% of all firearms traced in investigations were purchased at gun shows. [59](#note-93-59 "BATF, June 2000, covers only July 1996 through December 1998") But this includes all firearms that the police traced, whether or not they were used in crimes, which overstates the acquisition rate.

**Fact:** Gun dealers are federally licensed. They are bound to stringent rules for sales that apply equally whether they are selling firearms from a storefront or a gun show. [60](#note-93-60 "BATF, 2000")

**Fact:** Most crime guns are either bought off the street from illegal sources (39.2%) or through straw-man purchases by family members or friends (39.6%). [61](#note-93-61 "Firearm use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001")

## Myth: All four guns used at Columbine were bought at gun shows

**Fact:** Each of the guns was either bought through an intermediary or someone who knew they were going to underage buyers. In all cases there was a purposeful criminal activity occurring and the actors knew they were breaking the law.

## Myth: 25-50% of the vendors at most gun shows are “unlicensed dealers”

**Fact:** There is no such thing as an “unlicensed dealer,” except for people who buy and sell antique — curio — firearms as a hobby (not a business).

**Fact:** This 25-50% figure can only be achieved if you include those dealers *not selling guns* at these shows. These non-gun dealers include knife makers, ammunition dealers, accessories dealers, military artifact traders, clothing vendors, bumper-sticker sellers, and hobbyists. In short, *50% of the vendors at shows are not selling firearms at all!*

## Myth: Regulation of gun shows would reduce “straw sales”

**Fact:** The main study that makes this claim had no scientific means for determining what sales at the show were “straw sales.” Behaviors that Dr. Wintemute cited as “clear evidence” of a straw purchase were observational only and were more likely instances of more experienced acquaintances helping in a purchase decision. No attempts were made to verify that the sales in question were straw sales. [62](#note-93-62 "Gun shows across a multistate American gun market, Dr. GJ Wintemute, British Medical Journal, 2007")

## Myth: Prison isn’t the answer to crime control

**[![Incarceration rates, handgun supply and homicide rates 1978 thru 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b-400x293.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b.png)Fact:** 24 states, in a four year period, enacted habitual offender laws (in response to escalating violent crime rates) and the incarceration of these repeat offenders led to violence rates dropping nationally while the handgun supply kept rising. See our [study on habitual offender laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/habitual-effects/).

**Fact:** Why does crime rise when criminals are released from prison early? Because they are likely to commit more crimes. 67.5% were re-arrested for new felonies or serious misdemeanors within three years. Extrapolating, those released felons killed another 2,282 people. [63](#note-93-63 "Reentry Trends in the U.S., Recidivism, Department of Justice, 1999")

**Fact:** 45% of state prisoners were, at the time they committed their offense, under conditional supervision in the community – either on probation or on parole. [64](#note-93-64 "US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1991") Keeping violent convicts in prison would reduce violent crimes.

**Fact:** Homicide convicts serve a little more than half of their original sentences. [65](#note-93-65 "Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November, 2001") Given that men tend to be less prone to violent behavior as they age, [66](#note-93-66 "Homicide rates peak in the 18-24-year-old group, Bureau of Justice Statistics, online database") holding them for their full sentences would probably reduce violence significantly.

**Fact:** Los Angeles County saw repeat offender and re-arrest rates soar after authorities closed jails and released prisoners early. In less than three years, early release of prisoners in LA resulted in: [67](#note-93-67 "Releasing Inmates Early Has a Costly Human Toll, Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2006")

- 15,775 rearrested convicts
- 1,443 assault charges [68](#note-93-68 "Keep in mind these are just charges. Each arrested convict may have committed multiple crimes.")
- 518 robbery charges
- 215 sex-offense charges
- 16 murder charges

**Fact:** In 1991, 13,200 homicides were committed by felons on parole or probation. For comparison sake, this is about half of the 1999 annual gun death totals (keep in mind that gun deaths fell from 1991 to 1999).

## Myth: Waiting periods prevent rash crimes and reduce violent crime rates

**Fact:** The “time-to-crime” of a firearm is about 11 years, making it rare that a newly purchased firearm is used in a crime. [69](#note-93-69 "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as reported by Time Magazine, July 12, 2002")

**Fact:** The national five-day waiting period under the Brady Bill had no impact on murder or robbery. In fact, there was a slight increase in rape and aggravated assault, indicating no effective suppression of certain violent crimes. Thus, for two crime categories, a possible effect was to delay law-abiding citizens from getting a gun for protection. The risks were greatest for crimes against women. [70](#note-93-70 "Dr. John Lott Jr., University of Chicago School of Law, 1997")

**Fact:** Comparing homicide rates in 18 states that had waiting periods and background checks before the Brady Bill with rates in the 32 states that had no comparable laws, the difference in change of homicide rates was “insignificant”. [71](#note-93-71 "Dr. Jens Ludwig, Dr. Philip J. Cook, Journal of the American Medical Association, August 2000")

## Myth: 86% of Americans, 82% of gun owners favor universal background checks

**Fact:** Those statistics came from a pair of surveys reported by gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, who has been caught stacking survey responses by polling left-of-center mailing lists.

## Myth: Gun makers are selling plastic guns that slip through metal detectors

**Fact:** There is no such thing as a ‘plastic gun’. This myth started in 1980 [72](#note-93-72 "Heckler and Koch made a polymer framed firearm earlier, in 1968, but the myth seems to have erupted after Glock began promoting theirs to police departments.") when Glock began marketing a handgun with a polymer frame, not the entire firearm. Most of a Glock is metal (83% by weight) and detectable in common metal and x-ray detectors. “\[D\]espite a relatively common impression to the contrary, there is no current non-metal firearm not reasonably detectable by present technology and methods in use at our airports today, nor to my knowledge, is anyone on the threshold of developing such a firearm.” [73](#note-93-73 "Billie Vincent, FAA Director of Civil Aviation Security, House Subcommittee on Crime, May 15, 1986")

Incidentally, Glocks are one of the favorite handguns of police departments *because it is lightweight, thanks to the polymer frame*.

## Myth: Machine guns [74](#note-93-74 "In this myth, “machine gun” represents “fully automatic” firearms, ones that fire bullets as long as the trigger is pulled") are favored by criminals

**Fact:** In the drug-ridden Miami of 1980, fewer than 1% of all gun homicides were with machine guns. [75](#note-93-75 "Miami Herald, August 23, 1984, based on figures from Dr. Joseph Davis, Dade County medical examiner")

**Fact:** None of over 2,220 firearms recovered from crime scenes by the Minneapolis police in 1987-89 were machine guns. [76](#note-93-76 "1994, Minnesota Medical Association Firearm Injury Prevention Task Force")

**Fact:** 0.7% of seized guns in Detroit in 1991-92 were machine guns. [77](#note-93-77 "J. Gayle Mericle, 1989, Unpublished report of the Metropolitan Area Narcotics Squad, Will and Grundy Counties")

## Myth: Corrupt dealers sell almost 60 percent of crime guns

**Fact:** Only 0.5% of the reported traces were for an original purchase of three years or less before the trace was conducted. [78](#note-93-78 "Following the Gun: Enforcing Federal Law Against Firearms Traffickers, BATF, 2000") Thus, 99.5% of retailer sales had left their control long before the gun was traced (and many traces are not for crime guns).

**Fact:** The average “time to crime”, the time between the retail sale of a firearm and its use in a crime is eleven years. A firearm can change hands and travel far in six years.

---

Notes:

1. *City of Charlotte Gunshot Study*, Department of Criminal Justice, Lumb, Friday,1994 [↩](#return-note-93-1)
2. *Homicides and Non-Fatal Shootings: A Report on the First 6 Months Of 2009*, Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission, July 13, 2009 [↩](#return-note-93-2)
3. *Firearm-related Injury Incidents in 1999 – Annual Report*, San Francisco Department of Public Health and San Francisco Injury Center, February 2002 [↩](#return-note-93-3)
4. *Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2011 [↩](#return-note-93-4)
5. Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type; Pizarro, Zgoba, Jennings; Journal of Criminal Justice; 2011 [↩](#return-note-93-5)
6. Examining the Recidivism of Firearm Offenders Using State Criminal History and Mortality Data; Westley, Kang; 2018; Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority [↩](#return-note-93-6)
7. Taking Stock of Gang Violence: An Overview of the Literature; Valasik, Reid; 2019 [↩](#return-note-93-7)
8. Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type - Pizarro, Zgoba, Jennings - Journal of Criminal Justice - 2011 [↩](#return-note-93-8)
9. Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type - Pizarro, Zgoba, Jennings - Journal of Criminal Justice - 2011 [↩](#return-note-93-9)
10. Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type - Pizarro, Zgoba, Jennings - Journal of Criminal Justice - 2011 [↩](#return-note-93-10)
11. *Firearm Violence, 1993-2011*, BJS [↩](#return-note-93-11)
12. Ongoing Bureau of Justice Statistics incarcerated felon interview process, with variability in the years the interviews were conducted. [↩](#return-note-93-12)
13. Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2016 [↩](#return-note-93-13)
14. *The Last Link: from Gun Acquisition to Criminal Use*, Cook, Pollack, White, 2019 [↩](#return-note-93-14)
15. *Sources of guns to dangerous people: What we learn by asking them*, Cook, Parker, Pollack, Preventive Medicine, Volume 79, October 2015 [↩](#return-note-93-15)
16. *Gaps continue in firearm Surveillance: Evidence from a large U.S. city Bureau of Police*, Fabio, Duell, Creppage, O'Donnell and Laporte, Social Medicine, Vol 1, 2016 [↩](#return-note-93-16)
17. *Sources of guns to dangerous people: What we learn by asking them*, Cook, Parker, Pollack, Preventive Medicine, Volume 79, October 2015 [↩](#return-note-93-17)
18. Legal Firearm Sales at State Level and Rates of Violent Crime, Property Crime, and Homicides; Hamill, Hernandez, Bailey, Cutherell, Zielinski, Jenkins, Naylor, Matos, Collier, Schiller; August 2022 [↩](#return-note-93-18)
19. BATF trace records and Census Bureau for 2006, summarized in blog post [Rust Pipeline](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/rust-pipeline/) [↩](#return-note-93-19)
20. The Last Link: from Gun Acquisition to Criminal Use; Cook, Pollack, White; Journal of Urban Health; 2019 [↩](#return-note-93-20)
21. Individual, firearm, and purchasing characteristics associated with risk of firearm-related violent crime arrest: a nested case-control study; Laqueur, Schleimer, Shev, Kagawa; Injury Epidemiology; 2024 [↩](#return-note-93-21)
22. *Targeting Guns*, Dr. Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University, Aldine, 1997 [↩](#return-note-93-22)
23. *National Crime Victimization Survey, 2000*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, BATF estimates on handgun supply [↩](#return-note-93-23)
24. *Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms*, James Wright and Peter Rossi, Aldine, 1986 [↩](#return-note-93-24)
25. *Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms*, James Wright and Peter Rossi, Aldine, 1986 [↩](#return-note-93-25)
26. A “hot burglary” is when the burglar enters a home while the residents are there [↩](#return-note-93-26)
27. Dr. Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University (1997) and Kopel (1992 and 1999) [↩](#return-note-93-27)
28. The Supreme Court invalidated the D.C. handgun ban in the Heller case (2008), but the city has made obtaining a handgun very difficult via local legislation [↩](#return-note-93-28)
29. *Crime in the United States*, FBI, 1998 [↩](#return-note-93-29)
30. *Crime Against Small Business*, U.S. Small Business Administration, Senate Document No. 91-14, 1969 [↩](#return-note-93-30)
31. *Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force*, Dr. Gary Kleck, Social Problems, February 1988 [↩](#return-note-93-31)
32. *The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons*, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Federal Firearms Offenders study, 1997: National Institute of Justice, Research Report, July 1985, Department of Justice [↩](#return-note-93-32)
33. Barrett, B. J., Fitzgerald, A., Stevenson, R., & Cheung, C. H. (2017). Animal Maltreatment as a Risk Marker of More Frequent and Severe Forms of Intimate Partner Violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 35(23-24), 5131-5156. Doswell, A., Kazmir, S., Segal, R., & Tiyyagura, G. (2025). Impact of Intimate Partner Violence on Children. Pediatric Clinics of North America. Jegatheesan, B., Enders-Slegers, M.-J., Ormerod, E., & Boyden, P. (2020). Understanding the Link between Animal Cruelty and Family Violence: The Bioecological Systems Model. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(9), 3116. Jordan, C. E., Pritchard, A. J., Duckett, D., & Charnigo, R. (2010). Criminal Offending Among Respondents to Protective Orders: Crime Types and Patterns That Predict Victim Risk. Violence Against Women, 16(12), 1396-1411. Moylan, C. A., Herrenkohl, T. I., Sousa, C., Tajima, E. A., Herrenkohl, R. C., & Russo, M. J. (2009). The Effects of Child Abuse and Exposure to Domestic Violence on Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Problems. Journal of Family Violence, 25(1), 53-63. Smith, P. H., Homish, G. G., Leonard, K. E., & Cornelius, J. R. (2012). Intimate partner violence and specific substance use disorders: Findings from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 26(2), 236-245. [↩](#return-note-93-33)
34. Individual, firearm, and purchasing characteristics associated with risk of firearm-related violent crime arrest: a nested case-control study; Laqueur, Schleimer, Shev, Kagawa; Injury Epidemiology; 2024 [↩](#return-note-93-34)
35. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 1998 [↩](#return-note-93-35)
36. National Crime Victimization Survey, 1994, Bureau of Justice Statistics [↩](#return-note-93-36)
37. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1994 [↩](#return-note-93-37)
38. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1994 [↩](#return-note-93-38)
39. *Implementation of the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV)*, University of Cincinnati Policing Institute, 2008 [↩](#return-note-93-39)
40. *Homicide trends in the United States*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2011 [↩](#return-note-93-40)
41. *2011 National Gang Threat Assessment*, FBI, September 2011 [↩](#return-note-93-41)
42. *2011 National Gang Threat Assessment*, FBI, September 2011 [↩](#return-note-93-42)
43. *Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging, OMP, KNP Communications, 2012 [↩](#return-note-93-43)*
44. BATF report #133664, California Tracing Reports for 2012 [↩](#return-note-93-44)
45. BATF report #133664, California Tracing Reports for 2012 [↩](#return-note-93-45)
46. *Targeting Guns*, Dr. Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University, Aldine, 1997 [↩](#return-note-93-46)
47. *Injury Mortality Reports 1999-2008*, Center for Disease Control, online database [↩](#return-note-93-47)
48. *Gun crime spreads 'like a cancer' across Britain*, The Guardian, Oct 5, 2003 [↩](#return-note-93-48)
49. “Saturday Night Special” is a term, with racist origin, describing an inexpensive firearm. Part of the origin of the term came from “suicide special”, describing an inexpensive handgun purchased specifically for committing suicide. The racist origins are too detestable to repeat here. [↩](#return-note-93-49)
50. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1994 [↩](#return-note-93-50)
51. *Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers*, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006 [↩](#return-note-93-51)
52. *Firearm Violence, 1993-2011*, BJS [↩](#return-note-93-52)
53. *Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers*, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006 [↩](#return-note-93-53)
54. *Homicide in Eight U.S. Cities*, National Institute of Justice, December 1997 [↩](#return-note-93-54)
55. *Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers*, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006 [↩](#return-note-93-55)
56. *On the Front Line: Making Gun Interdiction Work*, Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, February 1998, survey of 37 police departments in large cities [↩](#return-note-93-56)
57. *Patterns in Gun Acquisition and Use by Youthful Offenders in Michigan*, Timothy S. Bynum, Todd G. Beitzel, Tracy A. O’Connell & Sean P. Varano, 1999 [↩](#return-note-93-57)
58. BATF, 1999 [↩](#return-note-93-58)
59. BATF, June 2000, covers only July 1996 through December 1998 [↩](#return-note-93-59)
60. BATF, 2000 [↩](#return-note-93-60)
61. *Firearm use by Offenders*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 [↩](#return-note-93-61)
62. *Gun shows across a multistate American gun market*, Dr. GJ Wintemute, British Medical Journal, 2007 [↩](#return-note-93-62)
63. *Reentry Trends in the U.S., Recidivism*, Department of Justice, 1999 [↩](#return-note-93-63)
64. US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1991 [↩](#return-note-93-64)
65. *Firearm Use by Offenders*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November, 2001 [↩](#return-note-93-65)
66. Homicide rates peak in the 18-24-year-old group, Bureau of Justice Statistics, online database [↩](#return-note-93-66)
67. *Releasing Inmates Early Has a Costly Human Toll*, Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2006 [↩](#return-note-93-67)
68. Keep in mind these are just charges. Each arrested convict may have committed multiple crimes. [↩](#return-note-93-68)
69. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as reported by Time Magazine, July 12, 2002 [↩](#return-note-93-69)
70. Dr. John Lott Jr., University of Chicago School of Law, 1997 [↩](#return-note-93-70)
71. Dr. Jens Ludwig, Dr. Philip J. Cook, Journal of the American Medical Association, August 2000 [↩](#return-note-93-71)
72. Heckler and Koch made a polymer framed firearm earlier, in 1968, but the myth seems to have erupted after Glock began promoting theirs to police departments. [↩](#return-note-93-72)
73. Billie Vincent, FAA Director of Civil Aviation Security, House Subcommittee on Crime, May 15, 1986 [↩](#return-note-93-73)
74. In this myth, “machine gun” represents “fully automatic” firearms, ones that fire bullets as long as the trigger is pulled [↩](#return-note-93-74)
75. Miami Herald, August 23, 1984, based on figures from Dr. Joseph Davis, Dade County medical examiner [↩](#return-note-93-75)
76. 1994, Minnesota Medical Association Firearm Injury Prevention Task Force [↩](#return-note-93-76)
77. J. Gayle Mericle, 1989, Unpublished report of the Metropolitan Area Narcotics Squad, Will and Grundy Counties [↩](#return-note-93-77)
78. *Following the Gun: Enforcing Federal Law Against Firearms Traffickers*, BATF, 2000 [↩](#return-note-93-78)

---

### [notes](https://www.gunfacts.info/notes/)

**Published:** April 17, 2026
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Gang Data

### % of gun homicides that are “gang related”

33% (Boston): Braga, A. A., Kennedy, D. M., Waring, E. J., & Piehl, A. M. (2001). Problem-oriented policing, deterrence, and youth violence: An evaluation of Boston’s Operation Ceasefire. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 38(3), 195–225.

*members of youth gangs or recurring street groups/networks, even if the immediate motive was not an explicit gang rivalry issue*

50% (Los Angeles): Klein, M. W., & Maxson, C. L. (2006). Street Gang Patterns and Policies. New York: Oxford University Press.Klein, M. W., & Maxson, C. L. (2006). **Street Gang Patterns and Policies.** New York: Oxford University Press.

*connected to gang activity such as rivalry, retaliation, turf conflict, status disputes, or was committed to benefit the gang*

---

### [Media Resources](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/)

**Published:** September 16, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

### Guy Smith – Author of [Guns and Control](https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Control-Nonpartisan-Understanding-Shootings/dp/1510760075) and creator of the long-running Gun Facts research project

Smith analyzes gun policy debates by tracing commonly cited statistics back to original FBI, CDC, and academic sources.

He regularly speaks with media about:

- gun violence statistics
- mass shooting data
- how gun research is misinterpreted in public debate
- Second Amendment history and policy claims
- differences between advocacy claims and underlying data
- common myths in gun policy research

*Media inquiries: [info@gunfacts.info]()*

This page is for members of the media who wish to leverage Gun Facts, Guy Smith’s knowledge concerning gun violence criminology data, and Second Amendment law and origins.

### Gun Policy Data Quick Reference:

- Gun violence is not “epidemic”. Is is highly concentrated into a few counties with major metro cities.
- The two principle concerns (who is causing the most gun violence and where are they getting their guns) resolves to [street gangs](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/gang-triangulation/) and guns [stollen from vehicles parked at residences](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/stolen-guns/).
- For gun homicides, young black males in highly urban areas are the most frequent. For gun suicides, old white males in rural areas.
- Internationally, there is no covariance between gun availability and either homicide or suicide rates.
- Mass public shooters have mental health disorders at twice the rate of the general public, and [thought disorder illnesses at nine times the rate](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mental-mass-contrast/).

For other key insights, see our [Journalists’ Gun Issues Guide](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-why-this-guide/) (top menu on this website).

### About Gun Facts

Gun Facts is a 25+ year research project that compiles firearm statistics from primary sources including the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, CDC data, and peer-reviewed academic research. The project focuses on:

- Presenting gold-standard data in easy to understand means.
- Conduct primary research to address both common misconceptions and unexplored areas of gun violence.
- Summarize complex secondary academic research.
- Debunk bad information, memes, and research.
- Doing all of the above without agenda or alignment with policy groups.

### Topics for Interviews

Guy frequently speaks with journalists about:

- Mass shooting trends and definitions
- How gun statistics are misinterpreted in public debate
- Crime trends vs gun ownership trends
- The difference between advocacy claims and underlying data-driven reality
- Historical origins of gun laws and the Second Amendment
- Common myths in gun policy research

## Television, Radio and Podcast Interviews with Guy Smith

---

### Selected Media Appearances

[![aj_jazeera_w284](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/aj_jazeera_w2841.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/gun-facts-author-interviewed-on-al-jazeera/ "Gun Facts Author interviewed on Al Jazeera")Guy Smith interviewed on Al Jazeera television evening news. Discusses gun control in America in relation to mass shootings by mentally ill people.On Andrew Heaton’s Political Orphanage podcast discussing [*Guns and Control*](https://amzn.to/2PLBNxC) and what we do and don’t know about gun violence.---

### Other Media Appearances

[![Thom Hartmann - Big Picture - 2011-05](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Thom-Hartmann-Big-Picture-2011-05-284.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/guy-smith-interviewed-on-thom-hartmann-big-picture/ "Guy Smith Interviewed on Thom Hartmann Big Picture")Guy Smith being interviewed on Thom Hartmann’s Big Picture, 2011-05-20. Discussing a patients’ privacy rights bill in Florida that had to do with firearms.[![UC Santa Cruz forum - Gun Culture - May 2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/UCSC-Gun-Culture-Forum-2014-400x225.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/gun-culture-uc-santa-cruz-policy-forum/ "Gun Culture – UC Santa Cruz Policy Forum")Guy Smith on a University of California at Santa Cruz public policy forum titled “Gun Culture” in May of 2014. Other panelists are from UCLA Law School, the Brady Campaign and the Liberal Gun Club.An interview about the the surprising and necessary critical information about guns and violence in America, on Gun Freedom Radio, 2025.[![still-shot](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/still-shot-400x253.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/guy-smith-on-kgo-tv-discussing-gun-buy-backs/ "Guy Smith on KGO-TV discussing gun buy-backs")Brief appearance by Guy Smith on KGO-TV discussing gun buy-backs.An interview about the impact of large capacity magazines, appearing on Mike G. in the Morning, WFYL.2010 interview on Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk discussing what to expect after the McDonald/Chicago handgun ban case.Interview on Liberty Watch Radio discussing the D.C. vs. Heller Supreme Court handgun ban case.Gun Facts interview on Armed American Radio.Gun Facts interview on Urban Shooter broadcast.Long 2008 interview on Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk discussing the Gun Facts book.

## Guy Smith: Brief Bio

Guy Smith is a writer, former IT guru (first job out of college was writing software at Kennedy Space Center), a former Silicon Valley marketing strategist, and long ago was both a cowboy, surfer.

The Gun Facts project started as an e-book personal crib sheet – a collection of notes about gun control, criminology, constitutional law and related topics. Smith began sharing his notes with others in the late 1990’s and discovered that most people faced the same problem: there was a mountain of real information that was unknown to the public.

Since inception, the Gun Facts e-book (no longer in production) was downloaded into more than 165 countries (it was estimated that each major edition had a viral spread of over one million copies). Gun Facts has been cited in testimony before state public safety commissions and has been cited in a number of books including extensive coverage in  *[Armed Response](/apop.php?id=0936783451)* by David Kenik.

Smith contributes Op/Ed pieces to major metropolitan newspapers (San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune).

**Background:** With an education in quantitative management sciences and as a working researcher, Guy started noticing that gun policy organizations were less than factual and often outright dishonest. His research capabilities, paired with a stubborn southern gent’s honor, caused him to take-up the cause of debunking gun policy misinformation.

**Guy is not a member of any organization** – not the NRA, not Everytown for Gun Safety, not the Second Amendment Foundation, not the Brady Campaign. Nada. *Not even any political party*. Someone once bought Guy a membership in the California Rifle and Pistol Association, and Guy immediately demanded to be removed from the membership roster.

## Promo Photographs – Guy Smith

To obtain a high resolution copy of each thumbnail photograph below, right-click on the photo and select “Save target as …” or “Save link as …”

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Guy-Smith-Headshot-2-cropped-DEAV8769-400x483.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Guy-Smith-Headshot-2-cropped-DEAV8769-scaled.png)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Guy-Smith-Headshot-1-DEAV8808-400x600.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Guy-Smith-Headshot-1-DEAV8808-scaled.png) [![guy-smith-CCTV-interview-2013-06-thumb](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/guy-smith-CCTV-interview-2013-06-thumb.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/guy-smith-CCTV-interview-2013-06.jpg)
---

## Biographical Information and Blurbs for Guy Smith

Guy Smith is a writer, former IT guru (first job out of college was writing software at Kennedy Space Center), a former Silicon Valley marketing strategist, and long ago was both a cowboy, surfer.

The Gun Facts project started as an e-book personal crib sheet – a collection of notes about gun control, criminology, constitutional law and related topics. Smith began sharing his notes with others in the late 1990’s and discovered that most people faced the same problem: there was a mountain of real information that was unknown to the public.

Since inception, the Gun Facts e-book (no longer in production) was downloaded into more than 165 countries (it was estimated that each major edition had a viral spread of over one million copies). Gun Facts has been cited in testimony before state public safety commissions and has been cited in a number of books including extensive coverage in  *[Armed Response](/apop.php?id=0936783451)* by David Kenik.

Smith contributes Op/Ed pieces to major metropolitan newspapers (San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune).

## Cover art for *Guns and Control*

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Guns-and-Control-Cover-Design-Form-400x592.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Guns-and-Control-Cover-Design-Form.jpg)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-FB-ad-1-400x400.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-FB-ad-1.jpg)*Click either image for a larger, downloadable version*

---

### [Guns in Other Countries](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/guns-in-other-countries/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: Countries with strict gun control have less crime

**Fact:** In America, we can demonstrate that private ownership of guns reduces crime, but from country to country there is no correlation between gun availability and the violent crime rate. Consider this:

**Crime Rate**HighLow**Gun Availability**HighUnited StatesSwitzerlandLowMexicoJapanOr, to use detailed data, we can contrast the per capita homicide rate with the per capita gun ownership rate between different industrialized countries (see graph below). Contrasting the data shows zero correlation between the availability of guns and the overall homicide rate.

**Fact:** Countries with the strictest gun-control laws also tended to have the highest homicide rates. [1](#note-99-1 "Violence, Guns and Drugs: A Cross-Country Analysis, Jeffery A. Miron, Department of Economics, Boston University, University of Chicago Press Journal of Law & Economics, October 2001")

**Fact:** According to the U.N., as of 2005, Scotland was the most violent country in the developed world, with people three times more likely to be assaulted than in America. Violent crime there has doubled over the last 20 years. 3% of Scots had been victims of assault compared with 1.2% in America. [2](#note-99-2 "Scotland tops list of world's most violent countries, The Times, September 19, 2005")

**Fact:** “… the major surveys completed in the past 20 years or more provides no evidence of any relationship between the total number of legally held firearms in society and the rate of armed crime. Nor is there a relationship between the severity of controls imposed in various countries or the mass of bureaucracy involved with many control systems with the apparent ease of access to firearms by criminals and terrorists.” [3](#note-99-3 "Minutes of Evidence, Colin Greenwood, Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, January 29, 2003")

**[![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - Homicide Rates and Per Capita Firearm Ownership Rates 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Homicide-Rates-and-Per-Capita-Firearm-Ownership-Rates-2017-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Homicide-Rates-and-Per-Capita-Firearm-Ownership-Rates-2017.png)Fact:** Even if we examine just firearm ownership and firearm homicide by country, we see no correlation between the two. [4](#note-99-4 "Firearm ownership, Small Arms Survey 2007; Crime, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - compiled by The Guardian, Gun homicides and gun ownership listed by country")

**Fact:** Switzerland has relatively lenient gun control for Europe [5](#note-99-5 "In Switzerland, handguns are obtainable once a person obtains a simple police permit which is valid for six months. Federal law over weapons, weapon accessories and ammunition (weapon law, WG), Federal Assembly of the Swiss Confederation, May 2007"), and has the third-lowest homicide rate of the top nine major European countries, and the same per capita rate as England and Wales, where restrictions are much tighter. [6](#note-99-6 "Carol Kalish, International Crime Rates, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report (Washington: Department of Justice, May 1988). 1984 data for Switzerland, and the 1983 data for England and Wales.")

**Fact:** Indeed, the Swiss basically have a military rifle in nearly every closest. “Everybody who has served in the army is allowed to keep their personal weapon, even after the end of their military service.” [7](#note-99-7 "Army rifles remain racked at home, Swiss Defense Ministry statement, May 15, 2004")

**Fact:** “We don’t have as many guns \[in Brazil\] as the United States, but we use them more.” [8](#note-99-8 "Chocolates for guns? Brazil targets gun violence, Rubem César Fernandes, executive secretary of Viva Rio, a nongovernmental agency that studies urban crime, Christian Science Monitor, August 10, 1999") Brazil has mandatory licensing, registration, and maximum personal ownership quotas. It now bans any new sales to private citizens. Their homicide rate is almost three (3) times higher than the U.S. [9](#note-99-9 "Homicide trends in the United States, U.S. data: Bureau of Justice Statistics, September, 2004. Brazil data: Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2005.")

**[![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - Contact (Violent) Crime Rates per Industrialized Country](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Contact-Violent-Crime-Rates-per-Industrialized-Country-400x298.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Contact-Violent-Crime-Rates-per-Industrialized-Country.png)Fact:** In Canada around 1920, before there was any form of gun control, their homicide rate was 7% of the U.S rate. By 1986, and after significant gun control legislation, Canada’s homicide rate was 35% of the U.S. rate – a significant increase. [10](#note-99-10 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, at 360") In 2003, Canada had a violent crime rate more than double that of the U.S. (963 vs. 475 per 100,000). [11](#note-99-11 "Juristat: Crime Statistics in Canada, 2004 and FBI Uniform Crime Statistics online")

**Fact:** One study of Canadian firearm law and homicide rates spanning 34 years “failed to demonstrate a beneficial association between legislation and firearm homicide rates” for three major gun control bills. [12](#note-99-12 "Canadian Firearms Legislation and Effects on Homicide 1974 to 2008, Caillin Langmann, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, September 30, 2011")

**Fact:** Many of the countries with the strictest gun control have the highest rates of violent crime. Australia and England, which have virtually banned gun ownership, have the highest rates of robbery, sexual assault, and assault with force of the top 17 industrialized countries. [13](#note-99-13 "Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries, Dutch Ministry of Justice, 2001")

**Fact:** The crime rate is 66% higher in four Canadian Prairie Provinces than in the northern US states across the border. [14](#note-99-14 "A Comparison of Violent and Firearm Crime Rates in the Canadian Prairie Provinces and Four U.S. Border States, 1961-2003, Parliamentary Research Branch of the Library of Parliament, March 7, 2005")

**Fact:** Strict controls over existing arms failed in Finland. Despite needs-based licensing, storage laws and transportation restrictions, [15](#note-99-15 "National Report by Finland, United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs") Finland experienced a multiple killing school shooting in 2007. [16](#note-99-16 "Pekka-Eric Auvinen shooting in Tuusula, Finland on November 8, 2007")

## Myth: Britain has strict gun control and thus a low crime rate

(see notes about [the odd nature of British crime statistics](/gun-control-myths/miscellaneous-gun-control-information/#BCS))

**Fact:** The United Kingdom has *always* had a lower homicide rate than the United States, even when British citizens could legally buy machine guns (Briton’s modern era of gun control did not [ramp up until the 1960s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom#1968_Firearms_Act)). The difference is cultural, not legal.

[![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - Homicides in U.S. and U.K. from 1900 through 2000](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Homicides-in-U.S.-and-U.K.-from-1900-through-2000-400x326.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Homicides-in-U.S.-and-U.K.-from-1900-through-2000.jpg)[![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - U.K. Violent Crime and Firearm Ownership Rates Before and After 1997](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-U.K.-Violent-Crime-and-Firearm-Ownership-Rates-Before-and-After-1997-400x288.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-U.K.-Violent-Crime-and-Firearm-Ownership-Rates-Before-and-After-1997.png)[![England and Wales homicides and attempted murder around firearms act](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/england-wales-homicides-attempted-murder-firearms-act-400x281.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/england-wales-homicides-attempted-murder-firearms-act.jpg)British Offenses in 2000**Offense category****Increase from pre-ban**Armed Robbery170.1%Kidnapping/abduction144.0%Assault130.9%Attempted murder117.6%Sexual assault112.6%**Fact:** Since gun banning has escalated in the UK, the rate of crime – especially violent crime – has risen.

**Fact:** Ironically, firearm use in crimes in the UK has ***doubled*** in the decade since handguns were banned. [17](#note-99-17 "Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger, The Times, August 24, 2007")

**Fact:** Britain has the highest rate of violent crime in Europe, more so than the United States or even South Africa. They also have the second highest overall crime rate in the European Union. In 2008, Britain had a violent crime rate nearly five times higher than the United States (2034 vs. 446 per 100,000 population). [18](#note-99-18 "The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S., Daily Mail, July 3, 2009, citing a joint report of the European Commission and United Nations")

**Fact:** 67% of British residents surveyed believed that “As a result of gun and knife crime \[rising\], the area I live in is not as safe as it was five years ago.” [19](#note-99-19 "YouGov survey of 2,156 residents in Sept 2007")

**Fact:** U.K. street robberies soared 28% in 2001. Violent crime was up 11%, murders up 4%, and rapes were up 14%. [20](#note-99-20 "British Home Office, reported by BBC news, July 12, 2002")

**Fact:** In 1919, before it had any gun control, the U.K. had a homicide rate that was 8% of the U.S. rate. By 1986, and after enacting significant gun control, the rate was 9% – practically unchanged. [21](#note-99-21 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, at 359")

**Fact:** “… \[There is\] nothing in the statistics for England and Wales to suggest that either the stricter controls on handguns prior to 1997 or the ban imposed since have controlled access to such firearms by criminals.” [22](#note-99-22 "Minutes of Evidence, Colin Greenwood, Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, January 29, 2003")

**Fact:** Comparing crime rates between America and Britain is fundamentally flawed. In America, a gun crime is recorded as a gun crime. In Britain, a crime is only recorded when there is a final disposition (a conviction). All unsolved gun crimes in Britain are not reported as gun crimes, grossly undercounting the amount of gun crime there. [23](#note-99-23 "Fear in Britain, Gallant, Hills, Kopel, Independence Institute, July 18, 2000") To make matters worse, British law enforcement has been exposed for falsifying criminal reports to create falsely lower crime figures, in part to preserve tourism. [24](#note-99-24 "Crime Figures a Sham, Say Police, Daily Telegraph, April 1, 1996")

**Fact:** An ongoing parliamentary inquiry in Britain into the growing number of black market weapons has concluded that there are more than three million illegally held firearms in circulation – double the number believed to have been held 10 years ago – and that criminals are more willing than ever to use them. One in three criminals under the age of 25 possesses or has access to a firearm. [25](#note-99-25 "Reported in The Guardian, September 3, 2000")
**Fact:** Handgun homicides in England and Wales reached an all-time high in 2000, years after a virtual ban on private handgun ownership. More than 3,000 crimes involving handguns were recorded in 1999-2000, including 42 homicides, 310 cases of attempted murder, 2,561 robberies and 204 burglaries. [26](#note-99-26 "42 killed by handguns last year, The Times, January 10, 2001, reporting on statistics supplied by the British Home Office")

**Fact:** Handguns were used in 3,685 British offenses in 2000 compared with 2,648 in 1997, an increase of 40%. [27](#note-99-27 "Illegal Firearms in the UK, Centre for Defense Studies at King's College in London, July 2001") It is interesting to note:

- Of the 20 areas with the lowest number of legal firearms, 10 had an above average level of “gun crime.”
- Of the 20 areas with the *highest* levels of legal guns, only 2 had armed crime levels above the average.

**Fact:** Between 1997 and 1999, there were 429 murders in London, the highest two-year figure for more than 10 years – nearly two-thirds of those involved firearms – in a country that has virtually banned private firearm ownership. [28](#note-99-28 "Illegal Firearms in the UK, Centre for Defense Studies at King's College in London, July 2001")

**Fact:** Over the last century, the British crime rate was largely unchanged. In the late nineteenth century, the per capita homicide rate in Britain was between 1.0 and 1.5 per 100,000. [29](#note-99-29 "Crime and Society in England 1750-1900, Clive Emsley, 1987, at 36") In the late twentieth century, after a near ban on gun ownership, the homicide rate is around 1.4. [30](#note-99-30 "Where Kids and Guns Do Mix, Stephen P. Halbrook, Wall Street Journal, June 1999") This implies that the homicide rate did not vary with either the level of gun control or gun availability.

**Fact:** The U.K. has strict gun control and a rising homicide rate of 1.4 per 100,000. Switzerland has the highest per capita firearm ownership rate on the planet (all males age 20 to 42 are required to keep rifles or pistols at home) and has a homicide rate of 1.2 per 100,000. To date, there has never been a schoolyard massacre in Switzerland. [31](#note-99-31 "Where Kids and Guns Do Mix, Stephen P. Halbrook, Wall Street Journal, June 1999")

**Fact:** “… the scale of gun crime in the capital \[London\] has forced senior officers to set up a specialist unit to deal with … shootings.” [32](#note-99-32 "Associated News Media, April 30, 2001")

## Myth: Other nations have gangs, but don’t have U.S. homicide rates

**Fact:** Street gangs in other countries have much different structures and cultural attitudes about violence. In one study of British gangs [33](#note-99-33 "Youth Gangs, Street Violence and Organized Crime in Modern Britain' - Global Perspectives on Youth Gang Behavior, Violence and Weapon Use, Harding, Palasinski") they note:

- British gangs are highly amorphous, whereas American gangs are organized to the point of having bullet-list codes.
- Attitudes to violence have traditionally been non-fatal (e.g., beatings and stabbings).
- Gang gun activity has been rising with the adoption of “rap culture” and gangs importing guns through their drug trafficking networks.

**Fact:** In the UK, 59% of gang members had possessed a gun at one time or another. But only 1% carry publicly as a matter of practice, reserving gun use for planned retaliatory violence. [34](#note-99-34 "Youth gangs in the UK: context, evolution and violence; Medina, Aldridge, Ralphs; ResearchGate; 2014") In some UK regions there’s a cultural aversion to using guns, with a preference for fist fights and disdain for firearms as “cowardly”.

## Myth: Gun control in Australia is curbing crime

[![Australia Homicides rates both before and after gun ban with trend lines](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Homicides-before-and-after-gun-ban-with-trend-lines-400x287.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Homicides-before-and-after-gun-ban-with-trend-lines.png)**Fact:** Homicides were falling ***before*** the Australian firearm ban. In the seven years before and after the Australian ban, the rate of decline was identical (down to four decimal places). Homicides dropped steeply starting in 2003, but all of this decline was associated with non-firearm and non-knife murders (fewer beatings, poisonings, drownings, etc.). [35](#note-99-35 "Australia Institute of Criminology, AIC NHMP 1989/90 to 2011-12")

**Fact:** Crime has been rising since enacting a sweeping ban on private gun ownership. In the first two years after the ban, government statistics showed a dramatic increase in criminal activity. [36](#note-99-36 "Crime and Justice - Crimes Recorded by Police, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000") In 2001-2002, homicides were up another 20%. [37](#note-99-37 "Report #46: Homicide in Australia, 2001-2002, Australian Institute of Criminology, April 2003")

From the inception of firearm confiscation to March 27, 2000, the numbers are:

- Firearm-related murders were up 19%
- Armed robberies were up 69%
- Home invasions were up 21%

The sad part is that in the 15 years before the national gun confiscation:

- Firearm-related homicides dropped nearly 66%
- Firearm-related deaths fell 50%

**Fact:** Gun crimes have been rising throughout Australia since guns were banned. In Sydney alone, robbery rates with guns rose 160% in 2001, more than in the previous year. [38](#note-99-38 "Costa targets armed robbers, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 4, 2002")

**Fact:** A ten-year Australian study has concluded that firearm confiscation had no effect on crime rates. [39](#note-99-39 "Gun Laws and Sudden Death: Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference?, Dr. Jeanine Baker and Dr. Samara McPhedran, British Journal of Criminology, November 2006.") A separate report also concluded that Australia’s 1996 gun control laws “found \[no\] evidence for an impact of the laws on the pre-existing decline in firearm homicides” [40](#note-99-40 "Austrian firearms: data require cautious approach, S. McPhedran, S. McPhedran, and J. Baker, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2007, 191:562") and yet another report from Australia for a similar time period indicates the same lack of decline in firearm homicides. [41](#note-99-41 "Australian firearms legislation and unintentional firearm deaths a theoretical explanation for the absence of decline following the 1996 gun laws Public Health, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, Public Health, Volume 122, Issue 3")
**Fact:** Despite having much stricter gun control than New Zealand (including a near ban on handguns) firearm homicides in both countries track one another over 25 years, indicating that gun control is not a control variable. [42](#note-99-42 "Firearm Homicide in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: What Can We Learn From Long- Term International Comparisons?, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, and Pooja Singh, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, March 16, 2010")

## Myth: The Australian Gun Buyback Reduced Mass Homicides

[![GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - Australia Mass Homicides 1970 through March 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Mass-Homicides-1970-through-March-2018-400x322.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Mass-Homicides-1970-through-March-2018.png)Mass Homicides in Australia
Before/After 1990s Gun Control Initiative**Incidents****Deaths**22-yearsTotalAverageTotalAverageBefore0.130.080.130.08After0.090.100.090.10Per 1,000 Population[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Homicide-Rate-by-Country-400x297.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Homicide-Rate-by-Country.png)**Fact:** The number of mass homicides and the number of people killed in mass homicides in Australia has gone up since the gun control initiatives of the mid 1990s.

## Myth: Japan has strict gun control and a less violent society

**Fact:** In Japan, the total murder rate is almost 1 per 100,000. In the U.S., there are about 3.2 murders per 100,000 people each year by weapons other than firearms. [43](#note-99-43 "Japan data: 1996 Demographic Yearbook, United Nations, 1998; US data: FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1996.") *This means that even if firearms in the U.S. could be eliminated, the U.S. would still have three times the murder rate of the Japanese.*

## Myth: Gun bans elsewhere work

**Fact:** Though illegal, side-street gun makers thrive in the Philippines, primarily hand crafting exact replicas of submachine guns, which are often the simplest type of gun to manufacture. Estimates are that almost half of all guns in the Philippines are illegal. [44](#note-99-44 "Filipino gunsmiths are making a killing, Taipei Times, May 7, 2005")

**Fact:** Chinese police destroyed 113 illegal gun factories and shops in a three-month crackdown in 2006. Police seized 2,445 tons of explosives, 4.81 million detonators and 117,000 guns. [45](#note-99-45 "China Radio International Online, September 7, 2006")

## Myth: The United States has the highest violence rate because of lax gun control

**Fact:** The top 100 countries for homicide do not include the U.S. [46](#note-99-46 "SOURCE: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2010") The top ten countries all have near or total firearm bans.

## Myth: The U.S. has the highest rate of firearm deaths among 25 high-income countries

**Fact:** 60% of American “gun deaths” are suicides [47](#note-99-47 "Center for Disease Control WISQARS Fatal Injury Data is the National Vital Statistics System for 2010") and the U.S. has a suicide rate 11% higher [48](#note-99-48 "World Health Organization, mortality database as of November 2006") than international averages. This accounts for most of the difference.

**Fact:** The U.S. has a violent crime rate lower than 12 of 17 industrialized countries [49](#note-99-49 "Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries, Dutch Ministry of Justice, 2001") due in large part to the 2.5 million annual defense gun uses. [50](#note-99-50 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997")

## Myth: The United States is the source of 90% of drug syndicate guns in Mexico

[![Firearms Trafficked, Confiscated in Mexico and Traced to U.S., 2008](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Firearms-Trafficked-Confiscated-in-Mexico-and-Traced-to-U.S.-2008-400x282.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Firearms-Trafficked-Confiscated-in-Mexico-and-Traced-to-U.S.-2008.jpg)[![ATF table on gun traces internationally](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ATF-table-on-gun-traces-internationally-400x142.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/ATF-table-on-gun-traces-internationally.png)click to enlarge

**Fact:** This is an often-misquoted data point from the BATFE, who said 90% of the firearms that have been *interdicted in transport* to Mexico or recovered in Mexico came from the United States. Thus, the 90% number includes only the firearms American and Mexican police stop in transport. [51](#note-99-51 "Mexico's Massive Illegal weapons coming from China and the U.S., American Chronicle, March 14, 2009")

**Fact:** The original 90% number was derived from the number of firearms successfully traced, not the total number of firearms criminally used. For 2007-2008, Mexican officials recovered approximately 29,000 firearms from crime scenes and asked for BATFE traces of 11,000. Of those, the BATFE could trace roughly 6,000 of which 5,114 were confirmed to have come from the United States. Thus, 83% of the crime guns recovered in Mexico have not been or cannot be traced to America and the real number is most likely 17%. [52](#note-99-52 "The Myth of 90 Percent, Fox News, April 2, 2009, BATFE data distilled by William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott")

**Fact:** 73% of trace requests by foreign countries were ***not successful*** in identifying the firearm purchaser within the USA. Nearly as many (22%) were guns that were never in the United States at any time (made overseas and not imported into the United States). 10% were legally exported to the country where they were later recovered by police. 2% were originally the property of the military or police, who made purchases from U.S. gun makers.

**Fact:** Mexican drug syndicates can buy guns anywhere. For the relatively under-powered civilian rifles coming from the United States, drug runners would pay between 300% and 400% above the market price. Thus, they can and are buying guns around the world. [53](#note-99-53 "Southwest Border Region--Drug Transportation and Homeland Security Issues, National Drug Intelligence Center, October 2007")

**Fact:** Mexican drug cartels – with $40 billion in annual revenues – have military armament that includes hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions, antitank rockets and assault *rifles* smuggled in from Central American countries. [54](#note-99-54 "Drug cartels' new weaponry means war, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2009") These are infantry weapons bought from around the world and not civilian rifles from the United States.

## Myth: Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States

**Fact:** The Mexican attorney general’s office reports seizing a total of 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008, or about 14,500 weapons a year. And that is *all* types of weapons, regardless of country of origin. [55](#note-99-55 "The Myth of 90 Percent, William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott, Fox News, April 2, 2009") Had they actually seized approximately 2,000 weapons per day, the total number of seized guns would be closer to 1,460,000.

## Myth: Thousands of guns go into Mexico from the U.S. every day

**Fact:** In Senate Committee testimony, the BAFTE said the number was likely at worst to be in the “hundreds”. [56](#note-99-56 "Senate Committee Judiciary, William Hoover, Assistant Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms, March 17, 2009") As evidenced above, for 2007 and 2008, the average for all firearms seizures was closer to 40 per day (29,000 guns/730 days), and only a fraction of these came from the USA by any means.

---

Notes:

1. *Violence, Guns and Drugs: A Cross-Country Analysis*, Jeffery A. Miron, Department of Economics, Boston University, University of Chicago Press Journal of Law & Economics, October 2001 [↩](#return-note-99-1)
2. *Scotland tops list of world's most violent countries*, The Times, September 19, 2005 [↩](#return-note-99-2)
3. *Minutes of Evidence*, Colin Greenwood, Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, January 29, 2003 [↩](#return-note-99-3)
4. Firearm ownership, Small Arms Survey 2007; Crime, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - compiled by The Guardian, *Gun homicides and gun ownership listed by country* [↩](#return-note-99-4)
5. In Switzerland, handguns are obtainable once a person obtains a simple police permit which is valid for six months. *Federal law over weapons, weapon accessories and ammunition (weapon law, WG)*, Federal Assembly of the Swiss Confederation, May 2007 [↩](#return-note-99-5)
6. Carol Kalish, International Crime Rates, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report (Washington: Department of Justice, May 1988). 1984 data for Switzerland, and the 1983 data for England and Wales. [↩](#return-note-99-6)
7. *Army rifles remain racked at home*, Swiss Defense Ministry statement, May 15, 2004 [↩](#return-note-99-7)
8. *Chocolates for guns? Brazil targets gun violence*, Rubem César Fernandes, executive secretary of Viva Rio, a nongovernmental agency that studies urban crime, Christian Science Monitor, August 10, 1999 [↩](#return-note-99-8)
9. *Homicide trends in the United States*, U.S. data: Bureau of Justice Statistics, September, 2004. Brazil data: Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2005. [↩](#return-note-99-9)
10. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, at 360 [↩](#return-note-99-10)
11. Juristat: Crime Statistics in Canada, 2004 and FBI Uniform Crime Statistics online [↩](#return-note-99-11)
12. *Canadian Firearms Legislation and Effects on Homicide 1974 to 2008*, Caillin Langmann, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, September 30, 2011 [↩](#return-note-99-12)
13. *Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries*, Dutch Ministry of Justice, 2001 [↩](#return-note-99-13)
14. *A Comparison of Violent and Firearm Crime Rates in the Canadian Prairie Provinces and Four U.S. Border States, 1961-2003*, Parliamentary Research Branch of the Library of Parliament, March 7, 2005 [↩](#return-note-99-14)
15. *National Report by Finland*, United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs [↩](#return-note-99-15)
16. Pekka-Eric Auvinen shooting in Tuusula, Finland on November 8, 2007 [↩](#return-note-99-16)
17. *Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger*, The Times, August 24, 2007 [↩](#return-note-99-17)
18. *The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.*, Daily Mail, July 3, 2009, citing a joint report of the European Commission and United Nations [↩](#return-note-99-18)
19. YouGov survey of 2,156 residents in Sept 2007 [↩](#return-note-99-19)
20. British Home Office, reported by BBC news, July 12, 2002 [↩](#return-note-99-20)
21. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, at 359 [↩](#return-note-99-21)
22. *Minutes of Evidence*, Colin Greenwood, Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, January 29, 2003 [↩](#return-note-99-22)
23. *Fear in Britain*, Gallant, Hills, Kopel, Independence Institute, July 18, 2000 [↩](#return-note-99-23)
24. *Crime Figures a Sham, Say Police*, Daily Telegraph, April 1, 1996 [↩](#return-note-99-24)
25. Reported in The Guardian, September 3, 2000 [↩](#return-note-99-25)
26. *42 killed by handguns last year*, The Times, January 10, 2001, reporting on statistics supplied by the British Home Office [↩](#return-note-99-26)
27. *Illegal* *Firearms in the UK*, Centre for Defense Studies at King's College in London, July 2001 [↩](#return-note-99-27)
28. *Illegal* *Firearms in the UK*, Centre for Defense Studies at King's College in London, July 2001 [↩](#return-note-99-28)
29. *Crime and Society in England 1750-1900*, Clive Emsley, 1987, at 36 [↩](#return-note-99-29)
30. *Where Kids and Guns Do Mix*, Stephen P. Halbrook, Wall Street Journal, June 1999 [↩](#return-note-99-30)
31. *Where Kids and Guns Do Mix*, Stephen P. Halbrook, Wall Street Journal, June 1999 [↩](#return-note-99-31)
32. Associated News Media, April 30, 2001 [↩](#return-note-99-32)
33. Youth Gangs, Street Violence and Organized Crime in Modern Britain' - Global Perspectives on Youth Gang Behavior, Violence and Weapon Use, Harding, Palasinski [↩](#return-note-99-33)
34. Youth gangs in the UK: context, evolution and violence; Medina, Aldridge, Ralphs; ResearchGate; 2014 [↩](#return-note-99-34)
35. Australia Institute of Criminology, AIC NHMP 1989/90 to 2011-12 [↩](#return-note-99-35)
36. *Crime and Justice - Crimes Recorded by Police*, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000 [↩](#return-note-99-36)
37. *Report #46: Homicide in Australia, 2001-2002*, Australian Institute of Criminology, April 2003 [↩](#return-note-99-37)
38. *Costa targets armed robbers*, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 4, 2002 [↩](#return-note-99-38)
39. *Gun Laws and Sudden Death: Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference?*, Dr. Jeanine Baker and Dr. Samara McPhedran, British Journal of Criminology, November 2006. [↩](#return-note-99-39)
40. *Austrian firearms: data require cautious approach*, S. McPhedran, S. McPhedran, and J. Baker, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2007, 191:562 [↩](#return-note-99-40)
41. *Australian firearms legislation and unintentional firearm deaths a theoretical explanation for the absence of decline following the 1996 gun laws Public Health*, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, Public Health, Volume 122, Issue 3 [↩](#return-note-99-41)
42. *Firearm Homicide in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: What Can We Learn From Long- Term International Comparisons?*, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, and Pooja Singh, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, March 16, 2010 [↩](#return-note-99-42)
43. Japan data: *1996 Demographic Yearbook*, United Nations, 1998; US data: FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1996. [↩](#return-note-99-43)
44. *Filipino gunsmiths are making a killing*, Taipei Times, May 7, 2005 [↩](#return-note-99-44)
45. China Radio International Online, September 7, 2006 [↩](#return-note-99-45)
46. SOURCE: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2010 [↩](#return-note-99-46)
47. Center for Disease Control WISQARS Fatal Injury Data is the National Vital Statistics System for 2010 [↩](#return-note-99-47)
48. World Health Organization, mortality database as of November 2006 [↩](#return-note-99-48)
49. *Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries*, Dutch Ministry of Justice, 2001 [↩](#return-note-99-49)
50. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997 [↩](#return-note-99-50)
51. *Mexico's Massive Illegal weapons coming from China and the U.S.*, American Chronicle, March 14, 2009 [↩](#return-note-99-51)
52. *The Myth of 90 Percent*, Fox News, April 2, 2009, BATFE data distilled by William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott [↩](#return-note-99-52)
53. *Southwest Border Region--Drug Transportation and Homeland Security Issues*, National Drug Intelligence Center, October 2007 [↩](#return-note-99-53)
54. *Drug cartels' new weaponry means war*, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2009 [↩](#return-note-99-54)
55. *The Myth of 90 Percent*, William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott, Fox News, April 2, 2009 [↩](#return-note-99-55)
56. Senate Committee Judiciary, William Hoover, Assistant Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms, March 17, 2009 [↩](#return-note-99-56)

---

### [Children and Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/children-and-guns/)

**Published:** September 6, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: Guns are the leading cause of death for children

**[![Firearm and Non-Firearm Death Rates, Ages 1 thru 19, 2019 - b](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Firearm-and-Non-Firearm-Death-Rates-Ages-1-thru-19-2019-b-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Firearm-and-Non-Firearm-Death-Rates-Ages-1-thru-19-2019-b.png)Fact:** There are criminology and health care definitions for “child” (prepubescent) and “teens”. The national Gang Center notes that street gang recruitment begins at age 14. This the principle reason why gun deaths are nearly nonexistent for children, but steadily rise for teens.

