“Overall, the Justice Department report said, firearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 homicides in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011, while nonfatal firearm crimes declined from 1.5 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011. The drop extended to schools: Homicides at schools declined from an average of 29 per year in the 1990s to an average of 20 per year in the 2000s.” – Jerry Markon in Report: Sharp drop in gun violence, but most killings still involve firearms [via washingtonpost.com]

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19 COMMENTS

  1. This information is obviously fake. Guns are the route of all evil. They can blow up railroads and turn babies in to gangsters as fast as Medusa turns a man to stone. No way could gun related crime stats drop, especially when George W Bush was in office.

  2. The numbers being what they are, will be a double edged sword. Pro 2A siders will find proof that gun crimes do not take 30,000 lives a year, one of the prevailing arguments on the anti side. Anti gunners will say crime is lower, so we don’t need guns. The fight goes on…..for the children(tm).

  3. This really is great news, not only because it helps the 2A community, but it also means that…gun violence is down! And that’s really a good thing, despite gun ownership being up. Maybe those CWP classes are helping? Maybe gun owners in general are taking safety more seriously?

    The down side is that until the average understands this (meaning unless the mainstream media pushes it) it will remain largely unheard.

  4. So cars kill roughly 3 (30,797) times the amount and there are approximately 23 (10.8 mil) times more vehicle crashes than crimes committed with firearms. (2009, Gov Census) http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/transportation/motor_vehicle_accidents_and_fatalities.html

    Cardiac disease kills about 600k a year. We need more laws to protect us from ourselves so we can keep driving to work and paying taxes for longer! The gov doesnt care about the adverse affects that stress from work has on our hearts, how long work weeks cut into exercise and recreation time, or how dangerous the commute is. :,( They just want the guns.

    • “We need more laws to protect us from ourselves so we can keep driving to work and paying taxes for longer!”

      Don’t encourage Bloomberg and Michelle.

    • And to emplace public transit, and to prevent us from lugging around 55 gallon drums of Mountain Dew, and…

    • Not to mention the effect CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards have had on death and disability from auto accidents. Since their introduction in 1975, CAFE standards and the subsequent replacement of steel with plastic and rubber in our cars has resulted in between 41,000 and 120,000 MORE deaths from automobile accident and between 300,000 to 600,000 MORE serious injuries, including life-long disability. Know what Obama did in light of these statistics? He increased the required MPG for fleet cars to 35MPG in 2016 and 54.5MPG by 2025. Talk about blood in the streets.

  5. “there’s lies, damned lies, and then there’s statistics”
    —Mark Twain

    • And the sunsetting of the Assault Weapons Ban 9 years ago. I wonder if the boom in gun sales has made the criminals nervous knowing the “proliferation” of guns in the US makes their job a bit more dangerous?

  7. The peak they mention was in 1993. When the 1994 gun control legislation push came on, there was very little in the way of “in their faces” stats to push back with.

    From 1994 to today, it’s a slam-dunk for our side. The meme for the last 30+ years has been “more guns equals more crime.” I’ve been using the long-term stats on both guns and crime to say “No, it doesn’t. We’ve had a huge surge in the numbers of guns, and not only no attending increase in crime, we’ve actually had a long-term decrease in crime and homicides.”

    I put it to the anti-gunners thusly: They not only have to disprove a negative statistical coincidence (ie, they have to show that the crime stats are cooked, or there are really a lot fewer guns being sold to Americans than the ATF is recording), they need to disprove a possible correlation between more guns and less crime. Both of these are mathematically huge barriers to their argument.

    In 1994, they had an argument of “collective rights.” There was no Heller decision. There was no McDonald decision. We were still arguing that the Second Amendment was an individual right without the SCOTUS on our side. We were arguing against the increase in crime at the same time we had an increase in gun sales. We were arguing for increased shall-issue CCW laws, and against such idiotic blathering as “Florida – the Gunshine State!” in the media. Today, nearly all states are shall-issue, and now four states are “constitutional carry.” I’m in one of those states, and the increase in our crime rate? Zip. Nada. Nothing.

    Which is why we can and should carry the day now. It’s simply a matter of dismissing the hyper-emotional pandering of the “government will take care of us all” mindset. The only people against whom I cannot win the argument are the people for whom emotional response trumps thinking response. They don’t care about facts, case law or anything else.

    • DS,

      A very intelligent analysis. If John Q. Public had your intellect, we would not be in this mess. Alas, many low information voters will side with BHO, Biden, Feinstein, et. all.

  8. I think that data is wrong. They quote 11,101 homicides in 2011 where the criminal used a firearm as their weapon. Off the top of my head, I think that is total homicides with all weapons and there were just under 9,000 homicides where a firearm was the weapon. Can anyone confirm this?

  11. I would like to see the NRA, SAF or whoever go up with commercials, or at least youtube videos, just highlighting these results. No attack, no ask, just say “You think there is more gun crime now? That isn’t the case.” Help to counteract the anti-gun propaganda and correct people’s misconceptions. Doesn’t have to cost a lot, just get the info out there are far as possible.

  12. Strange how this news merited only a two-sentence summary in our local birdcage liner, under “Headlines we aren’t going to tell you much about because we don’t like what the story says”. Typical Democrat Propaganda Ministry lying by omission. Hey, what are the Kardashians doing? THAT’S news!

    “Criminologists and other experts have said that explanations for the decline remain elusive, although the Justice Department has in part credited smarter policing practices and investments in law enforcement.” Gee, you don’t suppose the expansion of “shall issue” laws from a few states to 40 had anything to do with it? Or the LEGAL sales (to honest citizens) of nearly 200 million guns since that time?

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