What follows is a compilation of some of the assorted guns stats I have used to roast gun nuts over the years.
*****
"Homicide rates tend to be related to firearm ownership levels. Everything else being equal, a reduction in the percentage of households owning firearms should occasion a drop in the homicide rate".
--Evidence to the Cullen Inquiry 1996: Thomas Gabor, Professor of Criminology - University of Ottawa.
--http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm
CLAIM:
"...the vast majority of academic research finds that concealed handguns reduce violent crime generally."
Lambert responds:
"This is not true. The table below shows that there are more works that don’t find that they reduce violent crime. Note also that fully half of the ones finding that they reduce crime have Lott as an author, and that Michael Maltz, the only researcher with papers on both sides of the table has repudiated the paper that found that carry laws reduced crime. In any case, not all papers should be weighted equally, and Ayres and Donohue, the most comprehensive paper, found that carry laws tended to increase violent crime."
--http://timlambert.org/2003/07/0728/
***
ATLANTA -- The United States has by far the highest rate of gun deaths -- murders, suicides and accidents -- among the world's 36 richest nations, a government study found.
The U.S. rate for gun deaths in 1994 was 14.24 per 100,000 people. Japan had the lowest rate, at .05 per 100,000.
The study, done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is the first comprehensive international look at gun-related deaths. It was published Thursday in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
<<SNIP>
The 36 countries chosen were listed as the richest in the World Bank's 1994 World Development Report, with the highest GNP per capita income.
The study used 1994 statistics supplied by the 36 countries. Of the 88,649 gun deaths reported by all the countries, the United States accounted for 45 percent, said Etienne Krug, a CDC researcher and co-author of the article.
Japan, where very few people own guns, averages 124 gun-related attacks a year, and less than 1 percent end in death. Police often raid the homes of those suspected of having weapons.
The study found that gun-related deaths were five to six times higher in the Americas than in Europe or Australia and New Zealand and 95 times higher than in Asia.
Here are gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in the world's 36 richest countries in 1994:
United States 14.24; Brazil 12.95; Mexico 12.69; Estonia 12.26; Argentina 8.93; Northern Ireland 6.63; Finland 6.46; Switzerland 5.31; France 5.15; Canada 4.31; Norway 3.82; Austria 3.70; Portugal 3.20; Israel 2.91; Belgium 2.90; Australia 2.65; Slovenia 2.60; Italy 2.44; New Zealand 2.38; Denmark 2.09; Sweden 1.92; Kuwait 1.84; Greece 1.29; Germany 1.24; Hungary 1.11; Republic of Ireland 0.97; Spain 0.78; Netherlands 0.70; Scotland 0.54; England and Wales 0.41; Taiwan 0.37; Singapore 0.21; Mauritius 0.19; Hong Kong 0.14; South Korea 0.12; Japan 0.05."
Source: http://www.guncite.com/cnngunde.html
***
DAR
"In 1993, the FBI counted 24,526 murders (13,980 by handguns), 251 of these were justifiable homicides by civilians using handguns."
--FBI, Crime in the United States, 1994, 1995.
Updated:
"An estimated 15,241 persons were murdered nationwide in 2009..." FBI
"Of the 13,636 murder victims in 2009 for which supplemental data were received, most (77.0 percent) were male."
"Of the homicides for which the FBI received weapons data, most (71.8 percent) involved the use of firearms. Handguns comprised 70.5 percent of all firearms used in murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in 2009.
"In 2009, 24.2 percent of victims were slain by family members; 53.8 percent were killed by someone they knew (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.)."
"Law enforcement reported 667 justifiable homicides in 2009. Of those, law enforcement officers justifiably killed 406 felons, and private citizens justifiably killed 261 people during the commission of a crime."
FBI Homicide Data
Note, this means justifiable homicides with guns by private citizens represent about 1.9% of total gun homicides. Law enforcement's "justifiable killings" represents 2.98% of the total.
***
"...the international statistics, which also show a clear correlation between handgun ownership and murder rates. (Note: the first two statistics are for handguns, not guns in general.)"
