Gun Crimes Drop Dramatically, 2 Studies Confirm

All of the recent hand-wringing and political posturing has created the impression among the low-information populace that Americans are under siege by gun crime and homicides.

Despite the earlier cites of statistical evidence otherwise, many, if not most, people in general and on ATS refused to accept the fact that state laws adequattely protect their citizens, without unnecessary federal intervention.

Now, two independent studies have been published that clearly (and probably not finally) refute the hype and exaggeration:

Reports show gun homicides down since 1990s

Gun homicides have dropped steeply in the United States since their 1993 peak, a pair of reports released Tuesday showed, adding fuel to Congress' battle over whether to tighten restrictions on firearms.

A study released Tuesday by the government's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that gun-related homicides dropped from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. That's a 39 percent reduction.

Another report by the private Pew Research Center found a similar decline by looking at the rate of gun homicides, which compares the number of killings to the size of the country's growing population. It found that the number of gun homicides per 100,000 people fell from 7 in 1993 to 3.6 in 2010, a drop of 49 percent.

hosted.ap.org...

Given that one study was by the U.S. government itself, it will be hard for Holder, Obama, Reid, et al to pander and use victims as props to further an argument that has no leg to support it.

The other study, by the Pew Center, can hardly be criticized as conservative or NRA-sponsored: PEW is notoriously liberal in their polling and studies.

Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.


Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.

In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium

Gun crime has plunged, but Americans think it's up, says study

Why do Americans NOT know this? Has anyone seen the liberal MSM even coming close to saying this? Have any of the MSM pulished or broadcast "Braking News" on this?

The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found.

The bureau also looked into non-fatal violent crimes. Few victims of such crimes -- less than 1% -- reported using a firearm to defend themselves.

Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.

It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up

www.latimes.com...

Is it important? Of course!
Will the MSM push the story to the top? Of course, NOT!

jw

But, but that cant be right... Its not what we are told, we are told that they are going through the roof and we need to turn all our guns in and trust big sis will protect us.

reply to post by jdub297


It's not convenient to the current trend of keeping the population in a perpetual state of fear.
Fear causes people to make mistakes.

Fear for the safety of their children causes people to willingly give up privacy and freedoms.

Fear of losing freedoms and privacy causes people to lash out or otherwise do something the establishment can crack down on.

Either way, the population is kept in fear and the people running the show get their way.

reply to post by jdub297

Thanks for the post, unfortunately, after many discussions, I now realize that to most people actual facts mean nothing compared to emotional stories and scary pictures....

and if the law makers follow the "most people" - which they should, our only hope is to get people to wise up and look into things a little deeper.

So we are depending on people getting smarter.. that IS scary!

A few things here:

1. Crime, period, has come down over that period. From a total of 14,144,794 crimes in 1993 to 10,329,135 in 2010, per the FBI's database. An overall reduction in crime of roughly 28%. The Justice Department report is just statistics, not analysis and doesn't make any claim for why the reduction has occurred.

2. The reduction primarily occurred a decade ago, while having a slight increase in recent years.

3. I have to seriously question where someone's head is at when they call 11,101 gun murders "hyped". At which point is it too many? A million? Would a million no longer be "hype"? Eleven thousand murders in 2011 is okay with you? Around 300,000 gun homicides in the last 20 years is "hyped"?!? In the past 20 years on our own soil, fellow Americans have murdered, with a gun, nearly six times as many Americans as have been killed in war since our involvement in the Korean War onward. That's not hype. That's a terrible, terrible amount and not "hyped" enough. Making people aware of what is happening is extraordinarily important in the effort to end this nonsense.

4. While I see people bringing up these reports, they are missing the point. These are statistics only and not an analysis. Yes, deaths from gun violence is down, because the mortality rate has dropped. Read.

5. While the overall homicide rate has dropped, the number of mass killings has increased. And they have rightly been highlighted by the media and others. Only a monster would think it's alright to just sweep these things under the rug and not discuss them and try to find a solution to an obvious problem.

I am not a "gun-grabber", I am a gun owner. Every one of these mass killings, every single last gun homicide in this country sullies law abiding gun owners. There needs to be a solution. The best chance to protect the 2nd Amendment is to find a solution, not by ranting about politicians, not by calling concerned citizens belittling names, and most definitely not by threatening insurrection.

Again, 11,101 homicides is NOT something you point to and say "Look, look how low the murders are. No problem here!" It is, in fact, the exact opposite.

Kudo's to you for bringing this up to the surface. On this, I was among the ignorant. For the most part because I don't live in amerika, but secondly because, other than ATS most of the American news I hear comes from the msm(and from there have to try and figure out the actual story). With the amount that politicians are pushing gun control legislature and the backup that the news is giving them, it gave me a very strong impression that things were getting more tense and crime was increasing in the states. Although I still thought there was an ulterior motive simply taking advantage of a nation in duress.

