Search Results for: "firearm deaths"

Bad Research Roster

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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 Violence in America – Findings from the 2025 United States Violence Experiences Survey Preventable Tragedies: A Longitudinal Analysis of State Firearm Laws and K-12 School Shootings in the United States (2000-2019) “The only friend I had was my gun”: A mixed-methods study of gun culture in school shootings Firearm Laws and Pediatric Mortality in the US Patterns of U.S. Firearm Injury Emergency Department Visits by Month, Day, and Time During 2018 to 2023 “The only friend I had was my gun”: A mixed-methods study of gun culture in school shootings Direct Exposure to Mass Shootings Among US Adults Florida’s Red Flag Gun Law and Firearm and Non-firearm Homicide and Suicide Rates Suicide Prevention Effects of Extreme Risk Protection Order Laws in Four … Continue reading →

Children and handgun availability

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One bit of persistent good news is that very few children die from guns in the United States. 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 … Continue reading →

Negligent Discharge and CCWs

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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 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 … Continue reading →

Guns in Other Countries

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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 High Low Gun Availability High United States Switzerland Low Mexico Japan Or, 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. 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 … Continue reading →

Guns and Crime Prevention

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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.” 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.  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, estimates people defend themselves 235,700 times each year with guns. Fact: Victims with guns “would reduce … the criminals’ incentives to commit violent crimes and to be armed.” Fact: The number of times per year an American uses a firearm to deter a home invasion alone is 498,000. Fact: In 83.5% (2,087,500) of these successful gun defenses, the attacker either threatened … Continue reading →

Assorted Gun Insights

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Myth: 30,000 people are killed with guns every year. Fact: 61% of these deaths are suicides (80% in 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   Poll Gun Ownership Trend Registered Voter Isolation ABC/Post Steady Yes Gallup Steady Yes Pew Declining No GSS Declining No 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 … Continue reading →

Gun Facts

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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 … Continue reading →

Children and Guns

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Myth: Guns are the leading cause of death for children 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 … Continue reading →

Mass Shooting Metrics

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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, 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 … Continue reading →

Gun Violence Audit – 2025

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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 … Continue reading →