Percent of households with a handgun, 1991 (21)
United States 29%
Switzerland 14
Finland 7
Germany 7
Belgium 6
France 6
Canada 5
Norway 4
Europe 4
Australia 2
Netherlands 2
United Kingdom 1
Handgun murders (1992) (22)
Handgun 1992 Handgun Murder
Country Murders Population Rate (per 100,000)
-----------------------------------------------------------
United States 13,429 254,521,000 5.28
Switzerland 97 6,828,023 1.42
Canada 128 27,351,509 0.47
Sweden 36 8,602,157 0.42
Australia 13 17,576,354 0.07
United Kingdom 33 57,797,514 0.06
Japan 60 124,460,481 0.05
DAR
Compare:
Total population of the other countries: 242 million (10m less than the US)
Total handgun murders: 367 v. 13,429.
That's 36 times the US number, and a comparison with a similar population.
http://pearlyabraham.tripod.com/htmls/myth-guns2.html
***
"Firearms are the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle accidents) for young people ages 1-19 in the U.S."
--WISQARS, Leading Causes of Death Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2005 data, http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html
***
"Suicide attempts with firearms are much more likely to be fatal than attempts with other methods. Firearms are used in only 5% of all suicide attempts, but more than 90% of the attempts are fatal. In comparison, drugs or cutting are the methods used in 85% of suicide attempts, but the attempt is fatal only 3% of the time."
--Matthew Miller, David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael, "Firearms and Suicide in the Northeast," Journal of Trauma 57 (2004):626-632. (See also: E. D. Shenassa, S. N. Catlin, S. L Buka, "Lethality of Firearms Relative to Other Suicide Methods: A Population Based Study," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 57 (2003): 120-124.
***
Keeping a firearm in the home triples the risk of suicide and increases the risk of suicide with a firearm by a factor of 17(1). Thirty-four percent of U. S. households contain a gun(2), and half of gun-owning households don't lock up their guns, including 40 percent of households with kids under age 18(3).
Notes:
1. Douglas Wiebe, "Homicide and Suicide Risks Associated with Firearms in the Home: A National Case-Control Study," Annals of Internal Medicine 41 (2003):771-782.
2. Tom Smith, Public Attitudes Towards the Regulation of Firearms (2006), (Chicago, Illinois: National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago, 2007): Figure 2.
3. Renee Johnson, Tamera Coyne-Beasley, Carol Runyan, "Firearm Ownership and Storage Practices, U.S. Households, 1992–2002: A Systematic Review," American Journal of Preventive Medicine 27:2 (2007): 175.
***
"An additional 71,417 people were shot and survived their injuries -- 52,748 people injured in an attack; 3,190 people injured in a suicide attempt; 14,678 people shot accidentally, and 801 people shot in a police intervention."
--WISQARS, Nonfatal Injury Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2006 data, http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html.
***
Guns cause the death of over 30,000 per year:
"In 2005, 30,694 people in the United States died from firearm-related deaths – 12,352 were murdered; 17,002 killed themselves; 789 were accidents; 330 died by police intervention, and in 221, the intent was unknown."
--WISQARS, Injury Mortality Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2005 data, http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html (hereafter Injury Mortality Reports).
***
"WASHINGTON, April 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- States in the South and West with weak gun laws and high rates of gun ownership lead the nation in overall firearm death rates according to a new analysis issued today by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
The new VPC analysis uses 2005 data (the most recent available) from the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. The analysis reveals that the five states with the highest per capita gun death rates were Louisiana, Alaska, Montana, Tennessee, and Alabama. Each of these states had a per capita gun death rate far exceeding the national per capita gun death rate of 10.32 per 100,000.
By contrast, states with strong gun laws and low rates of gun ownership had far lower rates of firearm-related death."
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRel ... RN20080424
"...states with the highest rates of gun ownership have much greater gun death rates than those where only a small percentage of the population is armed. So, Hawaii, where only 9.7 percent of residents own guns, has the lowest gun death rate in the country, while Louisiana, where 45 percent of the public is armed, has the highest." http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/20 ... unslinger/
***
DAR
US accidental fire arm death rate: about 800 per year.
Canada's accidental fire arm death rate:
"Accidental firearm deaths stood at 0.1 per 100,000 in 2000."
That's about 35 people per year.
Lot's of slippery fingers here in the US I guess. Maybe it's the handguns in the houses?
D.
---------------------
"Youth who commit firearm suicide usually get the gun from a parent. Eighty-five percent of youths under age 18 who died by firearm suicide used a family member's gun, usually a parent's."
