"Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.
Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.
In less than two decades, the gun murder rate has been nearly cut in half. Other gun crimes fell even more sharply, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns. Violent crime dropped steeply during the 1990s and has fallen less dramatically since the turn of the millennium.
The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released 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." LA Times
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I betcha you won't hear much about this in the corporate media. None of the statistice support the anti-gun proposed legislation. According to DOJ, the victims and the perps of gun homicide are everwhelmingly male, Black and between the ages 0f 18-24. Very, very few of the weapons involved were other than handguns and hardly any were bought at gun shows. pl
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4616
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-gun-crimes-pew-report-20130507,0,3022693.story
The study from Pew:
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/
Posted by: John Minnerath | 08 May 2013 at 10:21 AM
I betcha you won't hear much about this in the corporate media.
Since when is the Washington Post NOT corporate media? :-)
Aside from that you were right. Obama choose an issue here for which he had no good political arguments or did not try to make such arguments. A political looser issue.
Posted by: b | 08 May 2013 at 10:42 AM
But it's intuitively obvious common sense that "assault weapons" are a problem!
Seriously, anyone who claims that they are entitled not to have to offer a good explanation on matters of controversy, especially in public policy, has to be thought of as a cool-aid drinking shill, no matter what the question, whether foreign or domestic.
Posted by: kao_hsien-chih | 08 May 2013 at 11:53 AM
Perception by the viewers of Hollywood Movies, makes most bad guys, using bad ass firearms, the common weapons in use by criminals. The more sinister the criminal the more powerful the weapon. A desert Eagle .50cal hand gun made by Bass Ass Hebrew's, is fitting for a large muscular criminal. Some sort of unobtainable/affordable fully automatic rifle with the ability to fire long bursts without reloading is common. Of course if the criminal is doing a stealth murder for hire, a suppressor 1.5 inches long that attaches seamlessly is shown.
Of course, drug dealers of any type in the movies always have a very nice automatic pistols to whip or shoot their opponents, or law enforcement.
Posted by: Peter C | 08 May 2013 at 12:52 PM
I've run across this report in many places. One of the more surprising is Talkleft, a civil liberties site strongly aligned with Democrats.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2013/5/7/211721/3770
But then they were also early skeptics of the Duke Rape Case media circus.
I do enjoy the cognitive dissonance this creates on the left.
Posted by: doug | 08 May 2013 at 01:46 PM
doug
IMO this fatally undercuts the possibility of legislation. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 08 May 2013 at 01:48 PM
Note that LA Times cites "two out of three murders" were carried out with guns. But I don't think the BJS report actually mentions "murder". The data come from death certificates "cause of death" submitted to the CDC and published as "National Vital Statistics Report". (In the past I have looked at some literature on the accuracy/reliability of "cause of death" as reported on death certificates and it is a problem worth considering in evaluating reports like this.) At any rate, CDC uses a WHO coding system, of which the following are of interest:
Intentional self-harm (suicide) X72 (handgun) X73 (long gun) X74 (gun - type not determined) *U03 (terrorist)
Assault (homicide) X93 X94 X95 *U02 (same categories) (terrorist U02/U03 is not official WHO)
I'm not sure from a quick read if the BJS data are just from assaults, or also include suicides but either way, not murder (except with a too-casual definition of murder).
Also note that besides the CDC data, most studies of this sort rely on the BJS National Crime Victimization Survey and/or FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Also subject to various reporting/categorization difficulties. Reference sometimes is also made to BATFE "gun trace data". Note that the percentage of gun-related incidents in which a trace is requested and successful is very small, and not at all a random sample.
Posted by: scott s. | 08 May 2013 at 07:53 PM
All:
Rate of gun homicides per 100,000 in Switzerland - a country with widespread gun ownership
2010: 0.5214
In US, the rate was 3.6
Other years were had the same rough order of magnitude.
Conclusion: gun ownership is not the cause.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 08 May 2013 at 10:46 PM
babak
Switzerland does nor have a large minority population that likes to shoot each other with guns. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 09 May 2013 at 07:32 AM
Right, probably because she does not suffer from endemic drug use; they seek their Freedom elsewhere.
Posted by: Babak Makkinejad | 09 May 2013 at 09:19 AM
babak
All right, I will be more specific. Homicide by firearm is a crime concentrated in the African-American community in the US and the victims are usually African-american. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 09 May 2013 at 10:54 AM
Here is a Cnd columnist in mainstream media that sites the Pew Survey and points out that maybe a bit more emphasis on safe gun handling rather than gun control is what is needed to reduce violence further. http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/05/10/chris-selley-a-new-narrative-on-american-gun-violence/
Posted by: Mark G | 10 May 2013 at 01:01 PM
I would like to chime in with the rather extensive analysis of crime in general going down with a strong and statistically significant correlation with a fall in environmental lead. I know the source may be suspect but the science is sound.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/lead-and-crime-linkfest
Posted by: Edgecliff | 10 May 2013 at 09:58 PM
b
The Post thing was in a right wing blog. that's pretty minimal coverage and I have heard no mention of this study in any broadcast media. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 11 May 2013 at 12:30 PM