## Myth: There have been 96 school shootings since Sandy Hook

**Fact:** This analysis of news reports was created by the gun control group Everytown. This study included:

- College campuses (47% of cases)
- Suicides attempts (18%)
- Cases where nobody was hurt (27%)

Some other analysts note that many of the cases are unrelated to school activity or actually occurred near campus, not on it. All in all, it is a poor study with no relevance to child endangerment.

## Myth: 240 schools had a school related shooting in 2015-16

(also “over 100 schools reported a school-related homicide”)

**Fact:** This Education Department “study” [1](#note-4-1 "School Climate and Safety, U.S. Department of Education, April, 2018") was utterly botched, to the point where they logged 16 shooting of one school district, but an NPR investigation [2](#note-4-2 "The School Shootings That Weren't, NPR, August 2018")showed zero. In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place. In at least four cases, something did happen, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting.

## Myth: 13 children are killed each day by guns

**Fact:** Adults included – This “statistic” includes “children” up to age 19 or 24, depending on the source. [3](#note-4-3 "Center for Disease Control WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports for 2013") Since most violent crime is committed by males ages 16-24, the “13 children” number includes adult gang members dying during criminal activity. The proper definition of ‘[child](http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=child)’ is a person between birth and puberty (typically 13-14 years old) and in 2013 only 1 child was killed on an average day nationwide, or about 0.02 children per state per day.

**[![CHILDREN AND GUNS - Child Homicide by Assailant](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Child-Homicide-by-Assailant-400x317.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Child-Homicide-by-Assailant.png)Fact:** For the year 2023: [4](#note-4-4 "CDC WONDER mortality database")

- 92 (1.8 children per state per year) were accidentally killed with firearms, a rate of 0.2/100,000.
- 779 (15.6 per state per year) were killed by firearms for any reason (homicide, negligent manslaughter, suicide, accidents, etc.), a rate of 1.3/100,000.

**Fact:** Criminals are included – According to the CDC, over half of all homicides of victims aged 15-19 are gang-related. The same study found that gang-related homicides are more likely to involve firearms than those that are not (95% versus 69%). [5](#note-4-5 "CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: "Gang Homicides -- Five U.S. Cities, 2003-2008", published January 27, 2012")

**Fact:** Suicides are included – 26% of child firearm deaths are suicides. Hence, the “13 children” statistic includes these suicides. [6](#note-4-6 "Center for Disease Control WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports for 2012")

**Fact:** For contrast:

- 1,446 children die per year in transportation accidents. [7](#note-4-7 "Center for Disease Control WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports for 2012")
- Parental neglect and abuse account for 80% of all child deaths (1,274) which dwarfs gun deaths. [8](#note-4-8 "Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities 2012, Child Welfare Information Gateway, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ")
- 1,917 children die each day from malaria [9](#note-4-9 "Fact Sheet No 178, U.N. World Health Organization, 1998") around the world and 15 men, women, and children per day are murdered by a convicted felon in government supervised parole/probation programs in the U.S. [10](#note-4-10 "US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998")

## Myth: More Guns in U.S. Homes, More Kids Getting Shot

**[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Child-Firearm-Deaths-and-Handgun-Availability-3-1-400x318.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Child-Firearm-Deaths-and-Handgun-Availability-3-1.png)Fact:** This study [11](#note-4-11 "United States Childhood Gun-Violence—Disturbing Trends, Madenci, American Academy of Pediatrics"), published by a medical student, used a non-standard database (not official CDC records), did not analyze other variables (multi-variant analysis) and did not specify regional co-variance in gun ownership. In short, shabby science.

## Myth: Schoolyard shootings are an epidemic

**Fact:** “Compared to other types of violence and crime children face, both in and outside of school, school-based attacks are rare. While the Department of Education reports 60 million children attend the nation’s 119,000 schools, available statistics indicate that few of these students will fall prey to violent situations in school settings.” [12](#note-4-12 "Threat Assessment in Schools, U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education, May 2002")

**Fact:** Over an eight year period, in states without “right to carry” laws, there were 15 school shootings; however, in states that allow citizens to carry guns, there was only one. [13](#note-4-13 "Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement, Lott J, Landes W; University of Chicago – (covers years 1977 to 1995)")

**Fact:** The five school shootings that occurred during the ’97-98 school year took place after the 1995 Gun-Free School Zones law was enacted, which banned guns within 1,000 feet of a school. [14](#note-4-14 "Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement, Lott J, Landes W; University of Chicago – (covers years 1977 to 1995)")

**[![CHILDREN AND GUNS - Prevent Sandy Hook Style Mass Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Prevent-Sandy-Hook-Style-Mass-Shootings-400x348.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Prevent-Sandy-Hook-Style-Mass-Shootings.png)Fact:** Schoolyard shooting deaths are not rising, rather; they have been falling through most of the 1990s: [15](#note-4-15 "Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools, National Center for Education Statistics,1996-97")

**Fact:** Only 10% of public schools reported one or more serious violent crimes during the 1996-97 school year. [16](#note-4-16 "Principal/School Disciplinarian Survey on School Violence, Department of Education, March 2000")

**Fact:** In Pearl, Mississippi, the assistant principal carried a firearm to the school until the 1995 “Gun-Free School Zones” law passed. Afterwards he began locking his firearm in his car and parking at least a quarter-mile away from the school. In 1997, when a student began a shooting rampage, the assistant principal ran to his car, got his gun, ran back, disarmed the shooter, and held him on the ground until the police arrived. Had the law not been passed, the assistant principal might have prevented the two deaths and seven shooting-related injuries.

**Fact:** Similar prevention occurred at a school dance in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, the Appalachian School of Law and during classes in Santee, California.

## Myth: Trigger locks will keep children from accidentally shooting themselves

**Fact:** 31 of 32 models of gun locks tested by the government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission could be opened without the key. According to their spokesperson, “We found you could open locks with paper clips, a pair of scissors or tweezers, or you could whack them on the table and they would open.” [17](#note-4-17 "Washington Post, Feb 7, 2001, Page A01")

**Fact:** 85% of all communities in America recorded no juvenile homicides in 1995, and 93.4% of communities recorded one or no juvenile arrests (not convictions) for murder. [18](#note-4-18 "Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1996")

**Fact:** In 1996, before laws requiring trigger locks and when there were around 80 million people who owned a firearm, there were only 44 accidental gun deaths for children under age 10, or about 0.0001%. [19](#note-4-19 "CBS News web site, Prof. John Lott, March 20, 2000")

**Fact:** California has a trigger lock law and saw a 12% increase in fatal firearm accidents in 1994. Texas didn’t have one and experienced a 28% decrease in the same year. [20](#note-4-20 "National Center for Health Statistics, 1995")

**Fact:** Children as young as seven (7) years old have demonstrated that they can pick or break a trigger lock; or that they can operate a gun with a trigger lock in place. [21](#note-4-21 "Accidental Shootings: many deaths and injuries caused by firearms could be prevented, United States General Accounting Office, March 1991") Over half of non-criminal firearm deaths for children over age seven are suicides, so trigger locks are unlikely to reduce these deaths.

**Fact:** If criminals are deterred from attacking victims because of the fear that people might be able to defend themselves, gun locks may in turn *reduce the danger to criminals* committing crime, and thus increase crime. This problem is exacerbated because many mechanical locks (such as barrel or trigger locks) also require that the gun be stored unloaded.

## Myth: Guns in America spark youth violence

**Fact:** Non-firearm juvenile violent crime rate in the U.S. is twice that of 25 other industrialized western nations. The non-firearm infant-homicide rate in the U.S. is 3.5 times higher. [22](#note-4-22 "Kids and Guns Bulletin, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, 2000. (covers years 1990-1995)") Thus we have a violence problem – not a “gun” problem.

**Fact:** Non-firearm related homicides of children out-rank firearm related homicides by children almost 5-to-1 [23](#note-4-23 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1997")

## Myth: More than 1,300 children commit suicide with guns

**Fact:** This statistic includes “children” ages 18-19. [24](#note-4-24 "Determined using CDC mortality data, and finding the only possible fit for the claim") As established previously, a child is defined as a person between birth and the age of 13 or 14 (puberty).

**[![CHILDREN AND GUNS - International Comparative Suicides and Gun Ownership Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-International-Comparative-Suicides-and-Gun-Ownership-Rates-400x323.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-International-Comparative-Suicides-and-Gun-Ownership-Rates.png)Fact:** Worldwide, the per capita suicide rate is fairly static (the suicide rate of the U.S. is lower than many industrial countries, including many where private gun ownership is banned). A certain fraction of the population will commit suicide regardless of the available tools.

**Fact:** The overall rate of suicide (firearm and non-firearm) among children age 15 and under was virtually unchanged in states that passed and maintained “safe storage” laws for four or more years. [25](#note-4-25 "Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime Safe Storage Gun Laws, John Lott, Yale Law School, 2000")

**Fact:** Among young girls, 71% of all suicides are by hanging or suffocation. [26](#note-4-26 "Suicide Trends Among Youths and Young Adults Aged 10--24 Years --- United States, 1990--2004, Center for Disease Control, September 2007")

**Fact:** People, including children, who are determined to commit suicide will find a way. There is a documented case of a man who killed himself by drilling a hole in his skull by using a power drill. [27](#note-4-27 "Drilled Head Husband Dies in Hospital, The Scotsman, April 28, 2003")

**Fact:** Banning country music might be more effective – one study shows 51% of the music-influenced suicide differential can be traced to country music. [28](#note-4-28 "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide, Steven Stack, Jim Gundlach, Social Forces. Volume: 71. Issue: 1., 1992")

## Myth: Stricter gun control laws could have prevented the Columbine massacre

**Fact:** Harris and Klebold violated close to 20 firearms laws in obtaining weapons. Would 21 laws really have made a difference? The two shotguns and one rifle used by Harris and Klebold were purchased by a girlfriend who passed a background check, and the TEC-9 handgun used was already banned.

## Myth: Gun-Free school zones reduce campus shootings

[![CHILDREN AND GUNS - School Shootings - K12 and College - 1980 thru 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-School-Shootings-K12-and-College-1980-thru-2017-400x308.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-School-Shootings-K12-and-College-1980-thru-2017.png) [![CHILDREN AND GUNS - Mass Shootings on School Campuses](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Mass-Shootings-on-School-Campuses-400x268.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Mass-Shootings-on-School-Campuses.png)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Accidental-Child-Firearm-Deaths-and-Handgun-Supply-2-400x325.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Accidental-Child-Firearm-Deaths-and-Handgun-Supply-2.png)![CHILDREN AND GUNS - Accidental Child Deaths - Ratio to Firearms](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Accidental-Child-Deaths-Ratio-to-Firearms-400x241.png)![CHILDREN AND GUNS - Homiocide Weapon Against Children - 2015](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CHILDREN-AND-GUNS-Homiocide-Weapon-Against-Children-2015-400x291.png)**Fact:** The trends after two major federal gun-free school zone acts show that they have no effect. Indeed, the number of campus shooting events, the number of people killed, and even the number of mass shootings (albeit statistically fragile) have increased.

## Myth: Children should be kept away from guns for their own safety

**Fact:** 0% of children that get guns from their parents commit gun-related crimes while 21% of those that get them illegally do. [29](#note-4-29 "Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse, U.S. Justice Department, 2000")

**Fact:** Children that acquire firearms illegally are twice as likely to commit street crimes (24%) than are those given a firearm by their parents (14%). [30](#note-4-30 "Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse, U.S. Justice Department, 2000")

**Fact:** Almost three times as many children (41%) consume illegal drugs if they also obtain firearms illegally, as compared to children given a firearm by their parents (13%).

**Fact:** In the 1950’s, children routinely played cops and robbers, had toy guns, were given BB rifles and small caliber hunting rifles before puberty. Yet the homicide rate in the 1950’s was almost half of that in the 1980’s. [31](#note-4-31 "Vital Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics, Revised July 1999")

## Myth: More children are shot and killed in the U.S. than anywhere else

**Fact:** 380 children age 14 or under were killed with firearms [32](#note-4-32 "Center for Disease Control, WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports, 2010") in 2010, or 0.0005% of the children in America and barely more than one child per day. Of those, 58% of those were homicides, likely innocent bystanders in drive-by scenarios.

## Myth: More children are hurt with guns than by any other means

**Fact:** Barely more than 1% of all unintentional deaths for children in the U.S. between ages 0-14 are from firearms. [33](#note-4-33 "Deaths: Final Data for 2006, National Vital Statistics Reports, 2009, Center for Disease Control")

**Fact:** The Center for Disease Control, a federal agency, disagrees. According to them, in 1998, children 0-14 years died from the following causes in the U.S. [34](#note-4-34 "Deaths: Final for 1998, Center for Disease Control, vol. 48 no. 11., July 24, 2000")

**Fact:** Children are 12 times more likely to die in an automobile accident than from gun-related homicides or legal interventions (being shot by a police officer, for example) if they are age 0-14. For the group 0-24 years old (which bends the definition of “child” quite a bit), the rate is still 8.6 times higher for cars. [35](#note-4-35 "National Vital Statistics Report, National Center for Health Statistics, 1997")

**Fact:** In 2001, there were only 72 accidental firearm deaths for children under age 15, as opposed to over 2,100 children who drowned (29 times as many drowning deaths as firearm deaths). [36](#note-4-36 "20 Leading Causes of Unintentional Injury Deaths, Center for Disease Control, United States, 2001, (All Races, Both Sexes, Ages: 1-14)")

**Fact:** Accidental firearm injuries for children and adolescents dropped 37% from 1993 to 1997, with the fastest drop — a 64% reduction ­— being for children. [37](#note-4-37 "Firearms Injury Surveillance Study, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, December 2001")

**Fact:** Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use than non-owners of guns. [38](#note-4-38 "Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse, U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, NCJ-143454, August 1995")

**Fact:** The *non-gun* homicide rate of children in the U.S. is more than twice as high as in other western countries. And eight times as many children die from *non-gun* violent acts than from gun crimes. [39](#note-4-39 "Kids and Guns, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2000") This indicates that the problem is violence, not guns.

**Fact:** Fatal gun accidents for children ages 0-14 declined by almost 83% from 1981 to 2002 [40](#note-4-40 "National Center for Health Statistics") – all while the number of handguns per capita increased over 41%. [41](#note-4-41 "BATF estimates on handguns in circulation, BATF, Firearms Commerce in the United States 2001/2002")

**Fact:** 82% of homicides of children age 13 and under were committed *without* a gun. [42](#note-4-42 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1997")

## Myth: States with background checks have fewer school shootings

**Fact:** This was the incorrect conclusion of a very odd and [extremely limited study](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis#school-shootings-background-checks) by a medical school (not a criminology study). The study used odd and atypical control variables, but it also concluded that urban residency was a better predictor.

## Myth: Gun safety training for children is ineffective

**Fact:** Once randomized trail [43](#note-4-43 "Effect of a Gun Safety Video on Children’s Behavior Around Real Guns: A Randomized Clinical Trial; Kjærvik, Bushman; JAMA Network; 2023") concluded that “watching a gun safety video reduced children’s unsafe behavior around real guns.” They noted that “Those who saw the gun safety video were more likely to tell an adult about the gun they found (38 of 112 \[33.9%\] vs 11 of 104 \[10.6%\]), were less likely to touch the gun (44 of 112 \[39.3%\] vs 70 of 104 \[67.3%\]), were less likely to pull the trigger at all (10 of 112 \[8.9%\] vs 31 of 104 \[29.8%\]).”

## Myth: If it saves the life of one child, it is worth it

**Fact:** Firearms in private hands are used an estimated 2.5 million times (or 6,849 times each day) each year to prevent crime; [44](#note-4-44 "Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University, 1997") this includes rapes, aggravated assaults, and kidnapping. The number of innocent children protected by firearm owners far outweighs the number of children harmed.

**Fact:** Most Americans (firearm owners or not) believe that the way parents raise kids is what causes gun violence (or just violence in general). Among non-firearm owners, 38% said it was parental neglect that causes youth violence, while only 28% thought it was due to the availability of guns. [45](#note-4-45 "Gallup/Women.com poll, May 2000") They may be right, given that most homicides of children under age five are by their own parents. Of homicides among children ages 5 and younger; 31% were killed by their own mothers and another 31% were killed by their own fathers. [46](#note-4-46 "FBI, Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976-98")

---

Notes:

1. School *Climate and Safety*, U.S. Department of Education, April, 2018 [↩](#return-note-4-1)
2. *The School Shootings That Weren't*, NPR, August 2018 [↩](#return-note-4-2)
3. Center for Disease Control WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports for 2013 [↩](#return-note-4-3)
4. CDC WONDER mortality database [↩](#return-note-4-4)
5. CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report: "Gang Homicides -- Five U.S. Cities, 2003-2008", published January 27, 2012 [↩](#return-note-4-5)
6. Center for Disease Control WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports for 2012 [↩](#return-note-4-6)
7. Center for Disease Control WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports for 2012 [↩](#return-note-4-7)
8. *Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities 2012*, Child Welfare Information Gateway, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [↩](#return-note-4-8)
9. *Fact Sheet No 178*, U.N. World Health Organization, 1998 [↩](#return-note-4-9)
10. US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998 [↩](#return-note-4-10)
11. *United States Childhood Gun-Violence—Disturbing Trends*, Madenci, American Academy of Pediatrics [↩](#return-note-4-11)
12. *Threat Assessment in Schools*, U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education, May 2002 [↩](#return-note-4-12)
13. *Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement*, Lott J, Landes W; University of Chicago – (covers years 1977 to 1995) [↩](#return-note-4-13)
14. *Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement*, Lott J, Landes W; University of Chicago – (covers years 1977 to 1995) [↩](#return-note-4-14)
15. *Violence and Discipline Problems in U.S. Public Schools*, National Center for Education Statistics*,*1996-97 [↩](#return-note-4-15)
16. *Principal/School Disciplinarian Survey on School Violence*, Department of Education, March 2000 [↩](#return-note-4-16)
17. Washington Post, Feb 7, 2001, Page A01 [↩](#return-note-4-17)
18. *Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports*, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1996 [↩](#return-note-4-18)
19. CBS News web site, Prof. John Lott, March 20, 2000 [↩](#return-note-4-19)
20. National Center for Health Statistics, 1995 [↩](#return-note-4-20)
21. *Accidental Shootings: many deaths and injuries caused by firearms could be prevented*, United States General Accounting Office, March 1991 [↩](#return-note-4-21)
22. *Kids and Guns* Bulletin, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics, 2000. (covers years 1990-1995) [↩](#return-note-4-22)
23. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1997 [↩](#return-note-4-23)
24. Determined using CDC mortality data, and finding the only possible fit for the claim [↩](#return-note-4-24)
25. *Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime Safe Storage Gun Laws*, John Lott, Yale Law School, 2000 [↩](#return-note-4-25)
26. *Suicide Trends Among Youths and Young Adults Aged 10--24 Years --- United States, 1990--2004*, Center for Disease Control, September 2007 [↩](#return-note-4-26)
27. *Drilled Head Husband Dies in Hospital*, The Scotsman, April 28, 2003 [↩](#return-note-4-27)
28. *The Effect of Country Music on Suicide*, Steven Stack, Jim Gundlach, Social Forces. Volume: 71. Issue: 1., 1992 [↩](#return-note-4-28)
29. *Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse,* U.S. Justice Department, 2000 [↩](#return-note-4-29)
30. *Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse,* U.S. Justice Department, 2000 [↩](#return-note-4-30)
31. *Vital Statistics*, National Center for Health Statistics, Revised July 1999 [↩](#return-note-4-31)
32. Center for Disease Control, WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports, 2010 [↩](#return-note-4-32)
33. *Deaths: Final Data for 2006*, National Vital Statistics Reports, 2009, Center for Disease Control [↩](#return-note-4-33)
34. *Deaths: Final for 1998*, Center for Disease Control, vol. 48 no. 11., July 24, 2000 [↩](#return-note-4-34)
35. *National Vital Statistics Report*, National Center for Health Statistics, 1997 [↩](#return-note-4-35)
36. *20 Leading Causes of Unintentional Injury Deaths*, Center for Disease Control, United States, 2001, (All Races, Both Sexes, Ages: 1-14) [↩](#return-note-4-36)
37. *Firearms Injury Surveillance Study*, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, December 2001 [↩](#return-note-4-37)
38. *Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse*, U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, NCJ-143454, August 1995 [↩](#return-note-4-38)
39. *Kids and Guns*, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2000 [↩](#return-note-4-39)
40. National Center for Health Statistics [↩](#return-note-4-40)
41. BATF estimates on handguns in circulation, BATF, Firearms Commerce in the United States 2001/2002 [↩](#return-note-4-41)
42. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1997 [↩](#return-note-4-42)
43. Effect of a Gun Safety Video on Children’s Behavior Around Real Guns: A Randomized Clinical Trial; Kjærvik, Bushman; JAMA Network; 2023 [↩](#return-note-4-43)
44. Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University, 1997 [↩](#return-note-4-44)
45. Gallup/Women.com poll, May 2000 [↩](#return-note-4-45)
46. *FBI, Supplementary Homicide Reports*, 1976-98 [↩](#return-note-4-46)

---

### [Bad Research Roster](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/)

**Published:** March 3, 2016
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

This page lists gun policy research papers that had two or more \[a\] methodology or \[b\] data quality problems, but which received media attention.

## List of Critiqued Papers

- [Preventable Tragedies: A Longitudinal Analysis of State Firearm Laws and K-12 School Shootings in the United States (2000-2019)](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#school-shooters-long)
- [“The only friend I had was my gun”: A mixed-methods study of gun culture in school shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#gun-culture-school-shooters)
- [Firearm Laws and Pediatric Mortality in the US](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#jama-kids-1)
- [Patterns of U.S. Firearm Injury Emergency Department Visits by Month, Day, and Time During 2018 to 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#er-guns)
- [“The only friend I had was my gun”: A mixed-methods study of gun culture in school shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#gun-culture)
- [Direct Exposure to Mass Shootings Among US Adults](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#jama-exposure)
- [Florida’s Red Flag Gun Law and Firearm and Non-firearm Homicide and Suicide Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#jama-fla-redflag)
- [Suicide Prevention Effects of Extreme Risk Protection Order Laws in Four States](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#suicide-conner)
- [Firearm Storage Behaviors — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Eight States, 2021–2022](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#cdc-storage)
- [Costs of Fatal and Nonfatal Firearm Injuries in the U.S., 2019 and 2020](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#cost2023)
- [The Era of Progress on Gun Mortality: State Gun Regulations and Gun Deaths from 1991 to 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#era-of-progress)
- [Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#gun-in-home-dahlberg)
- [More Guns, More Unintended Consequences: The Effects of Right-To-Carry On Criminal Behavior And Policing In Us Cities](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#carry-donohue)
- [The Relation Between State Gun Laws and the Incidence and Severity of Mass Public Shootings in the United States, 1976–2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#relationship)
- [Easiness of Legal Access to Concealed Firearm Permits and Homicide Rates in the United States](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#easiness)
- [Homicide Deaths Among Adult Cohabitants of Handgun Owners in California, 2004 to 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#cali-cohabitate)
- [Analysis of “Stand Your Ground” Self-defense Laws and Statewide Rates of Homicides and Firearm Homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#syg-Esposti)
- [Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#lankford-2016)
- [Association of Changes in Missouri Firearm Laws With Adolescent and Young Adult Suicides by Firearms](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#jama-missouri)
- [Handgun Ownership and Suicide in California](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#cali-state-suicides)
- [State-level Estimates of Household Firearm Ownership](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#rand-gun-ownership)
- [Evidence concerning the regulation of firearms design, sale, and carrying on fatal mass shootings in the United States](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#evidence-knot)
- [Extreme Risk Protection Orders Intended to Prevent Mass Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#calired-flag)
- [State Gun Laws and Pediatric Firearm-Related Mortality](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis#state-laws-pediatric)
- [Association Between Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Law and Homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis#conn-ptp)
- [Criminal Use of Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Semiautomatic Firearms: an Updated Examination of Local and National Sources](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#criminal-sw-lcm)
- [Right-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Control Analysis](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#rtc-donohue)
- [State gun laws, gun ownership, and mass shootings in the US: cross sectional time series](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#state-laws-mass-shootings)
- [What Do We Know About the Association Between Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Injuries](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#association-between-firearm-legislation)
- [Firearm Legislation and Firearm Mortality in the USA: a cross-sectional, state-level study](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#firearm-legislation-and-firearm-mortality-in-the-USA)
- [Survey Research and Self-Defense Gun Use: An Examination of Extreme Overestimates](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#survey-research-dgus-hemenway)
- [Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide Across the 50 United States](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#household-firearm-ownership-and-rates-of-suicide)
- [Target on Trafficking – New York Crime Gun Analysis](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#target-on-trafficking)
- [School shootings during 2013–2015 in the USA](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#school-shootings-background-checks)
- [Handgun Legislation and Changes in Statewide Overall Suicide Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#handgun-statewide-overall-suicide-rates)
- [Lead exposure at firing ranges—a review](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#lead-exposure-at-firing-ranges)
- [In-State and Interstate Associations Between Gun Shows and Firearm Deaths and Injuries](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#nevada-california-gun-shows)
- [State Firearm laws and Interstate Firearm Deaths from Homicide and Suicide in the United States](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#state-firearm-laws-interstate)

### Preventable Tragedies: A Longitudinal Analysis of State Firearm Laws and K-12 School Shootings in the United States (2000-2019)

DATE: 2026
AUTHORS: Wippell, Haynie, Riedman
PUBLICATION: Social Science & Medicine

#### OVERVIEW:

Attempts to measure if strictness of gun laws affect school shootings

#### CRITIQUE:

- Used the K12 School Shooting Database, which has well documented problems of including non-shooting events. 
    - They purposefully retained non-shooting events in the analysis.
- Definition/measurement of the strictness of laws was \[a\] the pure weight of all gun laws and optionally \[b\] a hand selected list of seven specific laws. There was no evaluation of criminology measures of the general effectiveness of these laws, nor how robustly they were enforced.
- Since actual school shooting are statistically rare, associating laws with outcomes is statistically fragile.
- They measure against changes in laws, which are often reactionary to local events. Laws passed contemporaneously may have produced much or all of any measured effect.
- They did not control for a wide range of other factors including: 
    - Juvenile justice changes
    - School policing or SRO mandates
    - Zero-tolerance school discipline laws
    - Mental-health commitment or reporting laws
    - Broader criminal-justice reform or punitive expansions
    - Post-Columbine school security investments

### “The only friend I had was my gun”: A mixed-methods study of gun culture in school shootings

DATE: 2025
AUTHORS: Nassauer
PUBLICATION: PLoS ONE

#### OVERVIEW:

Attempts to measure if “gun culture” is a predictor of adolescent gun misuse

#### CRITIQUE:

- Author creates a new definition of “gun culture”, which is not without merit, but is not how it has been commonly defined in the past and this negates comparisons with other studies.
- Data Limitations and Potential Bias: Study relies on secondary/public sources, which may be incomplete or unevenly available. There is no primary data (e.g., interviews) which limits insights into subjective meanings.
- Lack of any control group hinders causal inference. The findings describe patterns but can’t confirm if gun culture uniquely predicts shootings versus being common in certain U.S. demographics.
- Simplistic quantitative analysis (descriptive stats) are basic. There is no inferential tests (e.g., regression) to control for confounders like mental health or socioeconomic status.
- Fuzzy-set coding is subjective.

### Firearm Laws and Pediatric Mortality in the US

DATE: 2025
AUTHORS: Faust, Chen, Bhat, Otugo,Yaver, Renton, Lin, Krumholz
PUBLICATION: JAMA Pediatrics

#### OVERVIEW:

Measures excess mortalities for children and teens before and after a point in time

#### CRITIQUE:

- Amalgamates children and teens, which obfuscates youth/street gang violence
- Uses state law classifications/lists from activist groups (e.g., Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, Gun Violence State Scorecard, Everytown Research & Policy)
- Does not provide details on how the composite score was constructed or validated
- The methodology for grouping states (most permissive, permissive, strict) is not fully detailed, making it impossible to assess the validity or robustness of the classification.
- Includes pandemic years which were know for abnormal escalations of street violence
- Assumes that the McDonald v. Chicago decision is the primary driver of changes in firearm laws and mortality, but it uses the decision as a fixed temporal boundary rather than analyzing the specific timing of individual state law changes (treats laws as static) 
    - The static classification of states may not account for changes in laws over the 12-year post-period
- Does not fully account for confounding variables like socioeconomic changes, mental health trends, or policing practices
- Does not provide details on model diagnostics or goodness-of-fit measures for the Poisson regression, which are critical for assessing the model’s validity

### Patterns of U.S. Firearm Injury Emergency Department Visits by Month, Day, and Time During 2018 to 2023

DATE: 2025
AUTHORS: Rowh, Zwald, Sumner, George, Sheppard, Holland
PUBLICATION: Annals of Internal Medicine

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims 93,022 emergency room visits for gun shots over 5.5 years or one every 30 minutes

#### CRITIQUE:

- Examined only eight states and the District of Columbia 
    - Including D.C., typically the murder capital of the U.S., skews results
    - One data source covers 80% of emergency departments across the country, so their selection of a small number of states via a limited data resource is suspect.
    - The authors admit that this selection “are not nationally representative”.
- The report amalgamated urban, suburban and rural data which masks well understood patterns in gun violence.

### “The only friend I had was my gun”: A mixed-methods study of gun culture in school shootings

DATE: 2025
AUTHORS: Nassauer
PUBLICATION: PLOS ONE

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims that most school shooters come from a social setting in which firearms are a crucial leisure activity

#### CRITIQUE:

- There is no proper definition of “gun culture” in the paper. 
    - It avoids traditional definitions for “culture”
    - It substitutes gun availability with culture
    - It fails to segregate different subcultures and contrast them
- Completely misrepresents the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban as a causal effect for a temporary decrease in the use of legally acquired guns used in school shootings (the authors used the acts full name which concealed what would have been an obvious disconnect).
- The lack of a clear definition of “gun culture” led to apparently subjective classifications.

### Direct Exposure to Mass Shootings Among US Adults

DATE: 2025
AUTHORS: Pyrooz, Densley, Peterson
PUBLICATION: Journal of the American Medical Association

#### OVERVIEW:

Concluded that 7% of surveyed adults had “been present on the scene where 4 or more people were shot”.

#### CRITIQUE:

- This would extrapolate to over 18 million adults having been present at a “mass shooting”, which is improbable.
- 2% reported being injured in such events, or about 361,620 adults. All violence related non-fatal gun injuries in 2022 numbered 129,624 (CDC), so it is highly unlikely that the subset of “mass shooting” events would be this high. 
    - The number is elevated because “injured” includes “… being trampled, or other causes of injury.”
- The survey classified “present” to include “… or you could hear the gunfire.” Merely hear gunfire is not “being present” nor “direct exposure”.
- The study used an unreliable source (Gun Violence Archive) to estimate that over the ten years there were “5000 mass shootings documented nationwide”, or 500 per year. Improbable. 
    - Dividing the estimated number of injuries, there would have been 72 injuries per event. Improbable.
- They use a “synthetic sampling frame” to recruit survey respondents without documenting the synthesis employed.

### Florida’s Red Flag Gun Law and Firearm and Non-firearm Homicide and Suicide Rates

DATE: 2024
AUTHORS: Gimbrone, Rudolph
PUBLICATION: Journal of the American Medical Association

#### OVERVIEW:

Synthetic model of Florida from ERPO (a.k.a., red flag laws)

#### CRITIQUE:

- Synthetic modeling creates suicide statistics instead of using raw suicide count/rate data. 
    - “We used the augmented synthetic control method to construct a weighted combination of 19 politically conservative states lacking similar gun laws to serve as a matched control for Florida.”
- Made a bad assumption that “conservative” states have similar cultural values. Suicide rates are much higher for old, white males, and Florida’s elderly population, especially during a pandemic, may have amplified such.
- Included mainly pandemic-era years which saw significant fluctuations in suicide rate.

### Suicide Prevention Effects of Extreme Risk Protection Order Laws in Four States

DATE: 2019
AUTHORS: Swanson, Zeoli, Frattaroli, Betz, Easter, Kapoor, Knoepke, Norko, Pear, Rowhani-Rahbar, Schleimer, Wintemute
PUBLICATION: American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law

#### OVERVIEW:

Models theoretical lowering of gun suicide rates from ERPO (a.k.a., red flag laws)

#### CRITIQUE:

- They loaded the analysis with sets of unfounded assumptions: “We then used the CFR-extrapolated estimates of suicide attempts to create an alternative data array under the counterfactual assumption that these respondents had not been subject to an ERPO and had access to firearms.”
- In short, the paper did not study actual before/after changes in either gun suicide rates, but speculated on what they thought *might* occur.

### Firearm Storage Behaviors — Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, Eight States, 2021–2022

DATE: 2024
AUTHORS: Friar, Merrill-Francis, Parker, Siordia, Simon
PUBLICATION: Centers for Disease Control

#### OVERVIEW:

Attempts to correlate “safe storage” laws with measurable outcomes.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Limited to eight states.
- Did not measure outcomes (i.e., deaths and injuries) but instead leveraged a survey (The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System).
- Did not look into self-defense provided by not having guns secured (i.e., teens in the household, trained in to use guns and who defended themselves).

### Costs of Fatal and Nonfatal Firearm Injuries in the U.S., 2019 and 2020

DATE: 2023
AUTHORS: Miller, Barnett, Florence, Harrison, Dahlberg, Mercy
PUBLICATION: American Journal or Preventative Medicine

#### OVERVIEW:

Attempts to calculate an annual “social cost” from gun injuries and fatalities.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Includes *assumed* costs for both: 
    - Quality of life lost (e.g., “pain and suffering”)
    - Estimates for the “value of a statistical life”, which is an assumed price society puts on the value of longer life outcomes.
- “The ***bulk of the cost*** associated with firearm injuries *does not come from the medical costs* but rather from lost VSL and reduced quality of life.”

### The Era of Progress on Gun Mortality: State Gun Regulations and Gun Deaths from 1991 to 2016

DATE: 2023
AUTHORS: Sharkeya, Kang
PUBLICATION: Epidemiology

#### OVERVIEW:

Time-series correlation test of the raw number of “restrictive” gun laws in states to total gun deaths.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Amalgamated all modes of gun deaths (homicides, suicides, accidents)
- Failed to incorporate 24 states passing habitual offender laws at the start of the analysis period
- Used suicide measures to proxy gun ownership rates, then measured suicide rates (circular math)
- Opened with very biased language (i.e., “The United States has a gun problem. The United States has more private guns per capita and higher levels of household gun ownership than any other developed country.”) indicating an “intent of findings”
- Used political party affiliation of each state’s governor as a weighting factor
- Used in-state gun manufacturing data, which given that some states have no significant manufacturing is a false proxy
- Made the assumption that state governments would not add strict laws when large gun makers are resident, which is demonstrable incorrect given the number that have left states for that very reason (i.e., Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Remington) which means another false proxy
- Failed to incorporate pre-period abnormally high gun violence rates in some states (i.e., California) in trend analysis, nor do they appear to population weight this (California, with abnormally high pre-1993 gun violence rates fell fast after passing a habitual offender law and their population makes the reductions artificially large)

**NOTE:** The specifically weighted California as +20 for restrictive states, and Kansas as -2. But in 2019 (pre-pandemic) those states had nearly identical gun homicide rates, 3.2 and 3.4 respectively.

### Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study

DATE: November 2004
AUTHORS: Dahlberg, Ikeda, Kresnow
PUBLICATION: American Journal of Epidemiology

#### OVERVIEW:

Follow-back survey to evaluate if firearms in the home increases risk

#### CRITIQUE:

- Failed to evaluate all people who (a) had firearms in the home but (b) died outside of the home (e.g., seniors in hospitals)
- Only evaluated deaths
- Failed to evaluate possible lives saved by defense gun use
- Does not evaluate harm caused by non-firearm means (e.g., stabbings, etc.) which helps mask homes with criminal activities (i.e., occupied by gang members, etc.)

### More Guns, More Unintended Consequences: The Effects of Right-To-Carry On Criminal Behavior And Policing In Us Cities

DATE: June 2022
AUTHORS: Donohue, Cai, Bondy, Cook
PUBLICATION: National Bureau of Economic Research

#### OVERVIEW:

Statistical modeling of a few cities to explore if changes in concealed carry laws affected crime.

#### CRITIQUE:

- A small and seemingly cherry-picked sample of 47 cities, not a comprehensive 50 state or 3,143 counties. The list of cities if not provided in the paper.
- “… our focus on major cities …” and then “… This paper is the first of which we are aware that provides credible causal estimates of the effects of RTC laws on gun theft or policing.” The two statements are oppositional and self-negating.
- Major metro also induces the problem that metro cities are often in areas where obtaining a carry permit is difficult of impossible, even if it is technically “shall-issue” (e.g., Washington D.C.).
- An atypical set of control variables not normally associated with criminology (e.g., percentage of the population made up of female headed households, the percentage of people living alone, etc.) and which cannot conceivably map to the probability of carrying firearms legally in public.
- “We also removed all observations for a particular city-crime if that city-crime was missing more than 15 observations.” Inappropriate methodology. It negates entire classes of crime, and if even a few of the tiny number of cities being reviewed are involved, then it significantly skews estimates.
- Authors used “estimated value” of stolen guns as a measurement value, though the “value” of a gun is crime is not measured by retail or street sales prices. 
    - In the measurement period, crime “clearance rates” (cases closed or prosecuted) rose significantly in cities that had no change and fell in those that had a change

### The Relation Between State Gun Laws and the Incidence and Severity of Mass Public Shootings in the United States, 1976–2018

DATE: October 2020
AUTHORS: Siegal, Goder-Reiser, Duwe, Rocque, Fox, Fridel
PUBLICATION: Law and Human Behavior

#### OVERVIEW:

A generalized estimating equations logistic regression to examine the relationship between eight state firearm laws and the likelihood of a mass public shooting

#### CRITIQUE:

- “We sought to investigate mass public shootings, a small subset of all mass shootings. The sample size for analysis was therefore unavoidably small (N 155 events), resulting in fairly wide confidence intervals on many of our point estimates and making it difficult to conclude that laws we found to be unassociated with mass public shootings do not affect these events … we cannot infer causality from this study.”
- Did not evaluate the two leading factors in MPS lethality, planning and “cattle pen scenarios”.
- “Other factors associated with the occurrence of a mass public shooting were population, unemployment rate, divorce rate, firearm homicide rate, and suicide rate.”

### Easiness of Legal Access to Concealed Firearm Permits and Homicide Rates in the United States

DATE: December 2017
AUTHORS: Siegel, Xuan, Ross, Galea, Kalesan, Fleegler, Goss
PUBLICATION: American Journal of Public Health

#### OVERVIEW:

Used a quasi-experimental panel design to measure raw homicide counts after passage of concealed carry legislation

#### CRITIQUE:

- Measured changes in raw number of homicides, not ***homicide rates***, the latter of which measures probabilities of harm (the former does not).
- Started measurements the year after passage, ignoring what the developing situation might have been beforehand and which might have stimulated demand for the legislation (i.e., homicides were already rising).
- Used log transformation for homicide counts, which is inappropriate for high-quality source data, which they used.
- Restricted analysis to years 1991 through 2002, despite collecting data through 2015.
- Quoting the paper, “these results should be interpreted with caution because of the possibility that they reflect a reverse association. That is, it is possible that the adoption of shall-issue concealed carry laws is associated with higher baseline homicide rates so that we are picking up not a causal effect of these laws on homicide but a systematic difference in baseline homicide rates between states that do or do not have these laws.”

### Homicide Deaths Among Adult Cohabitants of Handgun Owners in California, 2004 to 2016

DATE: April 2022
AUTHORS: Studdert, Zhang,Holsinger, Prince
PUBLICATION: Annals of Internal Medicine

#### OVERVIEW:

Used multiple data sources in California (only) to model is cohabitating with a handgun owner is an increased risk.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Such California cohabitants had an overall homicide rate of 3.1 / 100,000 (2019, per FBI) but California’s overall homicide rate was 4.3. Authors did not disclose this.
- Excluded many people for inappropriate reasons (e.g., did not include people who had previously owned guns before cohabitation).
- Did not test against localized violence rates, which is a key indicator of both the likelihood of homicides but also the primary motivation to acquire guns (e.g., gun buying in rough neighborhoods is a response to crime, and in-home firearm homicides were the largest measurement in this study).
- Though documented in the study, the authors failed to note the astounding difference in firearm homicide counts between handgun-owning and non-handgun owning households.

Handgun Owning HouseholdsNon-handgun HouseholdsOverall homicides471,448In-home firearm homicides29418Away-from-home firearm homicides12929
### Analysis of “Stand Your Ground” Self-defense Laws and Statewide Rates of Homicides and Firearm Homicides

DATE: February 21, 2022
AUTHORS: Esposti, Wiebe, Gasparrini
PUBLICATION: JAMA Netw Open

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims that states with “stand your ground” laws saw “8% to 11% national increase in monthly rates of homicide and firearm homicide”.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Study was in the COIVID-19 pandemic year (“Data were analyzed from November 2019 to December 2020”) which is not time series and is also polluted by unusual circumstances.

### Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries

DATE: 2016
AUTHORS: Lankford
PUBLICATION: Violence and Victims, Volume 31, Number 2

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims that the United States has more mass public shootings (MPSs) that all other nations, 31% of global count.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Used English only datasets from American law enforcement, one of which was only concerning MPSs in America.
- Used “active shooter” datasets, which is different than MPSs.
- Use a unique definition of a MPS (included only attacks by a single perpetrator).
- Included “pre-internet” we searches going back to 1966, periods where media capture of events was non-existent.
- Did not include searches in languages other than English.

### Association of Changes in Missouri Firearm Laws With Adolescent and Young Adult Suicides by Firearms

DATE: November, 2020
AUTHORS: Bhatt, Cheng, Morris, Beyer, Chestnut, Steigerwalt, Metzner
PUBLICATION: Journal of the American Medical Association

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims changes in Missouri’s “permit to purchase” pistol and concealed carry laws led to an increase in suicide.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Synthetic modeling to produce non existent suicide rates.
- Assumption in the model were thin and not typical of criminology standards.
- Used a aggregate of shall-issue, may-issue and no-issue states to model the effects of CCWs to suicides.
- Uneven (7 and 3) year before/after snapshot.
- Circular logic on home gun ownership and suicide rates (using suicide rates to measure gun ownership, the then model suicides).

### Handgun Ownership and Suicide in California

DATE: June, 2020
AUTHORS: Wintemute, Studdert, Zhang, Swanson, Prince, Rodden, Holsinger, Spittal, Miller
PUBLICATION: New England Journal of Medicine

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims an “greatly elevated” association between handgun ownership and firearm suicide.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Based on incomplete integrated data that at best indexed 61% of the target population.
- Omitted gun ownership that preceded the study (i.e., just looked at guns bought during the study period).
- Failed to compare age-based observations of both gun ownership and gun suicide.
- Did not explore the well documented intersection of age/illness and suicide.
- Despite geocoding data, failed to report on regional/cultural differences that contribute to suicide.
- No investigation into suicide ideation before gun acquisition.
- Incomplete and inappropriate control proxies.

### State-level Estimates of Household Firearm Ownership

DATE: April, 2020
AUTHORS: Schell, Peterson, Vegetabile, Scherling, Smart, Morral
ORGANIZATION: Rand

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims declining household gun owner rates in the United States.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Used existing low-ball baseline survey as the anchor for all analysis. 
    - Baseline includes all households, including those of resident aliens, legal or otherwise.
    - Baseline survey is known by respondents to be a government project and thus may have false negative reporting.
    - Baseline recorded in three clustered years, so the baseline itself has no trending use and thus makes for a very weak comparison.
- Uses proxies for validation that have serious data quality assumptions and possible defects. These include: 
    - Hunting licenses (which fail metro/non-metro population density imbalances).
    - Magazine subscriptions covering Internet era of massively declining magazine subscription rates.
    - Background checks which do not account for preexisting supply of guns.
- Uses one proxy (suicides) with an incomplete assessment of urban/rural/sex combinations which would skew numbers low.
- Uses other gun ownership surveys for proxy validation, but omits surveys with much higher reported gun ownership rates (possible cherry-picked set of surveys).

Full review at .

### Evidence concerning the regulation of firearms design, sale, and carrying on fatal mass shootings in the United States

DATE: February, 2020
AUTHORS: Webster, McCourt, Crifasi, Booty, Stuart
ORGANIZATION: John Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims handgun licencing and large capacity magazine law reduce mass shootings.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Used incorrect statistical testing approach
- Amalgamated mass *public* and *private* shootings
- Controlled for gang and narcotics shootings, but there are known huge gaps therein
- Use a debated proxy for gun ownership rates
- Included the year 2017 as the last year studied, which was an unusual year for mass shootings
- Their full report included include control variables of dubious (and undocumented) fragility
- Cited a “retracted” study that in turn …
- Caused this study to omit five states (Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Nebraska) from analysis

Criminologist Gary Kleck published a paper [1](#note-3830-1 "The Hazards of Data-dredging in Gun Control Research:
Comment on Webster et al. (2020), Kleck, 2020") reviewing this study which contained these (and other) critical observations:

- “The authors stressed the findings based on the flawed methods (which incorrectly omitted year fixed effects), and deemphasized those based on the more correct methods.”
- “The authors, however, never explain why or how \[large capacity magazines\] possession or use would affect either whether a prospective mass shooter would carry out a MS or the number of people killed.”
- “Their main results indicated a significant negative association of \[large capacity magazine\] bans with the rate of \[mass shooting\] incidents, but no significant association with the number of \[mass shooting\] fatalities.”
- “The authors’ sole justification for their extraordinarily poor choice of control variables was that these same irrelevant variables had been used in prior studies, all co-authored by Webster, and all of similarly primitive quality.”
- “The authors chose to define the purchaser licensing law as one applying to handguns, even though they claimed that many \[mass shootings\] are committed using assault rifles.” \[Editor’s note: the publicly available mass shooting database all show that rifles play a minority role in mass shootings\]
- “Many of the authors’ own findings regarding purchaser licensing show no significant association with \[mass shootings\]. Their estimates of the law’s effects are highly inconsistent across the different sets of methods reported as part of their sensitivity checks.”

### Extreme Risk Protection Orders Intended to Prevent Mass Shootings

DATE: August, 2019
AUTHORS: Wintemute, Pear, Schleimer, Pallin, Sohl, Kravitz-Wirtz, Tomsich
ORGANIZATION: UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, University of California Firearm Violence Research Center

#### OVERVIEW:

Reviews a subset of California based “red-flag” gun confiscation episodes with an eye toward mass public shootings.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Author discloses that “It is impossible to know whether violence would have occurred had GVROs not been issued, and we make no claim of a causal relationship.”
- Examined 21 instances from 10 of California’s 58 counties. In this period there were 414 “gun violence restraining orders” (GVROs).
- Made two baseless assumptions: 
    - “Suspects … had exhibited behavior suggesting … an intent \[to commit a mass shooting\]
    - “\[T\]he subject had or would ***soon have*** access to firearms.” but were not actually in possession.
- Of the 52 firearms seized, 26 came from just one suspect.

### State Gun Laws and Pediatric Firearm-Related Mortality

DATE: August, 2019
AUTHORS: Goyal, Badolato, Patel, Iqbal, Parikh, McCarter
ORGANIZATION: Children’s National Health System, Washington, District of Columbia; Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, The George Washington University, Washington, District of Columbia, Pediatrics, Rockville, Maryland

#### OVERVIEW:

Uses an arbitrary ranking of the strictness of state gun laws and included adults (age 18+) to reach generate invalid statements.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Used the “Gun Law Scorecards” from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun control advocacy group, as the measure of strictness for gun laws. This scorecard has routinely been [critiqued for having no basis for its rankings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/brady-scorecard-scam/), instead appearing to positively rank gunslaw based on perceived political desirability.
- Authors used non-universal and non-child focused variables for analysis. In other words, the arbitrary list was augmented with invalid data pools. “Secondary exposure variables included individual laws previously associated with lower mortality rates in the **total population** of adults and children.” Their list of these secondary laws – universal background checks for firearm purchase, universal background checks for ammunition purchase, and identification requirement for firearms (microstamping, ballistic fingerprinting – are of debatable value with conflicting assessments by criminologists.
- The publication routinely mentions children, but examines firearm deaths and injuries to people upwards of 21 years in age. This, of course, includes the most active cross-section of active street gang members, ages 13-21. 
    - To a certain degree, they admit to this oddity by saying “Although the intent of injury may differ across the pediatric age group, we chose to focus this study across the entire pediatric age spectrum …”
- They excluded states with extremely low firearm death rates, which would likely include states with high gun ownership but low urbanality, and thus low gang participation rates.
- Gun ownership data was via a YouGov online survey, which is of questionable robustness. “… it is possible that this estimate is inaccurate.”

### Association Between Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Law and Homicides

DATE: April, 2015
AUTHORS: Rudolph, Stuart, Vernick, Webster
ORGANIZATION: Center for Gun Policy and Research, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

#### OVERVIEW:

Uses proxy data and synthetic analysis to create hypothetical crime data to test if Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase (PTP) law lowered homicides

#### [![Overall Homicides Rates - Connecticut, Surrounding States, U.S. 1989 - 2014](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Overall-Homicides-Rates-Connecticut-Surrounding-States-U.S.-1989-2014-400x359.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Overall-Homicides-Rates-Connecticut-Surrounding-States-U.S.-1989-2014.png)CRITIQUE:

- “Compare\[ed\] Connecticut’s homicide rates ***after*** the law change to ***rates we would have expected*** if the law had not been adopted, using the synthetic control method.”
- “Use\[ed\] longitudinal data … to predict pre-law homicide trends in Connecticut.” (in other words, did not use actual data).
- Only looked at changes after the law passed which masked the fact that homicide rates were already dropping.
- Ignores a steep increase in Connecticut homicides three years before passage.
- One of the control states was California, which two years prior had a homicide rate 40% above national average.

### Criminal Use of Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Semiautomatic Firearms: an Updated Examination of Local and National Sources

DATE: June, 2018
AUTHORS: Koper, Johnson, Nichols, Ayers, Mullins
ORGANIZATION: Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

#### OVERVIEW:

Uses proxy data on a small sample of metropolitan areas to see if criminals use “assault weapons” or large capacity magazines (LCM)

#### CRITIQUE:

1. ![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/map-of-aw-lcm-study-400x234.png)“… criminal use of these weapons was approximated by examining and triangulating across several local and national data sources on guns used in different types of crimes.”
2. Looked at only 10 cities, some seemingly cherry-picked.
3. The cities selected had populations between 124,000 and 684,500. Major metro areas, where homicides are disproportionately high due to street gangs, are not being evaluated in this study.
4. Cities in southern states are not represented, with the exception of Richmond Virginia. Given the dynamics of Florida, Texas and Arizona, this is a big omission.
5. Includes guns confiscated by police but possibly not used in the actual commission of a crime.
6. Inconsistent definition of “assault weapon”. “AWs were defined based on the weapons that have most commonly been identified as such based on the old federal ban, current state laws, and the recently proposed federal ban.”
7. Irrational data control used for “assault weapons”. “… an additional ceiling estimate of AW use was calculated based on the prevalence of semiautomatic rifles.” This is problematic since (a) many AWs are not riles and (b) most rifles are not AWs.
8. Only three of the cities studied, two in the northeast, had data on LCM.
9. Arbitrarily defined “large capacity magazine” as one holding more than 10 rounds.
10. The prevalence of LCMs was fictional. “use of LCM firearms was approximated based on recoveries of semiautomatics that are commonly manufactured and sold with LCMs.”

### Right-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Control Analysis

DATE: April, 2019
AUTHORS: Donohue, Aneja, Weber
ORGANIZATION: Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

#### OVERVIEW:

Paper uses an odd selection of control variables along with synthetic modeling of data, based on select assumptions, to generate crime statistics that do not actually exist.

#### CRITIQUE:

1. “Distill\[ed\] from an array of different panel data regressions.” This is a opaque way of saying the core data is not from a standard source, such as FBI Uniform Crime Statistics.
2. “Using two major sets of explanatory variables.” These external variables “model” the panel data to further remove it from the actual raw data.
3. “By comparing the actual crime pattern for \[right to carry\]-adopting states with the estimated synthetic controls …” In short, comparing real data to manufactured data, which was created based on assumptions and synthetic modeling.
4. In the first analysis section, authors compared changes in violent crime rates from 1977-2014: 
    1. This is a 37 year period that starts during an era of massively rising violent crime.
    2. The period also begins before states started adopting right to carry in 1988 (Florida being the first notable conversion state).
    3. In this section there was no control for the year of enactment for each state, and thus the before/after effects for states.
5. In the modeled section of the study: 
    1. Omission of very common control variables, such as population density (which discounts the effects of larger cities with inner-city crime), violent crime arrest rates, per capita income, and more.

---

### State gun laws, gun ownership, and mass shootings in the US: cross sectional time series

DATE: January 28, 2019
AUTHORS: Reeping, Cerdá, Kalesan, Wiebe, Galea, Branas
ORGANIZATION: Columbia University, Langone School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Boston University

#### OVERVIEW:

The paper uses a proxy for the relative degree of gun control in the sundry states. They also use an academic paper to estimate gun ownership rates in each state.

#### CRITIQUE:

1. The documents used to measure the relative degree of gun control law are based on an arbitrary and linear scale.This is a critical flaw. 
    1. The authors of that document said in email “The primary criteria in determining each state’s rating was how much (or little) a state regulated a traveler’s ability to carry a loaded firearm preferably a handgun) without a recognized license.”
    2. But otherwise, no weighting was given any law based on the degree of restrictiveness or the alleged efficacy of the law.
2. The rate of gun ownership comes from a relatively old review of the available measures. 
    1. In this paper, the author notes that “there are no known measures that are valid indicators of trends in gun levels, making credible longitudinal research on the subject impossible at present.”
3. The authors used firearm suicide rates as their proxy for gun ownership, which runs the hazard of not controlling for cultural and mental health intervention variations between states (e.g., it has been shown that people who are isolated and live in cultures of self-reliance both have higher overall suicide rates and gun ownership). 
    1. This is a critical issue as there is strong correlation between mental health and mass shooters.