--Harvard Injury Control Research Center, National Violent Injury Statistics Center, Characteristics of Victims of Suicide (Boston, MA: Harvard School of Public Health, 2001).
***
“…the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. American children are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a firearm accident than children in these other countries.”
--Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related deaths among children in 26 industrialized countries. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 1997; 46 :101 –105
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm
***
DAR
"Based on the NSPOF, an estimated 0.9 percent of all
gun-owning households (269,000) experienced the
theft of one or more firearms during 1994. About
211,000 handguns and 382,000 long guns were stolen
in noncommercial thefts that year, for a total of
593,000 stolen firearms. Those estimates are
subject to considerable sampling error but are
consistent with earlier estimates of about half a
million guns stolen annually.[10]
--Cook, Molliconi, and Cole, 1995, use
data from the National Crime Victimization Survey
for the period 1987-1992 to estimate 511,000 stolen
guns per year. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics,
Guns and Crime, April 1994, NCJ-147003)
Source:
National Institute of Justice
Research in Brief
Link:
http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/165476.txt
D.
--------------------------
"Between 1987 and 1990, David McDowall found that guns were used in defense during a crime incident 64,615 times annually."
--McDowall, David, Brian Wiersema (1994). "The Incidence of Defensive Firearm Use by US Crime Victims, 1987 through 1990". American Journal of Public Health 84: pp. 1982–1984. PMID 7998641
Summary:
"Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland, College Park 20742-8235.
It is well known that many crimes in the United States are committed with firearms. Less adequately documented is the frequency with which victims use guns in self-defense. We used National Crime Victimization Survey data to examine incidents where victims employed guns against offenders. Between 1987 and 1990 there were an estimated 258,460 incidents of firearm defense, an annual mean of 64,615. Victims used firearms in 0.18% of all crimes recorded by the survey and in 0.83% of violent offenses. Firearm self-defense is rare compared with gun crimes."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7998641
***
"During the 1980s and early 1990s, homicide rates surged in cities across the United States... Handgun homicides accounted for nearly all of the overall increase in the homicide rate, from 1985 to 1993, while homicide rates involving other weapons declined during that time frame."
--Committee on Law and Justice (2004). "Chapter 3", Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. National Academy of Science.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309091241&page=53
***
"Review of these data indicate that while the United States does not have the highest rate of homicide or firearm-related homicide, it does have the highest rates for these among industrialized democracies. Homicide rates in the United States are two to four times higher than they are in countries that are economically and politically similar to it. Higher rates are found in developing countries and those with political instability. The same is true for firearm-related homicides, but the differences are even greater. The firearm-related homicide rate in the United States is more like that of Argentina, Mexico, and Northern Ireland than England or Canada. While certainly not the highest homicide or firearm-related homicide rate in the world, these rates in the United States are in the upper quartile in each case."
--National Academy of Sciences
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881&page=54
***
"In 2005, 17,002 U.S. residents killed themselves with a firearm, including over 2300 young people (ages 10-25)."
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/
***
"If suicide is attempted with a firearm, it is almost certain the person will die. Many fewer people make it to the hospital than would be the case if another method were used. Consequently, the number of hospitalizations for firearm suicide attempts is much lower than the number of deaths. In 2005, only 3,190 people survived an attempt to kill themselves with a gun and made it to the hospital."
http://www.bradycampaign.org/issues/gvstats/suicide/
***
"In 2005, 75% of the 10,100 homicides committed using firearms in the United States were committed using handguns, compared to 4% with rifles, 5% with shotguns, and the rest with a type of firearm not specified.[34] Due to the lethal potential that a gun brings to a situation, the likelihood that a death will result is significantly increased when either the victim or the attacker has a gun.[35] The mortality rate for gunshot wounds to the heart is 84%, compared to 30% for people who sustain stab wounds to the heart.[36]"
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_gun_violence
***
"States with high household gun ownership have more suicides than states with low household gun ownership. The excess suicides are almost entirely due to firearms."
--Matthew Miller, Steven Lippmann, Deborah Azrael, David Hemenway, "Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide across the 50 United States," Journal of Trauma 62 (2007):1029-1035.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/issues/gvstats/suicide/
***
"Thirty-four percent of U. S. households contain a gun, and half of gun-owning households don't lock up their guns, including 40 percent of households with kids under age 18."