This statistic combined with every news coverage in the last year involving guns should be enough evidence to convince people who have a conscious thought process of what the future has to hold.

Don`t be scared....Be prepared

reply to post by LuckyLucian


I understand You think that number is a lot but it`s only 0.00002 percent of the population....If you think that's a lot of murders you should take a look at how many murders happen elsewhere in the world. Murders happen cause people are messed up in the head. Like anything the gun is simply the tool.

The only reason it seems like there is more gun violence is because of the internet.

Think about it we hear about EVERY single incident within hours of it happening thanks to various media outlets and social media. We didn't have this back in the 90s or even the early 2000's. It seems like there is a lot more violence but it's always been there we just hear about it more.

This study won't make headlines because it doesn't follow the agenda. It proves that what they are saying about guns and more violence is wrong.

There will always be gun violence no matter how many laws you put in place. Criminals will find guns no matter what. You can't stop it. There will always be irresponsible gun owners and there will always be tragic accidents. You can't stop it, you can try and educate people and put more regulations on it but there will always be a tragic shooting. It's sad yes but it's life.

reply to post by mblahnikluver

Criminals will find guns no matter what. You can't stop it.

You could get rid of Eric Holder... That might help

Tell that to the people who wanted to see Batman in aurora...

or the people who were helping teach young minds in Sandy hook.

Tell that to the fireman who were called to a house fire to rescue people..

..maybe tell that to a handful of uni faculties who will never see their students again.

Tell that to the mentally unstable and damaged soldiers returning from Iraq.

How about telling it to all the people at shopping malls, Ft Hood or whereever that gun crime was down.

How about you load this into your rifle and shoot it

gawker.com...

Five of the Twelve Deadliest Gun Massacres in U.S. History Took Place During Obama's First Term

Between 2008 - 2012, 5 of the 12 most deadliest gun massacres in the USA took place.

Stupid idiots.. you're all ego and bravado with your firearms until your child gets massacred by a mad man with a gun.

Just illustrates how crime can go down almost 40-50% and if the media reports go up (guessing) 100-200% it gives the illusion that crime goes up.

Agenda driven media is da devil... details be damned.

reply to post by openeyeswideshut


It doesn't matter what the percentage is. Every one of those 11,101 are PEOPLE. We aren't talking about dandelions here, but human lives. Individual human lives. An effort to reduce that number must be made. As the study pointed out, more than 2/3 of the homicides over those 19 years were commited with a gun.

I state again, there is a gun violence problem in this country, not a gun problem, and there needs to be a solution. As I've stated in other posts on this topic I have abondoned the NRA because I cannot conscionably support their agenda when it has been built upon a specious argument. Even those who support capital punishment have been terribly wrong, claiming it is a deterrent. The states with the death penalty have higher murder rates than those without.

So, what do we do? I don't have the answer. However, I also know the NRA doesn't either and history and facts have proven this. I do know that we, as a country, need to come to a concensus on how to stem this violence. We can't do that by saying there's no problem when there clearly is, or by buying into the extreme agendas on either side. As it usually is, the truth and the solution is somewhere between.

Also, I'm not trying to be confrontational, so I apologize if it comes across that way.

reply to post by Agit8dChop


Yes I do want to tell every stupid dumbass soldier who is or ever was in Iraq that. I would like to tell them that they DESERVE to live to through life seeing one of their friends shot down in combat. I wheep for the families and the people that loved that soldier for the pain that they have to endure, but I will NEVER feel sorry for anyone dumb enough to fight ANY war after ww2. And those two events you listed are among the most popular conspiracy theories of the last few years, with many people looking towards private interests as a cause.

Those who have family involved in those particular cases are the ones who should be felt the most sorry for, because there lives were taken simply for a group to gain more power, and that's the most sickening feeling of all.

reply to post by LuckyLucian


I understand that, but do you think that getting rid of guns is going to help the human brain grow?

Do you think that someone not having a gun is going to stop someone from killing another person?

I don't. I think dumb dumb will probably pick up a rock and smash someone over the head with it.

Also I wanna know if you really trust your govt. enough to make it so that they are the only ones who can gain access to or possess firearms? The 2nd amendment is there for a reason... So is consciousness and thought evolution.

As for the NRA they have their own agenda's as well. Among the federal branches of anything nowadays its hard to know who to trust. Everyone seems to lie to try and get whatever it is they want, and facts are often portrayed in a bias way to apropriatly support whatever the agenda is. There is truly only one way to end this madness, and it has to do with the collective of humanity getting off their lazy butts and simply learn about what is happening in the world. I really doubt that the entire world is evil and wants this kind of tyranny in power. I just believe that people are lied to every day, and most can't handle what reality has become, so they choose simply to ignore instead.

Guns are still dangerous and much more likely to cause harm than good.

That being said, if you read freakonomics they pretty conclusively showed that crime has gone down since the 1990's because that was a generation after Roe v Wade so there are less unwanted children turning into criminals.