---

### What Do We Know About the Association Between Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Injuries

PUBLICATION: Epidemiologic Reviews
DATE: February, 2016
AUTHORS: Santaella-Tenorio, Cerdá, Villaveces, Galea
ORGANIZATION: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

#### OVERVIEW:

This is a review of literature spanning 64 years (1950 through 2014). The papers were drawn from three databases (PubMed, Scopus and Web of Knowledge) and exclusions made using *Guide to Community Preventive Services*.

#### CRITIQUE:

1. The databases come from the medical sciences field (PubMed), others that are heavily populated with non-criminology publications (Scopus) and social sciences (heavily on Web of Knowledge). The sources are light on criminology, though not exclusionary.
2. The use of the *Guide to Community Preventive Services* is concerning. Their review processes “Use methods that address the specific needs of public health.” 
    1. The “criteria for including and excluding studies” is not transparent. The selection table is references to a web site that obscures the data.
3. Some routinely decried studies (Ayers/Donohue) are included as authoritative.
4. Amalgamated U.S. and international papers, obscuring cultural differences.
5. The authors admit to a number of problems with their review: 
    1. Studies where simultaneous legislation (gun control plus “get tough on criminal” laws) obscure the cause of changes in violence.
    2. Limited confidence in studies due to design and execution.

---

### Firearm Legislation and Firearm Mortality in the USA: a cross-sectional, state-level study

This study is famous for making the claim that nationalizing three gun control laws would reduce gun deaths by 90%.

PUBLICATION: The Lancet
DATE: March, 2016
AUTHORS: Kalesan, Mobily, Keiser, Fagan, Galea
ORGANIZATION: Various

#### OVERVIEW:

An epidemiology approach to criminology and the alleged cause/effect of firearm legislation. Highly critiqued by many. In fact, an accompanying commentary in the same Lancet edition listed several methodology exceptions.

#### CRITIQUE:

1. Used epidemiology measures not used in criminology (specifically, incident rate ratios as opposed to straight crime rates).
2. Cross-sectional study using only one external control variable (unemployment rates). Cross sectional studies can be valid is a large number potential confounding variables). A time series study base before and after enactment of laws would have been robust.
3. They used one year, and some have accused them of cherry picking the year (2009 for laws, 2010 for deaths) since crime data well before and after that year was available.
4. State-level gun ownership data was not transparent. It was gathered by YouGov, an “international internet-based market research firm, headquartered in the UK”. A scan of their site failed to show this poll, how it was conducted and thus there is no transparency on ownership rates.
5. There were passages in the text that were transparently anti-gun in nature, often echoing word-by-word memes from con control organizations. “Unfettered sales from unlicensed dealers”, a non-existent category. “Firearm ownership rates are reported to have fallen” which we debunked and showed [gun ownership rates depend on residency status](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/polling-pollution/).
6. A wild claim that a national universal background check law would lower gun death rates by 56% despite there being only a 10% total difference in firearm homicides in 2010 between states with and without universal background checks.
7. The basic claim, that 90% of gun deaths could be eliminated via background checks for guns and ammo and firearm identification, is absurd since over 60% of gun deaths are by suicide, and nearly all of those are done with legally owned guns.
8. Calculation modeling was used as a predictor of gun violence, a poorly documented “firearm risk profile” for each state, “predicted” how nationalizing laws would affect gun deaths.

---

### Survey Research and Self-Defense Gun Use: An Examination of Extreme Overestimates

PUBLICATION: Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology
DATE: Summer 1997
AUTHORS: David Hemenway
ORGANIZATION: Harvard

#### OVERVIEW:

This paper claims to refute the conclusions of Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, whereby Kleck/Gertz concluded the now certified claim of 2.5 million defensive gun uses (DGUs) every year. Yet, Hemenway’s paper never makes a point. There is a lot of speculation, odd yet inappropriate examples, and outright inaccuracies. In the end though, no refute is actually made and no statistical proof is offered.

#### CRITIQUE:

Hemenway is listed as a Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School. This is another instance of medical academics dabbling inexpertly into criminology. Indeed, Hemenway inaccurately used an epidemiology truth table in this paper to incorrectly explain survey response accuracy methods. The major problems with this “refute” include:

1. Many wild assumptions and assertions, most made without proof points (“… its conclusions cannot be accepted as valid”, “likelihood of \[many different things\]”, “interviewers presumably knew”, “interviewers appear to have …”, etc.)
2. Inaccurate methods. Of note was the use of a 4×4 truth table to suggest inaccuracies in a 1×2 survey matrix (the 4×4 table is quite appropriate for epidemiology when medical tests can and do produce both false positives and negatives, but not in disproving a set of survey yes/no responses).
3. Several inaccurate quotes or summaries of Kleck’s work (e.g. Kleck determined guns prevented 400,000 ***murders*** when in fact it was 400,000 ***serious violent crimes***).
4. Some incomprehensibly odd comparisons. The worst one was comparing possible over-reporting of DGUs to over-reporting of UFO encounters, ignoring the basic difference between an actual, experienced event and one requiring speculative interpretation (“Using a gun in self-defense, like having contact with an alien …”).
5. An odd reliance on the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), whose measure of DGUs is a low-side outlier when contrasted to criminology and media DGU surveys (it would appear that Hemenway wishes to believe the NCVS is accurate, despite the well-known reporting bias induced via personal interviews \[face-to-face\] in the respondent’s home).
6. Though Hemenway is responding to a specific Kleck paper, he does not mention how in Kleck’s book [*Targeting Guns*](http://www.amazon.com/Targeting-Guns-Firearms-Control-Institutions/dp/0202305694/ref=as_sl_pc_qf_sp_asin_til?tag=gunfacinfo-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=4LMQAZABQZT2RUMZ&creativeASIN=0202305694) that the 2.5 million number is replicated in several other criminology and media surveys, and how the NCVS tallies are not.
7. Hemenway ignores that DGUs prevent victimization, and relies instead on only counting DGUs that occurred during/after victimization. In short, he used oranges to talk about apples.
8. In one very odd passage, he confuses individual DGUs with household DGUs, apparently not understanding the design of the original survey, which was to measure individual DGUs.

---

### Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide Across the 50 United States

PUBLICATION: Journal of TRAUMA
DATE: April 2007
AUTHORS: David Hemenway, Matthew Miller, Steven Lippmann, Deborah Azrael

#### OVERVIEW:

This paper claims that states with higher hoursehold firearm ownership rates have higher suicides rates, and that the association is “significant”.

#### CRITIQUE:

Foremost, the study is unbalanced. To get the numbers that compared 15 “high ownership” states with a mere six “low ownership” states. They did this to compare roughly the same gross number of people, but this leads to stacking the deck in terms of the type of state cultures.

The cultural aspect is important. Many of the “high ownership” states are very rural, low population density, and have strongly “independent” cultures – cultures where people make their own decisions, including life and death ones. The “high ownership” states included Wyoming, the Dakotas, Montana, Alaska, etc. It should be noted that some of these rural states (West Virginia being one) have unusual drug and alcohol abuse rates, which is a key determinant for suicides.

As important, of the mere six states in the “low ownership” set, the authors included Hawaii, which has a profoundly different culture and is unique by its geographic isolation.

---

### Target on Trafficking – New York Crime Gun Analysis

PUBLICATION: Office of the Attorney General, State of New York
DATE: October 2016

#### Overview:

Using Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) crime gun trace data, along with questionable ranking systems and other methodology mistakes, the report attempted to identify several states other than New York as the source for crime guns. The report blames the bulk of New York’s crime gun sources on the mythical [*Iron Pipeline*](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/nyt-fiction/).

#### CRITIQUE:

- The report skips by the most obvious issue, which is that most New York State crime guns come from New York. According to the 2013 BATF “Firearms Recovered and Traced” report, New York was the source for 31% of all its crime guns, despite having very stringent gun control laws. 
    - In fact, crime guns from all *Iron Pipeline* states were a mere 37% more than from New York alone.
    - Interestingly, the report claims that only 1/2 of crime guns come from out of state, which by proxy means just as many come from inside the state.
- Aside: New York has a “universal” background check system, so it is surprising that the number of New York sourced crime guns is as high as it is, indicating that these laws do not work.
- No attempt was made to pair guns from out of state with normal interstate relocation. In other words, many or most of these guns may have been legally acquired and brought into the state by people moving there.
- The report uses an arbitrary scoring system to predict if the gun was purposefully trafficked. However … 
    - No statistical justification was used when selecting the scoring ratios.
    - For one key measurement (date of retail), nearly half of the BATF trace record were not available, and another 12% of crime guns could not be linked to any state. In short, the report disposed of half the relevant data.
    - 80% of the score for an assumed trafficked gun is a short *time to crime* (time from retailing of the gun to recovery at a crime scene). This presents many problems: 
        - There is no statistical justification for this being the proper weighting.
        - They cite an ancient study that covered only 27 cities as proof of this assumption, and that study did not conclusively show the that a short *time to crime* was proof of **trafficking**.
        - Only 10% of the weighting was given to “border crossing”, meaning the key element – interstate movement – was the lowest criteria.
        - In the report, they admit that 1/2 of the trace records lacked sufficient classification data, and those were not given a score. In other words, the report blindly dismissed 1/2 of the data.
- Even though the report weighted *time to crime* heavily, the authors admit that a mere 19% of recovered crime guns fit their definition for a short import period. In other words, less than 1/5th of crime guns were allegedly trafficked.
- The report admits that a small number of high density cities are responsible for nearly all traced crime guns, with NYC and the adjoining part of Long Island being the majority. But the report does not investigate why this very tight cluster is such a huge problem. If removed from the analysis, New York state’s numbers would likely equal national averages.
- The authors discredit themselves by citing Michael Bloomberg’s *Mayors Against Illegal Guns* and the *Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence* activist organization as an authoritative source for defining “supplier” states. 
    - The latter is most important. The report cites the LCAGV as providing an “objective measure of the strength of gun safety laws”. Yet the LCAGV does not cite their own scoring system in the scorecard for state gun laws. There’s is an arbitrary definition, and not at all “objective”.

---

### School shootings during 2013–2015 in the USA

PUBLICATION: Injury Prevention
DATE: December 2016

#### Overview:

Claims that states with firearm purchase background laws have a lower rate of school shootings.

#### CRITIQUE:

- Foremost, school shootings are pretty rare. The authors about 51 per year, and of course these include gang incidents. They may also have included incidents near (not on) campus.
- The control variables (mental health expenditures, K-12 education expenditure) were unusual and not standard for typical criminology research (poverty rates, population density, etc.).
- Used epidemiology statistics, not criminology statistics.
- The authors note that “urbanicity” (the impact of living in urban areas) had a greater covarience to school shootings than negative association with background checks.

---

### Handgun Legislation and Changes in Statewide Overall Suicide Rates

PUBLICATION: American Journal of Public Health Research
DATE: April 2017

#### Overview:

Claims that states with “universal” background checks and mandatory waiting periods have lower overall suicide rates.

#### CRITIQUE:

The authors performed a study, comparing all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They evaluated the ***change*** in suicide rates between 2013 and 2014 (one year). To quote their article, “… statewide suicide rate changes between 2013 and 2014 …”

- Foremost, a one year period cannot predict time-series effects. This is a major defect.
- Aligned with this is that most time series studies examine the before/after effects of a law. The authors admit “… To our knowledge, no states changed the status on any of these laws during 2013 and 2014.”
- Though they tested with a significant number of variables, they omitted many known to be associated with suicide rates, such as economic situation changes (i.e., layoffs, bankruptcies, etc.), familial support and abandonment rates, mental health access, and more. 
    - Quite oddly, they included “elevation above sea level” as a comparison variable.
    - Interestingly, the period under study was during recover from the Great Recession, a time of very uneven economic recovery. To not fully analyze the effect economic variable changes (or lack thereof) were having on suicide rates is serious.

---

### Lead exposure at firing ranges—a review

PUBLICATION: Environmental Health
DATE: April, 2017
AUTHORS: Mark A. S. Laidlaw, Gabriel Filippelli, Howard Mielke, Brian Gulson, Andrew S. Ball

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims that blood lead levels (BLL) in employees at firing ranges is dangerous.

**CRITIQUE:**

1. The BLL range for employees at United States firing ranges was between 16.7 and 30.3 µg/dL, which is within all regulatory safety ranges.
2. Many of the high scores were for shooting instructors and their blood samples taken immediately after training (in other words, not a average daily BLL).
3. The firing ranges examined included overseas where common building codes and material handling procedures vary.

---

### Right-To-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Controls Analysis

PUBLICATION: Working paper
DATE: July 2017
AUTHORS: John J. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, and Kyle D. Weber

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims Right To carry (RTC) laws increase violent crime from 13-15%.

**CRITIQUE:**

1. Uses mathematical modeling to “predict” what crime rates might have been without RTC.
2. Uses limited pairing of non-RTC states (2-4 states) with study states.
3. Control states often have no cultural, population or geographical similarity. For example, Texas was studies by comparing it with California, Nebraska and Wisconsin.
4. Studied only aggregate violent crime, despite RTC being a public function and certain forms of violence are not generally public (i.e., rape).

---

### In-State and Interstate Associations Between Gun Shows and Firearm Deaths and Injuries

PUBLICATION: Annals of Internal Medicine
DATE: October 24, 2017
AUTHORS: Matthay, Galin, Rudolph, Farkas, Wintemute, Ahern

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims Nevada gun shows lead to more firearm injuries and deaths in California.

**CRITIQUE:**

1. Raw gun injury data (presented in the paper) shows no change in California gun injury/deaths.
2. Even after seemingly inappropriate statistical “adjustments”, the change in rates of firearm death an injuries were tiny (rate ratio variances commonly of less than one percent).
3. Use control variables (seasonality and at-risk populations without: 
    1. Defining the criteria for these variables.
    2. Reporting their assumptions concerning these.
    3. Reporting the constants used, which had direct affects on their modeling.
4. Only looked at if Nevada gun shows affected California gun injuries, but not the other way (California affecting Nevada).
5. Does not verify that firearms acquired at the gun shows were used in homicides, suicides or accidents.
6. Used “[difference in differences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_in_differences)” statistical modeling to simulate experimental data: 
    1. Inappropriate for criminology review with “as occurred” data.
    2. Approach subject to a variety of biases.
    3. Lack of broad set of confounding variables used to test regressions.
7. No controls for suspect injury demographics (alcoholics, gang members, mentally ill, etc.) who are more prone to firearm accidents and homicides.
8. Did not appear to factor-in that Nevada gun shows disallow non-Nevada residents to exit guns shows with acquired arms, and that California FFLs are in attendance to facilitate California regulations on waiting periods, etc.

---

### State Firearm laws and Interstate Firearm Deaths from Homicide and Suicide in the United States

PUBLICATION: JAMA Internal Medicine
DATE: March 12, 2018
AUTHORS: Kaufman, Morrison, Branas, Wiebe

#### OVERVIEW:

Claims that “stronger” firearm laws are associated with lower suicide rates.

**CRITIQUE:**

1. Paper “received a waiver of review” for unexplained reasons.
2. Regardless of methodology concerns, the variability in their calculated Incidence Rate Ratios (IRRs) was
3. The variance in IRR for “firearm” events and “non-firearm” events was commonly small (2-6% range).
4. Inexplicably, they could not account for “causal relationship between state policies and firearm deaths.”
5. Used distance as a proxy for firearm migration despite stating explicitly that the FBI notes this to not be a barrier (guns travel quite far as people move from state to state).
6. Excluded Washington D.C. for no “applicable state laws” though city laws are well known.
7. “Calculated counts of firearm homicides” instead of using the standard FBI UCR homicide tables.
8. They began with an assumption of what firearm laws are associated with firearm death or interstate movement of firearms. [2](#note-3830-2 "We will note, in passing, that the roster of laws by state we provided to them by a gun control advocacy group who publishes their own rating system for laws, which begs questions of legitimacy.")
9. They created their own scoring system for six categories of laws, and assigned points without scaling criteria.
10. In many instances, their validation of efficacy came from irrational covariance assumptions (e.g., gun availability causes suicides).
11. Made an incorrect assumption about interstate proximity in illegal/legal firearm migration.
12. They clustered counties by the number of laws in effect, not their alleged efficacy (e.g., states with three marginal laws would be better that states with one strong law).
13. Used epidemiology modeling instead standard statistical processes used in criminology.
14. They had a poorly explained substitution of a model from 2010 with one from 2012
15. They tested three different models, but published only on one.

Notes:

1. *The Hazards of Data-dredging in Gun Control Research:* *Comment on Webster et al. (2020)*, Kleck, 2020 [↩](#return-note-3830-1)
2. We will note, in passing, that the roster of laws by state we provided to them by a gun control advocacy group who publishes their own rating system for laws, which begs questions of legitimacy. [↩](#return-note-3830-2)

---

### [Issues Driving Gun Violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-issues-driving-gun-violence-that-are-known-but-not-widely-discussed/)

**Published:** November 5, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Gun crime is highly localized

From the [FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Tables](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/top-15-murder-counties/) (2018):

- 15 counties (out of 3,143), or 0.5% of all counties…
- … with about 0.8% of the nation’s population…
- had 25% of gun homicides.
- About 50% of counties in any given year had zero gun homicides.

[![Illinois Firearm Homicide Share by County 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Illinois-Firearm-Homicide-Share-by-County-2018-400x263.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Illinois-Firearm-Homicide-Share-by-County-2018.png)click to enlarge

In any given state, the concentration of homicides into one county is typical. For example, in Illinois, most homicides occur in Cook County (Chicago). In Maryland, 65% of gun homicides are in Baltimore City. In Tennessee, it is Shelby County (Memphis) with 45%.

## Lack of policing and homicide resolution

In our study linked above, we asked why these 15 counties had 25% of gun homicides. Of the 26 variables we tested, understaffing of police departments and their associated low rate of solving homicides (AKA clearance rate) were the most important factors.

## Street Gangs

The 2011 National gang Threat Assessment revealed a growing gang problem with direct consequences concerning gun violence.

- [![Gang Violent Crime vs Gang Population, 2011](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gang-Violent-Crime-vs-Gang-Population-2011-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Gang-Violent-Crime-vs-Gang-Population-2011.png)click to enlarge

    48% of violent crimes in most jurisdictions were caused by gangs, and upwards of 90% in some jurisdictions.
- Gang membership grew 40% between 2009 and 2011. Mass media and the internet is driving fast and broader adoption. 
    - Due to the internet, gang “culture” is not just an inner-city issue (though major metro areas are still the primary location for gang activity). Gang-like actions are occurring in suburbs even is there are no established gangs.
- In 2011 there were over 1.4 million gang members and 33,000 gangs (which is roughly 10 gangs for every county). 
    - All the estimates offered by agencies in the Assessment come to gang committing 10.7% of all violent crimes while composing 0.4% of the population.
    - The rate for gun crimes is likely higher due to gang ethos about fatal retaliatory violent.
- Gang firearm acquisition is primarily through street sources.

What journalist need to understand, as is revealed in some of our research, is that gun violence is highly concentrated in specific neighborhoods mainly in major metro cities, and it is primarily associated with gang activity.

---

### [Mass Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/mass-shootings/)

**Published:** January 25, 2014
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

There are two criminology definitions for public shootings, and they are very different:

**Active Shooter Events (ASE):** Where a person shoots at multiple people in public, though there may be no deaths. [1](#note-1726-1 ""One or more persons engaged in killing or attempting to kill multiple people in an area (or areas) occupied by multiple unrelated individuals. At least one of the victims must be unrelated to the shooter. The primary motive appears to be mass murder; that is the shooting is not a by-product of an attempt to commit another crime." United States Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2010, School of Criminal Justice, Texas State University, 2014 – published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation")

**Mass Public Shootings (MPS):** Public shooting events where four or more people are killed, not including perpetrator(s). [2](#note-1726-2 "“Slaughter of four or more victims by one or a few assailants within a single event, lasting but a few minutes or as long as several hours”, Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder, James Alan Fox, Jack Levin, Crime and Justice, Vol. 23, 1998") Note: a 2012 definition created by Congress [3](#note-1726-3 "Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012") uses 3+ victims as their definition, but criminologists adhere the original 4+ baseline.

**Mass Shooting (MS):** Event, regardless of public/private locations, with four or more people are killed (not including the perpetrator) within a 24 hour period. [4](#note-1726-4 "A Comprehensive Assessment of Deadly Mass Shootings, 1980-2018 – Turanovic, Pratt, Neville, La Tosa – 2022")

## Myth: U.S. Leads World in Mass Shootings

[![MASS SHOOTINGS - International Map 1998 thru 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/MASS-SHOOTINGS-International-Map-1998-thru-2017-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/MASS-SHOOTINGS-International-Map-1998-thru-2017.png)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Mass-Shootings-by-Region-1998-2012-b-400x287.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Mass-Shootings-by-Region-1998-2012-b.png)[![U.S. Mass Public Shootings Per Capita 1982 through 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-Per-Capita-1982-through-2016-400x296.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-Per-Capita-1982-through-2016.png)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shootings-Incidents-and-Deaths-per-capita-sans-exceptional-events-1998-through-2016-400x260.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shootings-Incidents-and-Deaths-per-capita-sans-exceptional-events-1998-through-2016.png)[![Mass Shootings by Advanced Country 1998-2012](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Mass-Shootings-by-Advanced-Country-1998-2012-400x228.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Mass-Shootings-by-Advanced-Country-1998-2012.png)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Days-Between-U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-1988-thru-2021-03-25-400x303.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Days-Between-U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-1988-thru-2021-03-25.png)[![MASS SHOOTINGS - Mass Public Shooting Deaths - Assault Weapons and Cattle Pen Scenario](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shooting-Deaths-Assault-Weapons-and-Cattle-Pen-Scenario-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shooting-Deaths-Assault-Weapons-and-Cattle-Pen-Scenario.png)**Fact:** This conclusion was in a paper [5](#note-1726-5 "Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries, Lankford, 2016") with multiple problems:

- Does not list the shooting events, so there is no way of validating the conclusion.
- Issues with the author’s unique definition of “mass shooting”, which does not align with those commonly used in criminology.
- Data collection methodologies, such as only gathering data from English language websites in foreign countries, which naturally would mask reports in local languages.
- Research going back to 1996, well before even the United States had broad media use of internet, meaning third world countries – even though publishing in English – likely did not post stories of older mass shootings.

**Fact:** A different study [6](#note-1726-6 "How a Botched Study Fooled the World About the U.S. Share of Mass Public Shootings -- U.S. Rate is Lower than Global Average, Lott, 2018") with a significantly broader, multi-lingual and definition-precise dataset concluded that “While the US had about 4.6 percent of the world’s population … it had just 2.88 percent of the mass public shootings … The US ranks 58th in attack rate and 62st in murder rate.”

## Myth: **Mass public shootings are increasing**

**Fact:** Over a 35-year period, the number of mass public shootings rose during the violence escalation decades of the 1970s and 1980, then leveled off in the late 1990s and the first years of the 21st century. Starting with a a couple of high-profile MPSs in 2012 (Sandy Hook Elementary and Aurora, Colorado), the population adjusted trendline has started rising in the U.S.

**Special Note:** The FBI created a study of what they labeled “active shooter” events from 2000-2013, but they merged both ASEs and MPSs. Combined, this data shows an increase whereas other studies that separate the two do not. But it must be noted that their study starts in the year 2000, which had an abnormally low number of public shootings (only one). [7](#note-1726-7 "A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013, FBI, September 2013")

## Myth: More people are dying in mass public shootings

**Fact:** The number of people killed in MPSs, as a percent of the population, was relatively stable until 2012, a year of seven MPSs, two large-scale. After and including that year, the total number of people killed has risen. But when exceptional events (such as the Las Vegas concert shooting) are factored-out, the fatality rate per year has remained relatively stable.

**Fact:** Mass public shooting deaths make up less than 1% of all gun homicides, making them a small part of the problem.

## Myth: America has the highest rate of mass shootings in developed countries

**Fact:** On a per population basis, the United States ranks fourth behind three European countries [8](#note-1726-8 "Mass Shootings: Media, Myths, and Realities, Jaclyn Schildkraut, H. Jaymi Elsass") or eighth when a broader set of non-conflict countries are examined. [9](#note-1726-9 "The facts shoot holes in Obama's claim that US is only host to mass killings, John Lott, December 2015")

## Myth: Mental health is not associated with mass shootings

**Fact:** At least 61% of mass public shooters [10](#note-1726-10 "Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy, Mother Jones, November 2012, analysis of 62 mass public shootings") and 62% of active shooters [11](#note-1726-11 "A Study of The Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters In The United States Between 2000 and 2013, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2018") showed signs of mental instability in the days, weeks or months before their massacres. The rate for mass public shooters might be higher because medical privacy laws prevent fully exploring the mental health history of some killers.

**Fact:** Mass public shooters have significant mental health disorders at twice the rate of the general public, and as high as nine times the rate for specific disorders (thought disorders, most commonly associated with schizophrenia). [12](#note-1726-12 "Violence Project Mass Public Shooter Database 2023")

**[![Mass public shooters and mental health from Domestic Mass Shooters - The Association With Unmedicated and Untreated Psychiatric Illness](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Mass-public-shooters-and-mental-health-from-Domestic-Mass-Shooters-The-Association-With-Unmedicated-and-Untreated-Psychiatric-Illness-400x266.jpeg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Mass-public-shooters-and-mental-health-from-Domestic-Mass-Shooters-The-Association-With-Unmedicated-and-Untreated-Psychiatric-Illness.jpeg)Fact:** Among surviving shooters who received full psych evaluations as part of legal proceedings, 80% had serious mental disorders. A random sampling of non-surviving shooters shows a similar ratio. [13](#note-1726-13 "Domestic Mass Shooters - The Association With Unmedicated and Untreated Psychiatric Illness; Glick, Cerfolio, Kamis, Laurence; Journal of Clinical Psychpharmacology; 2021")

**Fact:** 31% of perpetrators had experienced psychosis [14](#note-1726-14 "Psychosis and mass shootings: A systematic examination using publicly available data; Peterson, Densley, Knapp, Higgins, Jensen; 2022") whereas less than 0.1% of the general public develops a psychosis in any given year [15](#note-1726-15 ""Understanding Psychosis", National Institute of Mental Health, website 2023")

**Fact:** 90% of attackers struggled with suicidality, mental illness or depression. [16](#note-1726-16 "Repeat tragedy: Rampage shootings in American high school and college settings, 2002–2008. American Behavioral Scientist, 52, 1286–1308.")

**Fact:** Killing for fame-seeking, which may be considered as sociopathic extreme within mental health, causes more deaths. “Fame-seeking rampage shooters killed an average of 7.2 victims, while the other offenders killed an average of 3.0 victims.” [17](#note-1726-17 "Fame-seeking rampage shooters: Initial findings and empirical predictions; Lankford; 2016")

Mental health is a key determinant variable.

## Myth: Mass public shootings cluster due to a copycat effect

**Fact:** The spread of days between mass public shootings is broad, from one day to two years. 4% occur within a week of the previous one, and 19% within 30 days. However, the average span is 145 days, so whatever clustering there is on the low end is likely coincidental (since most mass public shooting perpetrators die and cannot be interviewed, there is scant data on if they were motivated by recent events).

## Myth: Assault weapons (or high capacity magazines) cause higher fatality rates in mass shootings

**Fact:** “Civilian public mass shooting events with a handgun are more lethal than those associated with use of a rifle.” [18](#note-1726-18 "Wounding Patterns Based on Firearm Type in Civilian Public Mass Shootings in the United States - 2018 - Sarani, Hendrix, Matecki, Estroff, Amdur, Robinson, Shapiro, Gondek, Mitchell, Smith - Journal of the American College of Surgeons")

**Fact:** Venue selection, especially with regards to the number of people packed into a small place (what we names a “[cattle pen scenario](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shooting-cattle-pens/)“) is predictive, regardless of the weapon used.

## Myth: Guns in civilian hands are not good for stopping mass public shooters

**Fact:** One tracking database [19](#note-1726-19 "Massive errors in FBI’s Active Shooting Reports from 2014-2022 regarding cases where civilians stop attacks; Crime Prevention Research Center; 2023") shows that 41.3% of “active shooter events” were terminated by armed civilians. Outside of “gun free zones” the rate climbs to 63.5%.

**Fact:** One study shows that armed citizens responding to rampage killers result in 1/8th the number of casualties than when police intervene. [20](#note-1726-20 "Auditing Shooting Rampage Statistics, Davi Barker, July 2013 and updated thereafter") In other words, waiting on the police results in eight times as many people deaths and injuries.

**Fact:** Some of the more well known instances of just people with concealed carry permits have prevented spree killings includes: [21](#note-1726-21 "Crime Prevention Research Center web site")

- Chicago, July 7, 2014: Denzel A. Mickiel cornered by fellow party-goer.
- Rockledge, Florida, November 24, 2017: Robert Bailey stopped by armed co-workers.
- Antioch, Tennessee, September 24, 2017: Emanuel Kidega Samson stopped by church usher.
- Arlington, Texas, May 3, 2017: James Jones shot by bar patron.
- Lyman, South Carolina, June 30, 2016: Jody Ray Thompson stopped after shooting three victims.

In this ongoing collection of reports, there are over 31 instances in recent reporting.

---

## Understanding conflicting reports on “mass public shootings”

There are several different studies concerning mass public shootings, which make different claims. The primary points of confusion come from:

1. How the counting of such shootings is done
2. How they define “mass public shooting”

Here are some of the studies that are circulated and critiques of them.

### Mother Jones [22](#note-1726-22 "A Guide to Mass Shootings in America, Mother Jones, May 2014")

- This magazine report used media reports of mass shootings, which may not cover all such shootings and which lack criminological objectivity.
- There appear to be some arbitrary omissions of events that do not fit their definition of a public shooting.
- They only count “lone gunmen” events, and never the more common inner-city, gang-related multi-shooter episodes.
- They include terrorist activities, such as the Fort Hood massacre.

Mother Jones concluded that mass shootings occur more frequently than several decades ago, and that the mass public shooting rate tripled since 2011.

### James Alan Fox, Northeastern University criminologist [23](#note-1726-23 "Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown, Homicide Studies, 2013")

- Based on police reports, which are uniform and comprehensive.
- Includes all mass shootings, including those not in public, which defies the idea of a mass *public* shooting.

Concluded that mass shooting rates remain relatively stable over time.

### Grant Duwe, Minnesota Department of Corrections, criminologist [24](#note-1726-24 "Mass Murder in the United States: A History, McFarland, June 2007")

- Uses FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports for the core list, then media reports to provide details.
- Includes only public events.
- Excludes events related to other crimes (such as robberies gone wrong).

Concludes that mass public shootings declined from 1999 to 2011, then spiked in 2012 (the year of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting), then returned to the mean of previous years.

*The one thing all of the studies agree upon is that
mass public shootings are statistically rare*

Notes:

1. "One or more persons engaged in killing or attempting to kill multiple people in an area (or areas) occupied by multiple unrelated individuals. At least one of the victims must be unrelated to the shooter. The primary motive appears to be mass murder; that is the shooting is not a by-product of an attempt to commit another crime." *United States Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2010*, School of Criminal Justice, Texas State University, 2014 – published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation [↩](#return-note-1726-1)
2. “Slaughter of four or more victims by one or a few assailants within a single event, lasting but a few minutes or as long as several hours”, *Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder*, James Alan Fox, Jack Levin, Crime and Justice, Vol. 23, 1998 [↩](#return-note-1726-2)
3. Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 [↩](#return-note-1726-3)
4. A Comprehensive Assessment of Deadly Mass Shootings, 1980-2018 – Turanovic, Pratt, Neville, La Tosa – 2022 [↩](#return-note-1726-4)
5. *Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries*, Lankford, 2016 [↩](#return-note-1726-5)
6. *How a Botched Study Fooled the World About the U.S. Share of Mass Public Shootings -- U.S. Rate is Lower than Global Average*, Lott, 2018 [↩](#return-note-1726-6)
7. *A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013*, FBI, September 2013 [↩](#return-note-1726-7)
8. *Mass Shootings: Media, Myths, and Realities*, Jaclyn Schildkraut, H. Jaymi Elsass [↩](#return-note-1726-8)
9. *The facts shoot holes in Obama's claim that US is only host to mass killings*, John Lott, December 2015 [↩](#return-note-1726-9)
10. *Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy*, Mother Jones, November 2012, analysis of 62 mass public shootings [↩](#return-note-1726-10)
11. *A Study of The Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters In The United States Between 2000 and 2013*, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2018 [↩](#return-note-1726-11)
12. Violence Project Mass Public Shooter Database 2023 [↩](#return-note-1726-12)
13. Domestic Mass Shooters - The Association With Unmedicated and Untreated Psychiatric Illness; Glick, Cerfolio, Kamis, Laurence; Journal of Clinical Psychpharmacology; 2021 [↩](#return-note-1726-13)
14. Psychosis and mass shootings: A systematic examination using publicly available data; Peterson, Densley, Knapp, Higgins, Jensen; 2022 [↩](#return-note-1726-14)
15. "Understanding Psychosis", National Institute of Mental Health, website 2023 [↩](#return-note-1726-15)
16. *Repeat tragedy: Rampage shootings in American high school and college settings, 2002–2008*. American Behavioral Scientist, 52, 1286–1308. [↩](#return-note-1726-16)
17. Fame-seeking rampage shooters: Initial findings and empirical predictions; Lankford; 2016 [↩](#return-note-1726-17)
18. Wounding Patterns Based on Firearm Type in Civilian Public Mass Shootings in the United States - 2018 - Sarani, Hendrix, Matecki, Estroff, Amdur, Robinson, Shapiro, Gondek, Mitchell, Smith - Journal of the American College of Surgeons [↩](#return-note-1726-18)
19. Massive errors in FBI’s Active Shooting Reports from 2014-2022 regarding cases where civilians stop attacks; Crime Prevention Research Center; 2023 [↩](#return-note-1726-19)
20. *Auditing Shooting Rampage Statistics*, Davi Barker, July 2013 and updated thereafter [↩](#return-note-1726-20)
21. Crime Prevention Research Center web site [↩](#return-note-1726-21)
22. *A Guide to Mass Shootings in America*, Mother Jones, May 2014 [↩](#return-note-1726-22)
23. *Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown*, Homicide Studies, 2013 [↩](#return-note-1726-23)
24. *Mass Murder in the United States: A History*, McFarland, June 2007 [↩](#return-note-1726-24)

---

### [Mass Public Shooting Database](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/mass-public-shooting-database/)

**Published:** August 2, 2019
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

**Last posting: 2025-08-03**

Gun Facts maintains a database of U.S. [mass public shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/mass-shootings/) (MPSs). This database uses the original criminology definition of MPS: four or more people are killed in a single location, not including attackers and not part of another crime.

The Gun Facts MPS database has two elements that were first found in this database (though other researchers have replicated our efforts). This includes:

1. Determining if any of the weapons used conformed to the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban criteria.
2. If the event was a “cattle pen scenario”, which is a unique Gun facts observation about what makes MPSs more deadly.

You can optionally view and download the database [with this link](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DWtNus49mLE1AMcSq3L5_EvR_l123Bg_H3asVokHNnM/edit?usp=sharing).

---

### [Miscellaneous Gun Policy Information](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/miscellaneous-gun-policy-information/)

**Published:** December 1, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Firearms In The United States

Nobody is sure of exactly how many firearms are in circulation. This stems from a long history of no regulations on firearm ownership. In Gun Facts, we rely on multiple academic resources.

**Number of firearms in America:** Between 223,000,000 [1](#note-1509-1 "Guns Used in Crime, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Marianne W. Zawitz, 1995") and 415,000,000 [2](#note-1509-2 "2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022")

**Handguns in circulation:** 174,000,000 (2018)

**Households with Firearms:** Between 40-50%. [3](#note-1509-3 "Survey data from Pew, Gallup, ABC News")

**Individuals who own firearms (age 18+):** 31.9%, or 81,400,000 in 2021 [4](#note-1509-4 "2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022")

    Any Gun 31.9%   Handguns 82.7%   Rifles 68.8%   Shotguns 58.4%   AR-15s 30.2%   Magazines > 10 rounds 48.0%   For AR-15s in particular, one media survey [5](#note-1509-5 "Washington Post, Sep/Oct 2022") concluded:

- 20% of gun owners owned one or more AR-15s.
- With 31.9% of adults owning guns, this equates to 16.5 million AR-15 owners.
- The number of AR-15s in circulation is more since people can own more than one.
 
## Gun Ownership by State

    State Average (households) Variance (households) 2013 – Gun ownership and social gun culture – Kalesan, Villarreal, Keyes, Galea – 2015 – Survey 4000 people, YouGov panel 2002 – Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022

(largest sample, current gold-standard)

          Household Household Individual   Alabama 53.1% 0.3% 48.9% 57.2% 39.6%   Alaska 61.2% 0.0% 61.7% 60.6% 33.4%   Arizona 34.3% 0.1% 32.3% 36.2% 32.0%   Arkansas 58.1% 0.0% 57.9% 58.3% 36.6%   California 19.8% 0.0% 20.1% 19.5% 25.5%   Colorado 34.4% 0.0% 34.3% 34.5% 33.6%   Connecticut 16.4% 0.0% 16.6% 16.2% 20.2%   D.C. 15.6% 2.1% 25.9% 5.2% 23.9%   Delaware 16.0% 2.3% 5.2% 26.7% 24.7%   Florida 29.3% 0.2% 32.5% 26.0% 30.3%   Georgia 36.3% 0.4% 31.6% 41.0% 37.1%   Hawaii 27.4% 6.3% 45.1% 9.7% 16.4%   Idaho 56.9% 0.0% 56.9% 56.8% 54.5%   Illinois 23.0% 0.2% 26.2% 19.7% 26.5%   Indiana 36.4% 0.1% 33.8% 39.0% 40.3%   Iowa 38.9% 0.5% 33.8% 44.0% 33.2%   Kansas 38.0% 0.7% 32.2% 43.7% 42.8%   Kentucky 45.2% 0.2% 42.4% 48.0% 46.7%   Louisiana 45.1% 0.0% 44.5% 45.6% 32.8%   Maine 31.9% 1.7% 22.6% 41.1% 35.9%   Maryland 21.4% 0.0% 20.7% 22.1% 21.7%   Massachusetts 17.7% 0.5% 22.6% 12.8% 15.8%   Michigan 34.6% 0.7% 28.8% 40.3% 34.7%   Minnesota 40.7% 0.3% 36.7% 44.7% 32.5%   Mississippi 48.6% 0.7% 42.8% 54.3% 39.5%   Missouri 36.3% 1.7% 27.1% 45.4% 39.7%   Montana 56.9% 0.4% 52.3% 61.4% 48.4%   Nebraska 31.0% 2.5% 19.8% 42.1% 37.2%   Nevada 34.5% 0.2% 37.5% 31.5% 38.0%   New Hampshire 22.5% 1.3% 14.4% 30.5% 24.1%   New Jersey 11.3% 0.0% 11.3% 11.3% 19.3%   New Mexico 44.8% 0.5% 49.9% 39.6% 33.8%   New York 14.2% 0.3% 10.3% 18.1% 22.7%   North Carolina 34.8% 0.7% 28.7% 40.8% 37.3%   North Dakota 51.1% 0.2% 47.9% 54.3% 42.6%   Ohio 25.9% 0.8% 19.6% 32.1% 33.7%   Oklahoma 37.9% 0.9% 31.2% 44.6% 40.5%   Oregon 33.2% 0.9% 26.6% 39.8% 38.3%   Pennsylvania 32.7% 0.3% 28.8% 36.5% 30.3%   Rhode Island 9.6% 0.3% 5.8% 13.3% 16.9%   South Carolina 44.7% 0.0% 44.4% 45.0% 40.7%   South Dakota 47.5% 3.1% 35.0% 59.9% 39.2%   Tennessee 42.9% 0.2% 39.4% 46.4% 43.0%   Texas 35.8% 0.0% 35.7% 35.9% 36.0%   Utah 38.6% 0.9% 31.9% 45.3% 42.8%   Vermont 37.2% 1.4% 28.8% 45.5%     Virginia 32.6% 0.2% 29.3% 35.9% 30.6%   Washington 32.0% 0.4% 27.7% 36.2% 32.8%   West Virginia 56.1% 0.1% 54.2% 57.9% 53.0%   Wisconsin 39.5% 0.5% 34.7% 44.3% 33.3%   Wyoming 58.3% 0.4% 53.8% 62.8% 42.7%   Here is the core data from three different studies, including an average of their estimates and a variance measure that shows, with a small number of oddities, close alignment.

## 2,500,500 or 235,700 defensive gun uses (DGU)?

You may have heard that firearms are used 2.5 million times a year for self-defense, and you may also have heard they are only used 235,700 times. The reason is that there are different sources of the data and different ways of measuring.

The 2.5M times number come from criminologist Gary Kleck and his book [*Targeting Gun*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0202305694/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0202305694&linkCode=as2&tag=frethimed-20). Kleck gathered many surveys from both criminologists and media sources, and the midpoint was 2.5M DGUs a year (one of the surveys he reported was significantly higher and another one was lower, but most were in the 2-2.5M range).

The 235,700 number comes from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). One important methodological difference in the NCVS is that it entails personal, face-to-face engagements with government employees (per their methodology documentation “all interviews are done by telephone whenever possible, except for the first interview, which is primarily conducted in person”).

There is also the potential for self-incrimination that may prevent reporting of some DGUs to this government survey. A victim may have a strong reluctance to talk to a government agent about a firearm brandishing incident (which are 98% of DGUs) because they may not know the act was 100% legal. Thus, to assure they are not victimized by the legal system, they avoid reporting DGUs to this government survey.

Another criticism of the NCVS is that questions concerning gun-use are never asked unless the interviewee first indicates that they were “a victim of a crime.” Since some people who successfully avoid being a victim by using a gun reply that they have not been victimized, they are never asked the question about use of a firearm.

Because of this, some criminologists believe there is a self-reporting bias in the NCVS (e.g., people don’t like to tell the government they own or used a gun). Thus, this low number from the NCVS is considered to be an outlier and not reliable compared to other, broader and more standardized measures.

## British Crime Statistics

The U.K. measures crime using two different processes:

**British Crime Survey (BCS):** The Home Office conducts surveys of the population to determine how often subjects have been affected by criminal activity. Data is projected to reflect the entire population.

**Police reporting:** Crimes are reported to the police and nationwide, census-level statistics are summarized.

The BCS has been reporting a declining crime rate in the UK while police reporting has shown an increase. The BCS has routinely been criticized because it under reports crime due to the following factors:

- Murdered and imprisoned people do not answer surveys
- Some crimes are not surveyed when victims are below age 16 [6](#note-1509-6 "This is a serious omission as most gang crime is committed by and against young people.")
- Crime against institutions (bank robbery, etc.) are not included
 
The crime reporting system isn’t without flaws either. Crimes are recorded at final disposition (conviction/acquittal), leaving many crimes completely unreported [7](#note-1509-7 "Fear in Britain, Dr. Paul Gallant and Dr. Joanne Eisen, National Review, July 18, 2000")

These deficiencies are so significant that even the British government does not believe the accuracy of the BCS.

“\[T\]he BCS did not record ‘various categories of violent crime’, including murder and rape, retail crime, drug-taking, or offences in which the victims were aged below 16. The most reliable measure of crime is that which is reported to the police. We’re facing over a million violent crimes a year for the first time in history.” [8](#note-1509-8 "Row over figures as crime drops 5%, David Davis, Shadow Home Secretary, The Guardian, July 22, 2004")

Gun control groups tend to cite the BCS reports because it supports their narrative that Britain’s gun control laws lower crime. Criminologists tend to use the reporting system because it more closely matches the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics used in the United States.

More curious are the sudden leaps in reported violent crime when the British Home Office enforced standardized methods for recording reported crime (which led the Home Office to claim crime reports to be of poor quality, and thus rely on the suspect survey mechanism):

The 1998 changes to the Home Office Counting Rules had a very significant impact on violent crime; the numbers of such crimes recorded by the police increased by 83 per cent as a result of the 1998 changes … The National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS), introduced in April 2002, again resulted in increased recording of violent crimes particularly for less serious violent offenses. [9](#note-1509-9 "Crime in England and Wales 2005/06, British Home Office, July 2006")

## British Gun Control History

1870: British gun control began with licensing.

1903: [Pistols Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom#Pistols_Act_1903) to stop people carrying guns, and required a license for handguns outside the home.

1920: [Firearms Act 1920](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom#Firearms_Act_1920) required anyone wanting to purchase or possess a firearm or ammunition to obtain a firearm certificate, and limited ammunition possession. Enabled denial by local chief constables and a “good reason” justification denial grounds.

1937: [Firearms Act 1937](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom#Firearms_Act_1937) expanded age restrictions, transferred certificates for machine guns to military oversight, expanded gun seller regulations, expanded local constable conditions for issuance, ended self-defense as a justifiable condition.

1968: [Firearms Act 1968](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom#Firearms_Act_1968) consolidated all previous laws, added for the licenses. Added license for long-barrel shotguns, safe storage provisions, criminal right-to-possess suspension.

1988: [1988 Firearms Amendment Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom#The_Firearms_.28Amendment.29_Act_1988) banned semi-automatic and pump-action center-fire rifles, military weapons firing explosive ammunition, short shotguns that had magazines, pump-action and self-loading rifles. Add registration and secure storage of shotguns.

1997: [Firearms Amendment Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_policy_in_the_United_Kingdom#1997_Firearms_.28Amendment.29_Acts) defined and prohibited “short firearms”, effectively banned private possession of handguns.

## Gun Violence Archive

There are numerous critiques of the Gun Violence Archives, which combined indicate that this is a non-viable criminology resource.

The primary problem is a lack or reach. Whereas the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting system spans the country, the Gun Violence Archive “… numbers are found through 2,000 LEO, government and media sources.”

There are nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. If we were generous and assumed that most of the outlets from which the Gun Violence Archives find incident reports were law enforcement, they are still examining only 11% of the agencies. Since media reports make up a significant amount of the Gun Violence Archive’s reporting, odds are the reach into official agencies, which have uniform tracking methodologies, is much lower than 11%.

![gun-violence-archive-incident-clip](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/gun-violence-archive-incident-clip-400x282.jpg)Another problem is the definition of “gun violence” employed by the Gun Violence Archive is often misused. Their definition is “… all incidents of death or injury or threat with firearms.” This leads to episodes like the one shown here, clipped from the Gun Violence Archive web site, being included in their tallies along with homicides and woundings. Notice that this was a “non-shooting” incident.

The takeaway is that the Gun Violence Archive is a non-serious tool for understanding crime, violence and how guns fit into the situation.

# Confused terms in gun control policy

## **Assault rifle and assault weapon:**

Assault *rifles* are real, and are a specific type of military weapon classified by the Department of Defense. These are not generally available to the public.

Assault *weapon* is a legislative term, and means whatever the law says. In a paper promoting the extension of the federal assault weapons ban, the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence admitted that various “assault weapons” laws across the nation covered anywhere from 19 to 75 banned firearms, six differing generic classification schemes and several legal systems for banning more firearms without specific legislative action.

## “Gun Dealer”

Federal law defines a gun dealer as someone who is “engaged in the business of selling firearms,” which in turn is defined as a “devot\[ing\] time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms.”

The statutory definition explicitly excludes “a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”

## Negligent discharge and accidental shooting

Negligent discharges are defined as “a discharge of a firearm involving culpable carelessness.” In other words, a person did not have their firearm properly secured or handled it in a careless fashion.

Accidental shootings include negligent discharges, but include other activities such as unintended targets, people walking into a line of fire, down-range hunting accidents and more.

# Genocide and Gun Control [10](#note-1509-10 "Death by Gun Control: The Human Cost of Victim Disarmament,” Aaron Zelman & Richard W. Stevens, 2001")

Outside of war, the greatest loss of human life in the 20th century came from governments. In nearly every case, disarmament preceded mass murder. Though some nations have been functionally disarmed without such atrocities, it is worth remembering:

In 1911, Turkey established gun control. Subsequently, from 1915 to 1917, 1.5-million Armenians, deprived of the means to defend themselves, were rounded up and killed.

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. Then, from 1929 to 1953, approximately 20-millon dissidents were rounded up and killed.

In 1938 Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945 over 13-million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally ill, union leaders, Catholics and others, unable to fire a shot in protest, were rounded up and killed.

In 1935, China established gun control. Subsequently, between 1948 and 1952, over 20-million dissidents were rounded up and killed.

In 1956, Cambodia enshrined gun control. In just two years (1975-1977) over one million “educated” people were rounded up and killed.

In 1964, Guatemala locked in gun control. From 1964 to 1981, over 100,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up and killed as a result of their inability to defend themselves.

In 1970, Uganda embraced gun control. Over the next nine years over 300,000 Christians were rounded up and killed.

Over 56-million people have died because of gun control in the last century

Notes:

1. *Guns Used in* Crime, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Marianne W. Zawitz, 1995 [↩](#return-note-1509-1)
2. 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022 [↩](#return-note-1509-2)
3. Survey data from Pew, Gallup, ABC News [↩](#return-note-1509-3)
4. 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022 [↩](#return-note-1509-4)
5. Washington Post, Sep/Oct 2022 [↩](#return-note-1509-5)
6. This is a serious omission as most gang crime is committed by and against young people. [↩](#return-note-1509-6)
7. *Fear in Britain*, Dr. Paul Gallant and Dr. Joanne Eisen, National Review, July 18, 2000 [↩](#return-note-1509-7)
8. *Row over figures as crime drops 5%*, David Davis, Shadow Home Secretary, The Guardian, July 22, 2004 [↩](#return-note-1509-8)
9. *Crime in England and Wales 2005/06*, British Home Office, July 2006 [↩](#return-note-1509-9)
10. *Death by Gun Control*: *The Human Cost of Victim Disarmament*,” Aaron Zelman & Richard W. Stevens, 2001 [↩](#return-note-1509-10)

---

### [Assorted Gun Insights](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/assorted-gun-insights/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: 30,000 people are killed with guns every year.

**Fact:** 61% of these deaths are suicides [1](#note-85-1 "Center for Disease Control, WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports") (80% in Canada [2](#note-85-2 "Death Involving Firearms, Kathryn Wilkins, Health Report vol. 16, no 4, Statistics Canada.")). Numerous studies have shown that the presence or absence of a firearm does not change the overall (i.e., gun plus non-gun) suicide rate. This 30,000 number also includes justifiable homicides (self-defense) and accidents.

## Myth: Gun ownership is falling in the United States

[![AVAILABILITY OF GUNS - Household Firearm Ownership Rate 1999 thru 2018](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-Household-Firearm-Ownership-Rate-1999-thru-2018-400x297.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-Household-Firearm-Ownership-Rate-1999-thru-2018.png)**Poll****Gun Ownership Trend****Registered Voter Isolation**ABC/PostSteadyYesGallupSteadyYesPewDecliningNoGSSDecliningNo**[![Brady Campaign State Scorecard vs Firearm Homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ASSORTED-GUN-CONTROL-MYTHS-Brady-Campaign-State-Scorecard-vs-Firearm-Homicides-400x306.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ASSORTED-GUN-CONTROL-MYTHS-Brady-Campaign-State-Scorecard-vs-Firearm-Homicides.png)** **[![Brady Campaign State Scorecard vs Violent Crime Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ASSORTED-GUN-CONTROL-MYTHS-Brady-Campaign-State-Scorecard-vs-Violent-Crime-Rates-400x301.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ASSORTED-GUN-CONTROL-MYTHS-Brady-Campaign-State-Scorecard-vs-Violent-Crime-Rates.png)** **[![CRIME AND GUNS - NICS denials, investigations and prosecutions - 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/CRIME-AND-GUNS-NICS-denials-investigations-and-prosecutions-2017-400x277.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/CRIME-AND-GUNS-NICS-denials-investigations-and-prosecutions-2017.png)** **Fact:** All three of the long-term tracking polls show show a consistent or slightly rising household firearm ownership rate. A forth poll, after changing their methodology, fell into alignment with the other three.

## Myth: The Brady Campaign has a good ranking system of state gun control laws.

**Fact:** Two surveys (ABC and Gallup) consis­tently showed house­hold owner­ship rates remaining steady over multiple decades. Two others (Pew and GSS) showed ownership dropping. The former reported on registered voters, who have to be citizens to vote in federal elections. The latter polled everyone regardless of citizenship status. With the non-citizen population growing 37% in less than 30 years, and now claiming about 11% of the total population, this is a key differentiator. Pew changed their methodology in 2017, and their estimate is now in line with the other three surveys.

**Fact:** There is zero correlation between the letter grades given by the Brady Campaign and the violent crime or murder rate in those states, making the Brady grade irrelevant (see chart at right). [3](#note-85-3 "2012 Brady Campaign Scorecard, Center for Disease Control firearm homicides statistics")

**Fact:** The states that the Brady campaign rank first and last have nearly identical violent crime rates.

## Myth: 1,000 people die each day from guns

**Fact:** 25% of this unreliable figure [4](#note-85-4 "Bringing the global gun crisis under control, IANSA, 2006 citing Small Arms Survey.") includes “direct war deaths,” and another 14% are suicides. The bulk of the rest come from violence-prone and near-lawless localities.

**Fact:** The source for this raw data admits, “A complete dataset on people killed in conflict—directly or indirectly—does not exist. All published figures are *estimates* based on *incomplete information*.” [5](#note-85-5 "Small Arms Survey 2005, www.smallarmssurvey.org.")

**Fact:** Indeed, the definition of “gun” seems to be very broad: “… revolvers and self-loading pistols, carbines, assault rifles, sub-machine guns, and light machine guns.” Light weapons are “… heavy machine guns, hand-held under-barrel and mounted grenade launchers, portable antitank and anti-aircraft guns, recoilless rifles, portable launchers of anti-tank and antiaircraft missile systems, and mortars of less than 100mm caliber.” And they admit to the problem of a broad definition: “The Survey uses the terms ‘small arms,’ ‘firearms,’ and ‘weapons,’ interchangeably. Unless the context dictates otherwise, no distinction is intended between commercial firearms (e.g. hunting rifles), and small arms and “light” weapons designed for military use (e.g. assault rifles).” [6](#note-85-6 "Small Arms Survey 2002, www.smallarmssurvey.org.")

## Myth: Background checks stop crimes

**Fact:** A review by the General Accounting Office (GOA) shows that few denials are actually forwarded to federal agencies for prosecution, and almost none are actually prosecuted. The same report says that 10 of 13 selected states said they did not investigate or prosecute any firearm denials. This despite 72% of appealed denials staying in force.