--Renee Johnson, Tamera Coyne-Beasley, Carol Runyan, "Firearm Ownership and Storage Practices, U.S. Households, 1992–2002: A Systematic Review," American Journal of Preventive Medicine 27:2 (2007): 175.
***
"In the United States, a quarter of commercial robberies are committed with guns.[38] Robberies committed with guns are three times as likely to result in fatalities compared with robberies where other weapons were used,[38][39][40] with similar patterns in cases of family violence."
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_gun_violence
***
"Gun violence in the United States is associated with the majority of homicides and over half the suicides."
--"Self-inflicted Injury/Suicide". National Center for Health Statistics. Retrieved on 2006-11-06.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violen ... ote-nchs-0
***
"Suicide attempts with firearms are much more likely to be fatal than attempts with other methods. Firearms are used in only 5% of all suicide attempts, but more than 90% of the attempts are fatal. In comparison, drugs or cutting are the methods used in 85% of suicide attempts, but the attempt is fatal only 3% of the time."
--Matthew Miller, David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael, "Firearms and Suicide in the Northeast," Journal of Trauma 57 (2004):626-632.
***
"Levels of gun violence vary greatly across the world, with very high rates in South Africa and Colombia, as well as high levels in Thailand, Guatemala, and some other developing countries.[7] Levels of gun violence are low in Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, and many other countries.[7] The United States has the highest rates among developed countries, which some account to the loose firearm laws in the U.S. compared to other developed countries."
--Cook, Philip J., Gun Violence: The Real Cost, Page 29. Oxford University Press, 2002
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence#cite_note-7
***
"A British citizen is still 50 times less likely to be a victim of gun homicide than an American."
http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gunaus.htm
***
"In 2004, firearms were used to murder 56 people in Australia, 184 people in Canada, 73 people in England and Wales, 5 people in New Zealand, and 37 people in Sweden.
In comparison, firearms were used to murder 11,344 in the United States."
--WISQARS, Injury Mortality Reports.
***
"In Canada, where new gun laws were introduced in 1991 and 1995, the number of gun deaths has reached a 30-year low."
--http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gunaus.htm
***
1) "Firearms are the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle accidents) for young people ages 1-19 in the U.S."
--WISQARS, Leading Causes of Death Reports, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control, 2005 data, http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcaus10.html
2) “…the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. American children are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a firearm accident than children in these other countries.”
--Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related deaths among children in 26 industrialized countries. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 1997; 46 :101 –105
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm
***
The number of kids killed by guns (1995):
0 children in Japan
19 in Great Britain
57 in Germany
109 in France
153 in Canada
and
5,285 in the United States
http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/gunaus.htm
***
BRITAIN
Here are the number of total firearm deaths in Britain, per year, from the gov:
Homicide from all firearms, per year, England & Wales:
1999/00... 62
2000/01... 73
2001/02... 97
2002/03... 81
2003/04... 68
2004/05... 78
2005/06... 50
2006/07... 59
2007/08... 53
Government PDF here: http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/hosb0209.pdf
Or these nice folks have it up: http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF05.htm
Here's a neat trick. The UK population is about 60 million, so the US is about five times larger. If you average the numbers above and times they by five, you get: 345. So, this number should give us a per capita comparison with one year of US gun homicide.
UK = 345
US = 12,352 (in 2004)
Notice that these numbers are adjusted for population. There is no reason why they should be different at all. The US number is *35 TIMES* larger than five of Britain’s years combined. This makes the UK number a rounding error.
Apparently gun control is not working very well for those Brits. We have 35 times the per capita gun murder per year that they do, but apparently, they just need more guns. Then perhaps they could enjoy the death and destruction we do from our lax gun laws.
Guns for Felons
How the NRA Works to Rearm Criminals
http://www.vpc.org/studies/felons.htm
***
Gun availability and state homicide rates, 2001-2003
Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and homicide across states, 2001-2003.
Major findings: States with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide. This relationship held for both genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide.