Also, I believe that having hundreds of thousands of young men out of the country for a decade had some effect on decreasing crime here too.

Originally posted by Agit8dChop
Stupid idiots.. you're all ego and bravado with your firearms until your child gets massacred by a mad man with a gun.

Hence why GOOD man should be able to have guns.

The only reason this world seems evil is because good people do nothing while evil never rests.

Even if you reference decreasing crime, some advocates of gun control will just say that crime went down because of gun control. Or they'll have some other argument.

Bottom line, lots of people on both sides of this issue won't change their opinion. They'll just change the song they're singing to deliver their opinion. They're not actually invested in learning.

So much of what goes on is just one group asserting its will on another.

The public is afraid. Always will be. Freedom is an illusion without responsibility anyway. If too many people act stupidly and abuse a freedom then it's bound to get taken away.

reply to post by theMediator

reply to post by openeyeswideshut


Are we getting into a philosphical discussion here? I would certainly think that a society which has moved past the necessity to have weapons everywhere would likely be a bit more advanced and "evolved", yes. But we don't live in that world.

Do I think someone not having a gun would sway them towards not commiting a murder? In some cases, yes. I believe there are studies out there that bear that out. But that's neither here nor there. I said nothing about taking away guns. You're making illogical leaps here despite what I've already stated.

No, I really don't trust a government in such a complete way. However, I'm also aware the US government hasn't taken my effin' guns so, again, neither here nor there.

I've already explained where I stand here. We need a solution, not more of this "government is gonna get your guns" rubbish. That talk is fine as a warning. Warning heard. But when someone can't move past such a simple black and white point of view, they're wasting everyone else's time. When we as a society can't make significant progress when every attempt at not taking away guns is yelled down as a "gun grab", there's a serious problem.

The most recent background check bill is a prime example. Every single smear put out by the NRA and other gun advocacy groups has turned out to be a lie. The bill was very clear and very narrow in closing background check loopholes. And that's it. No gun grabbing. No national registry of fire arms. Not a single thing the NRA said it was. The same exact NRA that had a hand in writing the bill they then turned around and lobbied against. So the question needs to be asked, who's being played by the NRA? It's supporters, that's who. That, I refuse to be a part of.

reply to post by LuckyLucian

Crime, period, has come down over that period. From a total of 14,144,794 crimes in 1993 to 10,329,135 in 2010, per the FBI's database. An overall reduction in crime of roughly 28%. The Justice Department report is just statistics, not analysis and doesn't make any claim for why the reduction has occurred.

The point of the thread is to make obvious the falsehoods fed to the low-information public about the prevalence and dangers of “gun violence.”You prove my point by looking for something, anything to justify the fear and ignorance that the MSM and certain politicians and pundits want to reinforce among those who have no desire to think rationally and for themselves.

It is an “I told you so” thread, not a here’s why they’re wrong thread.

The reduction primarily occurred a decade ago, while having a slight increase in recent years.

Not so. You cite no source for this false claim. The rate has fallen again from a “slight rise” from 2000 to 2006. Making up “facts” doesn’t help your cause; whatever it may be.

Homicides committed with firearms peaked in 1993 at 17,075, after which the figure steadily fell, reaching a low of 10,117 in 1999. Gun-related homicides increased slightly after that, to a high of 11,547 in 2006, before falling again to 10,869 in 2008

www.nij.gov...

I have to seriously question where someone's head is at when they call 11,101 gun murders "hyped"

.
Then you have no sense of reality or proportion. How many die from infections, falls and auto accidents? I don’t hear any uproar about these ultimately preventable injuries. Get some perspective if you value your credibility.

Are you denying that the anti-gun crowd (and co-conspirator MSM)pandered to the masses and paraded grieving parents for their own agenda?.

In the past 20 years on our own soil, fellow Americans have murdered, with a gun, nearly six times as many Americans as have been killed in war since our involvement in the Korean War onward.

Why limit it from “the Korean war onward?”This is more hype. How many died in that time from old age? Heart attacks? Auto accidents?

While the overall homicide rate has dropped, the number of mass killings has increased. And they have rightly been highlighted by the media and others. Only a monster would think it's alright to just sweep these things under the rug and not discuss them and try to find a solution to an obvious problem.

Resorting to false logic and ad hominem ignores the poverty of your thinking. How many of these “mass killings” would be avoided by background checks? Are you including the millions of aborted babies in your numbers? That is a truly horrible number, but you will not recognize that many deaths are the result of commonly accepted acts and practices.

I am not a "gun-grabber", I am a gun owner. Every one of these mass killings, every single last gun homicide in this country sullies law abiding gun owners. There needs to be a solution. The best chance to protect the 2nd Amendment is to find a solution, not by ranting about politicians, not by calling concerned citizens belittling names, and most definitely not by threatening insurrection.

Funny, in all your ranting, I find not one suggested “solution.” This is pitiful.