## Myth: High-capacity magazines lead to more deadly shootings

**Fact:** Much of this myth comes from the fact that the general availability of high-capacity handguns briefly preceded the rise in the crack cocaine trade, which brought a new kind of violence in local drugs wars. [7](#note-85-7 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997.")

**Fact:** The number of shots fired by criminals has not changed significantly even with the increased capacity of handguns and other firearms. Indeed, the number of shots from revolvers (all within 6-8 round capacity) and semi-automatics were about the same – 2.04 vs. 2.53. [8](#note-85-8 "Urban firearm deaths: A five-year perspective, Michael McGonigal, John Cole, William Schwab, Donald Kauder, Michael Rotondo, Peter Angood, Journal of Trauma, 1993.") In a crime or gun battle, there is seldom time or need to shoot more.

**[![Mass Public Shootings Deaths - 15+ Round Magazines Used 1982-2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Mass-Public-Shootings-Deaths-15-Round-Magazines-Used-1982-2019-400x291.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Mass-Public-Shootings-Deaths-15-Round-Magazines-Used-1982-2019.png)Fact:** For mass public shootings the cluster of deaths per incident show that (a) the number of available victims is the key factor in deadliness and (b) a small number of one-time, high-end events (all [Cattle Pen Scenarios](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/mass-shooting-cattle-pens/)) are the primary factor.

**Fact:** The average magazine swap time for a non-expert shooter is 2-3 seconds. In the case of the Newtown Sandy Hook massacre, the murderer performed 10 magazine changes, or about 30 of the ~600 seconds that lapsed from him entering the building to when the police arrived. A 10-round restriction would have raised it to only 46 seconds and thus would have saved nobody.

**Fact:** Firearm homicides declined from 6.3 to 4.2 (per 100,000 population) from 1981 through 1998, when the increase in semi-automatics and large capacity handguns were rising at a fast rate. [9](#note-85-9 "Center for Disease Control WISQARS.") Fatal shootings of police officers declined sharply from 1988 through 1993. [10](#note-85-10 "Firearm injury from crime, Marianne Zawitz, 1996, Bureau of Justice Statistics.")

**Fact:** Drug dealers tend to be “more deliberate in their efforts to kill their victims by shooting them multiple times.” [11](#note-85-11 "Epidemiological changes in gunshot wounds in Washington D.C, Webster, Champion, Gainer and Sykes, Archives of Surgery, 1992.")

## Myth: “Universal” background checks will reduce crime

**Fact:** California’s comprehensive background check “was not associated with a net change in the firearm homicide rate over the ensuing 10 years in California.” [12](#note-85-12 "California's comprehensive background check and misdemeanor violence prohibition policies and firearm mortality, Castillo-Carniglia, Annals of Epidemiology, October 2018")

**Fact:** With nearly 40% of crime guns coming from black-market street dealers peddling stolen and recycled guns, and another 40% coming from “acquaintance” purchases [13](#note-85-13 "Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, February 2002.") (friends, other criminals, illegal straw sales) expanded background checks won’t stop these already off-the-radar transfers.

**Fact:** Police don’t think so – 80% surveyed reject the notion. [14](#note-85-14 "Gun Policy & Law Enforcement, PoliceOne, March 2013")

## [![Missouri Homicide Rate - before and after repeal of permit-to-purchase](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Missouri-Homicide-Rate-before-and-after-repeal-of-permit-to-purchase-400x297.jpg "Missouri Homicide Rate - before and after repeal of permit-to-purchase")](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Missouri-Homicide-Rate-before-and-after-repeal-of-permit-to-purchase.jpg)Myth: Homicides went up when Missouri repealed their permit-to-purchase (licensing) law

**Fact:** The homicide rate in Missouri has actually dropped in that period, according to the FBI’s Universal Crime Reporting data. [15](#note-85-15 "FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, online database")

## Myth: Connecticut’s permit and background law caused homicide to fall by 40% [16](#note-85-16 "Association between Connecticut’s permit-to-purchase handgun law and homicides, Webster, Stuart, Vernick, Rudolph, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, 2015")

**Fact:** This “study” did not use historical homicide data. Instead it created a statistical model of a “synthetic Connecticut” that was comprised using 72% of Rhode Island’s data. It is also worth noting that Connecticut’s homicide rate was already in free-fall before the law was passed, dropping 27% from its high in 1993.

## Myth: The “powerful gun industry” stops all gun control legislation

**Fact:** The firearms industry is composed of “small, marginally profitable companies,” with combined revenues of $1.5 billion to $2 billion per year, making it politically ineffective. [17](#note-85-17 "New York Times, Mar. 18, 2000.")

**Fact:** Total political contributions from firearm industry members, PACs and employees was under $4.4 million in the 2002 election cycle, which made the industry the 64th ranked contributor. Compare that to $33 million from the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees. [18](#note-85-18 "OpenSecrets.org, May 2003.")

**Fact:** Perhaps the “gun industry” being referenced is the 100+ million adults who peacefully own firearms and do not want their civil rights restricted.

## Myth: Access to guns increases the risk of suicide

**Fact:** The rate of suicide is not affected by the presence of a firearm. This is true in either a time-series analysis (like the chart at right showing the change in handgun supply in the U.S. over time), [19](#note-85-19 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics online, BATFE Firearm Commerce Report for 2002.") or through cross-national analysis. For example, Japan has no private handgun ownership (aside from an extremely limited number of licensed Olympic sport shooters), and yet had a suicide rate more than twice that of the United States in 2002. [20](#note-85-20 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, World Health Organization Suicide Prevention country reports (online).")

**Fact:** The claim derives mainly from one study [21](#note-85-21 "Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide Across the 50 United States, Miller, Steven, Lippmann, Azrael, Hemenway, Journal of Trauma, April 2007") which has some [serious methodology problems](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#household-firearm-ownership-and-rates-of-suicide) including unbalanced high/low state counts, inclusion of Hawaii (a known outlier) and intermixing mental health and drug use as confounding variables.

## Myth: States with background checks and waiting periods have lower suicide rates

**Fact:** This study (“[Handgun Legislation and Changes in Statewide Overall Suicides Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#handgun-statewide-overall-suicide-rates)“) had significant methodology flaws, including being a time-series study covering just one year and omitting a number necessary variables.

## Myth: States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths

**Fact:** This study [22](#note-85-22 "The States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths, Nation Journal, January 2016") includes suicides, which account for approximately 2/3rd of “gun deaths”. As has been shown before, [gun availability does ***not*** change the probability of a successful suicide](/blog/suicides-and-guns/).

## Myth: Individuals who commit suicide are more likely to have had access to guns [23](#note-85-23 "Mental Illness, Previous Suicidality, and Access to Guns in the United States, Ilgen, Zivin, McCammon, Valenstein, 2008 American Psychiatric Association.")

**[![Handgun availability and suicide rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Assorted-Myths-Handguns-and-Suicides-400x296.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Assorted-Myths-Handguns-and-Suicides.jpg)Fact:** This is a classic causal effect. If someone decides to commit suicide, and they choose to use a gun, they will first acquire a gun. As noted before, the total rate of suicide does not change when a gun is present because the victim will choose a different method.

## Myth: The only purpose for a gun is to kill people

**Fact:** Guns are used for self-defense 2,500,000 times a year in the United States. [24](#note-85-24 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997")

**Fact:** Guns are used as a deterrent to crime even when no rounds are fired. [25](#note-85-25 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997")

**Fact:** Guns are used in sports including hunting, target practice, practical pistol, scenario simulation, skeet, etc.

## Myth: 89% of mayors want congress to create tougher gun control laws

**Fact:** This [famously flawed survey](/blog/politico-propaganda/) (which the publication admitted was not scientific), cherry picked a full 76% of the respondents from the Michael Bloomberg gun-control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

---

Notes:

1. Center for Disease Control, WISQARS Fatal Injury Reports [↩](#return-note-85-1)
2. *Death Involving Firearms*, Kathryn Wilkins, Health Report vol. 16, no 4, Statistics Canada. [↩](#return-note-85-2)
3. 2012 Brady Campaign Scorecard, Center for Disease Control firearm homicides statistics [↩](#return-note-85-3)
4. *Bringing the global gun crisis under control*, IANSA, 2006 citing Small Arms Survey. [↩](#return-note-85-4)
5. Small Arms Survey 2005, www.smallarmssurvey.org. [↩](#return-note-85-5)
6. Small Arms Survey 2002, www.smallarmssurvey.org. [↩](#return-note-85-6)
7. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997. [↩](#return-note-85-7)
8. *Urban firearm deaths: A five-year perspective*, Michael McGonigal, John Cole, William Schwab, Donald Kauder, Michael Rotondo, Peter Angood, Journal of Trauma, 1993. [↩](#return-note-85-8)
9. Center for Disease Control WISQARS. [↩](#return-note-85-9)
10. *Firearm injury from crime*, Marianne Zawitz, 1996, Bureau of Justice Statistics. [↩](#return-note-85-10)
11. *Epidemiological changes in gunshot wounds in Washington D.C*, Webster, Champion, Gainer and Sykes, Archives of Surgery, 1992. [↩](#return-note-85-11)
12. *California's comprehensive background check and misdemeanor violence prohibition policies and firearm mortality*, Castillo-Carniglia, Annals of Epidemiology, October 2018 [↩](#return-note-85-12)
13. *Firearm Use by Offenders*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, February 2002. [↩](#return-note-85-13)
14. *Gun Policy & Law Enforcement*, PoliceOne, March 2013 [↩](#return-note-85-14)
15. FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, online database [↩](#return-note-85-15)
16. *Association between Connecticut’s permit-to-purchase handgun law and homicides*, Webster, Stuart, Vernick, Rudolph, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, 2015 [↩](#return-note-85-16)
17. New York Times, Mar. 18, 2000. [↩](#return-note-85-17)
18. OpenSecrets.org, May 2003. [↩](#return-note-85-18)
19. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics online, BATFE Firearm Commerce Report for 2002. [↩](#return-note-85-19)
20. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, World Health Organization Suicide Prevention country reports (online). [↩](#return-note-85-20)
21. *Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide Across the 50 United States*, Miller, Steven, Lippmann, Azrael, Hemenway, Journal of Trauma, April 2007 [↩](#return-note-85-21)
22. *The States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths*, Nation Journal, January 2016 [↩](#return-note-85-22)
23. *Mental Illness, Previous Suicidality, and Access to Guns in the United States*, Ilgen, Zivin, McCammon, Valenstein, 2008 American Psychiatric Association. [↩](#return-note-85-23)
24. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997 [↩](#return-note-85-24)
25. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997 [↩](#return-note-85-25)

---

### [Second Amendment](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/second-amendment/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

**Justification clause:** “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State,”

**Rights clause:** “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

*The justification clause does not modify, restrict, or deny the rights clause.* [1](#note-107-1 "Eugene Volokh, Prof. Law, UCLA")

For a full discussion of how the Second Amendment was created and revised, see “[Origin of the Second Amendment](#origin)” at the bottom of this page.

## Myth: The Supreme Court ruled the Second Amendment is not an individual right

**Fact:** In D.C. v Heller the Supreme Court (2008) firmly established the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, as they had in Cruikshank and Dred Scott.

**Fact:** In McDonald v Chicago (2010) the Supreme Court concluded the right is incorporated against the states via the 14th Amendment.

**Fact:** Of 300 decisions of the federal and state courts that have taken a position on the meaning of the Second Amendment or the state analogs to it, only 10 have claimed that the right to keep and bear arms is not an individual right. Many of the other decisions struck down gun control laws because they conflicted with the Second Amendment, such as State v. Nunn (Ga. 1846). [2](#note-107-2 "For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Clayton Cramer, Praeger Press, 1994")

## Myth: The Second Amendment is a collective right, not an individual right

**Fact:** St. George Tucker, any early legal commentator and authority of the original meaning of the constitution wrote in Blackstone’s Commentaries “… nor will the constitution permit any prohibition of arms to the people” [3](#note-107-3 "Blackstone’s Commentaries, St. George Tucker, Vol 1. Note D. Part 6. Restraints on Powers of Congress (1803)")

**Fact:** The Second Amendment was listed in a Supreme Court ruling as an individual right. [4](#note-107-4 "Dred Scott, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, U.S. v. Cruikshank and others")

**Fact:** The Supreme Court specifically reaffirmed that the right to keep and bear arms did not belong to the government. [5](#note-107-5 "United States v. Miller")

**Fact:** In 22 of the 27 instances where the Supreme Court mentions the Second Amendment, they quote the rights clause and not the justification clause.

**Fact:** Courts disagree. **“**We find that the history of the Second Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of its text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are a member of a select militia or performing active military service or training” and “We reject the collective rights and sophisticated collective rights models for interpreting the Second Amendment” [6](#note-107-6 "U.S. v. Emerson, 5th court of Appeals decision, November 2, 2001, No. 99-10331")

**Fact:** Citizens disagree. 62% believe the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right, while a mere 28% believe it protects the power of the states to form militias. [7](#note-107-7 "Associated Television News Survey, August 1999, 1,007 likely voters")

**Fact:** There are 23 state constitutions with RKBA clauses adopted between the Revolution and 1845, and 20 of them are explicitly individual in nature, only three have “for the common defense….” or other “collective rights” clauses. [8](#note-107-8 "For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Clayton Cramer, Praeger Press, 1994, cited as an authority in USA v. Emerson (N.D. Texas 1999)")

**Fact:** James Madison, considered to be the author of the Bill of Rights, wrote that the Bill of Rights was “calculated to secure the personal rights of the people”. He never excluded the Second Amendment from this statement.

**Fact:** Patrick Henry commented on the Swiss militia model (still in use today) noting that they maintain their independence without “a mighty and splendid President” or a standing army. [9](#note-107-9 "Where Kids and Guns Do Mix, Stephen P. Halbrook, Wall Street Journal, June 2000")

**Fact:** “The congress of the United States possesses no power to regulate, or interfere with the domestic concerns, or police of any state: it belongs not to them to establish any rules respecting the rights of property; nor will the constitution permit any prohibition of arms to the people; or of peaceable assemblies by them, for any purposes whatsoever, and in any number, whenever they may see occasion.” [10](#note-107-10 "Blackstone’s Commentaries, St. George Tucker, Volume 1, Appendix Note D., 1803 – Tucker's comments provide a number of insights into the consensus for interpretation of the Constitution that prevailed shortly after its ratification, after the debates had settled down and the Constitution was put into practice.")

**Fact:** Tench Coxe, in Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution said: “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”

## Myth: The Heller Decision created new law

**Fact:** In the Dred Scott case of 1856, the Supreme Court listed the protected rights of citizens and explicitly listed the right to keep and bear arms, and gave this right equal weight to the other freedoms enumerated in the constitution.

**Fact:** In United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876), the Supreme Court ruled:

- An individual right to arms predated the constitution.
- The Second Amendment was a prohibition against Congress from disarming citizens.

## Myth: Regulations are not infringements

**Fact:** Though not fully tested in courts, analysis of what “infringement” meant at th3e time of ratification carries “two meanings: (1) the right shall not be violated so completely as to be destroyed and (2) the right shall not be abridged through illegitimate process—whether the resulting regulation is the act of an unrepresentative legislature, serves a pretextual purpose contrary to the social contract’s focus on the public good, or collides against a higher or fundamental law (typically expressed in constitutional text).” [11](#note-107-11 "Shall Not Be Infringed, Daniel Slate, Duke Center for Firearm Law, 2024") In short, any significant or pretextual limitation of the right to arms would be infringement.

## Myth: The Second Amendment was established to control slaves

**Fact:** The basis of the Second Amendment arose from the British disarming Americans in the time leading up to the revolution. The first state to declare a civilian right to arms (1776) was Pennsylvania, a non-slave state. Vermont (1777) and Massachusetts (1780) did so as well, and all this occurred before the Second Amendment was drafted. When slaves were emancipated, the Freedmen Bureau Act provided emancipated slaves “the constitutional right to bear arms.”

## Myth: The “militia” clause is to arm the National Guard

**Fact:** “Militia” is a Latin abstract noun, meaning “military service”, not an “armed group”, and that is the way the Latin-literate Founders used it. To the Romans, “military service” included law enforcement and disaster response. Today “militia” might be more meaningfully translated as “defense service”, associated with a “defense duty”, which attaches to individuals as much as to groups of them, organized or otherwise. When we are alone, we are all militias of one. In the broadest sense, militia is the exercise of civic virtue. [12](#note-107-12 "Militia, The Constitution Society")

**Fact:** The Dick Act of 1903 designated the National Guard as the “organized militia” and that all other citizens were the “unorganized militia” – thus the National Guard is only part of the militia, and the whole militia is composed of the population at large. Before 1903, the National Guard had no federal definition as part of the militia at all.

**Fact:** The first half of the Second Amendment is called the “justification clause”. Justification clauses appear in many state constitutions, and cover liberties including right to trial, freedom of the press, free speech, and more. ***Denying gun rights based on the justification clause means we would have to deny free speech rights on the same*** *basis.* [13](#note-107-13 "Eugene Volokh, Prof. Law, UCLA, http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/testimon.htm")

**Fact:** The origin of the phrase “a well regulated militia” comes from a 1698 treatise “A Discourse of Government with Relation to Militias” by Andrew Fletcher, in which the term “well regulated” was equated with “well-behaved” or “disciplined”. [14](#note-107-14 "This document was widely published during the colonial and revolutionary periods, and was the basis for state and federal 'bills of rights'")

**Fact:** “We have found no historical evidence that the Second Amendment was intended to convey militia power to the states, limit the federal government’s power to maintain a standing army, or applies only to members of a select militia while on active duty. All of the evidence indicates that the Second Amendment, like other parts of the Bill of Rights, applies to and protects individual Americans.” [15](#note-107-15 "U.S. v. Emerson, 5th court of Appeals decision, November 2, 2001, No. 99-10331")

**Fact:** “The plain meaning of the right of the people to keep arms is that it is an individual, rather than a collective, right and is not limited to keeping arms while engaged in active military service or as a member of a select militia such as the National Guard …” [16](#note-107-16 "U.S. v. Emerson, 5th court of Appeals decision, November 2, 2001, No. 99-10331")

**Fact:** Most of the 13 original states (and many colonies/territories that became states after ratification of the Constitution and before or shortly after ratification of the Bill of Rights) had their own constitutions, and it is from these that the original Bill of Rights was distilled. The state constitutions of that time had many “right to keep and bear arms” clauses that clearly guaranteed an individual right. Some examples include:

**Connecticut:** Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state.

**Kentucky:** … the right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.

**Pennsylvania:** That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state; … The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.

**Rhode Island:** The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

**Vermont:** … the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State.

## Myth: The Second Amendment allows Congress to regulate ownership of guns for militia purposes

**Fact:** The phrase “well regulated” was common in the constitutional era, and described things that were in proper order or function. It was not a writ of authority. Borrowing from the Oxford English Dictionary, these examples, both before and after composition of the Second Amendment, show the usage:

1709: “If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations.”

1714: “The practice of all well-regulated courts of justice in the world.”

1812: “The equation of time … is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial.”

1848: “A remissness for which I am sure every well-regulated person will blame the Mayor.”

1862: “It appeared to her well-regulated mind, like a clandestine proceeding.”

1894: “The newspaper, a never wanting adjunct to every well-regulated American embryo city.”

## Myth: U.S. v. Cruikshank denied an individual right to bear arms

**Fact:** The court ruled that both the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms and the 1st Amendment right to assembly were “preexisting rights”, and that it was incumbent upon the states to enforce that right. Specifically, the court ruled:

*The right was not created by the amendment; neither was its continuance guaranteed, except as against congressional interference. For their protection in its enjoyment, therefore, the people must look to the States. …*

## Myth: U.S. v. Miller said that the Second Amendment is not an individual right

**Fact:** The Miller case specifically held that specific types of guns might be protected by the Second Amendment. It depended on whether a gun had militia use, and the court wanted evidence presented confirming that citizens have a right to military style weapons. Since no evidence was taken at the trial level in lower courts, they remanded the case for a new trial. Specifically, the court said:

“The signification attributed to the term Militia appears from the debates in the Convention, the history and legislation of Colonies and States, and the writings of approved commentators. *These show plainly enough that the Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense*. “A body of citizens enrolled for military discipline.” And further, that ordinarily when called for service *these men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied by themselves and of the kind in common use at the time*.”

“In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

**Fact:** Even the US government agreed. Here are some sentences from the brief filed by the government in the appeal to the Supreme Court:

“The Second Amendment does not grant to the people the right to keep and bear arms, but merely recognizes the prior existence of that right and prohibits its infringement by Congress.”

“The ‘arms’ referred to in the Second Amendment are, moreover, those which ordinarily are used for military or public defense purposes …”

“The Second Amendment does not confer upon the people the right to keep and bear arms; it is one of the provisions of the Constitution which, recognizing the prior existence of a certain right, declares that it shall not be infringed by Congress. Thus, the right to keep and bear arms is not a right granted by the Constitution and therefore is not dependent upon that instrument for its source.”

**Fact:** The Federal 8th Circuit Court of Appeals holds that the Miller case protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. “Although an individual’s right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, see United States v. Miller …” [17](#note-107-17 "U.S. v. Hutzel, 8 Iowa, No. 99-3719")

**Fact:** Federal courts reject the myth. “We conclude that Miller does not support the \[government’s\] collective rights or sophisticated collective rights approach to the Second Amendment.” [18](#note-107-18 "U.S. v. Emerson, 5th court of Appeals decision, November 2, 2001, No. 99-10331") They continue, “There is no evidence in the text of the Second Amendment, or any other part of the Constitution, that the words ‘we the people’ have a different connotation within the Second Amendment than when employed elsewhere …”.

## Myth: The Second Amendment does not protect a right to carry guns in public

FACT: The earliest Supreme Court case that stated what the Second Amendment was about was the Dred Scott case. Two justices in that decision were alive at the time the Second Amendment was passed and thus had a clear understanding of its meaning. In the decision (though not dicta) they said the right was “… to keep and **carry arms** wherever they went.”

## Summary of various court decisions concerning gun rights

### Decisions that explicitly recognized that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to purchase, possess or carry firearms, and that it limits the authority of both federal and state governments:

- Parker vs. D.C., Fed (2007), confirmed an individual right to keep arms and overturned a handgun ban (this case later became the *Heller* case)
- U.S. vs. Emerson, 5 Fed (1999), confirmed an individual right requiring compelling government interest for regulation
- Nunn v. State, 1 Ga. 243, 250, 251 (1846), struck down a ban on the sale of small, easily concealed handguns as violating the Second Amendment
- State v. Chandler, 5 La.An. 489, 490, 491 (1850), upheld a ban on concealed carry, but acknowledged that open carry was protected by the Second Amendment
- Smith v. State, 11 La.An. 633, 634 (1856), upheld a ban on concealed carry, but recognized as protected by Second Amendment – “arms there spoken of are such as are borne by a people in war, or at least carried openly”
- State v. Jumel, 13 La.An. 399, 400 (1858), upheld a ban on concealed carry, but acknowledged a Second Amendment right to carry openly.
- Cockrum v. State, 24 Tex. 394, 401, 402 (1859), upheld an enhanced penalty for manslaughter with a Bowie knife, but acknowledged that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual right to possess arms for collective overthrow of the government
- In Re Brickey, 8 Ida. 597, 70 Pac. 609, 101 Am.St.Rep. 215, 216 (1902), struck down a ban on open carry of a revolver in Lewiston, Idaho as violating both Second Amendment and Idaho Constitutional guarantee
- State v. Hart, 66 Ida. 217, 157 P.2d 72 (1945), upheld a ban on concealed carry as long as open carry was allowed based on both Second Amendment and Idaho Constitutional guarantee
- State v. Nickerson, 126 Mont. 157, 166 (1952), striking down a conviction for assault with a deadly weapon, acknowledging a right to carry based on Second Amendment and Montana Constitutional guarantee
- U.S. v. Hutzell, 8 Iowa, 99-3719, (2000) (cite in dictum that “an individual’s right to keep and bear arms is constitutionally protected, see United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174, 178-79 (1939).

### Decisions that recognized the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to possess or carry firearms, but only limiting the Federal government’s authority:

- U.S. v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 552 (1876) (limiting use of the Enforcement Act of 1870 so that Klansmen could not be punished for mass murder and disarming of freedmen).
- State v. Workman, 35 W.Va. 367, 373 (1891) (upholding a ban on carry of various concealable arms).
- State v. Kerner, 181 N.C. 574, 107 S.E. 222 (1921) (overturning a ban on open carry of pistols based on North Carolina Const., but acknowledging Second Amendment protected individual right from federal laws).

### Decisions in which the Second Amendment was argued or raised as a limitation on state laws, and in which the court ruled that it only limited the Federal government, tacitly acknowledging that the right was individual in nature:

- Andrews v. State, 3 Heisk. (50 Tenn.) 165, 172, 173 (1871).
- Fife v. State, 31 Ark. 455, 25 Am.Rep. 556, 557, 558 (1876); State v. Hill, 53 Ga. 472, 473, 474 (1874).
- Dunne v. People, 94 Ill. 120, 140, 141 (1879); Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265, 266 (1886) (upholding a ban on armed bodies marching through the streets).
- People v. Persce, 204 N.Y. 397, 403 (1912); In re Rameriz, 193 Cal. 633, 636, 226 P. 914 (1924) (upholding a ban on resident aliens possessing handguns).

### Decisions in which the Second Amendment was implied to guarantee an individual right, though unclear as to whether it limited only the Federal government or states as well, because the type of arm in question wasn’t protected:

- English v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 476, 477 (1872).
- State v. Duke, 42 Tex. 455, 458, 459 (1875) (upholding a ban on carrying of handguns, Bowie knives, sword-canes, spears, and brass knuckles).
- People v. Liss, 406 Ill. 419, 94 N.E.2d 320, 322, 323 (1950) (overturning a conviction for carrying a concealed handgun and acknowledging that the right in the Second Amendment was individual).
- Guida v. Dier, 84 Misc.2d 110, 375 N.Y.S.2d 827, 828 (1975) (denying that “concealable hand weapons” were protected by the Second Amendment, but acknowledging that an individual right protects other firearms).

### Decisions in which the Second Amendment has been classed with other individual rights, with no indication that it was not an individual right:

- Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 281, 282, 17 S.Ct. 826, 829 (1897); U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez, 110 S.Ct. 1056, 1060, 1061 (1990).

### Decisions that could have been very much shorter if the court had simply denied that the Second Amendment protected AN INDIVIDUAL right:

- U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) (the Supreme Court upholding the National Firearms Act of 1934, after district judge released defendants on the grounds that it violated Second Amendment).

## Origin of the Second Amendment

Before the United States Constitution or Bill of Rights existed, most of the thirteen original states had clauses in their constitutions protecting the right to keep and bear arms. When the time came for Congress to draft the Bill of Rights, states submitted clauses from their constitutions that they thought should be added to the Federal Bill of Rights.

Three predominant arms clauses existed at that time (many states had word-for-word copies from other state constitutions and the redundant versions are not mentioned herein).

Pennsylvania (1776): That ***the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the state***; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination, to, and governed by, the civil power. (Simplified in 1790 to read “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.”)

Vermont (1777): That ***the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State*** – and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

Massachusetts (1780): ***The people have a right to keep and to bear arms*** for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.

North Carolina (1776): That ***the people have a right to bear arms***, for the defence of the State; and, as standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.

We can see in these state constitution clauses the conjoined purposes as viewed by the people at the time that the 2nd Amendment was drafted.

### Calls for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms from State Ratification Conventions

Five states that ratified the Constitution sent demands for a Bill of Rights to Congress. All of these demands included a right to keep and bear arms. The relevant parts of these written demands are:

New Hampshire: Twelfth\[:\] Congress shall never disarm any Citizen unless such as are or have been in Actual Rebellion.

Virginia: … Seventeenth, That ***the people have a right to keep and bear arms***; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the Civil power.

New York: … That ***the People have a right to keep and bear Arms***; that a well regulated Militia, including the body of the People capable of bearing Arms, is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State; That the Militia should not be subject to Martial Law except in time of War, Rebellion or Insurrection. That Standing Armies in time of Peace are dangerous to Liberty, and ought not to be kept up, except in Cases of necessity; and that at all times, the Military should be under strict Subordination to the civil Power.

North Carolina: Almost identical to Virginia’s demand, but with, “the body of the people, trained to arms,” instead of, “the body of the people trained to arms.”

Rhode Island: Almost identical to Virginia’s demand, but with, “the body of the people capable of bearing arms,” instead of, “the body of the people trained to arms,” and with a, “militia shall not be subject to martial law,” proviso as in New York’s.

### Second Amendment drafting, proposals, and editing

James Madison had the duty of drafting the Bill of Rights from proposed amendments submitted by the states, and most coming from state constitutions. The Bill of Rights went through several revisions. The initial version of the 2nd Amendment read as follows:

***The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed***; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free **country**; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.

The second drafting of the 2nd Amendment saw a rearrangement of the justification and rights clauses, but no change in the intents and purposes therein:

A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free **State**, ***the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed***, but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms.

Notice that in the original draft, Madison used the phrase “free country” as the object of what is protected by the militia. In subsequent drafts, the word “state” was substituted. This is important because the concept of “state” and “country” are interchangeable, whereas “state***s***” (plural) and “country” are not. Throughout the rest of the Constitution, when the states and their powers were defined, the plural was always used but in the 2nd Amendment it was not. Clearly, the intent of militia protection defined in the 2nd Amendment was to protect a form of government, not define the power of the several states.

Four further revisions removed objectionable concepts (such as the “conscientious objector” clause). On September 9, 1789, a member of the Senate proposed adding “for the common defense” onto the draft of the Second Amendment. In other words, the proposed wording of the amendment would have read:

A well regulated militia being the security of a free State, the right of the people to bear arms *for the common defense*, shall not be infringed.

The proposed change was voted down. This is instructive because some believe that the current wording of the amendment exists specifically for collective/common/mutual defense, and has no bearing on individual self defense. However, the Senate considered adding this restriction and rejected it.

It is clear from these origins and first drafts, and from contemporary commentaries on the clause, that the original intent was to secure an individual right. The commentaries of St. George Tucker (The American Blackstone) and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, both of whom were federal jurists and chronologically close to the authoring of the amendment, bear this out.

### Arms clauses of states that joined shortly after the Second Amendment was ratified

Also worth review are arms clauses in the constitutions of states that joined the Union shortly after ratification of the Bill of Rights. These demonstrate the contemporary understanding of the amendment and the rights of the people:

Kentucky (1792): That ***the right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves*** and the State shall not be questioned.

Tennessee (1796): That the freemen of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence.

Kentucky (1799): That ***the rights of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves*** and the State shall not be questioned.

Ohio (1802): That ***the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves*** and the State; and as standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, they shall not be kept up, and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to the civil power.

Indiana (1816): That ***the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves*** and the State, and that the military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power.

Mississippi (1817): ***Every citizen has a right to bear arms, in defence of himself*** and the State.

Connecticut (1818): ***Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself*** and the state.

Maine (1819): Every citizen has a right to keep and bear arms for the common defence; and this right shall never be questioned.

Alabama (1819): That ***every citizen has a right to bear arms in defence of himself*** and the state.

Missouri (1820): That the people have the right peaceably to assemble for their common good, and to apply to those vested with the powers of government for redress of grievances by petition or remonstrance; and that their ***right to bear arms in defence of themselves*** and of the State cannot be questioned.

---

Notes:

1. Eugene Volokh, Prof. Law, UCLA [↩](#return-note-107-1)
2. *For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms*, Clayton Cramer, Praeger Press, 1994 [↩](#return-note-107-2)
3. *Blackstone’s Commentaries,* St. George Tucker, Vol 1. Note D. Part 6. Restraints on Powers of Congress (1803) [↩](#return-note-107-3)
4. *Dred Scott, Casey v. Planned Parenthood*, *U.S. v. Cruikshank* and others [↩](#return-note-107-4)
5. *United States v. Miller* [↩](#return-note-107-5)
6. *U.S. v. Emerson*, 5th court of Appeals decision, November 2, 2001, No. 99-10331 [↩](#return-note-107-6)
7. Associated Television News Survey, August 1999, 1,007 likely voters [↩](#return-note-107-7)
8. *For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,* Clayton Cramer, Praeger Press, 1994, cited as an authority in USA v. Emerson (N.D. Texas 1999) [↩](#return-note-107-8)
9. *Where Kids and Guns Do Mix*, Stephen P. Halbrook, Wall Street Journal, June 2000 [↩](#return-note-107-9)
10. *Blackstone’s Commentaries,* St. George Tucker, Volume 1, Appendix Note D., 1803 – Tucker's comments provide a number of insights into the consensus for interpretation of the Constitution that prevailed shortly after its ratification, after the debates had settled down and the Constitution was put into practice. [↩](#return-note-107-10)
11. *Shall Not Be Infringed*, Daniel Slate, Duke Center for Firearm Law, 2024 [↩](#return-note-107-11)
12. *Militia*, The Constitution Society [↩](#return-note-107-12)
13. Eugene Volokh, Prof. Law, UCLA, http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/beararms/testimon.htm [↩](#return-note-107-13)
14. This document was widely published during the colonial and revolutionary periods, and was the basis for state and federal 'bills of rights' [↩](#return-note-107-14)
15. *U.S. v. Emerson*, 5th court of Appeals decision, November 2, 2001, No. 99-10331 [↩](#return-note-107-15)
16. *U.S. v. Emerson*, 5th court of Appeals decision, November 2, 2001, No. 99-10331 [↩](#return-note-107-16)
17. *U.S. v. Hutzel*, 8 Iowa, No. 99-3719 [↩](#return-note-107-17)
18. *U.S. v. Emerson*, 5th court of Appeals decision, November 2, 2001, No. 99-10331 [↩](#return-note-107-18)

---

### [50 Caliber Rifles](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/50-caliber-rifles/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: .50-calibers are the favorite weapon of terrorists

**Fact:** Most terrorist attacks are in the form of bombings (90%). Other acts, such as kidnapping (6%), armed attack (2%), arson (1%), firebombing (1%), and other methods (2%), are far less common. [1](#note-81-1 "Facts and Figures About Terrorism, Dexter Ingram, Heritage Foundation, September 14, 2001 (some attacks had multiple methods which accounts for a total in excess of 100%).") Of the “armed attacks,” the most common weapons used are fully-automatic AK-47 rifles.

**Fact:** A single .50 caliber rifle costs upwards of $10,000, yet terrorists can buy the favored AK-47 in Pakistan for less than $200. History shows they opt for the AK-47.

**Fact:** .50-caliber rifles are heavy (20-35 pounds), expensive (from $3,000 to $10,000 each, with ammunition costing $2-$5 for each round), impossible to conceal (typically four feet long), usually single shot (slow to reload), and impractical for terrorists.

**Fact:** .50-caliber rifles have only been used in 18 crimes in the history of the United States. [2](#note-81-2 "Weaponry: .50 Caliber Rifle Crime, General Accounting Office Report number OSI-99-15R, revised Oct. 21, 2001.")

## Myth: American gun makers sold .50-calibers to terrorists

**Fact:** This “study” by the anti-gun Violence Policy Center was inaccurate. The rifles in question were sold to the United States government. Years later, the U.S. government gave the rifles to Afghan freedom fighters to defeat the former Soviet Union. There is no direct connection between gun makers and terrorists, and none of the rifles have been used in terrorist actions. [3](#note-81-3 "Barret Manufacturing letter on their web site available January 12, 2001.  This was confirmed during a visit by the BATF according to Dave Kopel in a National Review article “Guns and (Character) Assassination”, December 21, 2001.")

## Myth: .50-caliber shooters are terrorists in training

**Fact:** The average .50-caliber enthusiast is a successful businessman with an annual income of $50,000 or more – hardly a terrorist profile. [4](#note-81-4 "John Burtt, Fifty Caliber Shooters Policy Institute, Congressional testimony")

## Myth: The Founding Fathers would have had no use for a .50-caliber rifle

**Fact:** Common guns of the early American republic were larger than .50-caliber, many measuring up to .812 caliber. The famous Kentucky Rifle (a name eventually given to most rifles made by German immigrants) was usually between .60 to .75-caliber.

## Myth: .50-calibers are capable of piercing airline fuel tanks from a mile away

**Fact:** Most expert long-distance shooters cannot hit a stationary target under perfect, windless conditions at such distances (one notable exception in Vietnam [5](#note-81-5 "One Shot, One Kill: American Combat Snipers in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, C. Sasser and C. Roberts, Pocket Books , referring to Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock.")). Ill-trained terrorists shooting a high-recoil .50-caliber rifle at fast moving targets – a 280 mph airplane – have no chance.

**Fact:** The only known uses of .50-caliber weapons in downing aircraft have been military aircraft using *fully-automatic machine guns* spraying fire while in combat against other aircraft, and as sniper fire on *stationary* *aircraft* (i.e., on the ground) on enemy airfields. Not even the military’s best sharp shooters are going to ignite a jet’s fuel tank when the jet is flying between 200-300 miles per hour.

## Myth: .50-caliber bullets can penetrate concrete bunkers

**Fact:** “It takes 300 rounds to penetrate 2 meters of reinforced concrete at 100 meters.” [6](#note-81-6 "An Infantryman's Guide to Combat in Built-up Area, field manual 90-10-1, US Army, May 1993.") At $5 per round, it would cost a terrorist $1,500 in ammunition to shoot into one bunker.

## Myth: .50-caliber bullets can pierce light armor at 4 miles [7](#note-81-7 "Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senate testimony, March 9, 2001.")

**Fact:** “At 35 meters distance \[0.5% of the mythical “four mile” distance\], a .50-caliber round will go through one inch armor plate.” [8](#note-81-8 "An Infantryman's Guide to Combat in Built-up Area, field manual 90-10-1, US Army, May 1993.") Piercing any armor at four miles is highly improbable.

**Fact:** “It is exceedingly difficult to hit a target, even a large one … at anything over 1200 to 1500 yards by even highly trained individuals … The ammo is designed for a machine gun, and is generally only good for 2-3 minute of angle \[fraction of a degree\] of accuracy. That equates to a 30-45 inch circle at 1500 yards with a perfect rifle, no wind or other conditions and a trained shooter.” [9](#note-81-9 "An Infantryman's Guide to Combat in Built-up Area, field manual 90-10-1, US Army, May 1993.")

## Myth: .50-caliber rifles can knock a helicopter from the sky

**Fact:** The terminal energy of a .50-caliber (6,000 ft-lbs) is not enough to knock a modern military aircraft from the sky unless it hits a critical component like a fuel line. Records exist showing this has been done with common, smaller caliber assault rifles such as AK-47s.

## Myth: .50-caliber guns are for snipers

**Fact:** Americans have been long-distance target shooters since revolutionary times. According to period writings, Americans were shooting small targets at upwards of 150 yards using simple Kentucky long rifles and muskets. [10](#note-81-10 "Firearms Ownership & Manufacturing in Early America, Clayton Cramer, unpublished.")

**Fact:** “The use of \[.50-caliber\] by the IRA in Northern Ireland to shoot both soldiers and police officers at very short range (never more than 275 yards) also gave the weapon a worldwide notoriety when the world’s media slapped a ‘sniper’ label on the terrorists taking the shots. They obviously were not and soon ran scared when professional snipers were deployed to stop them.” [11](#note-81-11 "Sniper, Mark Spicer, Salamander Books, 2001.")

---

Notes:

1. *Facts and Figures About Terrorism*, Dexter Ingram, Heritage Foundation, September 14, 2001 (some attacks had multiple methods which accounts for a total in excess of 100%). [↩](#return-note-81-1)
2. *Weaponry: .50 Caliber Rifle Crime*, General Accounting Office Report number OSI-99-15R, revised Oct. 21, 2001. [↩](#return-note-81-2)
3. Barret Manufacturing letter on their web site available January 12, 2001. This was confirmed during a visit by the BATF according to Dave Kopel in a National Review article “Guns and (Character) Assassination”, December 21, 2001. [↩](#return-note-81-3)
4. John Burtt, Fifty Caliber Shooters Policy Institute, Congressional testimony [↩](#return-note-81-4)
5. *One Shot, One Kill: American Combat Snipers in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Beirut*, C. Sasser and C. Roberts, Pocket Books , referring to Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock. [↩](#return-note-81-5)
6. *An Infantryman's Guide to Combat in Built-up Area*, field manual 90-10-1, US Army, May 1993. [↩](#return-note-81-6)
7. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senate testimony, March 9, 2001. [↩](#return-note-81-7)
8. *An Infantryman's Guide to Combat in Built-up Area*, field manual 90-10-1, US Army, May 1993. [↩](#return-note-81-8)
9. *An Infantryman's Guide to Combat in Built-up Area*, field manual 90-10-1, US Army, May 1993. [↩](#return-note-81-9)
10. *Firearms Ownership & Manufacturing in Early America*, Clayton Cramer, unpublished. [↩](#return-note-81-10)
11. *Sniper*, Mark Spicer, Salamander Books, 2001. [↩](#return-note-81-11)

---

### [Ballistic Fingerprinting](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/ballistic-fingerprinting/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: Every firearm leaves a unique “fingerprint” that can pinpoint the firearm used

**Fact:** A group of National Research Council scientists concluded that this has not yet been fully demonstrated. Their research suggests that the current technology for collecting and comparing images may not reliably distinguish very fine differences. [1](#note-89-1 "Ballistic Imaging, Daniel Cork, John Rolph, Eugene Meieran, Carol Petrie, National Research Council, 2008")

**Fact:** “Firearms that generate markings on cartridge casings can change with use and can also be readily altered by the users. They are not permanently defined like fingerprints or DNA.” [2](#note-89-2 "Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 (henceforth FBID)")

**Fact:** “Automated computer matching systems do not provide conclusive results.” [3](#note-89-3 "Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 (henceforth FBID)")

**Fact:** “Because bullets are severely damaged on impact, they can only be examined manually”. [4](#note-89-4 "Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 (henceforth FBID)")

**Fact:** “Not all firearms generate markings on cartridge casings that can be identified back to the firearm.” [5](#note-89-5 "Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 (henceforth FBID)")

**Fact:** The same gun will produce different markings on bullets and casings, and different guns can produce similar markings. [6](#note-89-6 "Handbook of Firearms & Ballistics: Examining and Interpreting Forensic Evidence, Heard, 1997.") Additionally, the type of ammunition actually used in a crime could differ from the type used when the gun was originally test-fired — a difference that could lead to significant error in suggesting possible matches. [7](#note-89-7 "Ballistic Imaging, Daniel Cork, John Rolph, Eugene Meieran, Carol Petrie, National Research Council, 2008")

**Fact:** The rifle used in the Martin Luther King assassination was test fired 18 times under court supervision, and the results showed that no two bullets were marked alike. [8](#note-89-8 "Ballistics 'fingerprinting' not foolproof, Baltimore Sun, October 15, 2002") “Every test bullet was different because it was going over plating created by the previous bullet.”

**Fact:** “The common layman seems to believe that two bullets fired from the same weapon are identical, down to the very last striation placed on them by the weapon. The trained firearms examiner knows how far that is from reality.” [9](#note-89-9 "AFTE Journal, George G. Krivosta, Winter 2006 edition, Suffolk County Crime Laboratory, Hauppauge, New York")

## Myth: A database of ballistic profiles will allow police to trace gun crimes

**Fact:** The National Research Council deemed a national ballistics database as impractical due to practical limitations of current technology for generating and comparing images of ballistic markings. [10](#note-89-10 "Ballistic Imaging, Daniel Cork, John Rolph, Eugene Meieran, Carol Petrie, National Research Council, 2008")

**Fact:** Maryland’s ballistics database “is not doing anything” [11](#note-89-11 "Maryland State Police Report Recommends Suspending Ballistics ID System, Col. Thomas E. Hutchins, the state police superintendent, WBAL-TV web site, January 17, 2005") and “has not met the mission statement of the state police.” [12](#note-89-12 "Maryland State Police Report Recommends Suspending Ballistics ID System, Col. Thomas E. Hutchins, the state police superintendent, WBAL-TV web site, January 17, 2005, Sgt. Thornnie Rouse, Maryland State police spokesman") In the first five years of implementation, it failed to lead to any criminal arrest or convictions, despite collecting over 80,000 specimens at a cost of $2,567,633. [13](#note-89-13 "MD-IBIS Progress Report #2, Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division, September 2004")

**Fact:** More than 70% of armed career criminals get their guns from “off-the-street sales” and “criminal acts” such as burglaries [14](#note-89-14 "Protecting America, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 1992"), and 71% of these firearms are stolen. [15](#note-89-15 "Armed and Considered Dangerous, U.S. Department of Justice, 1986") Tracing these firearms will not lead to the criminals, as the trail stops at the last legal owner.

**Fact:** Computer image matching of cartridges fails between 38-62% of the time, depending on whether the cartridges are from the same or different manufacturers. [16](#note-89-16 "Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001")

**Fact:** “Automated computer matching systems do not provide conclusive results” requiring that “potential candidates be manually reviewed”. [17](#note-89-17 "Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001")

**Fact:** Criminals currently remove serial numbers from stolen guns to hide their origin. The same simple shop tools can change a ballistic profile within minutes. “The minor alteration required less than 5 minutes of labor”. [18](#note-89-18 "Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001") Criminals will make changing ballistic profiles part of their standard procedures.

## Myth: Ballistic imaging is used in Maryland and New York and solves many crimes

**Fact:** Not so far. New York has not reported a single prosecution based on matched casings or bullets [19](#note-89-19 "NY ballistic database firing blanks?, Associated Press, June 3, 2004"), [20](#note-89-20 "Ballistics 'fingerprinting' not foolproof, Baltimore Sun, October 15, 2002"), [21](#note-89-21 "Townsend backs New Rule on Sale of Assault Rifles, Washington Post, October 30, 2002") and Maryland had only a single instance in 2005. [22](#note-89-22 "Ballistics Database Yields 1st Conviction, Washington Post, April 2, 2005") The cost for this lack of success in Maryland exceeds $2,500,000 a year, and in New York it exceeds $4,000,000.

**Fact:** In Syracuse, the police have submitted fewer than 400 handguns for ballistic testing over a three-year span because the system is inefficient. [23](#note-89-23 "400 guns wait to be traced by Syracuse police, The Post-Standard, December 8, 2002.")

## Myth: A ballistic database is inexpensive to create/maintain

**Fact:** “ … \[A\] huge inventory \[of possible matches\] will be generated for manual review.” “\[The\] number of candidate cases will be so large as to be impractical and will likely create logistic complications so great that they cannot be effectively addressed”. [24](#note-89-24 "Ballistics 'fingerprinting' not foolproof, Baltimore Sun, October 15, 2002")

## Myth: Police want a ballistic database

**Fact:** “The National Fraternal Order of Police does not support any Federal requirement to register privately owned firearms with the Federal government,” the group said. “And, even if such a database is limited to firearms manufactured in the future, the cost to create and maintain such a system, with such small chances that it would be used to solve a firearm crime, suggests to the F.O.P. that these are law enforcement dollars best spent elsewhere.” [25](#note-89-25 "F.O.P. Viewpoint: Ballistics Imaging and Comparison Technology, FOP Grand Lodge, October 2002")

**Fact:** “We in law enforcement know it will not, does not, cannot work. Then, no one has considered the hundreds of millions of guns in the US that have never been registered or tested or printed.” [26](#note-89-26 "Joe Horn, Detective, Retired, Los AngelesCounty Sheriff's Dept., Small Arms Expert")

**Fact:** “One, the barrel is one of the most easily changed parts of many guns and two, the barrel, and the signature it leaves on a bullet, is constantly changing.” [27](#note-89-27 "Ted Deeds, chief operating officer of The Law Enforcement Alliance of America, Dodge Globe, Oct 24, 2002")

---

Notes:

1. *Ballistic Imaging*, Daniel Cork, John Rolph, Eugene Meieran, Carol Petrie, National Research Council, 2008 [↩](#return-note-89-1)
2. *Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales*, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 (henceforth *FBID*) [↩](#return-note-89-2)
3. *Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales*, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 (henceforth *FBID*) [↩](#return-note-89-3)
4. *Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales*, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 (henceforth *FBID*) [↩](#return-note-89-4)
5. *Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales*, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 (henceforth *FBID*) [↩](#return-note-89-5)
6. *Handbook of Firearms & Ballistics: Examining and Interpreting Forensic Evidence*, Heard, 1997. [↩](#return-note-89-6)
7. *Ballistic Imaging*, Daniel Cork, John Rolph, Eugene Meieran, Carol Petrie, National Research Council, 2008 [↩](#return-note-89-7)
8. *Ballistics 'fingerprinting' not foolproof*, Baltimore Sun, October 15, 2002 [↩](#return-note-89-8)
9. *AFTE Journal*, George G. Krivosta, Winter 2006 edition, Suffolk County Crime Laboratory, Hauppauge, New York [↩](#return-note-89-9)
10. *Ballistic Imaging*, Daniel Cork, John Rolph, Eugene Meieran, Carol Petrie, National Research Council, 2008 [↩](#return-note-89-10)
11. *Maryland State Police Report Recommends Suspending Ballistics ID System*, Col. Thomas E. Hutchins, the state police superintendent, WBAL-TV web site, January 17, 2005 [↩](#return-note-89-11)
12. *Maryland State Police Report Recommends Suspending Ballistics ID System*, Col. Thomas E. Hutchins, the state police superintendent, WBAL-TV web site, January 17, 2005, Sgt. Thornnie Rouse, Maryland State police spokesman [↩](#return-note-89-12)
13. *MD-IBIS Progress Report #2*, Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division, September 2004 [↩](#return-note-89-13)
14. *Protecting America*, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 1992 [↩](#return-note-89-14)
15. *Armed and Considered Dangerous*, U.S. Department of Justice, 1986 [↩](#return-note-89-15)
16. *Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales*, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 [↩](#return-note-89-16)
17. *Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales*, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 [↩](#return-note-89-17)
18. *Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales*, Frederic Tulleners, California Department of Justice, Bureau of Forensic Services, October 2001 [↩](#return-note-89-18)
19. *NY ballistic database firing blanks?*, Associated Press, June 3, 2004 [↩](#return-note-89-19)
20. *Ballistics 'fingerprinting' not foolproof*, Baltimore Sun, October 15, 2002 [↩](#return-note-89-20)
21. *Townsend backs New Rule on Sale of Assault Rifles*, Washington Post, October 30, 2002 [↩](#return-note-89-21)
22. *Ballistics Database Yields 1st Conviction*, Washington Post, April 2, 2005 [↩](#return-note-89-22)
23. *400 guns wait to be traced by Syracuse police*, The Post-Standard, December 8, 2002. [↩](#return-note-89-23)
24. *Ballistics 'fingerprinting' not foolproof*, Baltimore Sun, October 15, 2002 [↩](#return-note-89-24)
25. *F.O.P. Viewpoint: Ballistics Imaging and Comparison Technology*, FOP Grand Lodge, October 2002 [↩](#return-note-89-25)
26. Joe Horn, Detective, Retired, Los AngelesCounty Sheriff's Dept., Small Arms Expert [↩](#return-note-89-26)
27. Ted Deeds, chief operating officer of The Law Enforcement Alliance of America, Dodge Globe, Oct 24, 2002 [↩](#return-note-89-27)

---

### [Microstamping](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/microstamping/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

**Background:** Microstamping is a proposed means for imprinting unique serial numbers onto cartridges fired from a gun. Similar to “ballistic fingerprinting,” it allegedly helps police identify what firearm might have been used in a crime. Microstamping uses precision equipment to remove microscopic amounts of metal from the tip of the firing pin

## [![Microstamping - test of firing pin microstamping](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Microstamping-microstamp-after-test-firing-in-lab4-400x310.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Microstamping-microstamp-after-test-firing-in-lab4.jpg)Myth: Independent testing by forensic technologists shows the technology is reliable

**Fact:** Firing pins are readily removable and swappable in most models of handguns, with inexpensive replacement parts. Criminals who file down serial numbers on the sides of guns won’t hesitate to file or exchange firing pins.

**Fact:** 46% of impressions ranked as “unsatisfactory” (i.e., illegible) after only ten rounds. [1](#note-103-1 "NanoTagTM Markings From Another Perspective, George G. Krivosta, Suffolk County Crime Laboratory, Hauppauge, New York, Winter 2006 edition of the AFTE Journal")

**Fact:** Reloaded ammo (which is extremely common due to the economics of recycling casings and home reloading tools) will make prosecuting cases nearly impossible once the “reloaded ammo” defense is raised (for microstamping that imprints case sides). A *case* may have two or more markings, making the final shooter impossible to identify.

## Myth: Filing the firing pin will make the gun inoperable

**Fact:** Firing pins are designed to be pushed deeply into the primer (igniter) of the round. The depth of the engraving (approximately 0.005 inch) [2](#note-103-2 "NanoTagTM Markings From Another Perspective, George G. Krivosta, Suffolk County Crime Laboratory, Hauppauge, New York, Winter 2006 edition of the AFTE Journal") is vastly smaller than the tolerance of the firing pin’s drive depth.

**Fact:** In a test, the engravings were removed using a 50-year-old knife sharpening stone in less than a minute. The firearm still operated correctly after the filing. [3](#note-103-3 "NanoTagTM Markings From Another Perspective, George G. Krivosta, Suffolk County Crime Laboratory, Hauppauge, New York, Winter 2006 edition of the AFTE Journal")

## Myth: The cost per firearm will be cheap

**Fact:** The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the representative for firearm manufacturers, estimates the cost will be upwards of $150 per firearm, more than tripling the price of self-protection and making it unaffordable for low-income people. [4](#note-103-4 "Etched bullets interest law enforcement, The Record, September 25, 2006") The Brady Campaign dispute those with firearm manufacturing experience claiming micro-stamping would cost only 50¢?

## Myth: The numbers will let police find the gun’s owner and help solve crimes

**Fact:** Since many crime guns are stolen property, [5](#note-103-5 "Armed and Considered Dangerous, U.S. Department of Justice, 1986") finding the original owner does not help solve the crime.