Publication: Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. "State-level Homicide Victimization Rates in the U.S. in Relation to Survey Measures of Household Firearm Ownership, 2001-2003." Social Science and Medicine. 2007; 64:656-64.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hi ... index.html
***
John Lott roasted (Skeptical Inquirer): http://crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/mythsofmurder.htm
Deltoid: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/lott.php#coding
More response to John Lott: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_Lott
And: http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/1 ... ott/191885
And: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2004/02/
***
Gun rate Death.
Country Gun Death Rate per 100,000
Japan 0.07
Singapore 0.24
Taiwan 0.27
Kuwait 0.37
England/ Wales 0.4
Scotland 0.49
Netherlands 0.55
Spain 0.74
Ireland 1.24
Germany 1.44
Italy 2.27
Sweden 2.27
Denmark 2.48
Israel 2.56
New Zealand 2.67
Australia 2.94
Belgium 3.32
Canada 3.95
Norway 4.23
Austria 4.48
Northern Ireland 4.72
France 5.48
Switzerland 6.2
Finland 6.65
USA 13.47
Source: W. Cukier, Firearms Regulation: Canada in the International
Context, Chronic Diseases in Canada, April, 1998 (statistics updated
to January 2001)
http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/international.html
***
"U.S. homicide rates are 6.9 times higher than rates in 22 other populous high-income countries combined, despite similar non-lethal crime and violence rates. The firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is 19.5 times higher"
"Among 23 populous, high-income countries, 80% of all firearm deaths occurred in the United States"
--Richardson, Erin G., and David Hemenway, “Homicide, Suicide, and Unintentional Firearm Fatality: Comparing the United States With Other High-Income Countries, 2003,” Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection, and Critical Care, published online ahead of print, June 2010
***
Canada has lots of guns. Out of 178 nations they come in 13th for gun ownership: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... _ownership
What they don't have is lots of hand guns. The gun ridden US has far more homicide and 11 times (!) the handgun homicide of Canada. Regarding crime in Canada, see statistics Canada: "Crime comparisons between Canada and the United States" http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidie ... 8b-eng.htm
***
Canada US comparison:
"Three impressive studies appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA):
-- ``Handgun Regulations, Crime, Assaults and Handguns,`` in the New England Journal (by John Henry Sloan`s group), compared homicides and suicides in Seattle and in Vancouver, B.C., between 1980-86, finding that almost everything about the cities, 140 miles apart, was the same except gun-control laws and homicide rates. Your chances of being shot were eight times greater in Seattle."
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1992-0 ... ntrol-laws
***
Update: 7/29/12
"The United States leads the world in private gun ownership. We also lead the industrialized world in gun deaths, which occurred in the United States at a rate eight times higher than our economic counterparts between 1990 and 1995. A 2003 study by Harvard School of Public Health professor David Hemenway found that the firearm homicide rate in the United States is 19.5 times higher than the average rate found in other high-income nations. A study by the Firearm and Injury Center at the University of Pennsylvania concluded that the availability of firearms is correlated with increased gun homicide rates in high-income industrialized countries. This is certainly born out in the United States where states that have the highest gun ownership and loosest gun laws also often have the highest rates of gun death." Media Matters
***
Gun shows
"Undercover stings at gun shows in Ohio, Tennessee and Nevada documented that:
--63 percent of private sellers sold guns to purchasers who stated they probably could not pass a background check;
--94 percent of licensed dealers completed sales to people who appeared to be criminals or straw purchasers (City of New York, 2009, p. 6, 7)
http://www.bradycampaign.org/legislatio ... ophole?s=3
Much more documentation of this, which is standard procedure at gun shows, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_l ... w_loophole
***
Excellent page on yearly gun stats in the US.
***
How the gun nut lobby was able to stifle government research on violent gun death in the US:
"How the Government Stifled Gun Research"
LINK
Bonus: 10 Pro-gun Myths Shot Down
Regarding claims about the UK being far more violent than the US (while have almost no guns), nicely debunked here: Is the UK really 5 times more violent than the US?
Charts: Challenging the Myth That Guns Stop Crime
One of the gun lobby's favorite talking points is that America's arsenal of 300 million civilian firearms makes us safer by preventing millions of crimes. This contentious idea has taken fire as of late for relying on bogus stats and ignoring that most criminal shootings involve people who know each other, not gun-toting homeowners and midnight intruders. A new report from Violence Policy Center shoots even more holes in the argument that a well-armed society is a safer society.