---

Notes:

1. *NanoTagTM Markings From Another Perspective*, George G. Krivosta, Suffolk County Crime Laboratory, Hauppauge, New York, Winter 2006 edition of the AFTE Journal [↩](#return-note-103-1)
2. *NanoTagTM Markings From Another Perspective*, George G. Krivosta, Suffolk County Crime Laboratory, Hauppauge, New York, Winter 2006 edition of the AFTE Journal [↩](#return-note-103-2)
3. *NanoTagTM Markings From Another Perspective*, George G. Krivosta, Suffolk County Crime Laboratory, Hauppauge, New York, Winter 2006 edition of the AFTE Journal [↩](#return-note-103-3)
4. *Etched bullets interest law enforcement*, The Record, September 25, 2006 [↩](#return-note-103-4)
5. *Armed and Considered Dangerous*, U.S. Department of Justice, 1986 [↩](#return-note-103-5)

---

### [Laws, Social Costs](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/government-gun-laws-and-social-costs/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: Gun control reduces crime

**Fact:** There are more than 22,000 [1](#note-95-1 "Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime, and Violence in America, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms estimate and reported via James Wright, Peter H. Rossi, Kathleen Daly, 1983") gun laws at the city, county, state, and federal level. If gun control worked, then we should be free of crime. Yet the U.S. government “found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes” [2](#note-95-2 "First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Prelventing Violence: Firearms Laws, CDC, Task Force on Community Preventive Services, Oct 3, 2003 – a systematic review of 51 studies that evaluated the effects of selected firearms laws on violence") and also concluded in one study that none of the attackers interviewed was “hindered by any law – federal, state or local –that has ever been established to prevent gun ownership. They just laughed at gun laws.” [3](#note-95-3 "Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006")

**[![GOVERNMENT LAWS AND SOCIAL COSTS - U.S. Homcides Rates over 20th and 21st century](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GOVERNMENT-LAWS-AND-SOCIAL-COSTS-U.S.-Homcides-Rates-over-20th-and-21st-century-400x329.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GOVERNMENT-LAWS-AND-SOCIAL-COSTS-U.S.-Homcides-Rates-over-20th-and-21st-century.png)Fact:** Violent crime appears to be encouraged by gun control. Most gun control laws in the United States have been written since 1968, yet the murder rate rose during the 70s, 80s and early 90s. [4](#note-95-4 "National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics, Revised July 1999")

**Fact:** In 1976, Washington, D.C. enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. The city’s murder rate rose 134 percent through 1996 while the national murder rate dropped 2 percent. [5](#note-95-5 "Dr. Gary Kleck, University of Florida using FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1997")

**Fact:** Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws. [6](#note-95-6 "Dr. Gary Kleck, University of Florida using FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1997")

**Fact:** Maryland claims to have the toughest gun control laws in the nation and ranks #1 in robberies and #4 in both violent crime and murder. [7](#note-95-7 "Index of Crime by State, FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for 2000, p. 79, Table 5") The robbery rate is 70% more than the national average. [8](#note-95-8 "FBI Uniform Crime Reports, September 15, 2000") These numbers are likely low because one of their more violent cities, Baltimore, failed to report their crime levels.

**Fact:** In 2000, 20% of U.S. homicides occurred in four cities with just six percent of the population – New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. – most of which had a virtual prohibition on privately owned handguns at the time. [9](#note-95-9 "FBI Uniform Crime Reports, September 15, 2000")

**Fact:** The landmark federal Gun Control Act of 1968, banning most interstate gun sales, had no discernible impact on the criminal acquisition of guns from other states. [10](#note-95-10 "Under the Gun, Wright, Rossi, Daly, University of Massachusetts, 1981")

**Fact:** Washington, D.C.’s 1976 ban on the ownership of handguns (except those already registered in the District) was not linked to any reduction in gun crime in the nation’s capital. [11](#note-95-11 "Under the Gun, Wright, Rossi, Daly, University of Massachusetts, 1981")

**Fact:** New York has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation – and 20% of the armed robberies. [12](#note-95-12 "Under the Gun, Wright, Rossi, Daly, University of Massachusetts, 1981")

**Fact:** In analyzing 10 different possible reasons for the decline in violent crime during the 1990s, gun control was calculated to have contributed nothing (high imprisonment rates, more police and legalized abortion were considered the primary factors, contributing as much as 28% of the overall reduction). [13](#note-95-13 "Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s, Steven Levit, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004")

## Myth: California’s tough gun laws reduced gun deaths

[![GOVERNMENT LAWS AND SOCIAL COSTS - Non-Suicide Firearm Death Rates for U.S. and California 1993 through 2010](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GOVERNMENT-LAWS-AND-SOCIAL-COSTS-Non-Suicide-Firearm-Death-Rates-for-U.S.-and-California-1993-through-2010-400x314.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GOVERNMENT-LAWS-AND-SOCIAL-COSTS-Non-Suicide-Firearm-Death-Rates-for-U.S.-and-California-1993-through-2010.png)This myth, promoted primarily by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and covering years 1993 through 2013, has three major flaws:

- Suicides, which are 61% [14](#note-95-14 "Center for Disease Control, WISQARS online Fatal Injury Reports, 2010") of gun deaths, fell much faster in California than the rest of the nation.
- At the starting point, California’s criminal gun death rate was much higher than the national average.
- California passed the first of two “three strikes” laws in 1994, which began the process of incarcerating repeat violent offenders.

Thus, none of the decline in California gun deaths is attributable to the state’s gun control laws.

## Myth: Background checks reduce gun crime and suicides

**Fact:** One study contrasting a decade of data between California (after they passed “comprehensive” background checks) and 32 other states (that had not) concluded “found no change in the rates of either cause of death from firearms.” [15](#note-95-15 "California's comprehensive background check and misdemeanor violence prohibition policies and firearm mortality, Annals of Epidemiology, November 2018, Castillo-Carniglia, Kagawa, Wintemute") “The study found no net difference between firearm-related homicide rates before and during the 10 years after policy implementation.”

## Myth: The Brady Bill caused a decrease in gun homicides

**Fact:** All violent crime (including gun and non-gun murders) fell during the same period, 1992 to 1997. However, the percent of homicides committed with guns stayed the same. In 1992, 68% of murders were committed with guns; in 1997, it was still 68%. [16](#note-95-16 "FBI Uniform Crime Reports for 1992 and 1997") Thus, the decreased gun homicide rate was part of an overall declining crime rate, not an effect of the Brady Bill.

**Fact:** Gun possession by criminals has risen in the post-Brady years – 18% of state prisoners (was 16% before Brady) and 15% of federal prisoners (was 12% before Brady) were caught with firearms. [17](#note-95-17 "Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001")

**Fact:** The Brady Bill is not enforced. In 2006, of 77,000 Field Office referrals for instant background check violations (25,259 of which NICS identified as buyers with felony records), 0.4% (273) were ever charged with a crime and 0.1% (73) were convicted. [18](#note-95-18 "Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2006, Regional Justice Information Service, study funded by Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice")

**Fact:** The Brady Bill has so far failed to appreciably save lives. [19](#note-95-19 "Dr. Jens Ludwig, Dr. Philip J. Cook, Journal of the American Medical Association, August 2000")

**Fact:** Violent crime started falling in 1991, three years before passage of the Brady Bill. The Brady Bill did not apply in 18 states, yet violent crime in those states fell just as quickly. [20](#note-95-20 "Gun Licensing Leads to Increased Crime, Lost Lives, Prof. John Lott, L.A. Times, Aug 23, 2000, based on both the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics for 1990s and the U.S. Justice Department Crime Victimization Survey")

**Fact:** A majority of Americans agree that the bill is worthless. 51% believe the act has been ineffective at reducing violent crime, and 56% believe it has had no impact on reducing the number of homicides in the U.S. [21](#note-95-21 "Portrait of America survey, August 2000")

## Myth: Gun laws are being enforced

**Fact:** During the Clinton administration, federal prosecutions of gun-related crimes dropped more than 44 percent. [22](#note-95-22 "Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University covering 1992 through 1998")

**Fact:** Of the 3,353 prohibited individuals that obtained firearms, the Clinton administration only investigated 110 of them (3.3%). [23](#note-95-23 "General Accounting Office (GAO) 2000 audit of the National Instant Check System between 11/30/98 and 11/30/99.  This stat needs to be tempered by the fact that many initial rejections were due to database errors – false positives – where the buyer was later approved.")

**Fact:** Despite 536,000 prohibited buyers caught by the National Instant (Criminal Background) Check System (NICS), only 6,700 people (1.25%) have been charged for these firearms violations. This includes 71% of the violations coming from convicted or indicted felons. [24](#note-95-24 "Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Firearm Offenders and Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, June 4, 2000") None of these crimes were prosecuted by the Federal government in 1996, 1997, or 1998. [25](#note-95-25 "U.S. Justice Department statistics, 1999")

**Fact:** In 1998, the government prosecuted just eight children for gun law violations. [26](#note-95-26 "U.S. Justice Department statistics, 1999") In that same year, there were only:

- 8 prosecutions for juvenile handgun possession.
- 6 prosecutions for handgun transfer to juveniles.
- 1 prosecution for Brady Bill violations.

**Fact:** Some of the reasons listed for not prosecuting known gun criminals include “minimal federal interest” and “DOJ/U.S. Attorney policy”. [27](#note-95-27 "Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Firearm Offenders and Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, June 4, 2000")

**Fact:** Half of referrals concerning violent criminals were closed without investigation or prosecution. [28](#note-95-28 "General Accounting Office report on the Implementation of NICS, February 2000")

**Fact:** The average sentence for a federal firearms violation dropped from 57 months to 46 months from 1996 to 1998. [29](#note-95-29 "General Accounting Office report on the Implementation of NICS February, 2000")

**Fact:** 18-20 year olds commit over 23% of all gun murders. [30](#note-95-30 "United States Treasury and Justice Department Report, 1999") None of these criminals are allowed by law to purchase a handgun, but the Federal government under Clinton rarely enforced this law. [31](#note-95-31 "Federal Firearm Offenders report, Bureau of Justice Statistics, June 4, 2000 – firearm suspects declined for prosecution by U.S. attorneys … some of the reasons listed for not prosecuting known gun criminals include “minimal federal interest” and “DOJ/U.S. Attorney policy”")

**Fact:** During Project Exile in Richmond, Virginia US and State authorities prosecuted felons caught with guns, using Federal laws that require mandatory imprisonment. The first-year result was a 33% drop in homicides for the Richmond Metro area in a year where the national murder rate was climbing. [32](#note-95-32 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1999") This shows that enforcement works. According to Andrew McBride of the Richmond Department of Justice, these cases are as easy to prosecute as “picking change up off the street.”

## Myth: Federal gun crime prosecutions increased 25%

**Fact:**

1992: 9,885 BATF referrals for federal firearm purchase violations
1998: 4,391 (a 56% drop)
1999: 5,489 (a fictitious “25% increase”) [33](#note-95-33 "BATF, 1999")

**Fact:**

1992: 12,084 BATF referrals for all firearm law violations
1998: 5,620 (a 53% drop)

## Myth: The social cost of gun violence is enormous

**Fact:** Because guns are used an estimated 2.5 million times per year to *prevent* crimes, the cost savings in personal losses, police work, and court and prison expenses vastly outweighs the cost of criminal gun violence and gun accidents. The net savings, under a worst-case scenario, is about $3.5 billion a year. [34](#note-95-34 "Suing Gun Manufacturers: Hazardous to Our Health, Sterling Burnett, National Center for Policy Analysis, 1999")

**Fact:** Guns are used 65 times more often to prevent a crime than to commit one. [35](#note-95-35 "Taking Dr. Gary Kleck’s estimate of 2.5 million gun defenses each year, divided by the FBI estimates of crimes committed with a firearm.")

**Fact:** The medical cost of gun violence is only 0.16% of America’s annual health care expenditures. [36](#note-95-36 "Shooting in the dark: estimating the cost of firearm injuries, Max W and Rice DP, Health Affairs, 1993")

**Fact:** Drunken drivers killed 15,935 people in 1998 [37](#note-95-37 "Compiled by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)") while homicides with guns were 12,102 for the same year. Drunken drivers continue to kill people randomly despite a decade of increased strictness and social pressure against drunk drivers.

## Myth: The social cost of gun violence is $20-100 billion

**Fact:** One “study” [38](#note-95-38 "The Financial Costs of Gun Violence, Linda Gunderson, Annals of Internal Medicine, September 21, 1999") included the lifetime earnings of people that die from guns, not just the true social costs. This included lost incomes of criminals killed by law-abiding citizens, costs associated with suicides, the “emotional costs experienced by relatives and friends of gunshot victims, and the fear and general reduction in quality of life … including people who are not victimized”. If the same methodology were used to calculate the social savings from private gun ownership, we would see a benefit to society of half a trillion dollars, or 10% of the 1999 US Gross Domestic Product.

**Fact:** Another “study” [39](#note-95-39 "Gun Violence: The Real Costs, Ludwig, Cook, 2000") started by polling people how much they would be willing to have their taxes raised in order to reduce firearm violence by 30%, and then projected these bids to the entire U.S. population. This seriously flawed methodology does not measure the “cost” of the problem, just what people are willing to spend to reduce the problem.

**Fact:** Social saving from private ownership is not used in these studies. One study [40](#note-95-40 "Armed Resistance To Crime, Kleck, Gertz, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 86, no. 1, 1995: 150") indicated between 240,000 and 300,000 defensive uses of firearms, as described by the victim, “… almost certainly had saved a life.”

## Myth: Gun “buy-back” programs get guns off the streets

**Fact:** A study [41](#note-95-41 "Have U.S. Gun Buyback Programs Misfired; Ferrazares, Sabia, Anderson; National Bureau of Economic Research; 2021") of 339 buy-back programs in 277 cities over three decades “did little to reduce gun crime or firearm-related violence.” This was due because “most participants in buyback programs tend to be drawn from populations with relatively low crime risks” and “firearms sold in buybacks do not appear to be those that would typically be used to commit gun crime.”

**Fact:** According to the federal government, gun ‘buybacks’ have “no effect”. [42](#note-95-42 "Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising, National Institute of Justice, July 1998")

**Fact:** “Buy-backs” remove no more than 2% of the firearms within a community. And the firearms that are removed do not resemble guns used in crimes. *“There has never been any effect on crime results seen”*. [43](#note-95-43 "Garen Wintemute, Violence Prevention Research Program, U.C., Davis, 1997")

**Fact:** Up to 62% of people trading in a firearm still have another at home, and 27% said they would or might buy another within a year. [44](#note-95-44 "Jon Vernick, John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, Sacramento and St. Louis studies")

**Fact:** More than 50% of the weapons bought via a gun buy-back program were over 15 years old, whereas almost half of firearms seized from juveniles are less than three years old. [45](#note-95-45 "District of Columbia buyback program, 1999")

**Fact:** 81% of police surveyed believe buybacks are ineffective in reducing gun violence. [46](#note-95-46 "Gun Policy & Law Enforcement survey, PoliceOne, March 2013")

**Fact:** According to a variety of sources, the actual effect is that gun buy-back programs:

- Disarm future crime victims, creating new social costs
- Give criminals an easy way to dispose of evidence
- Acquire guns from those least likely to commit crimes (the elderly, women, etc.)
- Result in cheap guns being bought by private individuals and sold to the government for a profit
- Cause guns to be stolen and sold to the police, creating more crime
- Seldom return stolen guns to their rightful owners

**Fact:** “They do very little good. Guns arriving at buy-backs are simply not the same guns that would otherwise have been used in crime. If you look at the people who are turning in firearms, they are consistently the least crime-prone \[ed: least likely to commit crimes\]: older people and women.” [47](#note-95-47 "David Kennedy, Senior Researcher, Harvard University Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice, in appearance on Fox News, November 22, 2000")

## Myth: Closing down “kitchen table” gun dealers will reduce guns on the street

**Fact:** 43% of gun dealers had no inventory and sold no guns at all. Congressional testimony documented that the large number of low-volume gun dealers is a direct result of BATF policy. The BATF once prosecuted gun collectors who sold as few as three guns per year at gun shows, claiming that they were unlicensed, and therefore illegal, gun dealers. To avoid such harassment, thousands of American gun collectors became licensed gun dealers. Now the BATF claims not to have the resources to audit the paperwork monster it created.

**Fact:** Reforms of the Federal Firearm Licensing program – mainly focused at small volume retailers and traders – produced no significant results in firearm crime rates. [48](#note-95-48 "Christopher Koper of Pennsylvania's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, reported in Criminology & Public Policy, American Society of Criminology, March 2002")

## Myth: Only the government should have guns

**Fact:** Only if you want criminals to have them as well. Loose inventory controls are notorious in government agencies, as shown by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that has “misplaced” 539 weapons, including a gas-grenade launcher and 39 automatic rifles or machine guns. Six guns were eventually linked to crimes (two guns had been used in armed robberies, one was confiscated in a raid on a drug laboratory, two others during arrests and one was being held as evidence in a homicide investigation). [49](#note-95-49 "Associated Press report, April 17, 2001") In July of 2001, it was reported that the FBI lost 449 weapons, including machine guns.

## Myth: “Safe storage” laws protect people

**Fact:** Fifteen states that passed “safe storage” laws saw 300 more murders, 3,860 more rapes, 24,650 more robberies, and over 25,000 more aggravated assaults in the first five years. On average, the annual costs borne by victims averaged over $2.6 billion as a result of lost productivity, out-of-pocket expenses, medical bills, and property losses. “The problem is, you see no decrease in either juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides when such laws are enacted, but you do see an increase in crime rates.” [50](#note-95-50 "Safe Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime, Prof. John Lott, Yale School of Law, March 2000")

**Fact:** Only five American children under the age of 10 died of accidents involving handguns in 1997. [51](#note-95-51 "Safe Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime, Prof. John Lott, Yale School of Law, March 2000") Thus, the need for “safe storage” laws appears to be low.

**Fact:** In Merced California, an intruder stabbed three children to death with a pitchfork. The oldest child had been trained by her father in firearms use, but could not save her siblings from the attacker because the gun was locked away to comply with the state’s “safe storage” law. [52](#note-95-52 "Sierra Times and various wire services, September 2000")

## Myth: Local background checks reduce gun suicides [53](#note-95-53 "This myth derives from Firearm Death Rates and Association with Level of Firearm Purchase Background Check, Steven A. Sumner, Layde, Guse, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 35, Issue 1, Pages 1-86 (July 2008)")

**Fact:** The research reports only a change in the “firearm suicide rate” and not the total suicide rate. No strict correlation between overall suicides and background checks exists.

**Fact:** The report did not explain the disparity between states that had local background checks and radically different suicide rates (Hawaii with 2.82/100,000 and Washington with 9.28/100,000). Nor did it explain how states with different levels of background checks have nearly identical suicide rates (Hawaii has local checks and a 2.82 firearm suicide rate while New York uses state checks and has a lower 2.72 rate).

**Fact:** The report was a two-year snapshot, which makes trending impossible. Proper analysis would have examined change in suicide rates in states before and after background check policy changed.

**Fact:** Researchers split homicide and suicide propensity controls by age (65+ for suicides and 15-29 for homicides).

---

Notes:

1. *Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime, and Violence in America*, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms estimate and reported via James Wright, Peter H. Rossi, Kathleen Daly, 1983 [↩](#return-note-95-1)
2. *First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Prelventing Violence: Firearms Laws*, CDC, Task Force on Community Preventive Services, Oct 3, 2003 – a systematic review of 51 studies that evaluated the effects of selected firearms laws on violence [↩](#return-note-95-2)
3. *Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers*, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006 [↩](#return-note-95-3)
4. National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics, Revised July 1999 [↩](#return-note-95-4)
5. Dr. Gary Kleck, University of Florida using FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1997 [↩](#return-note-95-5)
6. Dr. Gary Kleck, University of Florida using FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1997 [↩](#return-note-95-6)
7. *Index of Crime by State*, FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for 2000, p. 79, Table 5 [↩](#return-note-95-7)
8. FBI Uniform Crime Reports, September 15, 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-8)
9. FBI Uniform Crime Reports, September 15, 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-9)
10. *Under the Gun*, Wright, Rossi, Daly, University of Massachusetts, 1981 [↩](#return-note-95-10)
11. *Under the Gun*, Wright, Rossi, Daly, University of Massachusetts, 1981 [↩](#return-note-95-11)
12. *Under the Gun*, Wright, Rossi, Daly, University of Massachusetts, 1981 [↩](#return-note-95-12)
13. *Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s*, Steven Levit, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2004 [↩](#return-note-95-13)
14. Center for Disease Control, WISQARS online Fatal Injury Reports, 2010 [↩](#return-note-95-14)
15. *California's comprehensive background check and misdemeanor violence prohibition policies and firearm mortality*, Annals of Epidemiology, November 2018, Castillo-Carniglia, Kagawa, Wintemute [↩](#return-note-95-15)
16. FBI Uniform Crime Reports for 1992 and 1997 [↩](#return-note-95-16)
17. *Firearm Use by Offenders*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 [↩](#return-note-95-17)
18. *Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2006*, Regional Justice Information Service, study funded by Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice [↩](#return-note-95-18)
19. Dr. Jens Ludwig, Dr. Philip J. Cook, Journal of the American Medical Association, August 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-19)
20. *Gun Licensing Leads to Increased Crime, Lost Lives*, Prof. John Lott, L.A. Times, Aug 23, 2000, based on both the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics for 1990s and the U.S. Justice Department Crime Victimization Survey [↩](#return-note-95-20)
21. Portrait of America survey, August 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-21)
22. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University covering 1992 through 1998 [↩](#return-note-95-22)
23. General Accounting Office (GAO) 2000 audit of the National Instant Check System between 11/30/98 and 11/30/99. This stat needs to be tempered by the fact that many initial rejections were due to database errors – false positives – where the buyer was later approved. [↩](#return-note-95-23)
24. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Firearm Offenders and Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, June 4, 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-24)
25. U.S. Justice Department statistics, 1999 [↩](#return-note-95-25)
26. U.S. Justice Department statistics, 1999 [↩](#return-note-95-26)
27. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Federal Firearm Offenders and Background Checks for Firearm Transfers, June 4, 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-27)
28. General Accounting Office report on the Implementation of NICS, February 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-28)
29. General Accounting Office report on the Implementation of NICS February, 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-29)
30. United States Treasury and Justice Department Report, 1999 [↩](#return-note-95-30)
31. *Federal Firearm Offenders* report, Bureau of Justice Statistics, June 4, 2000 – firearm suspects declined for prosecution by U.S. attorneys … some of the reasons listed for not prosecuting known gun criminals include “minimal federal interest” and “DOJ/U.S. Attorney policy” [↩](#return-note-95-31)
32. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1999 [↩](#return-note-95-32)
33. BATF, 1999 [↩](#return-note-95-33)
34. *Suing Gun Manufacturers: Hazardous to Our Health*, Sterling Burnett, National Center for Policy Analysis, 1999 [↩](#return-note-95-34)
35. Taking Dr. Gary Kleck’s estimate of 2.5 million gun defenses each year, divided by the FBI estimates of crimes committed with a firearm. [↩](#return-note-95-35)
36. *Shooting in the dark: estimating the cost of firearm injuries*, Max W and Rice DP, Health Affairs, 1993 [↩](#return-note-95-36)
37. Compiled by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) [↩](#return-note-95-37)
38. *The Financial Costs of Gun Violence*, Linda Gunderson, Annals of Internal Medicine, September 21, 1999 [↩](#return-note-95-38)
39. *Gun Violence: The Real Costs*, Ludwig, Cook, 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-39)
40. *Armed Resistance To Crime*, Kleck, Gertz, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 86, no. 1, 1995: 150 [↩](#return-note-95-40)
41. *Have U.S. Gun Buyback Programs Misfired*; Ferrazares, Sabia, Anderson; National Bureau of Economic Research; 2021 [↩](#return-note-95-41)
42. *Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising*, National Institute of Justice, July 1998 [↩](#return-note-95-42)
43. Garen Wintemute, Violence Prevention Research Program, U.C., Davis, 1997 [↩](#return-note-95-43)
44. Jon Vernick, John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, Sacramento and St. Louis studies [↩](#return-note-95-44)
45. District of Columbia buyback program, 1999 [↩](#return-note-95-45)
46. *Gun Policy & Law Enforcement survey*, PoliceOne, March 2013 [↩](#return-note-95-46)
47. David Kennedy, Senior Researcher, Harvard University Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice, in appearance on Fox News, November 22, 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-47)
48. Christopher Koper of Pennsylvania's Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, reported in Criminology & Public Policy, American Society of Criminology, March 2002 [↩](#return-note-95-48)
49. Associated Press report, April 17, 2001 [↩](#return-note-95-49)
50. *Safe Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime*, Prof. John Lott, Yale School of Law, March 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-50)
51. *Safe Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime*, Prof. John Lott, Yale School of Law, March 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-51)
52. Sierra Times and various wire services, September 2000 [↩](#return-note-95-52)
53. This myth derives from *Firearm Death Rates and Association with Level of Firearm Purchase Background Check*, Steven A. Sumner, Layde, Guse, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 35, Issue 1, Pages 1-86 (July 2008) [↩](#return-note-95-53)

---

### [Accidental Deaths & Injuries](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/accidental-deaths/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: Accidental gun fatalities are a serious problem

**[![ACCIDENTAL GUN DEATHS - U.S. Accidental Death Rate by Cause](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ACCIDENTAL-GUN-DEATHS-U.S.-Accidental-Death-Rate-by-Cause-400x297.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ACCIDENTAL-GUN-DEATHS-U.S.-Accidental-Death-Rate-by-Cause.png)Fact:** Firearm misuse causes only a small number of accidental deaths in the U.S. [1](#note-83-1 "WISQARS Injury Mortality Report, Center for Disease Control, 2007") For example, compared to being accidentally killed by a firearm, you are:

- Five times more likely to burn to death
- Five times more likely to drown
- 17 times more likely to be poisoned
- 17 times more likely to fall to your death
- And 68 times more likely to die in an automobile accident

**Fact:** In 2007, there were only 54 accidental gun deaths for children under age 13. About 12 times as many children died from drowning during the same period. [2](#note-83-2 "WISQARS Injury Mortality Report, Center for Disease Control, 2007")

**Fact:** In 2007, there were 999 drowning victims and 137 firearm-related accidental deaths in age groups 1 through 19. This despite the fact that firearms outnumber pools by a factor of more than 30:1. Thus, the risk ratio of drowning in an available pool is nearly 100 times higher than dying from a firearm-related accident for all ages, and nearly 500 times for children ages 0-5. [3](#note-83-3 "National Center for Health Statistics, and the National Spa and Pool Institute")

**[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ACCIDENTAL-GUN-DEATHS-U.S.-Accidental-Firearm-Death-Count-and-Rate-1981-through-2016-b-400x285.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ACCIDENTAL-GUN-DEATHS-U.S.-Accidental-Firearm-Death-Count-and-Rate-1981-through-2016-b.png)Fact:** Medical mistakes kill 400,000 people per year – the equivalent of almost three fully loaded Boeing 747 jet crashes per day – or about 286 times the rate of all accidental firearm deaths. [4](#note-83-4 "Medical death statistics, Gun deaths, Dr. David Lawrence, CEO Kaiser Permanente, CDC report 1993") This translates into 1 in 6 doctors causing an accidental death, and 1 in 56,666 gun owners doing the same.

**Fact:** Only 2% of gun deaths are from accidents, and some insurance investigations indicate that many of these may not be accidents after all. [5](#note-83-5 "Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter 1997 at 293-324")

**Fact:** Around 2,000 patients each year — six per day — are accidentally killed or injured in hospitals by registered nurses. [6](#note-83-6 "Chicago Tribune report, Sept 10, 2000")

## Myth: Handguns are unsafe and cause accidents

**Fact:** Most fatal firearm accidents involve long guns, which are more deadly. These are typically hunting accidents. [7](#note-83-7 "Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter 1997, at 293-324")

**Fact:** Handguns have triggers that are difficult for small (child) hands to operate, and are rarely the cause of accidents. [8](#note-83-8 "Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter 1997, at 293-324")

## Myth: Innocent bystanders are often killed by guns

**Fact:** Less than 1% of all gun homicides involve innocent bystanders. [9](#note-83-9 "Stray bullets and ‘mushrooms’, Sherman, Steele, Laufersweiler, Hoffer and Julian, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 1989")

## Myth: Citizens are too incompetent to use guns for protection

**Fact:** About 11% of police shootings kill an innocent person — about 2% of shootings by citizens kill an innocent person. The odds of a defensive gun user killing an innocent person are less than 1 in 26,000 [10](#note-83-10 "Shall Issue: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws, C. Cramer, and D. Kopel, Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994") despite American citizens using guns to prevent crimes almost 2,500,000 times every year.

**Fact:** Most firearm accidents are caused by people with various forms of poor self-control. These include alcoholics, people with previous criminal records, people with multiple driving accidents, and people who engage in other risky behaviors. [11](#note-83-11 "Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, at 307, 312")

## Myth: Gun accidents are flooding emergency rooms

**Fact:** The rate of gun accidents is so low that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn’t even mention them in their annual safety reports.

## Myth: “Junk” guns are dangerous and should be banned

**Fact:** In the history of the state of California, not one lawsuit against a gun maker had been filed (until 2003) based on a weapon being defective or poorly designed. [12](#note-83-12 "California Trial Lawyers Association, 1998")

## Myth: Guns should be made to conform to product liability laws

**Fact:** Guns are already covered under product liability laws. If you have a defective gun that does not operate properly, you can sue the gun maker.

---

Notes:

1. *WISQARS Injury Mortality Report*, Center for Disease Control, 2007 [↩](#return-note-83-1)
2. *WISQARS Injury Mortality Report*, Center for Disease Control, 2007 [↩](#return-note-83-2)
3. National Center for Health Statistics, and the National Spa and Pool Institute [↩](#return-note-83-3)
4. *Medical death statistics, Gun deaths*, Dr. David Lawrence, CEO Kaiser Permanente, CDC report 1993 [↩](#return-note-83-4)
5. *Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control*, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter 1997 at 293-324 [↩](#return-note-83-5)
6. Chicago Tribune report, Sept 10, 2000 [↩](#return-note-83-6)
7. *Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control*, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter 1997, at 293-324 [↩](#return-note-83-7)
8. *Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control*, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter 1997, at 293-324 [↩](#return-note-83-8)
9. *Stray bullets and ‘mushrooms’*, Sherman, Steele, Laufersweiler, Hoffer and Julian, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 1989 [↩](#return-note-83-9)
10. *Shall Issue: The New Wave of Concealed Handgun Permit Laws,* C. Cramer, and D. Kopel, Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994 [↩](#return-note-83-10)
11. *Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control*, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997, at 307, 312 [↩](#return-note-83-11)
12. California Trial Lawyers Association, 1998 [↩](#return-note-83-12)

---

### [Licensing and Registration](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/licensing-and-registration/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: Other countries register guns to fight crime

**Fact:** In these countries, non-registration rates (people keeping guns without registering them) are high, ranging from 22% as many unregistered as registered (Australia) to 1,500% as many unregistered (Greece). [1](#note-101-1 "Small Arms Survey, 2003")

**Fact:** Most of these laws were enacted in the post-World War I period to prevent civil uprisings as had occurred in Russia. A report of “Committee on the Control of Firearms,” written by British Home Office officials in 1918, was the basis for registration in the U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. [2](#note-101-2 "Response to Philip Alpers' submission to the California State Assembly Select Committee on Gun Violence, Steven W. Kendrick, January 2000")

**Fact:** Although restrictions were few in the United States and the number of legally held handguns exceeded those on the Canadian side by a factor of ten, rates of homicide were virtually identical. [3](#note-101-3 "Homicide and the Prevalence of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 1980, American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 134, Brandon Centrewall, December 1991. Though the rate of homicides as a whole were different, when demographics between the two cities were equalized, the homicide rates matched.")

**Fact:** Even so, registration does not prevent gun crimes. In a one week period, a licensed gun owner killed 12 people in England [4](#note-101-4 "Gun control and ownership laws in the UK, BBC, June 3, 2010") and a Chinese security guard killed three judges in a court building [5](#note-101-5 "Man shoots dead three judges in China court, Bangkok Post, June 1, 2010") despite complete licensing and registration

## Myth: Gun registration works

**Fact:** Internationally, there is no correlation between registration rates, percent of unregistered weapons, and homicide rates. [6](#note-101-6 "Small Arms Survey, 2003 for registration rates, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, for homicide statistics")

**Fact:** Not in California. California has had handgun registration since 1909 [7](#note-101-7 "In conversation between the author of Gun Facts and a representative of California Department of Justice.") and it has not had any impact on violent crime rates. [8](#note-101-8 "FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, via the Data Online data analysis tool on the website of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.")

**Fact:** Not in New Zealand. They repealed their gun registration law in the 1980s after police acknowledged its worthlessness. [9](#note-101-9 "Background to the Introduction of Firearms User Licensing Instead of Rifle and Shotgun Registration Under the Arms Act 1983 (Wellington, New Zealand: n.p., 1983)")

**Fact: Not in Australia. One report states, “It seems just to be an elaborate system of arithmetic with no tangible aim. Probably, and with the best of intentions, it may have been thought that if it were known what firearms each individual in Victoria owned, some form of control may be exercised, and those who were guilty of criminal misuse could be readily identified. This is a fallacy, and has been proven not to be the case.” [10](#note-101-10 "Registration Firearms System, Chief Inspector Newgreen, CRB File 39-1-1385/84") In addition, cost to Australian taxpayers exceeded $200 million annually. [11](#note-101-11 "The Failed Experiment: Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales, Gary Mauser, The Fraser Institute, 2003")

**Fact:** Not in Canada. More than 20,000 Canadian gun-owners have publicly refused to register their firearms. Many others (as many as 300,000 [12](#note-101-12 "Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, Evidence number 55, June 5, 2003")) are silently ignoring the law.

- The provincial governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have dumped both the administration and the enforcement of all federal gun-control laws right back into Ottawa’s lap, throwing the Canadian government into a paper civil war.
- And all at a cost more than 1,646% the original projected cost [13](#note-101-13 "Ottawa Under Pressure Over Gun Registry Fiasco, David Ljunggren, Reuters, December 4, 2002") (the original cost was estimated at 5% of all police expenditures in Canada [14](#note-101-14 "When ‘Gun Control’ costs lives, John Lott, Firing Line, September 2001")). “The gun registry as it sits right now is causing law abiding citizens to register their guns but it does nothing to take one illegal gun off the street or to increase any type of penalty for anybody that violates any part of the legislation,” according to Al Koenig, President, Calgary Police Association. [15](#note-101-15 "Calgary Herald, September 1, 2000") “We have an ongoing gun crisis, including firearms-related homicides lately in Toronto, and a law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them,” according to Toronto police Chief Julian Fantino. [16](#note-101-16 "Opponents increase pressure to halt Canada's gun control program, Associated Press, Jan 3, 2002")
- The system was so bad that six Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Nova Scotia, and Ontario) are refusing to prosecute firearm owners who fail to register. [17](#note-101-17 "Victoria won't enforce firearms act, Vancouver Sun, June 06, 2003")
- A bill to abolish the registry has been tabled (introduced) in the Canadian Parliament, which if passed, would eliminate the registry completely. [18](#note-101-18 "An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act, Received first reading June 19, 2006")
- A Saskatchewan MP who endorsed the long gun registry when first proposed has introduced legislation to abolish it stating that, “\[the registry\] has not saved one life in Canada, and it has been a financial sinkhole … absolutely useless in helping locate the 255,000 people who have been prohibited from owning firearms by the courts.” [19](#note-101-19 "$2 billion worth of police will save more lives than one gun registry, Garry Breitkreuz, National Post, February 27, 2009")
- In April 2012, the Canadian long gun registry was terminated.

**Fact:** Not in Germany. The Federal Republic of Germany began comprehensive gun registration in 1972. The government estimated that between 17,000,000 and 20,000,000 guns were to be registered, but only 3,200,000 surfaced, leaving 80% unaccounted for. [20](#note-101-20 "Why Gun Registration will Fail, Ted Drane, Australian Shooters Journal, May 1997")

**Fact:** Not in Boston, Cleveland, or California. These cities and state require registration of “assault weapons.” The compliance rate in Boston and Cleveland is about 1%. [21](#note-101-21 "The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies, David B. Kopel, 231, n.210 (1992)")

**Fact:** Criminals don’t register their guns, nor are they legally required to do so. [22](#note-101-22 "Haynes vs. U.S. 390 U.S. 85, 1968. The Supreme Court concluded that forcing a criminal to register their illegal guns was a form of self-incrimination.")

## Myth: Gun registration will help police find suspects

**Fact:** Registration is required in Hawaii, Chicago and Washington DC. Yet there has not been a single case where registration was instrumental in identifying someone who committed a crime. [23](#note-101-23 "Gun Licensing Leads to Increased Crime, Lost Lives, John Lott, L.A. Times, Aug 23, 2000") Criminals very rarely leave their guns at the scene of the crime. Would-be criminals also virtually never get licenses or register their weapons.

**Fact:** It may cause police to shoot citizens unnecessarily. “My research into more than a dozen raids that turned out badly is that … the presence of a firearm wires officers into a much higher tendency to shoot. \[T\]he presence of a legally possessed firearm bought to protect the home may get totally innocent people killed by the police who casually use SWAT for drug search warrants especially if they register.” [24](#note-101-24 "Joseph McNamara, former San Jose, California police chief, fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution quoted in California Gun Law Paves the Way for Confiscation, Reason, January 2014")

## Myth: Registration does not lead to confiscation

**Fact:** It did in Canada. The handgun registration law of 1934 was the source used to identify and confiscate (without compensation) over half of the registered handguns in 2001. [25](#note-101-25 "Civil Disobedience In Canada: It Just Happened To Be Guns, Dr. Paul Gallant, and Dr. Joanne Eisen,  Idaho Observer, August 2000")

**Fact:** It did in Germany. The 1928 Law on Firearms and Ammunition (before the Nazis came into power) required all firearms to be registered. When Hitler came into power, the existing lists were used for confiscating weapons.

**Fact:** It did in Australia. In 1996, the Australian government confiscated over 660,000 previously legal weapons from their citizens.

**Fact:** It did in California. The 1989 Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act required registration. Due to shifting definitions of “assault weapons,” many legal firearms are now being confiscated by the California government.

**Fact:** It did in New York City. In 1967, New York City passed an ordinance requiring a citizen to obtain a permit to own a rifle or shotgun, which would then be registered. In 1991, the city passed a ban on the private possession of some semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, and “registered” owners were told that those firearms had to be surrendered, rendered inoperable, or taken out of the city.

**Fact:** It did in Bermuda, Cuba, Greece, Ireland, Jamaica, and Soviet Georgia as well.

## Myth: Licensing will keep bad people from obtaining or using guns

**Fact:** Not in Canada. Canadian homicide rates were virtually unchanged before and after gun registration requirements were implemented (151 per 100,000 people in 1998 and 149 per 100,000 in 2002). [26](#note-101-26 "Statistics Canada, Oct 1, 2003")

**Fact:** In New York State alone, approximately 100,000 persons are convicted of unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle each year, and this is probably a small proportion of the actual number of people who drive without a valid license. [27](#note-101-27 "Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1998") Licensing requirements don’t stop ineligible people from driving, and they do not stop ineligible people from acquiring guns.

**Fact:** As long as the unlicensed purchaser is never caught with the handgun, the unlawful sale will go unnoticed. The risk of detection is negligible. If the unlicensed handgun owner is arrested, he could claim that he did not need a license because he had owned this handgun before licensing went into effect. [28](#note-101-28 "Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1998")

**Fact:** Currently, federal prosecutors do not eagerly accept felon-in-possession cases for prosecution unless the felon is a hardened criminal who represents a threat to the public. [29](#note-101-29 "Old Chief v. United States: Stipulating Away Prosecutorial Accountability, Daniel C. Richman,  83 Va. L. Rev. 939, 982-85 (1997)")

**Fact:** According to the Supreme Court, criminals do not have to obtain licenses or register their weapons, as that would be an act of self-incrimination. [30](#note-101-30 "Haynes vs. U.S. 390 U.S. 85, 1968")

**Fact:** Prohibition (which started as a ‘moderation’ movement) didn’t keep people from drinking. Instead it turned millions of otherwise honest and sober citizens into criminals, overnight.

**Fact:** Most police do not see the benefit. “It is my belief that \[licensing and registration\] significantly misses the mark because it diverts our attention from what should be our common goal: holding the true criminals accountable for the crimes they commit and getting them off the street.” [31](#note-101-31 "When ‘Gun Control’ costs lives, Bob Brooks, Firing Line, September 2001")

**Fact:** In 2005, agencies reported 1,400 arrests of persons denied a firearm or permit; but the U.S. Department of Justice accepted only 135 of those denial cases for prosecution. [32](#note-101-32 "Background Checks for Firearm Transfers 2005, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, November 2006") Given the poor performance of the Federal government in prosecuting felons identified by an instant background check trying to buy firearms, there is little to support firearm licensing as a crime prevention measure.

## Myth: Guns from the U.S. create crime in other countries

**Fact:** Canada, which shares the longest and most open border with the U.S., doesn’t think so, saying that guns from the U.S. are a “small part” of the problem. [33](#note-101-33 "Globe and Mail, Paul Culver, August 15, 2005")

## Myth: Guns should be registered and licensed like cars

**Fact:** You do not need a license to buy a car. You can buy as many as you want and drive them all you like on your own property without a license.

**Fact:** Cars are registered because they are (a) sources of tax revenue, (b) objects of fraud in some transactions, and (c) significant theft targets. Thus, we ask the government to track them.

**Fact:** There is no constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear automobiles, and thus they are subject to greater regulation than guns.

**Fact:** There are more guns in the U.S. than cars (228,000,000 guns and 207,754,000 automobiles). Yet you are 31 times more likely to be accidentally killed by a car than a gun according to the National Safety Council [34](#note-101-34 "Automobiles estimates: Federal Highway Administration, October 1998. Firearm estimates: FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1996.") … despite cars having been registered and licensed for almost 100 years.

---

Notes:

1. *Small Arms Survey*, 2003 [↩](#return-note-101-1)
2. *Response to Philip Alpers' submission to the California State Assembly Select Committee on Gun Violence*, Steven W. Kendrick, January 2000 [↩](#return-note-101-2)
3. *Homicide and the Prevalence of Handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 1980*, American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 134, Brandon Centrewall, December 1991. Though the rate of homicides as a whole were different, when demographics between the two cities were equalized, the homicide rates matched. [↩](#return-note-101-3)
4. *Gun control and ownership laws in the UK*, BBC, June 3, 2010 [↩](#return-note-101-4)
5. *Man shoots dead three judges in China court*, Bangkok Post, June 1, 2010 [↩](#return-note-101-5)
6. *Small Arms Survey*, 2003 for registration rates, *United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime*, for homicide statistics [↩](#return-note-101-6)
7. In conversation between the author of *Gun Facts* and a representative of California Department of Justice. [↩](#return-note-101-7)
8. FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, via the *Data Online* data analysis tool on the website of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. [↩](#return-note-101-8)
9. Background to the Introduction of Firearms User Licensing Instead of Rifle and Shotgun Registration Under the Arms Act 1983 (Wellington, New Zealand: n.p., 1983) [↩](#return-note-101-9)
10. Registration Firearms System, Chief Inspector Newgreen, CRB File 39-1-1385/84 [↩](#return-note-101-10)
11. *The Failed Experiment: Gun Control and Public Safety in Canada, Australia, England and Wales,* Gary Mauser, The Fraser Institute, 2003 [↩](#return-note-101-11)
12. Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, Evidence number 55, June 5, 2003 [↩](#return-note-101-12)
13. *Ottawa Under Pressure Over Gun Registry Fiasco,* David Ljunggren, Reuters, December 4, 2002 [↩](#return-note-101-13)
14. *When ‘Gun Control’ costs lives,* John Lott, Firing Line, September 2001 [↩](#return-note-101-14)
15. Calgary Herald, September 1, 2000 [↩](#return-note-101-15)
16. *Opponents increase pressure to halt Canada's gun control program,* Associated Press, Jan 3, 2002 [↩](#return-note-101-16)
17. *Victoria won't enforce firearms act,* Vancouver Sun, June 06, 2003 [↩](#return-note-101-17)
18. *An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act,* Received first reading June 19, 2006 [↩](#return-note-101-18)
19. *$2 billion worth of police will save more lives than one gun registry,* Garry Breitkreuz*,* National Post, February 27, 2009 [↩](#return-note-101-19)
20. *Why Gun Registration will Fail,* Ted Drane, Australian Shooters Journal, May 1997 [↩](#return-note-101-20)
21. *The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies,* David B. Kopel, 231, n.210 (1992) [↩](#return-note-101-21)
22. Haynes vs. U.S. 390 U.S. 85, 1968. The Supreme Court concluded that forcing a criminal to register their illegal guns was a form of self-incrimination. [↩](#return-note-101-22)
23. *Gun Licensing Leads to Increased Crime, Lost Lives,* John Lott, L.A. Times, Aug 23, 2000 [↩](#return-note-101-23)
24. Joseph McNamara, former San Jose, California police chief, fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution quoted in *California Gun Law Paves the Way for Confiscation*, Reason, January 2014 [↩](#return-note-101-24)
25. *Civil Disobedience In Canada: It Just Happened To Be Guns,* Dr. Paul Gallant, and Dr. Joanne Eisen, Idaho Observer, August 2000 [↩](#return-note-101-25)
26. Statistics Canada, Oct 1, 2003 [↩](#return-note-101-26)
27. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1998 [↩](#return-note-101-27)
28. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1998 [↩](#return-note-101-28)
29. *Old Chief v. United States: Stipulating Away Prosecutorial Accountability,* Daniel C. Richman, 83 Va. L. Rev. 939, 982-85 (1997) [↩](#return-note-101-29)
30. Haynes vs. U.S. 390 U.S. 85, 1968 [↩](#return-note-101-30)
31. *When ‘Gun Control’ costs lives,* Bob Brooks, Firing Line, September 2001 [↩](#return-note-101-31)
32. *Background Checks for Firearm Transfers 2005,* U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, November 2006 [↩](#return-note-101-32)
33. Globe and Mail, Paul Culver, August 15, 2005 [↩](#return-note-101-33)
34. Automobiles estimates: Federal Highway Administration, October 1998. Firearm estimates: FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1996. [↩](#return-note-101-34)

---

### [Concealed Carry](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/concealed-carry/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

[![2025 Gun Facts Concealed Carry Scorecard](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025-Gun-Facts-Concealed-Carry-Scorecard-borders-800x565.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025-Gun-Facts-Concealed-Carry-Scorecard-borders.png)

As of the summer of 2024, there were:

- 21.5 million people with carry permits
- 90.8 million adults living in permitless states

**NOTE:** About 26.3% of gun owners are “public carriers”, meaning that carry in public at least “sometime”. [1](#note-91-1 "2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022"). This equates to a little more than 10% of the population age 21 or higher.

## Myth: Concealed carry doesn’t prevent crimes

**Fact:** There are approximately 182,000 defensive gun uses in public each year. [2](#note-91-2 "2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022")

**Fact:** News reports tell many stories of armed civilians preventing mass murder in public. A few selected at random include:

- A citizen with a gun stopped a knife-wielding man as he began stabbing people in a Salt Lake City store.
- Two men retrieved firearms from their cars and stopped a mass murder at the Appalachian School of Law.
- Citizen takes out shooter while police were pinned down in Early, Texas.
- Citizen stops apartment shoot-up in Oklahoma City.

**Fact:** The FBI documents [3](#note-91-3 "Active Shooter Incidents in the United States (2014-2014 and 2016-2017), FBI") that 3.2% of [active shooter events](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/mass-shootings/) were stopped by CCW holders. However, other researchers claim the FBI undercounts the number of incidents (e.g. excluding events that were precipitated by a grudge) and the on the high end the number is 16.5% [4](#note-91-4 "The Problem With the FBI's 'Active Shooter' Data, Lott, Real Clear Politics, October 2018").

## Myth: Concealed carry laws increase crime

**[![CONCEALED CARRY - Concealed Carry Expansion and Violent Crime Rates 1986-2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/CONCEALED-CARRY-Concealed-Carry-Expansion-and-Violent-Crime-Rates-1986-2017-400x271.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/CONCEALED-CARRY-Concealed-Carry-Expansion-and-Violent-Crime-Rates-1986-2017.png)Fact:** Forty-two states, comprising the majority of the American population, are either “right-to-carry” states – where anyone without a criminal record will be issued a permit – or require no permit at all (though there are legal restrictions carrying weapons by felons, dometic abusers, etc.). In 1988 there were only ten “right-to-carry”. Statistics show that in these states the crime rate fell (or did not rise) after the right-to-carry law became active.

**Fact:** Gun homicides were 10% higher in states with restrictive CCW laws, according to a study spanning 1980-2009. [5](#note-91-5 "An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates, Applied Economics Letters, Vol 21, No. 4")

**Fact:** Crime rates involving gun owners with carry licenses have consistently been about 0.02% of all carry permit holders since Florida’s right-to-carry law started in 1988. [6](#note-91-6 "Florida Department of Justice, 1998")

**Fact:** After passing their concealed carry law, Florida’s homicide rate fell from 36% above the national average to 4% below. [7](#note-91-7 "Shall issue: the new wave of concealed handgun permit laws, Cramer C and Kopel D. Golden CO: Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994")

**Fact:** In Texas, murder rates fell 50% faster than the national average in the year after their concealed carry law passed. Rape rates fell 93% faster in the first year after enactment, and 500% faster in the second. [8](#note-91-8 "Some criminologist believe measuring first year change is shortsighted as it takes more than a year for permits to be issued, reach critical quantities, and for the criminally minded to recognize the new situation and avoid violent confrontations.") Assaults fell 250% faster in the second year. [9](#note-91-9 "Bureau of Justice Statistics, online database, reviewing Texas and U.S. violent crime from 1995-2001.")

**Fact:** Crime is significantly higher in states without right-to-carry laws. [10](#note-91-10 "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns, Lott, John R., and Mustard, David B. J. of Legal Studies, vol.26, n.1, pp.1-68 (Jan. 1997): This study involved county level crime statistics from all 3,054 counties in the U.S., from 1977 through 1992. During this time ten states adopted right-to-carry laws. It is estimated that if all states had adopted right-to-carry laws, in 1992 the US would have avoided 1,400 murders, 4,200 rapes, 12,000 robberies, 60,000 aggravated assaults – and saved over $5,000,000,000 in victim expenses.")

Type of Crime% Higher in
Restrictive StatesRobbery105%Murder86%Assault82%Violent Crime81%Auto Theft60%Rape25%**Fact:** States that disallow concealed carry have violent crime rates 11% higher than national averages. [11](#note-91-11 "FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, 2004 - excludes Hawaii and Rhode Island - small populations and geographic isolation create other determinants to violent crime.")

**Fact:** Deaths and injuries from mass public shootings fall dramatically after right-to-carry concealed handgun laws are enacted. Between 1977 and 1995, [12](#note-91-12 "Federal legislation created a national "gun-free schools" policy, effective in 1996.  Some criminologists maintain this created a new dynamic, encouraging mass murder on campus. Thus, after 1995 it is increasingly difficult to make comparisons based on the effects of CCWs and mass shootings.") the average death rate from mass shootings plummeted by up to 91% after such laws went into effect, and injuries dropped by over 80%. [13](#note-91-13 "Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement, John Lott and William Landes, Law School of the University of Chicago, Law & Economics Working Paper No. 73")

## Myth: Right-To-Carry laws increase violent crime 13-15%

**Fact:** This rather [miserable working paper](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#rtc-laws-and-violent-crime) is a wellspring of bad methodology, which might explain why it was not (as of July 2017) published in a peer reviewed journal.

## Myth: Concealed carry permit holders shoot police

**Fact:** The Violence Policy Center started listing instances of CCW holders shooting police. [14](#note-91-14 "Law Enforcement Officers Killed by Concealed Handgun Permit Holders, VPC, December 13, 2009") From May 2007 through November 2009 (2.5 years) they recorded nine police deaths, three in one mass killing by a white supremacist using an AK-47 rifle. Of the nine, five had yet to be tried or convicted as of the date of their report.

## Myth: People with concealed weapons licenses will commit crimes

**State [15](#note-91-15 "Reports were as received. No selection or filtering process was used.")****Licenses issued****Revoked licenses****% Revoked****Violent Crime Rate Change [16](#note-91-16 "Violent crime rates are from inception of “shall issue” CCW through 2006, the most recent period available through the Bureau of Justice Statistics online database.")**Florida1,327,321 [17](#note-91-17 "October 1987 through Jan 2008")4,1290.3%-30.5%Virginia50,000 [18](#note-91-18 "1995 – no follow-up data available at time of collection")00.0%-21.9%Arizona63,000 [19](#note-91-19 "1994 through 2007")500.9%-28.7%North Carolina59,597 [20](#note-91-20 "1995 through 2004")1,2741.2%-26.4%Minnesota46,636 [21](#note-91-21 "2002 through 2006")120.03%8.0% [22](#note-91-22 "In 2005 and 2006, Minnesota had an abnormal spike in robbery and aggravated assaults. The first three years of CCW in Minnesota saw violent crime rates being roughly stable and the problem has somewhat abated since then.")Michigan155,000 [23](#note-91-23 "2001 through 2007")2,1780.1%1.4%**Fact:** The results for the first 30 states that passed “shall-issue” laws for concealed carry licenses are similar.

**Fact:** In Texas, citizens with concealed carry licenses are 14 times less likely to commit a crime. They are also five times less likely to commit a violent crime. [24](#note-91-24 "Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September, 2000")

**Fact:** People with concealed carry licenses are: [25](#note-91-25 "An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Carry Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population, William E. Sturdevant, September 11, 1999")

- 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public
- 13.5 times less likely to be arrested for non-violent offenses than the general public

**Fact:** Even gun control organizations agree it is a non-problem. One said about Texas, “because there haven’t been Wild West shootouts in the streets”. [26](#note-91-26 "Nina Butts, Texans Against Gun Violence, Dallas Morning News, August 10, 2000")

**Fact:** Of 14,000 CCW licensees in Oregon, only 4 (0.03%) were convicted of the criminal (not necessarily violent) use or possession of a firearm.

**Fact:** “I’m detecting that I’m eating a lot of crow on this issue … I think that says something, that we’ve gotten to this point in the year and in the third largest city in America there has not been a single charge against anyone that had anything to do with a concealed handgun.” [27](#note-91-27 "John Holmes, Harris County [Houston, TX] District Attorney, In Session: Handgun Law's First Year Belies Fears of 'Blood in the Streets,” Texas Lawyer, December 9, 1996")

**Fact:** In Florida, a state that has allowed concealed carry since late 1987, you are twice as likely to be attacked by an alligator as by a person with a concealed carry permit. [28](#note-91-28 "Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report, Florida Department of State, 1998 – Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, December 1998")

## Myth: 460 people have been killed by CCW permit holders

**Fact:** The “study” by gun control group Violence Policy Center covers a six year span, meaning that at worst there is an average of 76 shootings of all types *per year*, including justifiable homicides.

**Fact:** As of 2017, there are over 14,500,000 CCW holders, [29](#note-91-29 "State-by-state tally from licensing records conducted by Crime Prevention research Center") meaning the worst case kill rate (justifiable or not) is 0.003% of all CCW holders.

## Myth: Concealed guns in bars will cause violence

**Fact:** In Virginia, in the first year where CCW holders were allowed to carry in bars, the number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2% The crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor. [30](#note-91-30 "Gun Crimes Drop at Virginia Bars And Restaurants, Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 14, 2011, reporting data from the Virginia State Police")

## Myth: Texas CCW holders are arrested 66% more often

**[![CONCEALED CARRY - Concealed Carry Licensee Crime Rates vs General Population](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CONCEALED-CARRY-Concealed-Carry-Licensee-Crime-Rates-vs-General-Population-400x337.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CONCEALED-CARRY-Concealed-Carry-Licensee-Crime-Rates-vs-General-Population.png)Fact:** Most arrests cited are not any form of violent crime (includes bounced checks or tax delinquency). [31](#note-91-31 "Basis For Revocation Or Suspension Of Texas Concealed, Texas Department of Public Safety, December 1, 1998")

**Fact:** The Violence Policy Center “study” only includes arrests, not convictions.

**Fact:** Many of these arrests in this premature VPC “study” came in the early years of Texas CCWs when the law was not understood by most of the law enforcement community or prosecutors.

**Fact:** Compared to the entire population, Texas CCW holders are about 7.6 times less likely to be arrested for a violent crime. [32](#note-91-32 "Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association, www.tsra.com") The numbers breakdown as follows:

- 214,000 CCW holders [33](#note-91-33 "These are year 2000 records. As of 2014, the number of Texas concealed carry license holders was 825,957.")
- 526 (0.2%) felony arrests of CCW holders that have been adjudicated
- 100 (0.05%) felony convictions

**Fact:** A different study concludes that the four year violent crime arrest rate for CCW holders is 128 per 100,000. For the general population, it is 710 per 100,000. In other words, CCW holders are 5.5 times less likely to commit a violent crime. [34](#note-91-34 "An Analysis Of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders As Compared To The Arrest Rate Of The Entire Texas Population, William E. Sturdevant, PE, September 11, 1999")

**Fact:** “I lobbied against the law in 1993 and 1995 because I thought it would lead to wholesale armed conflict. That hasn’t happened. All the horror stories I thought would come to pass didn’t happen. No bogeyman. I think it’s worked out well, and that says good things about the citizens who have permits. I’m a convert.” [35](#note-91-35 "Glenn White, President of the Dallas Police Association, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997")

**Fact:** “It has impressed me how remarkably responsible the permit holders have been.” [36](#note-91-36 "Colonel James Wilson, Director Texas Department of Public Safety, Dallas Morning News, June 11, 1996")

## Myth: CCWs will lead to mass public shootings

**[![CONCEALED CARRY - Concealed Carry vs Multiple Victim Mass Public Shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CONCEALED-CARRY-Concealed-Carry-vs-Multiple-Victim-Mass-Public-Shootings-400x248.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CONCEALED-CARRY-Concealed-Carry-vs-Multiple-Victim-Mass-Public-Shootings.png)Fact:** Multiple victim public shootings drop in states that pass shall-issue CCW legislation. [37](#note-91-37 "Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement,  Lott John R., Landes William M.; University of Chicago — Covers years 1977 to 1995")

**Fact:** CCW holders have prevented or curtailed mass public shootings – Pearl, Mississippi (Pearl Junior High School), Edinboro, Pennsylvania (Parker Middle School), Winnemucca, Nevada (Players Bar and Grill), Colorado Springs, Colorado (New Life Church).

**Fact:** Of all the alternatives to preventing mass public shootings, police officers believe that civilian concealed carry is the most effective.” [38](#note-91-38 "Gun Policy & Law Enforcement, PoliceOne, March 2013")

## Myth: People do not need concealable weapons

**Fact:** In 80% of gun defenses, the defender used a concealable handgun. A quarter of the gun defenses occurred in places away from the defender’s home. [39](#note-91-39 "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun, by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, in The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, Volume 86, Number 1, Fall, 1995")

**Fact:** 77% of all violent crime occurs in public places. [40](#note-91-40 "Criminal Victimization in the United States, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1993") This makes concealed carry necessary for almost all self-defense needs. But due to onerous laws forbidding concealed carry, only 26.8% of defensive gun uses occurred away from home. [41](#note-91-41 "Kleck and Gertz, National Self Defense Survey, 1995")

**Fact:** Often, small weapons that are capable of being concealed are the only ones usable by people of small stature or with physical disabilities.

**Fact:** The average citizen doesn’t need a Sport Utility Vehicle, but driving one is arguably safer than driving other vehicles. Similarly, carrying a concealable gun makes the owner — and his or her community — safer by providing protection not otherwise available.

**Fact:** 56% of Americans say more concealed weapons would make country safer. [42](#note-91-42 "Majority Say More Concealed Weapons Would Make U.S. Safer, Gallup Poll, October, 2015") Millions of Americans have concealed carry permits, and this doesn’t include people who carry in states that do not require permits.

## Myth: Police and prosecutors are against concealed carrying by citizens

**Fact:** In a survey of 15,000 officers, 91% said concealed carry should be permitted citizens “without question and without further restrictions.” [43](#note-91-43 "Gun Policy & Law Enforcement, PoliceOne, arch 2013")

**Fact:** 66% of police chiefs believe that citizens carrying concealed firearms reduce rates of violent crime. [44](#note-91-44 "National Association of Chiefs of Police, 17th Annual National Survey of Police Chiefs & Sheriffs, 2005")

**Fact:** “All the horror stories I thought would come to pass didn’t happen …I think it’s worked out well, and that says good things about the citizens who have permits. I’m a convert.” [45](#note-91-45 "Glenn White, president, Dallas Police Association, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997")

**Fact:** “I … \[felt\] that such legislation present\[ed\] a clear and present danger to law-abiding citizens by placing more handguns on our streets. Boy was I wrong. Our experience in Harris County, and indeed statewide, has proven my fears absolutely groundless.” [46](#note-91-46 "John B. Holmes, Harris County Texas district attorney, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997")

**Fact:** “Virginia has not turned into Dodge City. We have not seen a problem.” [47](#note-91-47 "Jerry Kilgore, Virginia Public Safety Secretary, Fredricksburg Freelance Star, February 2, 1996")

**Fact:** “The concerns I had – with more guns on the street, folks may be more apt to square off against one another with weapons – we haven’t experienced that.” [48](#note-91-48 "Chief Dennis Nowicki, Charlotte-Mecklenburg North Carolina Police, News and Observer, November 24, 1997")

**Fact:** “… to the best of my knowledge, we have not had an issue. I had expected there would be a lot more problems … But it has actually worked out.” [49](#note-91-49 "Lt. William Burgess of the Calhoun County (Michigan) Sheriff Department, Battle Creek Enquirer, January 28, 2005")

**Fact:** “Coming from California \[where he was on the Los Angeles police force for 28 years\], where it takes an act of Congress to get a concealed weapon permit, I got to Maine, where they give out lots of carrying concealed weapon permits, and I had a stack of CCW permits I was denying; that was my orientation. I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.” [50](#note-91-50 "Detroit Police Chief James Craig, Detroit police chief: Legal gun owners can deter crime, The Detroit News, January 3, 2014")

**Fact:** Explain this to the [Law Enforcement Alliance of America](http://www.leaa.org/), [Second Amendment Police Department](http://www.2ampd.net/#_blank), and Law Enforcement for the Preservation of the Second Amendment, all of whom support shall-issue concealed carry laws.

---

Notes:

1. 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022 [↩](#return-note-91-1)
2. 2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned; English; 2022 [↩](#return-note-91-2)
3. Active Shooter Incidents in the United States (2014-2014 and 2016-2017), FBI [↩](#return-note-91-3)
4. *The Problem With the FBI's 'Active Shooter' Data*, Lott, Real Clear Politics, October 2018 [↩](#return-note-91-4)
5. *An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates*, Applied Economics Letters, Vol 21, No. 4 [↩](#return-note-91-5)
6. Florida Department of Justice, 1998 [↩](#return-note-91-6)
7. *Shall issue: the new wave of concealed handgun permit laws,* Cramer C and Kopel D. Golden CO: Independence Institute Issue Paper. October 17, 1994 [↩](#return-note-91-7)
8. Some criminologist believe measuring first year change is shortsighted as it takes more than a year for permits to be issued, reach critical quantities, and for the criminally minded to recognize the new situation and avoid violent confrontations. [↩](#return-note-91-8)
9. Bureau of Justice Statistics, online database, reviewing Texas and U.S. violent crime from 1995-2001. [↩](#return-note-91-9)
10. *Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns*, Lott, John R., and Mustard, David B. J. of Legal Studies, vol.26, n.1, pp.1-68 (Jan. 1997): This study involved county level crime statistics from ***all*** 3,054 counties in the U.S., from 1977 through 1992. During this time ten states adopted right-to-carry laws. It is estimated that if all states had adopted right-to-carry laws, in 1992 the US would have avoided 1,400 murders, 4,200 rapes, 12,000 robberies, 60,000 aggravated assaults – and saved over $5,000,000,000 in victim expenses. [↩](#return-note-91-10)
11. FBI, Uniform Crime Reports, 2004 - excludes Hawaii and Rhode Island - small populations and geographic isolation create other determinants to violent crime. [↩](#return-note-91-11)
12. Federal legislation created a national "gun-free schools" policy, effective in 1996. Some criminologists maintain this created a new dynamic, encouraging mass murder on campus. Thus, after 1995 it is increasingly difficult to make comparisons based on the effects of CCWs and mass shootings. [↩](#return-note-91-12)
13. *Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement*, John Lott and William Landes, Law School of the University of Chicago, Law & Economics Working Paper No. 73 [↩](#return-note-91-13)
14. *Law Enforcement Officers Killed by Concealed Handgun Permit Holders*, VPC, December 13, 2009 [↩](#return-note-91-14)
15. Reports were as received. No selection or filtering process was used. [↩](#return-note-91-15)
16. Violent crime rates are from inception of “shall issue” CCW through 2006, the most recent period available through the Bureau of Justice Statistics online database. [↩](#return-note-91-16)
17. October 1987 through Jan 2008 [↩](#return-note-91-17)
18. 1995 – no follow-up data available at time of collection [↩](#return-note-91-18)
19. 1994 through 2007 [↩](#return-note-91-19)
20. 1995 through 2004 [↩](#return-note-91-20)
21. 2002 through 2006 [↩](#return-note-91-21)
22. In 2005 and 2006, Minnesota had an abnormal spike in robbery and aggravated assaults. The first three years of CCW in Minnesota saw violent crime rates being roughly stable and the problem has somewhat abated since then. [↩](#return-note-91-22)
23. 2001 through 2007 [↩](#return-note-91-23)
24. Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Census Bureau, reported in San Antonio Express-News, September, 2000 [↩](#return-note-91-24)
25. *An Analysis of the Arrest Rate of Texas Concealed Carry Handgun License Holders as Compared to the Arrest Rate of the Entire Texas Population*, William E. Sturdevant, September 11, 1999 [↩](#return-note-91-25)
26. Nina Butts, Texans Against Gun Violence, Dallas Morning News, August 10, 2000 [↩](#return-note-91-26)
27. John Holmes, Harris County \[Houston, TX\] District Attorney, *In Session: Handgun Law's First Year Belies Fears of 'Blood in the Streets*,” Texas Lawyer, December 9, 1996 [↩](#return-note-91-27)
28. *Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report*, Florida Department of State, 1998 – Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission, December 1998 [↩](#return-note-91-28)
29. State-by-state tally from licensing records conducted by Crime Prevention research Center [↩](#return-note-91-29)
30. *Gun Crimes Drop at Virginia Bars And Restaurants*, Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 14, 2011, reporting data from the Virginia State Police [↩](#return-note-91-30)
31. *Basis For Revocation Or Suspension Of Texas Concealed*, Texas Department of Public Safety, December 1, 1998 [↩](#return-note-91-31)
32. Texas Department of Corrections data, 1996-2000, compiled by the Texas State Rifle Association, [www.tsra.com](http://www.tsra.com/) [↩](#return-note-91-32)
33. These are year 2000 records. As of 2014, the number of Texas concealed carry license holders was 825,957. [↩](#return-note-91-33)
34. *An Analysis Of The Arrest Rate Of Texas Concealed Handgun License Holders As Compared To The Arrest Rate Of The Entire Texas Population*, William E. Sturdevant, PE, September 11, 1999 [↩](#return-note-91-34)
35. Glenn White, President of the Dallas Police Association, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997 [↩](#return-note-91-35)
36. Colonel James Wilson, Director Texas Department of Public Safety, Dallas Morning News, June 11, 1996 [↩](#return-note-91-36)
37. *Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement,*  Lott John R., Landes William M.; University of Chicago — Covers years 1977 to 1995 [↩](#return-note-91-37)
38. *Gun Policy & Law Enforcement*, PoliceOne, March 2013 [↩](#return-note-91-38)
39. *Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun*, by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, in The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, Volume 86, Number 1, Fall, 1995 [↩](#return-note-91-39)
40. *Criminal Victimization in the United States*, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1993 [↩](#return-note-91-40)
41. Kleck and Gertz, National Self Defense Survey, 1995 [↩](#return-note-91-41)
42. *Majority Say More Concealed Weapons Would Make U.S. Safer*, Gallup Poll, October, 2015 [↩](#return-note-91-42)
43. *Gun Policy & Law Enforcement*, PoliceOne, arch 2013 [↩](#return-note-91-43)
44. National Association of Chiefs of Police, 17th Annual National Survey of Police Chiefs & Sheriffs, 2005 [↩](#return-note-91-44)
45. Glenn White, president, Dallas Police Association, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997 [↩](#return-note-91-45)
46. John B. Holmes, Harris County Texas district attorney, Dallas Morning News, December 23, 1997 [↩](#return-note-91-46)
47. Jerry Kilgore, Virginia Public Safety Secretary, Fredricksburg Freelance Star, February 2, 1996 [↩](#return-note-91-47)
48. Chief Dennis Nowicki, Charlotte-Mecklenburg North Carolina Police, News and Observer, November 24, 1997 [↩](#return-note-91-48)
49. Lt. William Burgess of the Calhoun County (Michigan) Sheriff Department, Battle Creek Enquirer, January 28, 2005 [↩](#return-note-91-49)
50. Detroit Police Chief James Craig, *Detroit police chief: Legal gun owners can deter crime,* The Detroit News, January 3, 2014 [↩](#return-note-91-50)

---

### [Police and Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/police-and-guns/)

**Published:** September 16, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: More police officers are killed on duty in states with more guns

**[![POLICE AND GUNS - comparison of police and civilian homicides rates 1996-2010](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/POLICE-AND-GUNS-comparison-of-police-and-civilian-homicides-rates-1996-2010-400x309.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/POLICE-AND-GUNS-comparison-of-police-and-civilian-homicides-rates-1996-2010.jpg)Fact:** Police homicide rates are so low that statistical analysis begs inaccuracies due to the rareness of such killings. Using the study that made this claim [1](#note-24-1 "Firearm Prevalence and Homicides of Law Enforcement Officers in the United States, Swedler, Simmons, Dominici, and Hemenway, American Journal of Public Health, October 2015") the rate of civilian homicides was 60 times that of police officers, using the *highest* rate of police homicides. [2](#note-24-2 "Using the average national civilian homicide covering the period of their study for police.") To give you an idea of how small the numbers are, a mere 47 officers were killed with guns in 2014 (excluding firearm accidents). [3](#note-24-3 "Officer Down Memorial Page") Thus, the researchers were attempting to compare police homicides for each state when, on average, there was less than one such homicide per state.

## Myth: Police favor gun control

**Fact:** The National Association of Chiefs of Police polled its members [4](#note-24-4 "28th Annual National Survey Results, National Association of Chiefs of Police, 2016") and determined that:

- 86% want nationwide reciprocity for concealed carry licensees.
- 76% think armed citizen can help cops reduce violent crime.
- 88% believe any vetted (non-criminal) citizen should be able to buy a gun.

**Fact:** 94% of law enforcement officials believe that citizens should be able to purchase firearms for self-defense and sporting purposes. [5](#note-24-5 "17th Annual National Survey of Police Chiefs & Sheriffs, National Association of Chiefs of Police, 2005")

**Fact:** In a survey of 15,000 law enforcement professionals: [6](#note-24-6 "Gun Policy & Law Enforcement survey, PoliceOne, March 2013")

- 96% opposed limiting magazine capacity
- 91% think banning “assault weapons” would have no effect or a negative effect
- 62% said they would not enforce new gun control laws

**Fact:** 65.8% believe there should be no gun rationing, such as ‘one gun per month’ schemes.

**Fact:** 97.9% of police officers believe criminals are able to obtain any type of firearm through illegal means.

**Fact:** “Gun control has not worked in D.C. The only people who have guns are criminals. We have the strictest gun laws in the nation and one of the highest murder rates. It’s quicker to pull your Smith & Wesson than to dial 911 if you’re being robbed.” [7](#note-24-7 "Lt. Lowell Duckett, Special Assistant to DC Police Chief; President, Black Police Caucus, The Washington Post, March 22, 1996")

## Myth: Police are our protection — people don’t need guns

**Fact:** Tell that to 14,196 murder victims, 345,031 robbery victims, and 79,770 rape victims who the police could not help. [8](#note-24-8 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 2014")

**Fact:** The courts have consistently ruled that the police do not have an obligation to protect individuals. In Warren v. District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App. 1981), the court stated “… courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community.”

**Fact:** There are not enough police to protect everyone. In 1999, there were about 150,000 police officers on duty at any one time. [9](#note-24-9 "US Justice Department, 1998")

- This is on-duty police. This includes desk clerks, command sergeants, etc. – far fewer than 150,000 cops are cruising your neighborhood.
- There were approximately 271,933,702 people living in the United States in 1999. [10](#note-24-10 "US Census Bureau, 1999 estimate")
- Thus ***there is only one on-duty cop for every 1,813 citizens.***

**Fact:** Former Florida Attorney General Jim Smith told Florida legislators that police responded to only 200,000 of 700,000 calls for help to DadeCounty authorities.

**Fact:** The United States Department of Justice found that, in 1989, there were 168,881 crimes of violence for which police had not responded within 1 hour.

**Fact:** 95% of the time police arrive too late to prevent a crime or arrest the suspect. [11](#note-24-11 "This is 911 ... please hold, Witkin, Gordon, Guttman, Monika and Lenzy, Tracy. U.S. News & World Report, June 17, 1998")

Fact:** 75% of protective/restraining orders are violated and police often won’t enforce them unless they witness the violation. [12](#note-24-12 "Anti-stalking laws usually are unable to protect targets, Ellen Sorokin, Washington Times, April 16, 2000")

**Fact:** Despite prompt law enforcement responses, most armed and violent attacks at schools were stopped by means other than law enforcement intervention. [13](#note-24-13 "Threat Assessment In Schools, U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education, 2002") Often these interventions were by administrators, teachers, or other students who were licensed to carry firearms.

## Myth: The supply of guns is a danger to law enforcement

**Fact:** The courts kill cops by letting felons out of prison early. Of police killed in the line of duty:

- 70% are killed by criminals with prior arrest records
- 53% of these criminals have prior convictions
- 22% are on probation when the officer is killed

## Myth: “Cop Killer” bullets need to be banned

**Fact:** KTW rounds, wrongly labeled as “cop killer” bullets, were designed by police officers [14](#note-24-14 "Developed by Daniel Turcos (a police sergeant) and Donald Ward (Dr. Kopsch's special investigator)"), for use by police to penetrate hard targets like car windshields. KTWs have never been sold to the general public. [15](#note-24-15 "Cop Killer Bullets, Mike Casey, July 2000")

## Myth: Teflon bullets are designed to penetrate police bullet-proof vests

**Fact:** KTW rounds are Teflon coated to prevent heat build-up in a police officer’s gun barrel, not to pierce body armor. [16](#note-24-16 "Cop Killer Bullets, Mike Casey, July 2000")

---

Notes:

1. *Firearm Prevalence and Homicides of Law Enforcement Officers in the United States*, Swedler, Simmons, Dominici, and Hemenway, American Journal of Public Health, October 2015 [↩](#return-note-24-1)
2. Using the average national civilian homicide covering the period of their study for police. [↩](#return-note-24-2)
3. *Officer Down Memorial Page* [↩](#return-note-24-3)
4. *28th Annual National Survey Results*, National Association of Chiefs of Police, 2016 [↩](#return-note-24-4)
5. *17th Annual National Survey of Police Chiefs & Sheriffs*, National Association of Chiefs of Police, 2005 [↩](#return-note-24-5)
6. *Gun Policy & Law Enforcement survey*, PoliceOne, March 2013 [↩](#return-note-24-6)
7. Lt. Lowell Duckett, Special Assistant to DC Police Chief; President, Black Police Caucus, The Washington Post, March 22, 1996 [↩](#return-note-24-7)
8. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 2014 [↩](#return-note-24-8)
9. US Justice Department, 1998 [↩](#return-note-24-9)
10. US Census Bureau, 1999 estimate [↩](#return-note-24-10)
11. *This is 911 ... please hold,* Witkin, Gordon, Guttman, Monika and Lenzy, Tracy. U.S. News & World Report, June 17, 1998 [↩](#return-note-24-11)
12. *Anti-stalking laws usually are unable to protect targets,* Ellen Sorokin, Washington Times, April 16, 2000 [↩](#return-note-24-12)
13. *Threat Assessment In Schools*, U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education, 2002 [↩](#return-note-24-13)
14. Developed by Daniel Turcos (a police sergeant) and Donald Ward (Dr. Kopsch's special investigator) [↩](#return-note-24-14)
15. *Cop Killer Bullets,* Mike Casey, July 2000 [↩](#return-note-24-15)
16. *Cop Killer Bullets,* Mike Casey, July 2000 [↩](#return-note-24-16)

---

### [Availability of Guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/availability-of-guns/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: The availability of guns causes crime

[![AVAILABILITY OF GUNS - Handgun Supply and Homicide, Suicide Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-Handgun-Supply-and-Homicies-Suicide-Rates-400x310.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-Handgun-Supply-and-Homicies-Suicide-Rates.png)[![Homicides by Weapon Type by State 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Homicides-by-Weapon-Type-by-State-2017-b-400x276.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Homicides-by-Weapon-Type-by-State-2017-b.png)**Fact:** Though the number of firearms owned by private citizens has been increasing steadily since 1970, the overall rate of homicides and suicides has not risen (though suicide rates did start to rise during the Great Recession). [1](#note-87-1 "Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997. (With supporting data from the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1972 to 1995.)") As the chart shows, there is no correlation between the availability of firearms and the rates of homicide and suicide in America.

**Fact:** Internationally speaking “There’s no clear relationship between more guns and higher levels of violence.” [2](#note-87-2 "Small Arms Survey Project, Keith Krause, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, 2007")

**Fact:** When homicide modes (weapon type) are charted against gun ownership rates and total homicide rates, homicides rise as per capita gun ownership rates decline.

**Fact:** “A detailed study of the major surveys completed in the past 20 years or more provides no evidence of any relationship between the total number of legally held firearms in society and the rate of armed crime. Nor is there a relationship between the severity of controls imposed in various countries or the mass of bureaucracy involved with many control systems with the apparent ease of access to firearms by criminals and terrorists.” [3](#note-87-3 "Minutes of Evidence, Colin Greenwood, Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, January 29, 2003")

**Fact:** Handgun ownership among groups normally associated with higher violent crime (young males, blacks, low income, inner city, etc.) is at or below national averages. [4](#note-87-4 "Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997. (Ownership tables derived from the annual “General Social Survey.”)")

**Fact:** Among inmates who used a firearm in the commission of a crime, the most significant correlations occurred when the inmates’ parents abused drugs (27.5%) and when inmates had friends engaged in illegal activities (32.5% for robberies, 24.3% for drug trafficking). [5](#note-87-5 "Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001")

**Fact:** Five out of six gun-possessing felons obtained handguns from the secondary market and by theft, and “\[the\] criminal handgun market is overwhelmingly dominated by informal transactions and theft as mechanisms of supply.” [6](#note-87-6 "The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons, James D. Wright, Peter H. Rossi, National Institute of Justice (U.S.), 1985")

**Fact:** The majority of handguns in the possession of criminals are stolen, and not necessarily by the criminals in question. [7](#note-87-7 "Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997.") In fact, over 100,000 firearms are stolen in burglaries every year, and most of them likely enter the criminal market (i.e., are sold or traded to criminals). [8](#note-87-8 "Victimization During Household Burglary, Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 2010")

**[![AVAILABILITY OF GUNS - Homicide In England and Wales pre-post 1968 Gun Control act](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-Homicide-In-England-and-Wales-pre-post-1968-Gun-Control-act-400x315.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-Homicide-In-England-and-Wales-pre-post-1968-Gun-Control-act.png)Fact:** In 1968, the U.K. passed laws that reduced the number of licensed firearm owners, and thus reduced firearm availability. U.K. homicide rates **have steadily risen** since then. [9](#note-87-9 "A Century of Change: Trends in UK Statistics since 1900, Hicks, Joe; Allen, Grahame (SGS), Social and General Statistics Section, House of Commons") Ironically, firearm use in crimes has ***doubled*** in the decade after the U.K. banned handguns. [10](#note-87-10 "Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger, The Times, August 24, 2007")

**Fact:** Most violent crime is caused by a small minority of repeat offenders. One California study found that 3.8% of a group of males born in 1956 were responsible for 55.5% of all serious felonies. [11](#note-87-11 "The Prevalence and Incidence of Arrest Among Adult Males in California, Robert Tillman, prepared for California Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Statistics and Special Services, Sacramento, California, 1987") 75-80% of murder arrestees have prior arrests for a violent (including non-fatal) felony or burglary. On average, they have about four felony arrests and one felony conviction.

**Fact:** Half of all murders are committed by people on “conditional release” (i.e., parole or probation). [12](#note-87-12 "Probation and Parole Violators in State Prison, 1991: Survey of State Prison Inmates, Robyn Cohen, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995") 81% of all homicide defendants had an arrest record, 67% had a felony arrest record, 70% had a conviction record, and 54% had a felony conviction. [13](#note-87-13 "Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 1998, Brian Reaves, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001")

**Fact:** Per capita firearm ownership rates have risen steadily since 1959 while crime rates have gone up and down depending on economics, drug trafficking innovations, and “get tough” crime legislation. [14](#note-87-14 "Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 1998, Brian Reaves, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 (Based on a compilation of 85 separate surveys from 1959 through 1996.)")

**Thoughts:** Criminals are not motivated by guns. They are motivated by opportunity. Attempts to reduce public access to firearms provide criminals more points of opportunity. It is little wonder that high-crime cities also tend to be those with the most restrictive gun control laws – which criminals tend to ignore.

## Myth: Gun availability increases suicide rates

[![GUN AVAILABILITY - International Suicide Rates and Firearm Availability rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/GUN-AVAILABILITY-International-Suicide-Rates-and-Firearm-Availability-rates-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/GUN-AVAILABILITY-International-Suicide-Rates-and-Firearm-Availability-rates.png)[![AVAILABILITY OF GUNS - Suicide rates by age, means and gender 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-Suicide-rates-by-age-means-and-gender-2019-400x282.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/AVAILABILITY-OF-GUNS-Suicide-rates-by-age-means-and-gender-2019.png)**Fact:** Cross national studies show that there is no relationship to suicides rates and the availability of firearms. Two outstanding contrasts:

- The U.S. and Canada – who share geography, cultural elements, and entertainment – have nearly identical suicide rates, but Canada has significantly lower gun ownership.
- Lithuania – which has nearly zero gun ownership – has the world’s highest suicide rate, more than three times that of the United States.

**Fact:** Firearm use in suicides is heavily skewed to older males, especially older rural, white males. This despite firearms being readily available to all adults and all genders.

## Myth: Gun availability is what is causing school shootings

**Fact:** Schoolyard shootings have been occurring since at least 1974, so it is not a new phenomenon due to increases in gun ownership. [15](#note-87-15 "U.S.S.S. Safe School Initiative: An Interim Report on the Prevention of Targeted Violence in Schools, B. Vossekuil, M. Reddy, R. Fein,  R. Borum, W. Modzeleski, U. S. Secret Service, Threat Assessment Center, 2000")

**Fact:** More than 50% of these murderers started thinking about their assaults two or more weeks before the shooting, and 75% planned-out their attacks, showing that these events are not spontaneous. [16](#note-87-16 "U.S.S.S. Safe School Initiative: An Interim Report on the Prevention of Targeted Violence in Schools, B. Vossekuil, M. Reddy, R. Fein,  R. Borum, W. Modzeleski, U. S. Secret Service, Threat Assessment Center, 2000")

**Thoughts:** In rural areas, guns are everywhere, and children are taught to shoot at young ages – yet these areas are almost devoid of schoolyard shootings. Clearly, availability is not the issue.

## Myth: Gun availability leads to massacres

**Fact:** In 62% of mass public shootings, the assailant had a history of having “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” [17](#note-87-17 "Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy, Mother Jones, November 9, 2012")

## Myth: Gun ownership is linked to higher homicide rates

**Fact:** This “study” [18](#note-87-18 "State-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001–2003, Matthew Miller, David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael, Harvard School of Public Health, October 27, 2006") has multiple defects which, when corrected, reverse the results. Some of the defects of this study include:

- Exclusion of the District of Columbia, a high crime city
- Use of other crime rates to indirectly explain homicide rates
- Use of purely cross-sectional data that never allowed control variable analysis
- Data from different years is used without any explanation (unemployment rate from 2000 to explain the homicide rate from 2001 to 2003, etc.).

## Myth: Handguns are 43 times more likely to kill a family member than a criminal

**Fact:** Of the 43 deaths reported in this flawed study, 37 (86%) were suicides. Other deaths involved criminal activity between the family members (botched drug deals). [19](#note-87-19 "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home, Arthur L. Kellerman, D.T. Reay, 314 New Eng. J. Med. 1557-60, June 12, 1986.  (Kellerman admits that his study did "not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm." He also admitted his study did not look at situations in which intruders "purposely avoided a home known to be armed." This is a classic case of a "study" conducted to achieve a desired result. In his critique of this "study", Gary Kleck notes that the estimation of gun ownership rates was "inaccurate", and that the total population came from a non-random selection of only two cities )")

**Fact:** Of the remaining deaths, the deceased family members include felons, drug dealers, violent spouses committing assault, and other criminals. [20](#note-87-20 "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home, Arthur L. Kellerman, D.T. Reay, 314 New Eng. J. Med. 1557-60, June 12, 1986")

**Fact:** Only 0.1% of the defensive uses of guns results in the death of the predator. [21](#note-87-21 "Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Gary Kleck, New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991") This means you are much more likely to prevent a crime without bloodshed than hurt a family member.

---

Notes:

1. *Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control*, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997. (With supporting data from the FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1972 to 1995.) [↩](#return-note-87-1)
2. *Small Arms Survey Project*, Keith Krause, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, 2007 [↩](#return-note-87-2)
3. *Minutes of Evidence*, Colin Greenwood, Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, January 29, 2003 [↩](#return-note-87-3)
4. *Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control*, Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997. (Ownership tables derived from the annual “General Social Survey.”) [↩](#return-note-87-4)
5. *Firearm Use by Offenders*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 [↩](#return-note-87-5)
6. *The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons*, James D. Wright, Peter H. Rossi, National Institute of Justice (U.S.), 1985 [↩](#return-note-87-6)
7. *Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control,* Gary Kleck, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997. [↩](#return-note-87-7)
8. *Victimization During Household Burglary*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 2010 [↩](#return-note-87-8)
9. *A Century of Change: Trends in UK Statistics since 1900*, Hicks, Joe; Allen, Grahame (SGS), Social and General Statistics Section, House of Commons [↩](#return-note-87-9)
10. *Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger*, The Times, August 24, 2007 [↩](#return-note-87-10)
11. *The Prevalence and Incidence of Arrest Among Adult Males in California*, Robert Tillman, prepared for California Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Statistics and Special Services, Sacramento, California, 1987 [↩](#return-note-87-11)
12. *Probation and Parole Violators in State Prison, 1991: Survey of State Prison Inmates*, Robyn Cohen, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995 [↩](#return-note-87-12)
13. *Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties*, 1998, Brian Reaves, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 [↩](#return-note-87-13)
14. *Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties*, 1998, Brian Reaves, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 (Based on a compilation of 85 separate surveys from 1959 through 1996.) [↩](#return-note-87-14)
15. *U.S.S.S. Safe School Initiative:* *An Interim Report on the Prevention of Targeted Violence in Schools*, B. Vossekuil, M. Reddy, R. Fein, R. Borum, W. Modzeleski, U. S. Secret Service, Threat Assessment Center, 2000 [↩](#return-note-87-15)
16. *U.S.S.S. Safe School Initiative:* *An Interim Report on the Prevention of Targeted Violence in Schools*, B. Vossekuil, M. Reddy, R. Fein, R. Borum, W. Modzeleski, U. S. Secret Service, Threat Assessment Center, 2000 [↩](#return-note-87-16)
17. *Mass Shootings: Maybe What We Need Is a Better Mental-Health Policy*, Mother Jones, November 9, 2012 [↩](#return-note-87-17)
18. *State-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001–2003*, Matthew Miller, David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael, Harvard School of Public Health, October 27, 2006 [↩](#return-note-87-18)
19. *Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home*, Arthur L. Kellerman, D.T. Reay, 314 New Eng. J. Med. 1557-60, June 12, 1986. (Kellerman admits that his study did "not include cases in which burglars or intruders are wounded or frightened away by the use or display of a firearm." He also admitted his study did not look at situations in which intruders "purposely avoided a home known to be armed." This is a classic case of a "study" conducted to achieve a desired result. In his critique of this "study", Gary Kleck notes that the estimation of gun ownership rates was "inaccurate", and that the total population came from a non-random selection of only two cities ) [↩](#return-note-87-19)
20. *Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home*, Arthur L. Kellerman, D.T. Reay, 314 New Eng. J. Med. 1557-60, June 12, 1986 [↩](#return-note-87-20)
21. *Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America*, Gary Kleck, New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991 [↩](#return-note-87-21)

---

### [The Editor](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/the-editor/)

**Published:** September 16, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

**![Guy Smith, Gun Facts author](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/g.jpg)Background:** With an education in quantitative management, and as a working market researcher, Guy started noticing that gun policy organizations were less than factual and often outright dishonest. His research capabilities, paired with a stubborn southern gent’s honor, caused him to take-up the cause of debunking gun policy misinformation.

Guy is ***not*** a member of any organization – not the NRA, not Everytown for Gun Safety, not the Second Amendment Foundation, not the Brady Campaign. Nada. Not even any political party. Someone once bought Guy a membership in the California Rifle and Pistol Association, and Guy immediately demanded to be removed from the membership roster.

**Speaking:** Guy is a regular speaker on television (Al Jazeera, CCTV, Thom Hartmann’s Big Picture), radio (several of the [Heavy Hundred](http://www.talkers.com/heavy-hundred/), Gun Talk, NRANews and countless regional stations) and at meetings of civil liberty groups, including being an invited speaker at the Gun Rights Policy Conference.

If you are with the media and wish to interview Guy, or have him speak before your group, email him at **guy \[at\] GunFacts.info**.

---

### [Assault Weapons](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/assault-weapons/)

**Published:** October 15, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

“Assault weapon” is an invented term. In the firearm lexicon, there is no such thing as an “assault weapon.” [1](#note-531-1 "It is worth noting that there are numerous different ‘legal’ definitions of "assault weapons".  A report from the Legal Community Against Violence showed no fewer than eight jurisdictions, anywhere from 19 to 75 banned firearms, six differing generic classification schemes and several legal systems for banning more firearms without specific legislative action.  In other words, an "assault weapon" is whatever a politician deems it to be.") The closest relative is the “assault rifle,” which is a machine gun or “select fire” rifle that shoots rifle cartridges. [2](#note-531-2 "Small Arms Identification and Operations Guide, U.S. Department of Defense. The exact statement from their manual is "short, compact, select-fire weapons that fires a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges."") In most cases, “assault weapons” are functionally identical though less powerful than hunting rifles, but they are *cosmetically* similar to military guns.

## Myth: Assault weapons are a serious problem in the U.S.

**Fact:** In 1994, before the Federal “assault weapons ban,” you were eleven (11) times more likely to be beaten to death than to be killed by an “assault weapon.” [3](#note-531-3 "Based on death rates reported by CDC and FBI Uniform Crime Statistics and estimating from state-level reporting on the percent of crimes involving types of firearms")

**Fact:** In the first 7 years since the ban was lifted, murders declined 43%, violent crime 43%, rapes 27% and robberies 49%. [4](#note-531-4 "FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics - UCR Data Online, 1995-2012")

**Fact:** Nationally, “assault weapons” were used in 1.4% of crimes involving firearms and 0.25% of all violent crime before the enactment of any national or state “assault weapons” ban. In many major urban areas (San Antonio, Mobile, Nashville, etc.) and some entire states (Maryland, New Jersey, etc.) the rate is less than 0.1%. [5](#note-531-5 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, compilation of 48 metropolitan police departments from 1980-1994")

**Fact:** Even weapons misclassified as “assault weapons” (common in the former Federal and California “assault weapons” confiscations) are used in less than 1% of all homicides. [6](#note-531-6 "Based on state-level reporting from various states in 1993 during debates concerning the bill.")

**Fact:** Police reports show that “assault weapons” are a non-problem:

For California:

- **Los Angeles:** In 1998, of 538 documented gun incidents, only one (0.2%) involved an “assault weapon.”
- **San Francisco:** In 1998, only 2.2% of confiscated weapons were “assault weapons.”
- **San Diego:** Between 1988 and 1990, only 0.3% of confiscated weapons were “assault weapons.”
- “I surveyed the firearms used in violent crimes…assault-type firearms were the least of our worries.” [7](#note-531-7 "S.C. Helsley, Assistant Director DOJ Investigation and Enforcement Branch, California, October 31, 1988")

For the rest of the nation:

- Between 1980 and 1994, only 2% of confiscated guns were “assault weapons.” [8](#note-531-8 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, compilation of 48 metropolitan police departments from 1980-1994")
- Fewer than 2% of criminals that commit violent crimes used “assault weapons.” [9](#note-531-9 "Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, calculated from Bureau of Justice Statistics, assault weapon recovery rates")

**Fact:** Only 1.4% of recovered crime weapons are models covered under the 1994 “assault weapons” ban. [10](#note-531-10 "From statewide recovery report from Connecticut (1988-1993) and Pennsylvania (1989-1994)")

**Fact:** In Virginia, no surveyed inmates had carried an “assault weapon” during the commission of their last crime, despite 20% admitting that they had previously owned such weapons. [11](#note-531-11 "Criminal Justice Research Center, Department of Criminal Justice Services, 1994")

**Fact:** Most “assault weapons” have no more firepower or killing capacity than the average hunting rifle and “play a small role in overall violent crime.” [12](#note-531-12 "House Panel Issue: Can Gun Ban Work, New York Times. April 7, 1989. P. A-15, quoting Philip McGuire, Handgun Control, Inc.,")

Some men use weapons to compensate for their inadequacy in bed, but is better suited for this.

**Fact:** Even the government agrees. “… the weapons banned by this legislation \[1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban – since repealed\] were used only rarely in gun crimes … There has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence, based on indicators like the percentage of gun crimes resulting in death or the share of gunfire incidents resulting in injury.” [13](#note-531-13 "Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96, National Institute of Justice, March 1999")

## Myth: Assault weapons are used in between 2 and 9% of gun crimes

**Fact:** This data point came from [a study with very weak data and numerous methodology issues](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/#criminal-sw-lcm).

## Myth: Assault weapons are used in mass public shootings

**[![ASSAULT WEAPONS - Assault weapons used in mass public shootings 1986 thru July of 2025](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ASSAULT-WEAPONS-Assault-weapons-used-in-mass-public-shootings-1986-thru-July-of-2025-400x400.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/ASSAULT-WEAPONS-Assault-weapons-used-in-mass-public-shootings-1986-thru-July-of-2025.png)Fact:** Only 14% of mass public shootings were committed using assault weapons, as defined by the 1994 Federal Assault Weapon bill (handguns of the primary weapon, used in 74% of mass public shootings). [14](#note-531-14 "Analysis of the Gun Facts Mass Shooting Database as of the fall of 2019")

**Fact:** A decade long study, covering 84 mass public shootings, found that pistols were used 60% of the time. Rifles were used 27%. [15](#note-531-15 "United States Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2010: Training and Equipment Implications, Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT),Texas State University, 2013") But that is *all* types of rifles, and so-called “assault weapons” (such as the AR-15 or civilian versions of the AK-47) are a subset of these.

## Myth: Assault weapons cause more serious damage to a body that handguns or common rifles

**Fact:** “Civilian public mass shooting events with a handgun are more lethal than those associated with use of a rifle.” [16](#note-531-16 "Wounding Patterns Based on Firearm Type in Civilian Public Mass Shootings in the United States - 2018 - Sarani, Hendrix, Matecki, Estroff, Amdur, Robinson, Shapiro, Gondek, Mitchell, Smith - Journal of the American College of Surgeons") This would, of course, include the two most common civilian “assault weapons”, namely the AR-15 and AK-47.

**Fact:** “The case fatality rate by firearm type was 0.63 for shotgun, 0.72 for handgun, and 0.19 for rifle.” [17](#note-531-17 "Wounding Patterns Based on Firearm Type in Civilian Public Mass Shootings in the United States - 2018 - Sarani, Hendrix, Matecki, Estroff, Amdur, Robinson, Shapiro, Gondek, Mitchell, Smith - Journal of the American College of Surgeons")

**[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Balistics-of-various-calibers-of-handgun-and-rifle-ammunition-c-400x598.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Balistics-of-various-calibers-of-handgun-and-rifle-ammunition-c.jpg)Fact:** Bodily damage is a factor of the amount of energy transferred from the bullet to the body, and which organs it hits. [18](#note-531-18 "Gunshot wounds - A review of ballistics, bullets, weapons, and myths - 2016 - Rhee, Moore, Joseph, Tang, Pandit, Vercruysse - Journal of Trauma") This is measured in “foot pounds” (ftlb) of energy. This chart shows the AR15 and AK17 rounds are in the middle of the list, and far less than the M1 Garand, a WWII rifle the U.S. government gives surpluses of away as part of the Civilian Marksmanship Program.

## Myth: Every 48 hours, an assault rifle is traced to crime in Maryland

**Fact:** This claim by Cease Fire Maryland includes firearms never used in crimes. Some examples of firearms traced include:

- 47 firearms found at a private residence of a person who passed-away from natural causes, and which were never used in any crime.
- Firearms temporarily taken from owners under court Emergency Evaluation Petitions (the firearms were not used in crimes, but the judge wanted them confiscated until other issues are resolved).

**Fact:** This claim lacks perspective. During the same time period, there were 163,101 violent crimes reported in Maryland. Even if the Cease Fire Maryland data was correct, they have connected assault rifles to just 0.4% of violent crimes during the same period.

## Myth: One out of five police officers killed are killed with assault weapons [19](#note-531-19 "This claim was made by the anti-gun Violence Policy Center in their 2003 report titled Officer Down")

**Fact:** This “study” included firearms not on the former Federal “assault weapons”list. By including various legal firearms [20](#note-531-20 "The study included legal models of the SKS, Ruger Mini-14, and M1-Carbine, which were all in circulation before the federal "assault weapons" ban and which were excluded from the ban.") the report inflated the statistics nearly 100%.

**Fact:** Only 1% of police officers murdered were killed using “assault weapons.” They were twice as likely to be killed with their own handgun. [21](#note-531-21 "Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, FBI, 1994")

**Fact:** One 2006 federal government study found *zero* “assault weapons” were used to kill police officers. [22](#note-531-22 "Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation’s Law Enforcement Officers, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006")

**Fact:** Police don’t think it is a major problem, with 91% saying an assault weapons ban would have either no effect or a negative effect on violent crime. [23](#note-531-23 "Gun Policy & Law Enforcement, PoliceOne, March 2013")

## Myth: Assault weapons are favored by criminals

**Fact:** Only 6% of criminals use anything that is classified (even incorrectly) as an “assault weapon,” [24](#note-531-24 "Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001") and fewer than 2.5% of criminal claimed to use these firearms when committing crimes. [25](#note-531-25 "Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001")

**Fact:** Criminals are over five times more likely to carry single shot handguns as they are to carry “assault weapons.” [26](#note-531-26 "Firearm Use by Offenders, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001")

**Fact:** “Assault rifles have never been an issue in law enforcement. I have been on this job for 25 years and I haven’t seen a drug dealer carry one. They are not used in crimes, they are not used against police officers.” [27](#note-531-27 "Deputy Chief of Police Joseph Constance, Trenton, NJ, testimony - Senate Judiciary Committee in Aug 1993")

**Fact:** “Since police started keeping statistics, we now know that ‘assault weapons’ are/were used in an underwhelming 0.026 of 1% of crimes in New Jersey. This means that my officers are more likely to confront an escaped tiger from the local zoo than to confront an assault rifle in the hands of a drug-crazed killer on the streets.” [28](#note-531-28 "Deputy Chief of Police Joseph Constance, Trenton, NJ, testimony - Senate Judiciary Committee in Aug 1993")

**Thoughts:** “Assault weapons” are large and unwieldy. Even misclassified handguns tend to be bigger than practical for concealed carry. Criminals (who, incidentally, disregard concealed carry laws) are unlikely to carry “assault weapons” and instead carry handguns, which are more easily concealed.

## Myth: Assault weapons can be easily converted to machine guns

**Fact:** Firearms that can be “readily converted” are already prohibited by law. [29](#note-531-29 "U.S. Code title 26, subtitle E, Chapter 53, subchapter B, part 1, section 5845")

**Fact:** None of the firearms on the list of banned weapons can be readily converted. [30](#note-531-30 "BATF test as reported in the New York Times, April 3, 1989")

**Fact:** Only 0.15% of over 4,000 weapons confiscated in Los Angeles in one year were converted, and only 0.3% had any evidence of an attempt to convert. [31](#note-531-31 "Congressional testimony, Jimmy Trahin, Los Angeles Detective, Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, May 5, 1989, 101st Congress, 1st Session, Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, May 5, 1989, p. 379")

## Myth: Assault weapons are used in 16% of homicides

**Fact:** This figure was concocted to promote an “assault weapons” bill in New York. Their classification scheme included most firearms sold in the U.S. since 1987 (centerfire rifles, shotguns holding more than six cartridges, and handguns holding more than 10 rounds). By misclassifying most firearms as “assault weapons,” they expanded the scope of a non-problem.

## Myth: The 1994 (former) Federal Assault Weapons Ban was effective

**Fact:** Murder rates were 19.3% higher when the Federal assault weapons ban was in force. [32](#note-531-32 "An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates, Applied Economics Letters, Vol 21, No. 4")

**[![Assault Weapons Use in Mass Public Shootings - 1982 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Assault-Weapons-Use-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1982-thru-2019-400x232.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Assault-Weapons-Use-in-Mass-Public-Shootings-1982-thru-2019.png)Fact:** ” … we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.” [33](#note-531-33 "An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, National Institute of Justice, June 2004")

**Fact:** The ban covered only 1.39% of the models of firearms on the market, so the ban’s effectiveness is automatically limited.

**Fact:** “The ban has failed to reduce the average number of victims per gun murder incident or multiple gunshot wound victims.” [34](#note-531-34 "Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96, National Institute of Justice, March 1999")

**Fact:** “The public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated.” [35](#note-531-35 "Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96, National Institute of Justice, March 1999")

**Fact:** “The ban triggered speculative price increases and ramped-up production of the banned firearms … prior to the law’s implementation,” [36](#note-531-36 "Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96, National Institute of Justice, March 1999") and thus increased the total supply over the following decade.

**Fact:** The Brady Campaign claims that “After the 1994 ban, there were 18% fewer ‘assault weapons’ traced to crime in the first eight months of 1995 than were traced in the same period in 1994.” However, they failed to note (and these are mentioned in the NIJ study) that:

1. “Assault weapons” traces were minimal before the ban (due to their infrequent use in crimes), so an 18% change enters the realm of statistical irrelevancy.

2. Fewer “assault weapons” were available to criminals because collectors bought-up the available supply before the ban.

## Myth: States need to ban assault weapons

**Fact:** State assault weapons bans “did not significantly affect murder rates” in a study covering 1980-2009. [37](#note-531-37 "An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates, Applied Economics Letters, Vol 21, No. 4")

## Myth: Assault weapons have only one purpose, to kill large numbers of people

**Fact:** Of the millions of these firearms currently in civilian hands, they are routinely used for:

- Small game hunting (especially hog hunting in thick southern brush)
- Sports competitions such as “three gun shoots”
- Self-defense, both at home and during civil disorder situations such as the Rodney King riots in L.A. and Hurricane Katrina

## Myth: Nobody needs an assault weapon

**Fact:** Their light weight and durability make them suitable for many types of hunting and are especially favored for wild boar hunting.

**Fact:** Their lighter recoil combined with light weight make them the preferred rifle with people of small stature or limited strength.

**Fact:** Recall the 1992 Rodney King riots in the anti-gun city of Los Angeles. Every major news network carried footage of Korean store owners sitting on the roofs of their stores, armed with “assault weapons.” [38](#note-531-38 "Washington Post, May 2, 1992") Those were the stores that did ***not*** get burned to the ground, and those were the people that were ***not*** dragged into the street and beaten by rioters. “You can’t get around the image of people shooting at people to protect their stores and it working. This is damaging to the \[gun control\] movement.” [39](#note-531-39 "Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, Washington Post, May 18, 1993")

**Fact:** There are many reasons people prefer to use these firearms:

- They are easy to operate
- They are very reliable in outdoor conditions (backpacking, hunting, etc.)
- They are accurate
- They are good for recreational and competitive target shooting
- They have value in many self-defense situations

**Fact:** There are many sports in which these firearms are required:

- Many hunters use these firearms (especially for wild boar hunting in the south)
- Three-gun target matches
- Camp Perry competitions, especially the Service Rifle events
- DCM/CMP competitions
- Bodyguard simulations

**NOTE:** A Washington Post survey from fall of 2022 shows the top motivations of AR-15 owners (AR’s being a subset of “assault weapons”):

- 33% Self/hone defense
- 30% Recreation and target shooting
- 60% Target shooting is a “major” motivation and 65% for defense

---

Notes:

1. It is worth noting that there are numerous different ‘legal’ definitions of "assault weapons". A report from the Legal Community Against Violence showed no fewer than eight jurisdictions, anywhere from 19 to 75 banned firearms, six differing generic classification schemes and several legal systems for banning more firearms without specific legislative action. In other words, an "assault weapon" is whatever a politician deems it to be. [↩](#return-note-531-1)
2. *Small Arms Identification and Operations Guide, U.S. Department of Defense.* The exact statement from their manual is "short, compact, **select-fire** weapons that fires a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges." [↩](#return-note-531-2)
3. Based on death rates reported by CDC and FBI Uniform Crime Statistics and estimating from state-level reporting on the percent of crimes involving types of firearms [↩](#return-note-531-3)
4. FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics - UCR Data Online, 1995-2012 [↩](#return-note-531-4)
5. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, compilation of 48 metropolitan police departments from 1980-1994 [↩](#return-note-531-5)
6. Based on state-level reporting from various states in 1993 during debates concerning the bill. [↩](#return-note-531-6)
7. S.C. Helsley, Assistant Director DOJ Investigation and Enforcement Branch, California, October 31, 1988 [↩](#return-note-531-7)
8. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, compilation of 48 metropolitan police departments from 1980-1994 [↩](#return-note-531-8)
9. *Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, calculated from Bureau of Justice Statistics, assault weapon recovery rates [↩](#return-note-531-9)
10. From statewide recovery report from Connecticut (1988-1993) and Pennsylvania (1989-1994) [↩](#return-note-531-10)
11. Criminal Justice Research Center, Department of Criminal Justice Services, 1994 [↩](#return-note-531-11)
12. *House Panel Issue: Can Gun Ban Work*, New York Times. April 7, 1989. P. A-15, quoting Philip McGuire, Handgun Control, Inc., [↩](#return-note-531-12)
13. *Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96*, National Institute of Justice, March 1999 [↩](#return-note-531-13)
14. Analysis of the Gun Facts Mass Shooting Database as of the fall of 2019 [↩](#return-note-531-14)
15. *United States Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2010: Training and Equipment Implications*, Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT),Texas State University, 2013 [↩](#return-note-531-15)
16. Wounding Patterns Based on Firearm Type in Civilian Public Mass Shootings in the United States - 2018 - Sarani, Hendrix, Matecki, Estroff, Amdur, Robinson, Shapiro, Gondek, Mitchell, Smith - Journal of the American College of Surgeons [↩](#return-note-531-16)
17. Wounding Patterns Based on Firearm Type in Civilian Public Mass Shootings in the United States - 2018 - Sarani, Hendrix, Matecki, Estroff, Amdur, Robinson, Shapiro, Gondek, Mitchell, Smith - Journal of the American College of Surgeons [↩](#return-note-531-17)
18. Gunshot wounds - A review of ballistics, bullets, weapons, and myths - 2016 - Rhee, Moore, Joseph, Tang, Pandit, Vercruysse - Journal of Trauma [↩](#return-note-531-18)
19. This claim was made by the anti-gun Violence Policy Center in their 2003 report titled *Officer Down* [↩](#return-note-531-19)
20. The study included legal models of the SKS, Ruger Mini-14, and M1-Carbine, which were all in circulation before the federal "assault weapons" ban and which were excluded from the ban. [↩](#return-note-531-20)
21. *Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted*, FBI, 1994 [↩](#return-note-531-21)
22. *Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation’s Law Enforcement Officers*, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2006 [↩](#return-note-531-22)
23. *Gun Policy & Law Enforcement*, PoliceOne, March 2013 [↩](#return-note-531-23)
24. *Firearm Use by Offenders*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 [↩](#return-note-531-24)
25. *Firearm Use by Offenders*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 [↩](#return-note-531-25)
26. *Firearm Use by Offenders*, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 [↩](#return-note-531-26)
27. Deputy Chief of Police Joseph Constance, Trenton, NJ, testimony - Senate Judiciary Committee in Aug 1993 [↩](#return-note-531-27)
28. Deputy Chief of Police Joseph Constance, Trenton, NJ, testimony - Senate Judiciary Committee in Aug 1993 [↩](#return-note-531-28)
29. U.S. Code title 26, subtitle E, Chapter 53, subchapter B, part 1, section 5845 [↩](#return-note-531-29)
30. BATF test as reported in the New York Times, April 3, 1989 [↩](#return-note-531-30)
31. Congressional testimony, Jimmy Trahin, Los Angeles Detective, Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, May 5, 1989, 101st Congress, 1st Session, Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, May 5, 1989, p. 379 [↩](#return-note-531-31)
32. *An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates*, Applied Economics Letters, Vol 21, No. 4 [↩](#return-note-531-32)
33. *An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003*, National Institute of Justice, June 2004 [↩](#return-note-531-33)
34. *Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96*, National Institute of Justice, March 1999 [↩](#return-note-531-34)
35. *Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96*, National Institute of Justice, March 1999 [↩](#return-note-531-35)
36. *Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994-96*, National Institute of Justice, March 1999 [↩](#return-note-531-36)
37. *An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates*, Applied Economics Letters, Vol 21, No. 4 [↩](#return-note-531-37)
38. Washington Post, May 2, 1992 [↩](#return-note-531-38)
39. Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, Washington Post, May 18, 1993 [↩](#return-note-531-39)

---

### [Infographics](https://www.gunfacts.info/infographics/)

**Published:** September 16, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Below are various infographics that debunk gun control myths or the proponents of such. **Clicking on the graphic will display or allow downloading of the high-resolution version**. Right click and select "Save target as ..." or "Save Link As ..." to save the high resolution image to your computer.