The report finds that less than 3 percent of gun-related homicides are committed in self-defense (mouse over charts for the raw numbers):
LINK
***
New Data Shows Increase in Percentage of Out-of-State Guns Used to Commit Crimes in NYC
Jul 31, 2013 | NYC.gov
"Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Criminal Justice Coordinator and Mayor’s Chief Policy Advisor John Feinblatt today released the most recent available crime gun trace data, which shows the percentage of out-of-state guns used in crimes in New York City has increased from 85 percent in 2009 to 90 percent in 2011. Moreover, the data – from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – reveals that the increase in proportion of out-state guns used to commit crimes occurs even as the total number of guns recovered in the city has decreased by more than 44 percent.
Despite the ongoing drop in violence in the five boroughs with homicides and shootings at all-time recorded lows, the data demonstrate the impact of weak gun laws at the Federal and State levels on the safety of New Yorkers, and the need to prevent thousands of illegal guns from being transported across state lines."
LINK
***
"How Big Is The Internet Gun Sales Loophole Conservative Media Claim Doesn't Exist?"
"A new study finds that in June and July, a single website allowed sellers of more than 15,000 firearms in ten states to utilize the loophole in federal law allowing people to buy guns on the Internet without passing a criminal background check -- a loophole that conservative media claim doesn't exist."
In a new study, the center-left think tank Third Way examined June and July listings in ten states whose senators did not support Manchin-Toomey:
-- 15,768 for sale ads listed by private sellers of firearms.
-- 5,168 of these ads were for semi-automatic weapons, including assault weapons.
-- 1,928 ads were from prospective buyers asking to buy specifically from private sellers (thereby ensuring that no background check is required).
-- 1,018 private individuals were selling four or more firearms simultaneously.
-- Many listed numerous weapons for sale at the same time. One person had 22 separate guns listed for sale in Arkansas, while another listed 21 in Nevada, and a third listed 21 in Ohio.
Media Matters
"A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities
in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually."
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article ... id=1661390
---
"Seven US children are shot dead every day on average"
For every U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan during 11 years of war, at least 13 children were shot and killed in America.
More than 450 kids didn’t make it to kindergarten.
Another 2,700 or more were killed by a firearm before they could sit behind the wheel of a car.
Every day, on average, seven children were shot dead.
A News21 investigation of child and youth deaths in America between 2002 and 2012 found that at least 28,000 children and teens 19-years-old and younger were killed with guns. Teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 made up over two-thirds of all youth gun deaths in America. ...
Most of those killed by firearms, 62 percent, were murdered and the majority of victims were black children and teens. Suicides resulted in 25 percent of the firearm deaths of young people: The majority of them were white. More than 1,100 children and teens were killed by a gun that accidentally discharged."
Link.
***
Our gun access problem is so bad it spills over into other countries. And not just the neighboring ones.
Guess Where the Gangs Get Their Guns?
Excerpt:
"Penate, a Cuban-American from New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen, is the ATF’s only agent for all of Central America. From his desk at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, he is the one responsible for tracing U.S. guns smuggled into the Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. That role has given him a front-row seat to a bloodbath. Looking beyond the region’s homicide rates, which are some of the world’s highest, what stands out is the number of gunhomicides. And since Penate took on the job two years ago, he has come to an inescapable conclusion: U.S. weapons are partly to blame for the carnage—and in turn for the kids who are fleeing it. “I feel as bad about guns going into Central America and Mexico as good, hard-working Colombians feel about cocaine going into the U.S.,” he says.
By the ATF’s count, more than a third of the traceable guns seized from criminals last year in the Northern Triangle that originated from the United States were purchased from a retail dealer. The weapons are then smuggled south in cars and trucks, or in checked airline luggage, air freight, or even boats. That may sound like a lot of effort, but buying from U.S. gun stores is a lot more convenient for gang members. Thanks to our lax gun laws, there is little official paper trail, and the weapons (Northern Triangle gangs favor semi-automatic pistols) are cheaper than buying locally. “It’s a lot easier for me to go to a gun store in the U.S., buy a Glock, and ship it in parts in a microwave oven and have it show up at a relative’s house,” Penate says."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1190 ... ca-come-us
***
Excellent resource:
"Gun violence in America, in 17 maps and charts"
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9183525/gu ... statistics