   Description Infographic   Infographics showing that 15 counties in the United states, with 8% of the population produce 25% of all gun homicides. [![Hot 15 Homicide Counties](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Hot-15-Counties-400x225.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Hot-15-Counties.jpg)   Map of the United States showing the county within each state that has the highest share of the state's homicides for 2016. See the following link for the map and the lists of states and the percept of both the homicides and the state's population for the "hot" counties.   [![U.S. counties with highest homicide percentages in each state in 2016.](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Counties-with-highest-homicide-percentages-in-each-state-2016-b-400x288.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Counties-with-highest-homicide-percentages-in-each-state-2016-b.png)   Demographics of street gang members against the rate of gun homicides for those demographics. The demographics were identified by the U.S. government's National gang Center. [![CRIME AND GUNS - Firearm Homicides in the U.S. by age, race, urbanization - 2016 - c](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-c-400x324.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-c.png)   States with "strict" gun control laws get a larger share of traced crime guns from other "strict" states, and not states with "lax" gun control laws. [![Source states for guns, strict and lax gun control laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/strict-vs-lax-gun-control-source-states-2-1024w-400x300.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/strict-vs-lax-gun-control-source-states-2-1024w.jpg)   What works and does not work in terms of gun control laws at the state level. Most restrictive and paper work laws do nothing to reduce crime, and may encourage robbery.  [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/gun-control-rights-law-effectiveness-400x289.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/gun-control-rights-law-effectiveness.jpg)   Infographic showing that the U.S. homicide rate fell during expansion of concealed carry laws. It also shows how homicides rose during both Prohibition and America's *War On Drugs*. [![Homicides rates over time, prohibition, gun control and CCW expansion periods](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Government-laws-social-costs-Homicides-prohibition-CCWs-400x301.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Government-laws-social-costs-Homicides-prohibition-CCWs.jpg "Comparison of U.S. homicides and handgun supply")   How likely are you to die in a mass shooting? It is the least of your worries. You are more than a thousand times more likely to die from Parkinson's Disease. [![Chart showing death rates of diseases vs. mass shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Mass-Shooting-vs-Disease-400x288.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Mass-Shooting-vs-Disease.jpg "Chart showing death rates of diseases vs. mass shootings")   What is the probability of being injured by an attacker given various ways of defending yourself? If you want to stay whole and healthy, using a gun is your top option. [![Chart showing the probability of being injured by an attacker given various ways of defending yourself](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/injury-rate-by-self-defense-means-400x314.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/injury-rate-by-self-defense-means.png "Chart showing the probability of being injured by an attacker given various ways of defending yourself")   Do more guns cause less crime? There are many variables to examine, but we can see that a rise in handgun availability/supply and the number of states with shall-issue and constitutional concealed carry coincided with a drop in firearm violence (fatal and non-fatal). Though this does not prove that more guns leads to less crime, it does show that they don't create a bigger problem. [![Chart showing a 20 year trend in gun violence, handgun supply and concealed carry licenses](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/20-years-of-change-400x346.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/20-years-of-change.jpg "Chart showing a 20 year trend in gun violence, handgun supply and concealed carry licenses")   Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) primarily occur at or near the defenders home. [![GUNS AND CRIME PREVENTION - Location of Defensive Gun Uses - DGUs](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Location-of-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs-800x670.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Location-of-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs.png)   Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) prevent a variety of crimes. Most importantly, almost 60% of the crimes prevented involved at least one violent crime (some instances involve multiple crimes, hence why the pie slices are more than 100% and that the violent crime slices, though including 59% of all instances are less than 50% of all crimes committed). [![GUNS AND CRIME PREVENTION - Types of crimes prevented by Defensive Gun Uses - DGUs](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Types-of-crimes-prevented-by-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs-1-800x737.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GUNS-AND-CRIME-PREVENTION-Types-of-crimes-prevented-by-Defensive-Gun-Uses-DGUs-1.png)   New York City's low violent crime rate is not from its ancient gun control laws, but from recent bulking-up of the police force and clean-up of crime-ridden neighborhoods. It also mirrors the drop in violence nationally. [![Trend line chart for violent crime in New York City and the United States](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/NYC-and-US-violent-crime-400x355.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/NYC-and-US-violent-crime.png "Trend line chart for violent crime in New York City and the United States")

---

### [Advertise on GunFacts.info](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/advertise/)

**Published:** September 16, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

You can advertise both on the Gun Facts web site. Contact us guy \[at\] GunFacts.info to discuss pricing and volume.

## Advertising on the Gun Facts web site

There are many advertising insertion locations on GunFacts.info. One is trafficked by Google AdWords. The rest are available on a subscribed basis. The AdWord locations can also be replaced with subscribed insertions.

The Gun Facts website has considerable traffic. See page bottom for stats and stuff.

Ad LocationSpecific PageRun-of-siteAdWordsSubscribedMonthly Subscribed RateLeft side bar (floating – always on page)YesYesYes$150Top Sitewide (between content and header graphic)Yes YesYes$200Middle Sitewide (inside of content)YesYes$100Page bottom (bottom of content, above footer)Yes YesYes$100Footers (four slots available)YesYesYes$75

**Google AdWords:** Primary ad space on Gun Facts is handled by [Google’s AdWords](http://adwords.google.com) system (left sidebar, page top and page bottom). It is a *run-of-site*, which means it appears on almost every page within the Gun Facts website.

AdWord’s Target and Bid setting allows you to manually key in the names of the sites on which you display ads. This is a fast and simple way to put ads on GunFacts.info.

**Subscribed Placements:** You can also place your ads on the Gun Facts website for a fixed fee for a specific period of time. This includes the ad space where Google ads appear, other site-wide locations, on specific pages, or on specific device types (desktop, phones, tablets).

We also have the ability to reformat specific pages and add new areas for your advertisements (such as adding a right-side margin for a skyscraper advert).

Contact guy \[at\] GunFacts.info to schedule your ad placement.

## GunFacts.info Web Traffic information for advertisers (last updated on 2019-09-05)

**Monthly**Active Users4,200Page Views5,200Peak Users5,920/dayAverage Page Viewing Time1m 45s

![Google Traffic Map for GunFacts.info 2019-09-05](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Google-Traffic-Map-2019-09-05-800x482.jpg)Map of the countries that visit the Gun Facts website

![Visitor Demographics for GunFacts.info 2019-09-05](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Google-Visitor-Demographics-2019-09-05-800x289.jpg)

---

### [Copyright and use](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/copyright-and-use/)

**Published:** December 7, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

The contents of this web site are copyrighted and the property of Guy Smith. All rights are reserved unless otherwise noted.

**Otherwise noted:**

- You are encouraged to use some or all of the page content providing you cite the source (“Gun Facts”) and include a link back to this web site (www.GunFacts.info).
- Any graphic on gun control myth pages can be copied, shared on social media at will providing you do not alter the image in any way.
- “Reasonable use” laws apply, which basically means you can use small sections of Gun Facts without my prior consent. Written excerpts may be distributed as long as the URL www.GunFacts.info is identified.
- Images on the media resources page are free to use.
- Images on the infographics page are free to use (and encouraged).

**Without the legalese:**

You are encouraged to spread the truth, and thus the copyright for Gun Facts is very flexible. In return for doing all this research and publishing it free of charge, all I ask is that you always cite the source of the data, link back to this site as part of the citation and click any ads you find appealing (and toss me a dime using the [donation page](https://www.gunfacts.info/donate/ "Donate to Gun Facts")).

**Suggested links:**

When creating a link back to this site, please use appropriate keywords under the link. “Appropriate” should be those keywords that guide people Googling for information on gun control policy. Some suggested anchor text might be:

- gun control facts, gun safety facts
- gun control policy, gun safety policy
- gun violence information
- gun policy misinformation
- criminological information concerning guns
- gun control data
- Or, if linking to a topic page, the topic itself (“assault weapons and gun control”, etc.)

---

### [About Gun Facts](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/about-gun-facts/)

**Published:** September 17, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Gun Facts® has one mission: To remove propaganda from gun control discussions.

![GUN FACTS 7.0 BOOK COVER ](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/GUN-FACTS-7.0-COVER-w165.jpg)Cover of the now discontinued Gun Facts book

Late last century, Gun Facts author and editor Guy Smith ran across a gun control sound bite in a local San Francisco newspaper editorial. He knew the information was wrong having seen the actual data the day before. Yet that scrap of evidence was lost in the perpetual paper blizzard atop Guy’s desk. So Guy started keeping a crib sheet.

(Incidentally, it was the myth that there are 30,000 instances of *gun violence deaths* in the United States each year, a talking point still misused to this day).

After lobbing dozens of data points into his Word file, he started sharing the document with other policy wonks. The demand for more was immediate, and Guy slowly formalized the file into a shareable PDF document. That was the nascent first edition of Gun Facts.

According to web site analytics and other tools, we know that Gun Facts:

- Has been **downloaded into more than 185 countries** including China, U.K., Japan, Iran, Viet Nam, Mongolia and Cuba.
- The last major version was **downloaded more than 376,000 times**, with 24,000 downloads from 58 countries, **in the first week from this web site alone**.
- Since the book is free to pass around, and based on decaying propagation theory, each major edition is **in the hands of a few million people at least**.
- It is **most frequently downloaded in Washington D.C.**, where it has been called “mandatory reading” for congressional staffers of the non-statist variety.

[![Guns and Control by Guy Smith](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Guns-and-Control-Cover-Design-Form-400x592.jpg)](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0983240701/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0983240701&linkCode=as2&tag=gunfacinfo-20&linkId=H5SLOS7RWC7JXIO3)

In 2013, the data in Gun Facts was (finally) put into this web site itself so Google, Bing and maybe even Sogou might index the data. Over time fans of the Gun Facts project came to prefer the web content (readily available on their smartphones) and the book was discontinued in the summer of 2019.

As Gun Facts grew, a number of other researchers volunteered their time to help with the process. Today, Gun Facts volunteers help with research, fact checking, citations, proofreading and publicity.

“When good people work together, miracles happen.”

In all these years, Gun Facts has declined to take money from policy groups. No NRA, SAF, GOA cash at all (well, one tiny, local NRA members chapter once sent $100 unsolicited). Indeed, in 2018 we turned down two different offers (one from a national organization, and another from a state organization tightly affiliated with a national) that would have tripled our income.

Instead, Gun Facts takes donations from readers, holds (almost) annual fundraising events, and accepts on-page sponsorships. Retaining objectivity and quality is the cornerstone of the Gun Facts project. If the information isn’t **sound** and **independent**, it is not included.

With over two decades of debunking gun control and gun violence misinformation, Guy Smith, the founder of the Gun Facts project, wrote *Guns and Control*. Guy earlier penned *[Shooting The Bull](http://amzn.to/1KotyQ4),* The gun control debates provided Guy with all the raw materials required to author the first modern book on the topic of real-time propaganda analysis (until the academic who wrote a forward to *Shooting The Bull* penned [*The Ten Commandments of Propaganda*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1907166815/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1907166815&linkCode=as2&tag=gunfacinfo-20&linkId=GXYRVUXVVO3QBZER)).

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.” – John F. Kennedy

---

### [Funding](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/funding/)

**Published:** January 17, 2019
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## No institutional funding

The Gun Facts project receives ***zero*** money from agenda institutions (and to date no funding from non-aligned or government agencies either). Nor do we ask them for money.

We have been offered such money – from both national organizations and from state-level outfits affiliated with national organizations – and we turned down that money … which really hurts because such money is significantly more than we current receive in donations.

We do this because we are the primary (perhaps only) non-ideological, independent gun policy research outfit … and we want to keep it that way.

## All donations come from fans

100% of Gun Facts donations come from people who like our work. We hold an annual (more or less) fundraising event (average donation is about $20). We also encourage people to become [sustaining donors](https://www.gunfacts.info/donate/) and give a little each month (average monthly donation $10).

## One oddball note

On three separate occasions were received unsolicited checks from county-level social groups who definitely had opinions about guns and their control. The average of these donations was about $100. Given that they were local groups, and one was unaffiliated with any state or national organization, we decided this was not “influence” money and banked the small change.

---

### [Donate to Gun Facts](https://www.gunfacts.info/donate/)

**Published:** September 18, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Gun Facts, the organization that has been debunking gun violence mythology for over a decade, runs on donations. Make a donation today to keep this engine of truth racing down the tracks.

**Monthly using PayPal**The best way to rid the gun control debates of bad information is to make a monthly donation to the Gun Facts project. This keep us working daily and fueled with enough coffee to wake the dead.

Some unexpected benefits to being a sustaining donor include:

- Not being on the annual fundraiser email list.
- Automatically getting fundraiser gifts.

Gun Facts Sustaining DonationSmall Caliber : $5.00 USD – monthlyMedium Caliber : $15.00 USD – monthlyLarge Caliber : $25.00 USD – monthlyMagnum : $40.00 USD – monthlyBazzoka : $100.00 USD – monthly

![](https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif)

---

**PayPal**The easiest way to donate right now is to use PayPal. Click the button below and you will be guided to our PayPal donation page. There you can use your credit card or PayPal account to send us money today.  ---

**Zelle**Zelle users can give using payee ID info@GunFacts.info.

*Zelle does not give us your contact information, so we thank you in advance.*

![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/zelle-logo-200w.jpg)---

**Patreon**For those who want to donate regularly, but who don’t like PayPal, Patreon is an option.[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Patreon-Logo.png)](https://www.patreon.com/gunfacts)---

**Bitcoin**For the privacy minded, many prefer Bitcoin. This alternate currency has fans around the globe, and you can learn more about it at [Bitcoin.org](http://bitcoin.org/en/). Click on the donate button if you have a wallet installed, or use the following Bitcoin address: 043abc99-c556-485a-89aa-2e4c18bad07f

[](bitcoin:043abc99-c556-485a-89aa-2e4c18bad07f?label=Gun%20Facts%20Donation)![Donate to Gun Facts using Bitcoin](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/bitcoin-donation.png)---

**Snail mail**Not everyone likes PayPal, and Bitcoin is new technology. If you prefer the old fashion way, send a check to:Gun Facts
PO Box 8642
Asheville, NC 28814

---

### [Gun Policy Books](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-books/)

**Published:** September 16, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Gun control policy is complex, covering topics from the meaning of the Second Amendment, to criminology to public opinion. Below are some books that are informative. Most are required reading for anyone serious about the topic.

## Criminology and Statistical Analysis of Gun Control Policy

[![Guns and Control by Guy Smith](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Guns-and-Control-Cover-Design-Form-400x592.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Control-Nonpartisan-Understanding-Shootings/dp/1510760075)**Guns and Control:** A Nonpartisan Guide to Understanding Mass Public Shootings, Gun Accidents, Crime, Public Carry, Suicides, Defensive Use, and More. By Gun Facts founder Guy Smith, this is an end-to-end review of what we know and don’t know about guns, violence and where the solvable problems exist.

The book makes no point on gun control and offers no pro- or anti-gun viewpoint. But it gives the reader everything they need to know in order to decide what is or isn’t going to be effective.

---

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/targeting_guns_kleck_book_cover.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Targeting-Guns-Firearms-Control-Institutions/dp/0202305694)**Targeting Guns:** Firearms and Their Control: This classic work by Gary Kleck is a studious tome by a revered criminologist. Targeting Guns is the original source of the “2,500,000 defensive uses” data as well as a wealth of other information.

---

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/point_blank_kleck_book_cover.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Point-Blank-Guns-Violence-America/dp/020230762X)**Point Blank:** The focus of this book agrees with the Gun Facts mission: “Written deliberately to counter an atmosphere of hysteria and extremism.” Kleck again provides perspective about what is happening and what has happened vis-a-vis guns and violence.

---

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/assasination_generation_grossman_book_cover.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Generation-Aggression-Psychology-Killing/dp/147890979X)**Assassination Generation:** What role does violent entertainment and games have on mass violence? The world’s leading authority on military/police training to desensitize soldiers/cops to killing on duty has the answers, and they are frightening.

---

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/violence_project_book_cover.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Project-Stop-Shooting-Epidemic-ebook/dp/B08WJV7W3P)**Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting:** A distillation of the most useful and complete of all the (currently) available mass public shooting databases. Though it contains infrequent incorrect analysis, it is a solid survey of what is known about mass public shooters.

---

 [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/mass_killings_hardy_book_cover-400x600.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Mass-Killings-Myth-Reality-Solutions/dp/1718142242)**Mass Killings:** A concise book covering many of the essential topics and observations about mass public shootings. A good primer for those who don’t need a deep, deep dive.

---

## Second Amendment Studies

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/be_armed_halbrook_book_cover.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/That-Every-Man-Armed-Constitutional/dp/0945999380)**That Every Man Be Armed:** The Evolution of a Constitutional Right is hailed by many as the best distillation of the twin rights of the individual and militia to keep and bear arms. Noted left-of-center law professor Sanford Levinson said of this book “provides indefatigable research into the second amendment, and all serious scholars will eternally be in its debt.”

---

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/defense_of_themselves_cramer_book_cover.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Themselves-State-Original-Interpretation/dp/0275949133)**For the Defense of Themselves and the State:** This is the masterwork of Clayton Cramer, a man who earn some distinction by his deconstruction of Michael Bellesiles’ notion that guns were scarce in colonial America (which led to Bellesiles’ academic conviction). This book covers the European origins and legislative history of the Second Amendment, details some 200 state and US Supreme Court decisions concerning the amendment, and discusses issues such as the role of racism in the passage of gun control laws during Reconstruction.

---

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2nd_amendment_origins_young_book_cover.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Second-Amendment-Documentary-Commentaries/dp/0962366439)**The Origin of the Second Amendment:** This is not an analysis book, but a complete compilation of 500+ documents that had a direct bearing on the creation of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. For the scholarly minded or the 2nd Amendment warrior in need of reference materials (such as the Senate votes that eliminated the collective rights proposal).

## Miscellaneous

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/098324071X_frontcover-400x600.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Bull-Guy-Smith/dp/0983240701)**Shooting The Bull:** By Gun Facts founder Guy Smith, *Shooting The Bull* is a book on propaganda analysis using the misinformation campaigns found in the control debates as a case study and guide. Academic foreword by Brian Anse Patrick, author of [*The Ten Commandments of Propaganda*](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005TUDPHG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=gunfacinfo-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B005TUDPHG&linkId=ec6b5079a7aa5c515ab397e3a9b5d1b5).

---

### [How To Identify Bad Research](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-how-to-identify-bad-research/)

**Published:** November 5, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Below is some basic training to help journalists identify potentially bad research being presented by policy groups.

### DATA QUALITY and METHODOLOGY:

These are the two key factors in good research. If both are not sufficient, then neither are the results of the study.

**DATA QUALITY:** There are “gold standard” data sources such as the CDC mortality databases, the FBI’s crime reporting system, Census Bureau for anything related to demographics (states, county or city), the UN Drug and Crime datasets, and the Small Arms Survey. We also favor the Violence Project’s mass public shooting database, as they have been given unprecedented access to perpetrators’ backgrounds (such as their mental health and treatment status).

***!*** When presented with research, ask what raw data sources were used. If they are not gold standard, if they were created by a policy group, or if the sources have no significant use elsewhere, then the study is suspect.

Some researchers do primary research and do develop new, quality information. For example, in 2022, Professor William English of Georgetown University conducted a large-scale survey to determine, among other things, state level gun ownership rates. Before then, most estimates of gun ownership rates were derived by proxies.

***!*** When presented with new primary data, ask for the data gathering methodologies and the sample size. Small sample sizes are statistically inaccurate, and inappropriate data mining (such as surveying only NRA members, only Republicans, or only high income earners) would pollute the results.

One recurring problem is state-level “gun law scorecards” published by advocacy groups. These scorecards have no basis in statistical criminology, and are often just policy group wish lists. Using them as a metric is pointless as there is nothing underpinning the scores and grade. For example, one policy group gives California an “A” for their gun laws, but gives Kansas an “F,” though both states have nearly identical gun homicide rates.

**METHODOLOGIES:** There are appropriate and inappropriate methodologies. In recent years, the number of studies using inappropriate methodologies has gone up.

Because methodologies are complicated, because their descriptions get buried in studies, and because some statistical mathematics are complex, it is easy to get misled.

In recent times, the following inappropriate methodologies have been recurring:

***Synthetic modeling:*** These methodologies create crime statistics that never existed by creating mathematical models based on (often dubious) assumptions and data sources. Modeling is appropriate when data is scarce, but in the United States we have robust crime data reporting. Hence, this approach is not appropriate.

***Quasi-experimental:*** This methodology is an *experiment*, but unlike a true experiment, a quasi-experiment does not rely on random data assignment (which is what you would obtain from raw crime data). These have roles in fields where the nature of relationships have to be inferred because they cannot be measured directly, which is not the case in most gun violence data.

[![Incarceration rates, handgun supply and homicide rates 1978 thru 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b-400x293.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Incarceration-rates-handgun-supply-and-homicide-rates-1978-thru-2016-b.png)[![Australia Homicides rates both before and after gun ban with trend lines](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Homicides-before-and-after-gun-ban-with-trend-lines-400x287.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GUNS-IN-OTHER-COUNTRIES-Australia-Homicides-before-and-after-gun-ban-with-trend-lines.png)click to enlarge

***Incomplete variable testing:*** There are many variables that can be tested against crime and laws. The most frequent arguments among academics concern which variables should be tested. Not testing obvious variables is now a common inequity.

For example, in a 2023 study looking just at gun control laws concluded that the volume of strict gun control laws caused homicides to fall after 1993. The authors did not incorporate the fact that 24 states, including populous California, passed habitual offender laws (e.g., three strikes) and removed many bad actors from further public violent crime.

***Gun-only focus:*** Suffocation suicide rates are rising faster than gun suicide rates. Hence, any study that focuses only on gun suicides would be incomplete. The same can be said for gun-only homicides and gun-only accidental deaths.

***Baseline fallacy:*** This is where a researcher starts their analysis at a point in time and infers cause/effect, without examining what was happening *before* the point in time. As an example, some researchers credit the 1996 era changes in gun laws in Australia for lowering homicide rates. But homicide rates were falling before 1996, and at the exact same rate down to two decimal places.

### PEER REVIEW

Peer review is not always reliable. The issues include inappropriate journal selection, paper filtering, and the general decline due to profiteering.

#### Inappropriate journal selection

In recent years, medical schools and some in the medical field have published poorly constructed *criminology* investigations in *medical journals* (we named this “criminology malpractice”).

The problem is that editors and judges working for medical journals lack the training and background to see flaws in these studies – much as the judges on a criminology journal would lack the training for reviewing an epidemiological study of pathogens.

We have yet to encounter a single gun policy paper proffered by a medical school, organization or professional that has been submitted to or accepted by a criminology journal.

#### Paper filtering

Likewise, it is well understood that journal editors choose what papers go under peer review. We are loath to accuse any editor of rejecting papers that disagree with their political beliefs. But Robert Higgs, a university professor, researcher, writer, and editor, notes, “Any journal editor who desires, for whatever reason, to reject a submission can easily do so by choosing referees he knows full well will knock it down; likewise, he can easily obtain favorable referee reports.”

This *may* also be why medical professionals operating outside their field of expertise publish in medical journals: the editor’s sympathies may be aligned.

#### General decline due to profiteering

Most journals are profit centers. We know this because a portion of the Gun Facts budget goes to buying journal articles, which are nearly all pay-to-read. This may be contributory to the acceptance of articles for volume instead of quality. This may be the case of the recent news of [fraudulent papers being accepted](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/27/fabricated-peer-reviews-prompt-scientific-journal-to-retract-43-papers-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/).

#### Our point

Journalists need to ignore any “peer-review” label and dig at least one level deeper to understand if the paper being proffered has good data quality and good methodologies. “Peer-reviewed” is no longer a safe criteria to use.

## Other Research Issues

There are other issues that should give journalists pause before covering any study.

### Pandemic, George Floyd, police pullbacks

2020 saw several unprecedented events that caused crime rates to fluctuate wildly. As such, studies of data series that include 2020 and/or 2021 are highly suspect. Any *trend* analysis that starts in 2020 is hopelessly flawed.

Some criminology papers explored how the pandemic, the Floyd riots and “defund the police” initiatives *facilitated* more street crime (two we have reviewed include “Did De-Policing contributes to the 2020 homicide spikes?” and “Explaining the Recent Homicide Spikes in U.S. Cities”).

### Suicides and gun ownership proxies

Prior to the aforementioned large-scale gun ownership survey, many people – including a few criminologists – used gun suicide rates as a proxy for gun ownership rates, accepting sundry inequities of the approach (i.e., urban vs. rural gun ownership variation).

The problem is that some advocacy groups used the “suicide proxy” for gun ownership rates to explore the effects of gun ownership rates on suicides. This is “circular mathematics” and quite inappropriate.

### A resource for you

Gun Facts has a page on its website where we list and briefly explain the problems with some research we have encountered over time (see the “Bad Research Roster” under the “Research” menu item). You can use this page to see if any policy group is feeding you previously published bad research, or if you need to cross-check papers cited as being authoritative in new studies tossed your way.

---

### [Data Sources and Reliability](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-data-sources-and-reliability/)

**Published:** November 5, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

In this field, there are:

- Gold standard sources
- Acceptable sources
- Questionable sources
- Unacceptable sources

Gun Facts strives to use gold standard sources. This is not always possible as some data is fragmented, incomplete, or statistically fragile.

That said, there are some sources that are unusable, though this has not stopped lesser news organizations than yours from using them. Below is a list of sources and our observations about them.

## Gold Standard sources

**CDC:** The Centers for Disease Control gather a great deal of data from primary sources at the local level (i.e., death certificate tallies). They also have good statisticians and a long history of quality number crunching. Their web portals and data exploration tools are much better than average.

The primary portal is called WONDER (Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research). Their “Underlying Cause of Death” is the primary gateway to finding data, down to the county level, for anything deadly including guns.

The other important one is WISQARS (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System) which can lead you to non-fatal gun injury data.

**FBI:** The FBI started gathering structured crime data in the 1940s. The old system (recently augmented) was called the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) system. It remains the primary source of data for crime measurement.

The FBI recently replaced an old, simple but useful crime data exploration system with a new web portal that is an impediment to easily obtaining quality crime data. The new system, Crime Data Explorer (CDE) is useful for getting high-level data and simple comparisons (i.e., the homicide rates for Illinois compared to the nation at large).

**NACJD:** The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) is a repository for crime data and studies. They also take difficult-to-use data (i.e., the FBI’s raw UCR data) and repackage it to make it simpler to obtain and use.

**BJS:** The Bureau of Justice Statistics is the national archive for crime data and analysis. They produce a number of recurring reports (i.e., prisoner surveys about the sources of crime guns).

## Acceptable sources

**Violence Project and Gun Facts Mass Public Shooting database:** There are several mass *public* shooting databases that use the criminology-consensus definition of mass public shooting (which is not what the Gun Violence Archive uses, and we’ll discuss that later).

The Violence Project (VP) is an amazing resource, tracking the largest collection of variables about mass public shootings (MPS). They have also been granted unparalleled access to shooter profiles, histories, mental health assessments, et cetera. Gun Facts refers to their work often.

That said, they don’t track everything and their dataset organization has some inconveniences. Hence, Gun Facts maintains an independent MPS database that includes data not found elsewhere, and it is in a slightly more user-friendly format. Interestingly, when we conducted a periodic update of our database, we had two events that the Violence Project did not (and we told them about these events so they could update their database).

The reason we flag these as “acceptable” when they are otherwise gold standard is that the data on the details of MPS remains fragmented. You can learn much from either MPS database, but there are gaps in the data, especially for events that occurred before the commercialization of the Internet.

**CPRC Global Mass Shooting Database:** The Crime Prevention Research Center hired native speakers of the top global languages to comb the internet for all reported MPS. Though many regions with little mass media or localized languages (i.e., Chemehuevi) are not covered, the database does cover the first and second worlds, and a fair bit of third-world counties.

## Questionable sources

**Gun Violence Archive (GVA):** There are too many problems with GVA to consider it a reliable source. It may be acceptable for rough, ballpark assessments, but it is unsuitable for proper research.

Some of the shortcomings with GVA include:

- History of data quality issues
- Incomplete scope of data
- Invents terms that do not comport with established definitions
- No transparency on operations and methods

Early in their history, GVA was basically crowd sourced and had few checks and balances. Sundry researchers noted they had duplicate entries, missing entries, events were not being updated after the initial logging, no follow-up for adjudication, and more shortcomings.

Over time they have slightly improved and made their methodology more acceptable. But it is still woefully lacking and their home-grown definitions have added to public confusion.

For example, GVA claims to have (as of 2023-10-17) 7,500+ media and law enforcement “sources.” That said, there are over 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Hence, GVA cannot be considered a ground-up data source.

Also, GVA does not base their data collection classification and reporting on established criminology terms, which makes comparing their work to gold standard sources nearly impossible. For example, the criminology-consensus of “mass public shooting” is a **public** shooting event where four or more people are killed, not including perpetrator, in a single location. GVA invented their own definition of “mass shooting” (note, the omission of the word *public*) which reads, “Four or more **shot** \[injured\] and/or killed in a single event \[incident\], at the same **general time and location** not including the shooter.” This adds private property events, self-defense incidents, gangland gun battles, and more, but ***importantly*** it includes both wounded and killed, whereas the rest of the world uses only deaths as the metric.

## Unacceptable sources

**K–12 School Shooting Database:** There are many defects in this source. It appears to be a one-man project. As you can tell by the curve of incidents, there appears to be a “reporting awareness” skewing the data (i.e., over time, more awareness of events led to more entries – not that a consistent finding/gathering process was initiated from the start).

The next problem is that their definition of “school shooting” is impossibly broad. Some examples of what could constitute a “school shooting” in their database includes:

- Brandish a gun at a nighttime football game
- A stray bullet from a drive-by shooting landing on school grounds
- A depressed teacher committing suicide in the parking lot at 3 AM on the weekend

The overreach is so bad that in 2020, the General Accounting Office (GAO) edited the K–12 database down to only authentic school shooting incidents (see report titled “Characteristics of School Shootings”).

---

### [Why The Guide](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-why-this-guide/)

**Published:** November 5, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Gun policy is of national and local interest. Unfortunately, it is also a highly polarized topic, with both pro- and anti-gun policy organizations telling only part of the story or peddling outright misinformation.

Gun Facts lives by our motto, “We are neither pro-gun not anti-gun, we are pro-math and anti BS.” We thus strive to dig well below the surface claims of policy groups and provide:

- Quality data from gold-standard sources
- Important insights that are not crafted to any agenda
- Debunk bad claims and memes

This guide is for working journalist to:

- Gain rapid understanding of the realities about guns and violence
- Avoid publishing embarrassing work sullied by activist materials
- See underlying issues and important details missed by other news organizations

Naturally, this guide cannot cover every subtopic. *Should you need help* exploring any issue related to guns, please contact us at info\[at\]GunFacts.info and we’ll take the time to walk you through what we have learned in 25+ years of research, or even to find the information you need.

---

### [Mass Public Shootings (MPS)](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-mass-public-shootings-mps/)

**Published:** November 5, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

### Sorting out definitions

Regrettably, people have devised many different definitions for words describing mass murder. This has created great confusion.

Below is a list of commonly used terms with notes about which ones you might want to use or avoid:

**TERM****Definition****Includes****Source of Definition****Used By****Notes****Mass Public Shooting**- 4+ killed
- Not including the perp
- One *public* location
- Not part of another crime

Only killedCriminologists [1](#note-7742-1 "Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder, James Alan Fox, Jack Levin, Crime and Justice, Vol. 23, 1998")· Most criminologists

· Gun Facts

· Mother Jones [2](#note-7742-2 "Mother Jones started their database using the standard, criminology definition. They later converted to the Congressional definition of 3+ killed.")

· Violence Project

A 2012 definition created by Congress uses 3+ victims as their definition. But this definition is not widely used or respected. [3](#note-7742-3 "Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012")**Mass Shooting v1**- 4+ shot, not necessarily killed
- Not including the perp
- One or multiple locations
- Public or private locations

Killed or woundedEverytown

Gun Violence Archive

Everytown

Gun Violence Archive

Everytown [admits on their web site](https://everytownresearch.org/mass-shootings-in-america/?_gl=1*1ygkczy*_ga*MTg1NTY3NjExNy4xNjk3MTU1MjE5*_ga_LT0FWV3EK3*MTY5ODM0MzY2MC4yLjEuMTY5ODM0MzY5OC4wLjAuMA..) that they adopted a new and unique definition, discarding the traditional criminology one.**Mass Shooting v2**- 4+ killed or injured
- Can include the perp
- Any number of locations
- Public or private locations

Killed or woundedMass Shooting TrackerMass Shooting Tracker**Mass Killing**- 4+ Killed
- 24 hour time span
- Any number of locations
- Public or private location

Killed onlyAssociated PressAssociated Press**Active Shooter Event**- 0+ deaths, 1+ wounded
- Public location
- May include multiple locations

Killed or woundedAdopted by the FBI, sourced from School of Criminal Justice, Texas State UniversityFBI, academiaFBI### MPS portion of all firearm homicides, USA

[![Mass Public Shooting Deaths and All Gun Homicides 1982 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Mass-Public-Shooting-Deaths-and-All-Gun-Homicides-1982-thru-2019-800x564.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Mass-Public-Shooting-Deaths-and-All-Gun-Homicides-1982-thru-2019.png)click to enlarge

Though the average number of people killed in MPS events is rising slightly, it is the falling overall rate of gun homicides that makes the percent of MPS deaths artificially high.

Note that in the worst year on record (2017, Las Vegas country music shooting and the Sutherland Springs church shooting), the percent of deaths from MPS was 0.67%. In an average year excluding 2017, the rate is 0.2%).

### Domestic trends

[![U.S. Mass Public Shooting Incidents, deaths and woundings 1982 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shooting-Incidents-deaths-and-woundings-1982-thru-2019-800x564.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shooting-Incidents-deaths-and-woundings-1982-thru-2019.png)click to enlarge

The number of MPS in the United states is rising slowly, though the average number of deaths and wounded people is rising less quickly (slope of line: incidents = 0.10, death = 0.08, wounded = 0.03).

### International perspective

[![MASS SHOOTINGS - International Map 1998 thru 2017](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/MASS-SHOOTINGS-International-Map-1998-thru-2017-800x565.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/MASS-SHOOTINGS-International-Map-1998-thru-2017.png)click to enlarge

Most importantly, mass public shootings (MPS) are not an “only in America” phenomena.

[![Guns and Control - Mass Public Shootings - High Socioeconomic Index Countries](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-4-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-4.jpg)click to enlarge

Nor are they only an American issue in first-world countries (chart above is for all from 1997 thru 2017). There is some distortion on the left of the chart because some nations have small populations (i.e., Norway had 5.3 million people in 2017, compared to 325 million for the US, and thus a small number of high body count events makes them look outsized).

### International trends

[![Mass public shooting rate trends, international](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-5-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-5.jpg)click to enlarge

Outside of the United States, the frequency of MPS is rising faster than in the US. However, the average number of people killed per incident is rising faster domestically. The key variable that likely explains this domestic trend is that U.S. perpetrators are doing more detailed planning of their events and choosing “cattle pen scenario” venues for their attacks.

[![U.S. Mass Public Shootings Per Capita 1982 through 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-Per-Capita-1982-through-2016-800x593.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/U.S.-Mass-Public-Shootings-Per-Capita-1982-through-2016.png)click to enlarge

The US trend is upwards, though there is a big precaution, namely a handful of “super killer” events that were well-planned cattle pen scenario MPS (i.e., Las Vegas country music, Pulse Night Club).

[![MASS SHOOTINGS - Mass Public Shootings - Incidents and Deaths per capita sans exceptional events - 1998 through 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shootings-Incidents-and-Deaths-per-capita-sans-exceptional-events-1998-through-2016-800x520.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/MASS-SHOOTINGS-Mass-Public-Shootings-Incidents-and-Deaths-per-capita-sans-exceptional-events-1998-through-2016.png)click to enlarge

When we remove seven (7) events where the number of people killed was 20 or more, then the curve is nearly flat.

### United States Basic Percentages

Of mass public shootings from 1982 thru October 2023, the following percentages are of interest:

- Perps had a prior criminal record: 64%
- Perps had a history of violence: 52%
- Venue was a “gun free” zone: 46%
- Venue was a well-chosen “cattle pen scenario”: 36%
- Event was well planned: 33%
- Magazine <= 10 rounds used: 31%
- Magazine >=15 rounds used: 40% (includes handguns with those default capacities)
- Guns obtained illegally: 30%
- Guns used conform to the 1994 federal assault weapon ban: 21%
- Handguns, shotguns, rifles used (more than 100% as multiple guns occasionally used): 71%, 35%, 20%
- Perp showed signs of, or was diagnosed with, a mental illness: 76%
- Perp with mental illness that had received prior treatment: 47%

Notes:

1. Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder, James Alan Fox, Jack Levin, Crime and Justice, Vol. 23, 1998 [↩](#return-note-7742-1)
2. Mother Jones started their database using the standard, criminology definition. They later converted to the Congressional definition of 3+ killed. [↩](#return-note-7742-2)
3. Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 [↩](#return-note-7742-3)

---

### [Basic Data and Trends](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-basic-data-and-trends/)

**Published:** November 5, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

# Basic Data and Trends

Unless otherwise noted, we present data for 2019… and with good reason.

The pandemic years saw erratic shifts in homicides, suicides and violent crimes. Some of this was due to the pandemic, the lockdowns, et cetera. Some was due to the George Floyd murder and riots. Some was due to the “defund the police” movement and the operational withdrawal of police from the streets.

2019 was the last pre-pandemic year and thus more representative of the “static” reality. We caution journalists to watch for organizations presenting *any* pandemic-period data, and especially if they:

- Only show that data
- Try to combine pre- or post-pandemic data as a “trend”

## Who is killed with guns?

[![Firearm Deaths by Intent 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Deaths-by-Intent-2019-800x800.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Deaths-by-Intent-2019.png)click to enlarge

Year in and year out, most gun deaths are by suicide. This is where some policy organizations get into trouble. For 2019, they might say “39,000 people died from gun violence” but they fail to note that 60%, or 23,941 of those deaths, were by suicide. This is an important distinction since the causes leading to suicide and homicide are very different.

### Suicides

Gun suicides are most frequent among white, rural, old males. This is a significant contrast to gun homicides (see next section) which are mainly committed by young, urban males.

[![Firearm Suicide by Age and Urbanizations 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Suicide-by-Age-and-Urbanizations-2019-800x565.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Suicide-by-Age-and-Urbanizations-2019.png)click to enlarge

[![Firearm Suicide by Age and Race 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Suicide-by-Age-and-Race-2019-800x565.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Suicide-by-Age-and-Race-2019.png)click to enlarge

[![Firearm Suicide by Age and Gender 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Suicide-by-Age-and-Gender-2019-800x565.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Suicide-by-Age-and-Gender-2019.png)click to enlarge

### Homicides

[![CRIME AND GUNS - Firearm Homicides in the U.S. by age, race, urbanization - 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-d-800x609.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/CRIME-AND-GUNS-Firearm-Homicides-in-the-U.S.-by-age-race-urbanization-2016-d.png)click to enlarge

Gun homicides occur primarily among young, urban, black males. This is one of the key demographic profiles reported by the Nation Gang Center.

### Unintentional (accidental)

[![Accidental Firearm deaths by age group from 1979 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Accidental-Firearm-deaths-by-age-group-from-1979-thru-2019-800x564.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Accidental-Firearm-deaths-by-age-group-from-1979-thru-2019.png)click to enlarge

Accidental (unintentional) gun deaths have been falling steadily over time, while most estimates of household firearm ownership have remained steady (roughly 43% of households).

The plunge started at a time when 24 states enacted habitual offender laws (e.g., “three strikes”) and as more states permitted public carrying of firearms (typically “shall issue” concealed carry).

[![Public carry expansion by state from 1986 thru 2023](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/CCW-expansion-and-three-strikes-era-800x445.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/CCW-expansion-and-three-strikes-era.png)click to enlarge

This table shows the expansion of public carry laws, and the red box (1992 through 1995) shows a period when 24 states passed habitual offender laws.

This data is presented because we have not uncovered data or academic papers detailing what major factors led to the rapid decline in accidental gun deaths. But the data does show that steady household gun ownership rates, gun availability, and public carry of guns are statistically *disassociated* from the falling accidental gun death rates.

## How do deaths by guns compare to deaths by other means in each group?

[![Non-suicide Firearm Death Ranking and Percentage by Age Group 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Non-suicide-Firearm-Death-Ranking-and-Percentage-by-Age-Group-2019-800x565.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Non-suicide-Firearm-Death-Ranking-and-Percentage-by-Age-Group-2019.png)click to enlarge

This chart shows what percentage of non-suicide deaths in each age group occur from firearms. This includes homicides, accidents, legal interventions and unknown causes.

Note that in the “children” group, we excluded deaths for children under the age of one. This is because an extremely large number of infant deaths occur from prenatal condition, genetic disorders, and the like. Including them would have distorted the reality about guns in this age group.

## What are the long-term trends?

[![Firearm Death Rates by Intent 1979 thru 2019](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Death-Rates-by-Intent-1979-thru-2019-800x564.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Firearm-Death-Rates-by-Intent-1979-thru-2019.png)click to enlarge

Over time, firearm homicides have dropped from their peak in 1993, primarily due to 24 states passing habitual offender laws in that era.

Into the twenty-first century, suicide rates have climbed in general, with suffocation being the fastest growing means. But with more suicidal people in general, comes more gun suicides.

---

### [pme2](https://www.gunfacts.info/pme2/)

**Published:** May 7, 2018
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

- [Home](https://www.gunfacts.info/)
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    - [Bad Research Roster](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/)
    - [Research Resources](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/)
    - [Mass Public Shooting Database](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/mass-public-shooting-database/)
- [Blog](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/)
- [Books](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-books/)
- [Charts from “Guns and Control”](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/charts-from-the-book-guns-and-control/)
- [Alerts & Volunteers](https://www.gunfacts.info/alerts-and-volunteers/)
- Journalists’ Gun Issue Guide
    - [Why This Guide](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-why-this-guide/)
    - [Data Sources and Reliability](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-data-sources-and-reliability/)
    - [Basic Data and Trends](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-basic-data-and-trends/)
    - [Mass Public Shootings (MPS)](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-mass-public-shootings-mps/)
    - [How to Identify Bad Research](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-how-to-identify-bad-research/)
    - [Issues Under Debate](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-issues-under-debate-and-what-is-known/)
    - [Issues Not Widely Discussed](https://www.gunfacts.info/journalists-gun-issue-guide-issues-driving-gun-violence-that-are-known-but-not-widely-discussed/)
- [Donate](https://www.gunfacts.info/donate/)

---

### [pme](https://www.gunfacts.info/pme/)

**Published:** October 1, 2014
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Search for:

---

### [Charts from "Guns and Control"](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/charts-from-the-book-guns-and-control/)

**Published:** August 30, 2020
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Firearm Accidents

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-ACCIDENT-1-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-ACCIDENT-1.jpg)

## Availability of Guns

## [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-8-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-8.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-7-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-7.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-6-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-6.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-5-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-5.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-4-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-4.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-3-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-3.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-2-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-2.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-1-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Availabilioty-1.jpg)Public Carry

## [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-5-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-5.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-4-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-4.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-3-800x616.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-3.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-2-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-2.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-1-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CCW-1.jpg)Guns and Crime

## [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-5-800x512.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-5.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-4-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-4.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-3-800x616.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-3.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-2-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-2.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-1-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-CRIME-1.jpg)Defensive Guns Use

## [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-6-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-6.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-5-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-5.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-4-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-4.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-3-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-3.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-2-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-2.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-1-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-DGU-1.jpg)Miscellaneous Topics

## [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-misc-7-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-misc-7.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-6-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-6.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-5-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-5.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-4-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-4.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-3-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-3.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-2-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-2.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-1-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MISC-1.jpg)Mass Public Shootings

## [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-14-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-14.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-13-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-13.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-12-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-12.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-11B-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-11B.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-11A-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-11A.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-10-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-10.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-9-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-9.jpg)

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-8-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-8.jpg)NOTE: This chart was from an older database and shows incidents where the type of weapon was known. It misses years where there were events, but for which the weapon type had not been recorded. Do not consider this authoritative.

## [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-7-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-7.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-6-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-6.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-5-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-5.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-4-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-4.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-mps-3-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-mps-3.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-2-800x533.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-2.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-1-800x616.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-MPS-1.jpg)Research

## [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-RESEARCH-1-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-RESEARCH-1.jpg)Guns and Suicide

## [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-6-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-6.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-5-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-5.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-4-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-4.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-3-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-3.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-2-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-2.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-1-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-Suicides-1.jpg)U.S., U.K. and Australia

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-5-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-5.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-4-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-4.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-3-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-3.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-2-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-2.jpg) [![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-1-800x619.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Guns-and-Control-UK-1.jpg)

---

### [Top Homicide County in Each State 2016](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-research-analysis/top-homicide-county-in-each-state-2016/)

**Published:** July 19, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

At publishing, 2016 was the most recent county-level data available from NACJD. When they publish the updated datasets, we will update this map.

[![U.S. counties with highest homicide percentages in each state in 2016.](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Counties-with-highest-homicide-percentages-in-each-state-2016-b-800x576.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Counties-with-highest-homicide-percentages-in-each-state-2016-b.png)click for a larger, sharable version

**State****County****% or Murders****% of Popula­tion****Gap**AlabamaJefferson County, Alabama26%14%12%AlaskaAnchorage Borough, Alaska76%64%12%ArizonaMaricopa County, Arizona68%61%6%ArkansasPulaski County, Arkansas30%14%16%CaliforniaLos Angeles County, California32%26%6%ColoradoDenver County, Colorado30%13%17%ConnecticutNew Haven County, Connecticut42%26%16%DelawareNew Castle County, Delaware78%59%19%FloridaOrange County, Florida17%7%10%GeorgiaFulton County, Georgia23%10%12%HawaiiHonolulu County, Hawaii46%70%-24%IdahoAda County, Idaho20%27%-7%IllinoisCook County, Illinois80%41%39%IndianaMarion County, Indiana38%17%21%IowaPolk County, Iowa28%15%13%KansasSedgwick County, Kansas38%20%18%KentuckyJefferson County, Kentucky55%17%37%LouisianaOrleans Parish, Louisiana32%9%23%MaineCumberland County, Maine30%22%8%MarylandBaltimore City, Maryland59%10%49%MassachusettsSuffolk County, Massachusetts38%12%26%MichiganWayne County, Michigan55%18%37%MinnesotaHennepin County, Minnesota41%22%18%MississippiHinds County, Mississippi37%12%25%MissouriSt. Louis City, Missouri36%5%31%MontanaCascade County, Montana13%8%5%NebraskaDouglas County, Nebraska63%30%33%NevadaClark County, Nevada88%73%14%New HampshireHillsborough County, New Hampshire28%31%-4%New JerseyEssex County, New Jersey33%9%24%New MexicoBernalillo County, New Mexico53%33%20%New YorkKings County, New York16%13%3%North CarolinaMecklenburg County, North Carolina12%11%1%North DakotaCass County, North Dakota29%23%6%OhioCuyahoga County, Ohio24%10%14%OklahomaTulsa County, Oklahoma33%17%16%OregonMultnomah County, Oregon21%20%1%PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia County, Pennsylvania41%12%28%Rhode IslandProvidence County, Rhode Island76%60%16%South CarolinaCharleston County, South Carolina12%8%4%South DakotaMinnehaha County, South Dakota43%24%19%TennesseeShelby County, Tennessee45%14%30%TexasHarris County, Texas27%17%11%UtahSalt Lake County, Utah62%37%24%VermontFranklin County, Vermont45%8%38%VirginiaRichmond City, Virginia12%3%9%WashingtonKing County, Washington29%30%-1%West VirginiaKanawha County, West Virginia20%11%9%WisconsinMilwaukee County, Wisconsin67%17%51%WyomingLaramie County, Wyoming40%17%23%

---

### [ROLE: Associate researcher](https://www.gunfacts.info/positions-available/role-associate-researcher/)

**Published:** June 14, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

This unpaid role tasks you with performing data discovery, data mining, calculations, and data summary work.

Part-time (a few hours a week).

## Requirements

- Some education in research methodologies (can be part of unrelated course work)
- Basic knowledge of statistics at least to multivariate regressions
- Experience in data quality and analysis self-checking
- Microsoft Excel experience and an up-to-date license for Excel

## Description

In this role, you will work with and at the direction of Gun Facts founder, Guy Smith. The work will range from small discrete task (i.e., “measure the covariance of private gun ownership internationally to assault rates”) to larger-scale projects (i.e., “perform a cross-section study of child gun death rates against safe storage laws by state”).

Given the nature of Gun Facts research projects, Guy Smith will help in terms of:

1. defining the goal
2. collaborating on metrics
3. providing any data which has already been collected
4. guiding through the processes
5. assisting with data acquisition (mainly via guidance)

This role requires some self-direction, but the tasks/projects will remain collaborative until such time as you demonstrate self-sufficiency in execution.

You have the option of being identified as a collaborator or as a researcher when results are published.

To apply, send an email to  and provide the following:

1. Your first and last name
2. Your email address and telephone number
3. A brief statement about your education and experience in research methodologies
4. A brief statement about your education and experience with statistic

---

### [Positions Available](https://www.gunfacts.info/positions-available/)

**Published:** June 14, 2023
**Author:** admin

**Content:**



---

### [Research Resources](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/research-resources/)

**Published:** August 25, 2014
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Clarifying gun policy requires people working from consistent and credible data. Below are the most common sources for criminology, health and other databases used by policy researchers.

# Crime statistics

## United States

#### FBI Uniform Crime Statistics: 

The FBI’s crime data collection is one of the longest running, national efforts going back into the 1940s. It is considered gold standard, but is not without quirks including incomplete agency reporting (which requires imputing some data points).

In the 2020s, the FBI began converting from Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The transition was not smooth and data in the early conversion years (2021) is suspect due to large-scale local agency non-reporting. However, that was during the COVID pandemic and most crime data was wildly in flux and is often skipped in trend analysis.

#### NACJD: 

The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) is a repository of crime data, including more accessible FBI UCR and NIBRS data. When the FBI introduced their Crime Data Explorer (CDE), they eliminated meaningful data exploration and thus NACJD has become a go-to source.

## International

#### U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime: 

The U.N. attempts to normalize definitions and statistics on types of crimes. As such, you will occationally see different crime rates reported by aa country and the U.N. for the same country.

## Injury and Death

#### Center for Disease Control Injury Prevention & Control:

**Mortality data:** CDC Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER): 

**Injury Data:** Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS): 

## Street Gangs

#### National Gang Center: 

Original source for demographic data on street gang membership and participation rates.

# Gun ownership rates

## International

#### Small Arms Survey: 

The SAS collects multiple estimates on per capital private gun ownership by country and aggregates these estimates. These include both registered weapons’ (for countries that have registration regimes) but also estimates on unregistered guns.

---

### [Search Gun Facts](https://www.gunfacts.info/search/)

**Published:** March 30, 2021
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Enter your search terms below and we’ll search all pages and blogs.

 Search for:

---

### [Alerts and Volunteers](https://www.gunfacts.info/alerts-and-volunteers/)

**Published:** December 22, 2015
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

This is where you can:

- Receive new blog posts and “short shots”, the former being for long analysis, the latter for brief observations
- Volunteer to help: 
    - research gun control myths and facts
    - proofread Gun Facts pages
    - translate Gun Facts into foreign languages (currently only interested in native Spanish speakers)

  Please leave this field empty

Email \*

First name

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Country

Email Contact Subjects Blog (new Gun Facts Blog posts) Short Shots (brief notes and small datum) Volunteer – research (gun policy, crime, statistics, etc.) Volunteer – proofreading (proofread new Gun Facts books) Volunteer – translation to Spanish

This field is required.

Check your inbox or spam folder now to confirm your subscription.

---

### [Cookies and Privacy](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/cookies-and-privacy/)

**Published:** November 13, 2019
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Cookies

We use cookies, but not directly.

We host using WordPress. We use several plugins (software) to help manage the site and advertising. Some of these plugins use cookies. We have little or no control over them.

For example, we use one plugin to manage pop-overs (those annoying overlays that keep you from going directly to content) such as our annual reminder about how to get bigger charts. These types of plugins use cookies to keep from showing you something over and over again.

We also use plugins that help us manage advertising, which mainly means Google ads and Amazon ads. These use cookies as well.

Otherwise, we are unaware of what other plugins may or may not use cookies, but since the rest of our plugins are for internal management of the site, odds are they do not affect you.

We have no opt-out policy. If you use our website, you implicitly agree to our cookie policy.

## Privacy

We only collect personal information for our emailing system. We do not sell or share that information with anyone. We do not sell access to you via our inhouse email system, so nobody can contact you that way either.

---

### [Abbreviations and Acronyms](https://www.gunfacts.info/abbreviations-and-acronyms/)

**Published:** March 4, 2018
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Below is a list of abbreviations and acronyms in common use at both the Gun Facts project, and in the sundry disciplines (criminology, sociology, etc.) that are part of gun policy research.

**Acronym****Full Name**AFTEAssociation of Firearm and Toolmark ExaminersAIC NHMPAustralia Institute of Criminology National Homicide Monitoring ProgramALERRTAdvanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response TrainingASEActive Shooter EventBATFBureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and FirearmsBATFEBureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and ExplosivesBBCBritish Broadcasting CorporationBCSBritish Crime SurveyCBSColumbia Broadcasting SystemCCWConcealed Carry WeaponCDCCenter for Disease Control and PreventionCEOChief Executive OfficerCIRVCincinnati Initiative to Reduce ViolenceCMPCivilian Marksmanship ProgramCNNCable News NetworkCRBCriminal Records BureauDCMDirector of Civilian MarksmanshipDGUDefensive Gun UseDNADeoxyribonucleic AcidDOJDepartment of JusticeEUEuropean UnionF.O.P./FOPFraternal Order of PoliceFAAFederal Aviation AdministrationFBIFederal Bureau of InvestigationFBIDFeasibility of a Ballistics Imaging DatabaseGAOGeneral Accounting OfficeGSSGeneral Social SurveyHCIHandgun Control, Inc.IANSAInternational Action Network on Small ArmsIDIdentificationINSImmigration and Naturalization ServiceIRAIrish Republican ArmyITInformation TechnologyL.A., LALos AngelesLEOLaw Enforcement OfficerMADDMothers Against Drunk DriversMD IBISMaryland Integrated Ballistics Identification SystemMPMember of ParliamentMPSMass Public ShootingMTVMusic TelevisionNCRSNational Crime Reporting StandardNCVSNational Crime Victimization SurveyNICSNational Instant (Criminal Background) Check SystemNIJNational Institute of JusticeORCOpinion Research CorporationPACPolitical Action CommitteePDFPortable Document FormatRKBAright to keep and bear armsS.A.F.E.Safety Awareness Firearms Education, Sexually Active Firearm EntrepreneursS.F.San FranciscoSAFSecond Amendment FoundationSASSecond Amendment SistersSWATSpecial Weapons and TacticsTRACTransnational Records Access ClearinghouseU.C.University of CaliforniaU.K., UKUnited KingdomU.N.United NationsU.S., USUnited StatesU.S.S.S.United States Secret ServiceUCLAUniversity of California – Los AngelesUCRUniform Crime ReportsUCRUniform Crime ReportingURLUniform Resource LocatorUSAUnited States of AmericaVPCViolence Policy CenterWISQARSWeb-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System

---

### [Contributor Instructions](https://www.gunfacts.info/contributor-instructions/)

**Published:** September 28, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Thank you for volunteering to improve Gun Facts. Your contribution will help drive a rusty nail into the coffin lid of the gun control industry.

Below are links to instructions for editing Gun Facts chapters, and for bloggers (future enhancement). Please review them before editing any content.

[LOGGING IN, FINDING CHAPTERS AND EDITING](/contributorcontributor-instructions/logging-in-finding-chapters-and-editing/):

[CONTENT STANDARDS DETAILS — FORMATS, GRAPHICS, TABLES](/contributor-instructions/content-standards/):

BLOGGERS — CREATING AND PROPAGATING BLOG ENTRIES:

---

### [Sponsor Gun Facts](https://www.gunfacts.info/sponsor-hide/)

**Published:** November 5, 2014
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## **Reach your target audience while preserving gun owner rights!**

\[ninja\_forms\_display\_form id=3\]For over 15 years the Gun Facts project has debunked gun control mythology, using detailed research, artful presentation and media appearances. We have been a driving force in social and citizens’ media to keep the gun control industry on the run.

Now you can help us while reaching new and existing customers through the new Gun Facts banner sponsorship program. In a nutshell, the program works like this:

- Your company or organization becomes an annual sponsor – three different levels are available.
- Each level has a **reserved banner place** on every content page of the site.
- Sponsors **display banners at each visit**, shared only with sponsors of the same level.
- Each sponsorship level is limited, and thus **your banners will not be diluted**.

The advantages to your company or organization are obvious:

1. Foremost, you are helping to advance knowledge about this critical policy issue.
2. You pay for frequent exposure and not for each click.
3. A single investment buys you over 240,000 potential exposures in a year.
4. You are viewed as an active participant in protecting honesty and freedom.

### Sponsorship details

**Sponsorship levels:** There are three sponsorship levels; Bronze, Silver and Gold.

**Banner placement:** Your clickable banner is placed, in rotation with other sponsors, on each page and blog post (some exceptions are made for administrative pages such as this one and the home page).

**Reserved spots, no dilution:** Your banner runs in rotation with only sponsors of the same level, and the number of sponsors at each level is limited.

**Sponsorship duration:** Sponsorship is for one year, and your clickable banner will appear every day for a year from receipt of your graphics.

### Sponsorship levels

LevelMax SponsorsBanner PositionBanner SizeAnnual CostGold10Top of Page728×90$950Silver25Middle of Page468×60$475Bronze50Bottom of Page728×90$250### Outreach through Gun Facts

#### Significant Traffic:

As of October 2014, the Gun Facts we site drew over 20,000 page views a month and nearly 13,000 visitors. Your sponsorship banner will be visible on nearly every visit. The higher your sponsorship level, the more often it will be seen.

[![analytics](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/analytics-400x121.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/analytics.jpg)#### Thriving social media growth drives more views:

With the Gun Facts web site now fully mobile ready, the rate of page sharing constantly increases, driving even more views. We are also active on Twitter and Facebook to extend our reach.

[![social-presence](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/social-presence-400x99.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/social-presence.jpg)#### More traction through the policy media outlets gains more sponsorship views at the Gun Facts web site:

By appearing on TV and radio programs that your existing customer base listens to, they will visit the Gun Facts web site and be exposed to your sponsorship branding.

 ![Reference logo cluster - web page](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Reference-logo-cluster-web-page-400x99.png)#### New audience generated via mass-media appearances creates new product interest:

New visitors come to the Gun Facts web site when we appear on mainstream media outlets, exposing your brand and message to new customers.

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---

### [Content Standards Details -- Formats, Graphics, Tables, Etc.](https://www.gunfacts.info/contributor-instructions/content-standards/)

**Published:** September 28, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

ALSO: [LOGGING IN, FINDING CHAPTERS AND EDITING](/contributorcontributor-instructions/logging-in-finding-chapters-and-editing/):

Below are the specific details for formatting of content within Gun Facts. Some of these may be a bit technical for people not familiar with the mechanics of web pages. [لعب روليت مجاني](https://studio595.co.uk/?p=39449792/)

**If in doubt, edit and save content in draft, then**
 **contact the editor to complete formatting**

## TEXT

### Headers

- The only header format you should need will be for myth paragraphs.
- Myth paragraphs use **Heading 2**.
- Myths should be in first cap case (e. [إلعب واربح](https://www.qnez.net/97998544/) g. The Quick Brown Box).
- The software will automate all of heading formatting.

### Body text

- There is no need to define a paragraph style. Use the default.
- Bold, italics and underline should be used sparingly and only to emphasize essential points.
- If you need to copy/paste text into a page, use the **paste as plain text** button on the editing toolbar. This removes any formatting and thus preserves Gun Facts formatting.

## Images

- Images must be uploaded to the **Media Library**. 
    - Upload full size for press ready use (2,400 pixels wide or larger, but no bigger than 8,192 pixel on either dimension).
    - The site will automatically create smaller sized images to insert into pages.
    - *It is important to use the smaller size images in posts to avoid Gun Facts readers downloading the large, full size image to their mobile devices*.
- Images themselves should: 
    - Be JPG format (PNG is also acceptable, but we want to avoid image transparency issues than PGN can create).
    - Include the source of information being related (e.g., FBI Uniform Crime Statistics 2010)
- Image names should: 
    - Be descriptive name such as child\_homicides\_over\_time.jpg
    - Include text on the bottom reading “Copyright, Guy Smith and Gun Facts – www.GunFacts.info” 
        - If your graphics tool (e.g. Photoshop) allows editing file info (meta data), put the same copyright notice in there along with a description of the image itself (helps Google to spread the knowledge).
    - After the image is uploaded, click **Edit** and add a description of the image into the **Alternative Text** field. This too makes the image more relevant to searches by Bing and Google. [العاب تكسب فلوس](http://criaderouruguay.com/11731632/)
    - *Do Not* include **Caption Text** as that is not a feature currently used on Gun Facts.
- When inserting an image into a page or post: 
    - Click the Add Media** button above the editing area tool bar.
    - Select the image your already uploaded.
    - ![contributor-media-insert-options-2](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/contributor-media-insert-options-2.jpg)In the lower right, under **Attachment Display Settings**, select the **Thumbnail** size from the “size” picklist.

    - Images should be right aligned.
    - Leave the **Link To** field alone, we want it to link to the large image so people can automatically zoom by clicking on it.
- Once the thumbnail image in in the content: 
    - ![contributor-edit-image-button](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/contributor-edit-image-button.jpg)Click on the Edit Image icon on the image itself.
    - Remove **\_thumb** from the **Link URL** field (this changes the link on the image to point to the full sized graphic you uploaded separately).

## Tables

For now, the administrator will insert all tables (the format has yet to be standardized and inserting tables is highly technical).

---

### [Gun Culture - UC Santa Cruz Policy Forum](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/gun-culture-uc-santa-cruz-policy-forum/)

**Published:** September 30, 2014
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

[/wp-content/uploads/videos/ucsc-gun-culture-forum-final.mp4](/wp-content/uploads/videos/ucsc-gun-culture-forum-final.mp4)

---

### [Catalog of Canards](https://www.gunfacts.info/catalog-of-canards/)

**Published:** November 17, 2018
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Below are all forms of fibs, lies, canards, casuistry, flummery, tergiversation, artifice and tidbits of tarradiddle in common use by propagandists. [777 gaminator](https://www.prelom.bg/68574137/) Use the **bold** parts and the entire definition in your social media posts when you find someone misleading others.

**The Lie of Fear:** Creating a false sense of fear in order to moti­vate people to action while easing them past critical thinking.

**The Lie of Definition:** Using purposefully vague or misleading definitions to create political or legislative leverage, especially when it splits the opposing faction.

**The Lie of Intimidation:** Triggering instinctive reactions to create unfounded fears.

**The Lie of Omission:** Purposefully excluding information to inappropriately change beliefs about an issue.

**The Lie of Looming Catastrophe:** Using worst case scenarios, regardless of how remote, to instill a fear of uncontrollable danger.

**The Lie of Association:** Using invalid associations to demon­ize a person or position.

**The Lie of Lewinsky:** Forcefully making flat denials of ob­servable fact to cast doubt in otherwise lucid minds.

**The Lie of Concern:** Demonstrating an insincere state of con­cern for others in order to achieve tangential objectives.

**The Lie of Camaraderie:** Portraying false associations with a person or organization to create an emotive bond.

**The Lie of Statistics:** The use of numbers that present mis­leading information and distort perspective.

**The Lie of Authority:** To speak with authority, though not fact, and by such presence keep others from questioning the information.

**The Lie of Context:** Showing either a small snippet alone, or a string of snippets together, to create a false impression of what happened.

**The Lie of Non Sequiturs:** Combining vaguely related, or completely unrelated, information to create a false impression or conclusion.

**The Lie of Invalidatable Conclusions:** Pronouncing with certainty what has never been and can never be proven.

**The Lie of Invalid Policy Comparisons:** Comparing two seeming similar policies so the rational effects of one are inap­propriately associated with the other.

**The Lie of Big Databases:** Claiming that sufficiently large databases will instantly identify useful information.

**The Lie of Proportion:** Avoid showing relative proportions in order to avoid showing the weakness of an argument.

**The Lie of False Intents:** Proclaiming a false goal to mask one’s real objective.

**The Lie of Historical Obfuscation:** Obscuring or marginal­izing historical trends in order to lure people toward the same end.

**The Lie of Science:** Using weak or irrelevant studies by topic “experts” to convince people that greater minds have reached a valid conclusion.

**The Lie of Methodology:** Using inappropriate and misleading research methods to create ill-founded conclusions.

**The Lie of Incomplete Comparisons:** Examining only one as­pect of a cause-and-effect relationship to create the impres­sion of a single cause and effect.

**The Lie of Inappropriate Experts:** Using otherwise credible people without subject matter expertise to research or opine on a topic.

**The Lie of Picked Cherries:** Using selected studies, or selected parts of studies, to substantiate an invalid conclusion.

**The Lie of Mass(ive) Assault:** Generating a huge amount of convincing but inadequate “research” in order to make an is­sue appear to have “scientific consensus.”

**The Lie of Universal Competence:** Using experts in one field of study to opine in a different field, and having their credi­bility conceal poor research.

**The Lie of Peer Review:** Using bands of researchers who share the same biases to review and approve suspect research.

**The Lie of Technology:** Asserting that one or another technology will correct a perceived social disorder.

**The Lie of Snowflakes:** Claiming that every unit of a mass manufactured product is inherently unique and will always remain that way.

**Lie of Concealment:** Promoting a seemingly benign policy to surreptitiously enact a malignant one.

**The Lie of Increments:** Claiming that only a small intrusion into private matters is planned, knowing it can be made infi­nitely more intrusive later.

**The Lie of Even Better Technology:** Insisting that failed technologies will or have improved while ignoring the inherent problem.

**The Lie of Business Acumen:** Making inaccurate claims about the limited impact to business and customers in order make a costly proposal sound reasonable.

**The Lie of Pantyhose:** Claiming that people’s situations are similar enough that one-size-fits-all solutions work univer­sally.

**The Lie of Legislative Salvation:** Assuring people that law by itself will cure a social ill.

**The Lie of Accountability:** Falsely assuring people that those charged with performing a duty will attempt to do so.

**Lie of Moving Sources:** Changing the claimed source or cause of a perceived problem when facts make it necessary.

**The Lie of More:** Insisting that more of the same will produce a different outcome.

**The Lie of Mass Micro:** Claiming that a law restraining the masses will control the minority who actually cause problems.

**The Lie of Distance:** Comparing places to which the average voter has never traveled to create a misleading policy analogy.

**The Lie of Selected Cells:** Selecting a small number (often two) points of reference to create a false comparison, ignoring the remaining combinations.

**The Lie of Exotic Divergence:** Contrasting two items without exploring everything that might cause their differences.

**The Lie of Limited Perspective:** Avoidance of exposing the big picture or long-range trends.

**The Lie of Vague Intentions:** Uttering ill-defined but popular objectives while striving for specific and unpopular goals.

**The Lie of Humanitarianism:** Appealing to people’s hopes that aberrant human behavior can be post-processed, and later enforced, by government.

**The Lie of Slices:** Using a small slice of data to simultane­ously obscure the reality presented by all the available data, and creating a false sense of blame.

**The Lie of Cost:** Using arbitrary and inconsistent definitions of cost to create a sense of a serious problem.

**The Lie of Duration:** Not exposing the duration of the topic in order to inflate or deflate the apparent cost, risk or benefit.

**The Lie of Blindness:** Willingly repeating factoids that have been disproven in order to perpetuate the myth.

**The Lie of Balance:** Avoiding exposure of the opposite as­sumption in order to avoid providing balanced perspective.

**The Lie of Unexamined Alternatives:** Examining only half of an obviously two-sided discussion to keep people from ob­taining a full perspective.

**The Lie of Synchronicity:** Creating the appearance of mass, spontaneous mutual consensus to cause the public to believe there is an urgent issue to be resolved.

**The Lie of Mirrors:** Constantly stating the inverse of a fact in order to steadily remove belief in that fact.

**The Lie of Magic:** Redirecting the attention of the public away from the core of the topic to complicated irrelevancies.

**The Lie of Shifted Terms:** Inverting the meaning of words in order to invert an argument.

**The Lie of Loyal Opposition:** Rigging expert analysis and generating media coverage of the same to mask the true con­sensus.

**The Lie of Bluff:** Stating a lie with authority to get the media to repeat your claim.

**The Lie of Action:** Making claims that contradict your past actions in hopes that those actions are forgotten and your fu­ture actions will not be predicted.

**The Lie of Inclusion:** Including inappropriate people or organizations in a group.

**The Lie of Union:** Connecting two or more unrelated ele­ments that occur in proximity to create the appearance of a problem caused by one.

**The Lie of Straw:** Using seemingly evil entity as a non sequi­tur point of argument.

**Lie of Linguistic Substitution:** Using similar-sounding phrases to blur the distinction between the undesirable and desirable so the desirable is vilified.

**Lie of Clusters:** Combining disjointed and emotional elements to obfuscate more basic fallacies.

**The Lie of Coalition:** Pretending that membership in an organization is popular and the ranks are swollen and stable.

**The Lie of the Promised Land:** Promise of utopian outcomes with no conceivable method or means for achieving them, often to gain a smaller, incremental advancement.

**The Lie of Guilt:** Playing to a human’s innate sense of guilt, motivating them into otherwise irresponsible action.

**The Lie of Distracting Terminology:** Injecting confusing and inconsequential jargon into a discussion to distract people from the simpler and more understandable issue.

**The Lie of Equivocation:** The use of a term which has multi­ple meanings to present a false impression of the issue (e.g., “Michael Bloomberg is a *man*.”)

**The Lie of Minutia:** Presenting massive amounts of meaning–less detail to distract people from focusing on conclusions or other important information.

**The Lie of Historical Vectoring:** Presenting one historical element as a proof of concept without presenting the full scope of historical pressures.

**The Lie of Obvious:** Stating that something is obvious in an attempt to prevent someone seeking information.

**The Lie of Headlines:** A headline and opening few paragraphs to a news story that inaccurately portrays the story, or at least buries the lede.

---

### [Top gun control topics debunked](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/top-gun-control-topics-debunked/)

**Published:** January 8, 2015
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

[/wp-content/uploads/videos/gs2ac-2014-11-final.mp4](/wp-content/uploads/videos/gs2ac-2014-11-final.mp4)

---

### [Guy Smith, NRA News, Anti-Gun Owner Propaganda](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/guy-smith-nra-news-anti-gun-owner-propaganda/)

**Published:** April 18, 2014
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

Guy Smith interviewed by Cam Edwards of NRA News, how gun control groups misrepresent gun owners, and how it is backfiring.

---

### [Alerts & Volunteers](https://www.gunfacts.info/alerts-volunteers/)

**Published:** September 16, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

//

[Click to Receive
Alerts or to
Volunteer](http://lists.gunfacts.info/lists/?p=subscribe)

Gun Facts is a community project, and we invite you to participate, even if it is just receiving notices of new releases of the book.

Volunteering is not required. You can sign-up for alerts and news about the Gun Facts project.

However, we encourage you to become one of the hundreds Gun Facts fans who volunteer to:

- Research gun control myths and facts.
- Proof read Gun Facts pages and new book editions.
- Translate Gun Facts into foreign languages (currently only Spanish).

Click the button and get on the alert list now, and volunteer if you can to help make Gun Facts even better.

---

### [Public Opinion](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/public-opinion/)

**Published:** November 30, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Myth: Gun owners are a tiny minority

**[![PUBLIC OPINION - Tighter Restriction On Buying or Owning Guns and Effectiveness on Crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PUBLIC-OPINION-Tighter-Restriction-On-Buying-or-Owning-Guns-and-Effectiveness-on-Crime-400x344.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PUBLIC-OPINION-Tighter-Restriction-On-Buying-or-Owning-Guns-and-Effectiveness-on-Crime.png)Fact:** The Federal government once estimated that there were well over 65 million gun owners in the U.S. and more than 50% were handgun owners. [1](#note-1443-1 "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 1997") This number is generally considered low due to the reluctance of many to admit to a government agency that they own a gun. Other estimates indicate that between 41% and 49% of U.S. households are gun-owning households.

**Fact:** 42% of Americans claim that they own a gun. [2](#note-1443-2 "Americans by Slight Margin Say Gun in the Home Makes It Safer, Gallup Poll, October 11, 2017")

## Myth: People do not believe that the Second Amendment is an individual right

**Fact:** A Gallup survey confirms that 73% of Americans believe the 2nd Amendment “guarantees” the right to keep guns, and that a mere 20% believe it exists to enable state militias. [3](#note-1443-3 "Public Believes Americans Have Right to Own Guns, Gallup Poll,  May 27, 2008")

**Fact:** Surveys show that “52% say it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns, while 46% say it is more important to control gun ownership.” [4](#note-1443-4 "Growing Public Support for Gun Rights, Pew Research Center, December 10, 2014") The split was 29% to 66% in 1999, showing that approval of Second Amendment protections is growing.

**Fact:** A Zogby poll [5](#note-1443-5 "SAF survey of 1,015 likely voters, Zogby, June 2002") conducted after the big gun control initiatives of the year 2000 concluded that 75% of Americans believe the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right. In the same year ABC determined the rate to be 77%. [6](#note-1443-6 "ABC News, May 14, 2002")

## Myth: Most Americans favor gun control

**Cause of Gun Violence****%**The way parents raise their children45%Popular culture26%Availability of guns21%Other6%No opinion2%**Fact:** A CNN/ORC poll has 52% opposing more gun control, and a mere 46% who support it. [7](#note-1443-7 "Poll: More Americans oppose stricter gun control, CNN.com, October 2015") This agrees with a 2006 Rasmussen survey that found 52% of Americans did not believe more gun control is needed. [8](#note-1443-8 "Rasmussen Reports, February 19, 2006")

**Fact:** A 2014 Gallup Poll showed that fewer than half of Americans favored stricter gun control, which extended a long-term trend. Barely more than a quarter favor banning handguns (rendered a moot point by the 2008 *Heller* Supreme Court decision). [9](#note-1443-9 "Less Than Half of Americans Support Stricter Gun Laws, Gallup Poll, October 2014")

**Fact:** Americans believe that parents and popular culture are more responsible for violence in America than firearms.

**Yes****No**Should the U.S. have stricter gun control laws?6.73%92.25%Do you believe that allowing people to carry concealed weapons reduce crime?92.22%7.76%Do you believe that U.S. cities should sue gun manufacturers to recoup money spent dealing with gun-related crime?1.96%98.01%How would you rate the effectiveness of the Brady Bill and the “assault weapons” ban in preventing the illegal use and distribution of guns?0.52%Very effective3.79%Somewhat effective6.19%Somewhat ineffective87.27%Not at all effective2.23%Don’t knowTime Magazine, survey of 33,202 adult Americans,1998**Fact:** A 1999 survey by the Associated Press showed:

- A plurality (49%) felt enforcing existing laws was the key to reducing violent crime.
- 52% felt that background checks did not help reduce the number of crimes committed with guns.

**Fact:** A 2000 Zogby telephone survey of 1,201 adults concluded that, by almost a two-to-one margin, Americans prefer enforcement of existing laws instead of new and tougher gun legislation to fight crime. The same poll found that 68% of the public disagrees with cities suing gun makers for the criminal misuse of guns.

**Fact:** A December 2000 Zogby poll of 1,028 American adults showed that they felt enforcing current laws was the “best way to solve gun violence in America.”

**Fact:** A January 2001 Zogby, *American Values* poll found that 66% of voters felt that the U.S. should spend more money enforcing current laws including mandatory jail time for those who commit a crime with a handgun, while only 26% felt there should be more gun control laws including mandatory gun locks.

**How can gun violence be effectively prevented? [الفائز بكاس العرب 2024](https://streamer.llc/81641648/)** **People****Percent**Stricter gun control laws10,84117.8%Proper enforcement of current gun control laws13,58722.4%Ban on handguns8,00813.2%Stricter punishment for crimes involving guns21,59635.6%Other5,0948.4%Not sure1,6132.7%AOL.com poll, March 2000**Fact:** Only 39% believe stricter gun control is needed, down from 43% in an earlier poll. [10](#note-1443-10 "Rasmussen Reports, October 05, 2009")

**Fact:** An Associated Press poll in April 2000 showed 42% thought stricter enforcement was more likely to cut gun violence. Only 33% said enacting tougher gun laws was better.

**Fact:** A survey in April 2000 by ABC News/Washington Post asked whether “passing stricter gun control laws” or “stricter enforcement of existing laws” is the best way to curb gun violence. Enforcement was preferred by 53% to 33%.

**Fact:** 58% percent of Americans believe better enforcement of existing laws “is a better way to reduce handgun violence” than new gun control laws. [11](#note-1443-11 "Portrait of America Survey, August 2000")

## Myth: More and more Americans support stricter gun control

**Best Way To Reduce Gun ViolenceEnforce existing laws52%Banning handguns15%Teach children self-control15%Additional congressional legislation2%Other8%Don’t know2%Zogby, December 2000**![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/knhjwspfg0o6_cxk7uyieg1-400x241.png)Fact:** The Gallup Poll has been asking Americans this question since 1990 and in the 16 years thereafter, the number supporting stricter gun control has fallen from 78% to 46% and had been as low as 26% before the Sandy Hook Massacre. [12](#note-1443-12 "Americans by Slight Margin Say Gun in the Home Makes It Safer, Gallup Poll, October 20, 2006")

**Fact:** Twice as many Americans currently reject the idea of a handgun ban, though a majority favored such a ban in 1959. [13](#note-1443-13 "Americans by Slight Margin Say Gun in the Home Makes It Safer, Gallup Poll, October 20, 2006")

## Myth: People want to ban handguns

**[![PUBLIC OPINION - Should Handguns Be Banned - Trend](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PUBLIC-OPINION-Should-Handguns-Be-Banned-Trend-400x291.png)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PUBLIC-OPINION-Should-Handguns-Be-Banned-Trend.png)Fact:** Only 28% of Americans believe handguns should be banned from private ownership and this rate is down from 60% when polling began in the 1950’s. [14](#note-1443-14 "Gallup Poll Social Series: Crime, October 11, 2017")

**Fact:** Even a New York Times poll showed that citizens don’t want to ban so-called “assault weapons” by a 50/44 margin [15](#note-1443-15 "New York Times/CBS News Poll on Terrorism and the 2016 Race, December 10, 2015") though an ABC/Washington Post poll has the split at 53/45. [16](#note-1443-16 "Most Now Oppose an Assault Weapons Ban, December 2015") This is down from an 18/80 split in 1994.

## Myth: People think gun control stops crime

**Fact:** Fifty-one percent of Americans think more gun control is more likely to make it harder for law-abiding citizens to purchase a gun rather than keep guns out of the hands of criminals, people with mental illness and suspected terrorists. Only 38% disagree. [17](#note-1443-17 "New York Daily News/Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, December 2015")

## Myth: People oppose concealed carry

**Fact:** 56% say more concealed weapons would make country safer. [18](#note-1443-18 "Majority Say More Concealed Weapons Would Make U.S. Safer, Gallup Poll, October 2015")

**Fact:** Ignoring for a moment that 42 states have enacted “shall issue” concealed carry laws (and two more never bothered to outlaw concealed carry), 2009 survey showed 83% support concealed carry laws as they are commonly enacted. [19](#note-1443-19 "Zogby, August 4, 2009")

## Myth: Most people think guns in the home are dangerous

**Fact:** 57% of Americans believe guns “protect people from becoming victims of crimes” while only 38% believe that guns “put people’s safety at risk.” [20](#note-1443-20 "Growing Public Support for Gun Rights, Pew Research Center, December 10, 2014")

**Fact:** Gallup poll concludes that 63% of Americans believe having a firearm in the home makes it safer. [21](#note-1443-21 "More Than Six in 10 Americans Say Guns Make Homes Safer, Gallop, November 2014")

**Fact:** Sixty-eight percent of Americans would feel safer living in a neighborhood where they can own a gun rather than one where no one could have a gun for their own protection. [22](#note-1443-22 "Rasmussen Reports, June 2015")

## Myth: People want local government to ban guns

**Fact:** Only 20% of people believe local gun control is permissible – 69% disagree. [23](#note-1443-23 "Rasmussen Reports, October 05, 2009")

---

Notes:

1. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 1997 [↩](#return-note-1443-1)
2. *Americans by Slight Margin Say Gun in the Home Makes It Safer*, Gallup Poll, October 11, 2017 [↩](#return-note-1443-2)
3. *Public Believes Americans Have Right to Own Guns*, Gallup Poll, May 27, 2008 [↩](#return-note-1443-3)
4. Growing Public Support for Gun Rights, Pew Research Center, December 10, 2014 [↩](#return-note-1443-4)
5. *SAF survey of 1,015 likely voters*, Zogby, June 2002 [↩](#return-note-1443-5)
6. ABC News, May 14, 2002 [↩](#return-note-1443-6)
7. *Poll: More Americans oppose stricter gun control*, CNN.com, October 2015 [↩](#return-note-1443-7)
8. *Rasmussen Reports*, February 19, 2006 [↩](#return-note-1443-8)
9. *Less Than Half of Americans Support Stricter Gun Laws*, Gallup Poll, October 2014 [↩](#return-note-1443-9)
10. *Rasmussen Reports*, October 05, 2009 [↩](#return-note-1443-10)
11. *Portrait of America Survey*, August 2000 [↩](#return-note-1443-11)
12. *Americans by Slight Margin Say Gun in the Home Makes It Safer*, Gallup Poll, October 20, 2006 [↩](#return-note-1443-12)
13. *Americans by Slight Margin Say Gun in the Home Makes It Safer*, Gallup Poll, October 20, 2006 [↩](#return-note-1443-13)
14. Gallup Poll Social Series: Crime, October 11, 2017 [↩](#return-note-1443-14)
15. *New York Times/CBS News Poll on Terrorism and the 2016 Race*, December 10, 2015 [↩](#return-note-1443-15)
16. *Most Now Oppose an Assault Weapons Ban*, December 2015 [↩](#return-note-1443-16)
17. New York Daily News/Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, December 2015 [↩](#return-note-1443-17)
18. *Majority Say More Concealed Weapons Would Make U.S. Safer*, Gallup Poll, October 2015 [↩](#return-note-1443-18)
19. Zogby, August 4, 2009 [↩](#return-note-1443-19)
20. Growing Public Support for Gun Rights, Pew Research Center, December 10, 2014 [↩](#return-note-1443-20)
21. *More Than Six in 10 Americans Say Guns Make Homes Safer*, Gallop, November 2014 [↩](#return-note-1443-21)
22. Rasmussen Reports, June 2015 [↩](#return-note-1443-22)
23. *Rasmussen Reports*, October 05, 2009 [↩](#return-note-1443-23)

---

### [](https://www.gunfacts.info/fundraiser-donates-by-mail/)

**Published:** February 4, 2015
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

# How to Donate by Snail Mail

DONATION LEVEL (circle one):.22 ($1 or above, or for no gift donation)9mm ($25).40 Caliber ($50)12 Gauge ($100)Bazooka ($200)*If you want to donate more than $200, chose the Bazooka level and we’ll toss in a few extra prizes.*1. Print this page
2. Select which donation level you want
3. Provide your contact and shipping info
4. Make your check out to “Gun Facts”
5. Send the form and the check to:

Gun Facts
PO Box 8642
Asheville, NC 28804

**YOUR CONTACT AND SHIPPING INFO:**

NAME (first and last):

EMAIL ADDRESS:

SHIPPING ADDRESS:

---

### [Press Releases](https://www.gunfacts.info/press-releases/)

**Published:** September 24, 2020
**Author:** admin

**Content:**



---

### [Guns and Control](https://www.gunfacts.info/guns-and-control/)

**Published:** July 5, 2020
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## The Most Important Book Of The 2020 Election

!["Guns and Control" by Guy Smith, Skyhorse Publishing, 2020](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Guns-and-Control-Cover-Design-Form-galley-400x592.jpg)Order Now at [Amazon.com](https://amzn.to/31KeZWe)

(click for [press content and resource](/guns-and-control/#press-content))

*Guns and Control* grants high-level perspectives—for example, that mass public shootings are a global phenomenon, occurring in nearly all developed nations—and explore details to understand the causes, and thus the possible and impossible cures, of gun violence-related problems. Was the push for de-institutionalization in mental health management a contributing factor to the rise in mass public shootings? *Guns and Control* will help readers find answers to such questions.

### The Endorsements

“This is an instructive book for those who want the information and want to make their own minds in the gun control debate. The science and empirical data concerning guns and violence are both rich and complex. Smith, as is his way, has made this complex topic easy to grasp and demystified where problems with guns do and don’t exist. He elucidates rather than obfuscate this issue with clarity and eloquence.”

Dr. Miguel A. Faria, Associate Editor in Chief, Surgical Neurology International (SNI). Former Injury Research Grant Review Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

---

“This book will delight and annoy both pro-gun and anti-gun factions. Guy Smith has always dealt in the facts without an agenda, and this time is no exception. If you don’t know who is lying or telling the truth about guns, this book will guide you to your own conclusions.”

Alan Gottlieb, Founder, Second Amendment Foundation

---

A guided tour through data pertinent to these areas, with a tour guide who points out the sources, the uses and misuses – all in an easy to read manner.

Henry Schaffer, Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Biomathematics; Coordinator of Special IT Projects & Faculty Collaboration, NC State University

## About “Guns and Control”

What the public lacks is a clear, unbiased, broad perspective on the realities of guns, explained in simple, straightforward, and entertaining ways. *Guns and Control* will demystify these misunderstood aspects of who uses and misuses guns.

From project creator Guy Smith comes *Guns and Control: A Nonpartisan Guide to Mass Public Shootings, Gun Accidents, Crime, Public Carry, Suicides, Defensive Use, and More.* Non-aligned voters are often baffled by gun control. This book is designed to be a guide to thoughtful discussion; it arms readers with facts and observations behind the conflicting arguments, leaves emotional rhetoric to the pundits, and focuses on the thorny perspectives underlying the debate. *Guns and Control* will:

• Guide readers step-wise through each of the major gun control topics: mass public shootings, assault weapons, street crime, suicide, private carry, defensive gun use, gun availability, and more.
• Help readers gain the broad perspective and the full set of important, true facts.
• Inoculate readers against some of the more egregious misinformation.
• Help readers in formulating their own conclusions, not spoon feed them spin.

## Press content and resources

#### Author blurb

**Guy Smith** is internationally known as a gun control policy analyst. He is the founder and chief researcher at the Gun Facts Project. In twenty years as a policy analyst, Smith has contributed to public understanding of the realities of guns and their control through both secondary and primary research, occasionally breaking new ground on key topics (he personally conducted work mapping issues of mental health, psychotropic prescription medications and mass public shootings). In the past two decades, Gun Facts has been directly distributed to more than 165 countries around the world, and is routinely referenced in testimony, including that by Dick Heller, the namesake of the famous 2008 Supreme Court decision reaffirming the constitutional right to own a handgun.

#### Book Cover Downloads

[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Guns-and-Control-FB-ad-1-gradient-400x400.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Guns-and-Control-FB-ad-1-gradient.jpg)[![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Guns-and-Control-Cover-Design-Form-400x592.jpg)](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Guns-and-Control-Cover-Design-Form.jpg)Click either image to get a larger version for publishing#### Previous interviews

See this section of the [media resources page for some previous interviews](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/#interviews) with the author of Guns and Control.

#### Author photographs

A [small collection of photos of Guy Smith](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/#photos), author of Guns and Control.

---

### [Gun Control Myths](https://www.gunfacts.info/gun-policy-info/)

**Published:** September 17, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**



---

### [Instructions for FDA drug tally project](https://www.gunfacts.info/contributor-instructions/instructions-for-fda-drug-tally-project/)

**Published:** June 1, 2018
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

## Thanks for chipping in

*See this [video on YouTube](https://youtu.be/1ni4X4ZSeIE) for a quick “visual learning” of how to gather the data for this project.*

Here are the steps for helping build a database of the adverse reactions to psychotropic medications that may have a bearing on gun violence.

1. We will send you the name of ***one*** generic medication at a time (in this example, we will use “fluvoxamine”, the generic name for Luvox).
2. Go to the FDA web site at .
3. ![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/fda-square.png)Click on the “FDA Adverse Events Reporting …” square.
4. Click on the box that says “Reaction”
5. Key-in the generic drug name. In the resulting list, click just those medication that ***begin*** with the drugs name.
6. Click on the menu item “Reaction” (hover hint currently reads “Cases by Reaction Term”).
7. A list of reaction groups will be presented. Click on “psychiatric disorders” and then click the green check mark.
8. Twice, once for violent reactions, and again for delusional reactions (our classification, not the FDA’s), do the following: 
    1. Click the drop-down button that says “reaction”
    2. ![](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/fda-reactions.png)Enter the first few characters of the reaction name from the list in the Google spreadsheet and click on (check-mark) the matching entry (“violent” or “delusional”) that you are working on … NOT BOTH IN ONE PASS.
    3. Once you have selected all that apply, then click the large green check mark in the upper right of the drop-down box.
    4. In a separate browser window/tab, open the [master spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KRysBnn0Mg5ZX0BQEDYCjbi7a1WCLuQNr0aUPCsU2LU/edit?usp=sharing) we have created for this project.
    5. Find the tab within the spreadsheet for the generic medication you are researching.
    6. In the column for the classification (either “violent” or “delusional”) for which you just made your reaction selections, and for each of the years individually from 1992 through 2017, enter the total number of reactions for that year.
    7. At the bottom of the column, in one cell, enter the name of each reaction you included in the list of reactions, each one separated by a comma.
9. Once you have filled in the two columns, please mail  and inform him of the name of the medication you have just done. Once he sanity checks your work, and if you are willing, he will assign you another medication.

---

### [Quick Blogs](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/quick-blogs/)

**Published:** March 12, 2018
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

\[Total\_Soft\_Poll id=”2″\]

---

### [Special Research](https://www.gunfacts.info/special-research/)

**Published:** April 18, 2015
**Author:** admin

**Content:**



---

### [Research](https://www.gunfacts.info/research/)

**Published:** February 6, 2015
**Author:** admin

**Content:**



---

### [Guy Smith on KGO-TV discussing gun buy-backs](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/guy-smith-on-kgo-tv-discussing-gun-buy-backs/)

**Published:** April 28, 2014
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

[https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/videos/2008-04-oakland-gun-buy-back\_x264.mp4](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/videos/2008-04-oakland-gun-buy-back_x264.mp4)

Guy Smith, interviewed on KGO-TV concerning an Oakland, California gun “buy back” program and the realistic impact on crime.

---

### [Gun Facts Author interviewed on Al Jazeera ](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/gun-facts-author-interviewed-on-al-jazeera/)

**Published:** April 18, 2014
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

[/wp-content/uploads/videos/Al-Jazera-2012-04-03-Oakland-College-Shooting.mp4](/wp-content/uploads/videos/Al-Jazera-2012-04-03-Oakland-College-Shooting.mp4)

Guy Smith, interviewed on Al Jazeera English concerning American gun control policy in the wake of the Oakland, California Oikos University shooting, 2012-04-03.

---

### [Guy Smith Interviewed on Thom Hartmann Big Picture](https://www.gunfacts.info/home/media-resources/guy-smith-interviewed-on-thom-hartmann-big-picture/)

**Published:** April 18, 2014
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

webm=”/wp-content/uploads/videos/Thom-Hartmann-Big-Picture-2011-05.webm”wmv=”/wp-content/uploads/videos/Thom-Hartmann-Big-Picture-2011-05.wmv”[/wp-content/uploads/videos/Thom-Hartmann-Big-Picture-2011-05.mp4](/wp-content/uploads/videos/Thom-Hartmann-Big-Picture-2011-05.mp4)

Guy Smith interviewed on the Thom Hartmann Big Picture Program, discussing gun owner privacy rights and doctors.

---

### [Logging in, finding chapters and editing](https://www.gunfacts.info/contributor-instructions/logging-in-finding-chapters-and-editing/)

**Published:** September 28, 2013
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

ALSO: [CONTENT STANDARDS DETAILS — FORMATS, GRAPHICS, TABLES](/contributor-instructions/content-standards/):

## LOGGING IN

1. ![contributor-login-link](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/contributor-login-link.jpg)Scroll to the bottom of any Gun Facts page, and click the foot link reading “Contributor Login”.
2. At the WordPress login screen, enter your user ID and password. 
    1. ![contributor-login-screen](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/contributor-login-screen.jpg)Your user ID was assigned to you by Guy Smith, as was an initial password.
    2. After logging on the first time, change your password (more on that below).
3. What you can edit will be restricted based on your role. In most instances you will have specific “pages” that you can alter (bloggers will have the ability to create “posts”).

## CHANGING YOUR PASSWORD

You can change your password at any time, and it it wise to do so fairly often.

**NEVER PROVIDE YOUR PASSWORD TO ANYONE! PERIOD!**

Gun Facts relies on solid information, which means access to editing is restricted. Keep you login information strictly to yourself and never share it with anyone.

![contributor-profile-select](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/contributor-profile-select.jpg)
 To change your password:

1. Click on **PROFILE** on the left-hand menu.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
3. Enter your new password in ***both*** password fields.
4. use at least one digit or special character (! ” ? $ % ^ &) to make the password stronger.
5. Click **UPDATE PROFILE**.

## EDITING CONTENT

![contributor-edit-posts-find](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/contributor-edit-posts-find.jpg)

1. Most volunteers will edit “pages”. To see the pages you have permission to edit, click on **PAGES** in the left-hand menu.
2. You will be presented a list of pages tat you have permission to edit. Click on the one to which you need to make changes/addition. 
    1. Be aware that there may be more than one person working on a page at a time.
    2. If so you may see two or more entries for the page, listing who edited each version.
    3. ![contributor-choosing-revision](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/contributor-choosing-revision.jpg)If in doubt, wait for the other version to be accepted or rejected. But if you need to make a change, edit the version that have pending changes. This will add your changes to the other person’s edits. The Gun Facts publisher will sort out any conflicts.
3. The editor will be familiar to many people who work on public boards. The content is displayed in a “what you see is what you get” box and can be edited like most word processing documents.
4. ![contributor-edit-bar-find](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/contributor-edit-bar-find.jpg)The bar above the editing area is used for basic formatting (see the [Content Standards Detail]() page for details on standards for formatting text, headers, images, tables, etc.)
5. When you have finished making changes, you need to save your work and then preview/review them.
6. Save your work. The button to click depends on if you are editing a non-pending page, or if you are updating your own pending edits. 
    1. ![contributor-two-submit-buttons-for-edits](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/contributor-two-submit-buttons-for-edits.jpg)For new edits, click the **Submit Update** blue button on the right of your screen.
    2. For chances to your own pending edits, click the **Update Revision** button under the editing window.
7. Click the **Update Revision** button below the editing area.
8. Click on **Pages** in the main menu on the left.
9. Hover your mouse under the title of the page you edited and click on **Preview**.
10. There are specific instructions for uploading, inserting graphics. Please see the [Contents Standards](/contributor-instructions/content-standards/) page for those instructions.![contributor-preview-changes](http://wp.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/contributor-preview-changes.jpg)

### Approvals

Your changes will not be immediately published. An email will be sent to a Gun Facts administrator who will review your edits. Once your changes pass quality control, they will be published. If there are problems with the changes, either you will be notified or the clean-up (if minor) will be handled by the administrator.

FOOTNOTES

Footnotes are all important to Gun Facts. We use a special tool for impelmenting footnotes which keeps them consistant and allows them to be exported to the book simply.

At the point in the text where the footnote number should appear, enter the following text:

![foot-note-intruction-1](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/foot-note-intruction-1.jpg)

This causes the footnote text (what appears between the acp and /acp brackets) to appear at the page bottom. An example would be:

![foot-note-intruction-2](https://www.gunfacts.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/foot-note-intruction-2-400x30.jpg)

Using the example text above, this paragraph will end with a footnote. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see it.\[acp footnote\]*Targeting Guns*, Gary Kleck, 1987\[/acp\]

Gun Facts uses a non-standard footnote format. Follow these guidelines for the format of the two primary citation types.

**Publications:**

- Title of article/paper in italics
- Year published
- Publisher

```
Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997
```

**People:**

- Person’s name
- Title
- Date

```
S.C. Helsley, Assistant Director DOJ Investigation and Enforcement Branch, 
California, October 31, 1988
```

\[acp footnote display title=”This Is Where Your Footnotes Show” /\]

---


## MailPoet Page

### [MailPoet Page](https://www.gunfacts.info/?mailpoet_page=captcha)

**Published:** April 13, 2025
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

\[mailpoet\_page\]

---

### [MailPoet Page](https://www.gunfacts.info/?mailpoet_page=subscriptions)

**Published:** April 29, 2018
**Author:** admin

**Content:**

\[mailpoet\_page\]

---


## Tags

### [international](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/international/)

---

### [firearms](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/firearms/)

---

### [crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/crime/)

---

### [gun control](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-control/)

---

### [law center to prevent gun violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/law-center-to-prevent-gun-violence/)

---

### [propaganda](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/propaganda/)

---

### [homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/homicides/)

---

### [california](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/california/)

---

### [ccw](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ccw/)

---

### [negligent](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/negligent/)

---

### [accidental](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/accidental/)

---

### [discharge](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/discharge/)

---

### [children](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/children/)

---

### [guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/guns/)

---

### [schools](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/schools/)

---

### [suicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/suicides/)

---

### [media](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/media/)

---

### [arizona republic](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/arizona-republic/)

---

### [Megan Finnerty](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/megan-finnerty/)

---

### [school](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/school/)

---

### [shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/shootings/)

---

### [everytown](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/everytown-2/)

---

### [alcohol](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/alcohol/)

---

### [death](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/death/)

---

### [assault weapons](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/assault-weapons/)

---

### [assault rifles](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/assault-rifles/)

---

### [reporters](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/reporters/)

---

### [journalists](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/journalists/)

---

### [handguns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/handguns/)

---

### [reason](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/reason/)

---

### [chicago](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/chicago/)

---

### [violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/violence/)

---

### [obama](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/obama/)

---

### [holder](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/holder/)

---

### [gun](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun/)

---

### [prosecutions](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/prosecutions/)

---

### [federal](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/federal/)

---

### [violent crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/violent-crime/)

---

### [robbery](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/robbery/)

---

### [lcpgv](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/lcpgv/)

---

### [assault rifle](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/assault-rifle/)

---

### [assault weapon](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/assault-weapon/)

---

### [definition](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/definition/)

---

### [cities](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/cities/)

---

### [gangs](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gangs/)

---

### [brady campaign](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/brady-campaign-2/)

---

### [scorecard](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/scorecard/)

---

### [background checks](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/background-checks/)

---

### [bureau of justice statistics](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/bureau-of-justice-statistics/)

---

### [police](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/police/)

---

### [deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/deaths/)

---

### [trend](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/trend/)

---

### [gun trafficking](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-trafficking/)

---

### [interstate](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/interstate/)

---

### [BATF](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/batf/)

---

### [women](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/women/)

---

### [suicide](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/suicide/)

---

### [homicide](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/homicide/)

---

### [bloomberg](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/bloomberg/)

---

### [minorities](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/minorities/)

---

### [95%](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/95/)

---

### [statistics](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/statistics/)

---

### [firearm](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/firearm/)

---

### [ammo](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ammo/)

---

### [ban](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ban/)

---

### [cops](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/cops/)

---

### [research](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/research/)

---

### [bunk](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/bunk/)

---

### [methodology](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/methodology/)

---

### [child](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/child/)

---

### [gun deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-deaths/)

---

### [campus](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/campus/)

---

### [concealed](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/concealed/)

---

### [carry](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/carry/)

---

### [vpc](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/vpc/)

---

### [violence policy center](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/violence-policy-center/)

---

### [self-defense](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/self-defense/)

---

### [preschoolers](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/preschoolers/)

---

### [accidents](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/accidents/)

---

### [los angeles](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/los-angeles/)

---

### [ukraine](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ukraine/)

---

### [illegal guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/illegal-guns/)

---

### [universal](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/universal/)

---

### [background](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/background/)

---

### [checks](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/checks/)

---

### [juvenile](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/juvenile/)

---

### [laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/laws/)

---

### [mass public shooting](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mass-public-shooting/)

---

### [mental health](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mental-health/)

---

### [newsom](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/newsom/)

---

### [misinformation](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/misinformation/)

---

### [politico](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/politico/)

---

### [mayors against illegal guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mayors-against-illegal-guns/)

---

### [eveytown](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/eveytown/)

---

### [iron pipeline](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/iron-pipeline/)

---

### [new york times](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/new-york-times/)

---

### [myth](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/myth/)

---

### [new york](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/new-york/)

---

### [toy guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/toy-guns/)

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### [missouri](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/missouri/)

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### [permit](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/permit/)

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### [handgun](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/handgun/)

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### [repeal](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/repeal/)

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### [definitions](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/definitions/)

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### [rampage](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/rampage/)

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### [civilian](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/civilian/)

---

### [husbands](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/husbands/)

---

### [boyfriends](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/boyfriends/)

---

### [intimates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/intimates/)

---

### [concealed carry](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/concealed-carry/)

---

### [bars](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/bars/)

---

### [pubs](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/pubs/)

---

### [gun violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-violence/)

---

### [dearth](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/dearth/)

---

### [registration](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/registration/)

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### [lancet](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/lancet/)

---

### [three](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/three/)

---

### [Australia](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/australia/)

---

### [gun ban](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-ban/)

---

### [results](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/results/)

---

### [outcome](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/outcome/)

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### [rape](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/rape/)

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### [doctors](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/doctors/)

---

### [mistakes](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mistakes/)

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### [economists](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/economists/)

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### [criminologists](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/criminologists/)

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### [cincinatti](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/cincinatti/)

---

### [richmond](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/richmond/)

---

### [target in trafficking](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/target-in-trafficking/)

---

### [suppressors](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/suppressors/)

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### [silencers](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/silencers/)

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### [Constitutional Carry](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/constitutional-carry/)

---

### [firearm homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/firearm-homicides/)

---

### [sales](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/sales/)

---

### [law](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/law/)

---

### [lead](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/lead/)

---

### [shooting](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/shooting/)

---

### [ranges](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ranges/)

---

### [toxicity](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/toxicity/)

---

### [ownership](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ownership/)

---

### [rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/rates/)

---

### [map](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/map/)

---

### [pew](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/pew/)

---

### [poll](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/poll/)

---

### [survey](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/survey/)

---

### [owners](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/owners/)

---

### [stanford](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/stanford/)

---

### [RTC](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/rtc/)

---

### [permits](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/permits/)

---

### [Scientific American](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/scientific-american/)

---

### [deaths accidental homicides suicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/deaths-accidental-homicides-suicides/)

---

### [gun shows](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-shows/)

---

### [nevada](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/nevada/)

---

### [nbc](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/nbc/)

---

### [trace](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/trace/)

---

### [stolen](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/stolen/)

---

### [legal intervention](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/legal-intervention/)

---

### [justifiable homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/justifiable-homicides/)

---

### [Parkland](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/parkland/)

---

### [Florida](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/florida/)

---

### [mass public](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mass-public/)

---

### [mass public shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mass-public-shootings/)

---

### [autism](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/autism/)

---

### [gifford](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gifford/)

---

### [giffords law center](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/giffords-law-center/)

---

### [strong gun laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/strong-gun-laws/)

---

### [mass](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mass/)

---

### [psychological stressors](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/psychological-stressors/)

---

### [deinstitutionalization](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/deinstitutionalization/)

---

### [active shooter events](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/active-shooter-events/)

---

### [stopping](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/stopping/)

---

### [ar-15](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ar-15/)

---

### [psychotropic](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/psychotropic/)

---

### [medications](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/medications/)

---

### [antidepressants](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/antidepressants/)

---

### [mood stabilizers](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mood-stabilizers/)

---

### [anti-psychotics](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/anti-psychotics/)

---

### [public](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/public/)

---

### [cattle pen](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/cattle-pen/)

---

### [the trace](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/the-trace/)

---

### [cdc](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/cdc/)

---

### [high capacity](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/high-capacity/)

---

### [magazines](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/magazines/)

---

### [gun stores](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-stores/)

---

### [FFL](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ffl/)

---

### [red flag](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/red-flag/)

---

### [pediatrics](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/pediatrics/)

---

### [teenagers](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/teenagers/)

---

### [school shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/school-shootings/)

---

### [k12](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/k12/)

---

### [rand corporation](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/rand-corporation/)

---

### [household firearm gun](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/household-firearm-gun/)

---

### [teens](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/teens/)

---

### [ama](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ama/)

---

### [jama](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/jama/)

---

### [missousri](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/missousri/)

---

### [ammunition](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ammunition/)

---

### [mass shooting](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mass-shooting/)

---

### [inner-cities](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/inner-cities/)

---

### [ghost guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ghost-guns/)

---

### [diy guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/diy-guns/)

---

### [crime guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/crime-guns/)

---

### [NICS](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/nics/)

---

### [gun sales](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-sales/)

---

### [murder](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/murder/)

---

### [sentencing](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/sentencing/)

---

### [retail guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/retail-guns/)

---

### [D.C.](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/d-c/)

---

### [permitless](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/permitless/)

---

### [family](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/family/)

---

### [mass pulic shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mass-pulic-shootings/)

---

### [mass shootings](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mass-shootings/)

---

### [child gun deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/child-gun-deaths/)

---

### [teen gun deaths](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/teen-gun-deaths/)

---

### [gavin newsom](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gavin-newsom/)

---

### [ranking](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/ranking/)

---

### [street gangs](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/street-gangs/)

---

### [gun safety](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-safety/)

---

### [psychotropic medications](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/psychotropic-medications/)

---

### [mass attacks](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/mass-attacks/)

---

### [NIBIN](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/nibin/)

---

### [repeat offenders](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/repeat-offenders/)

---

### [stand your ground](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/stand-your-ground/)

---

### [public carry](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/public-carry/)

---

### [county](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/county/)

---

### [policing](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/policing/)

---

### [Gun Violence Archive](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-violence-archive/)

---

### [GVA](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gva/)

---

### [habitual offender](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/habitual-offender/)

---

### [three strikes](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/three-strikes/)

---

### [teachers](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/teachers/)

---

### [resource officers](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/resource-officers/)

---

### [stolen guns](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/stolen-guns/)

---

### [gun crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-crime/)

---

### [data](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/data/)

---

### [fbi](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/fbi/)

---

### [permit to purchase](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/permit-to-purchase/)

---

### [licensing](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/licensing/)

---

### [non-fatal firearm crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/non-fatal-firearm-crime/)

---

### [recidivism](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/recidivism/)

---

### [universal background checks](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/universal-background-checks/)

---

### [gun homicides](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-homicides/)

---

### [state laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/state-laws/)

---

### [handgun purchase waiting periods](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/handgun-purchase-waiting-periods/)

---

### [waiting periods](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/waiting-periods/)

---

### [nibrs](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/nibrs/)

---

### [firearm crime](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/firearm-crime/)

---

### [professionalism](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/professionalism/)

---

### [non-fatal gun injuries](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/non-fatal-gun-injuries/)

---

### [gun injuries](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/gun-injuries/)

---

### [medical intervention](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/medical-intervention/)

---

### [firearm assault](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/firearm-assault/)

---

### [firearm homicide](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/firearm-homicide/)

---

### [police staffing](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/police-staffing/)

---

### [detective and patrol ratio](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/detective-and-patrol-ratio/)

---

### [london](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/london/)

---

### [Habitual Offender Laws](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/habitual-offender-laws/)

---

### [tough on crime.](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/tough-on-crime/)

---

### [Firearm Homicide Rates](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/firearm-homicide-rates/)

---

### [demographics](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/demographics/)

---

### [internet](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/internet/)

---

### [Domestic violence](https://www.gunfacts.info/blog/tag/domestic-violence/)

---