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Highlights

The collective federal data indicate that except for homicides, the vast majority of violent crime does not involve the use of handguns or firearms.

Author

Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.

Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Aspiring drummer.

Introduction

Based on the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (description below) the majority of violent crime does not involve the use of firearms (chart below).

Except for homicides, most violent crime involved personal weapons or knives or blunt objects or motor vehicles with large numbers falling into the “other” or “unknown weapons” categories.

There were 86,210 assaults involving firearms versus 1,22,640 non-firearm assaults.

There were 33,436 robberies with firearms versus 46,276 knives, personal weapons, all others and no weapon/force involved.

No weapon or force involved (bottom line of chart) exceeds firearm use for assaults and sex offenses.

Very few sex offenses involved firearms.

Chart:

Other Federal Sources

Based on the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, about 1 in 5 (21%) of all state and federal prisoners reported that they had possessed or carried a firearm when they committed the offense for which they were serving time in prison. More than 1 in 8 (13%) of all prisoners had used a firearm by showing, pointing, or discharging it during the offense for which they were imprisoned, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

About 70 percent of all homicides and eight percent of all nonfatal violent victimizations (rape, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault) were committed with a firearm, mainly a handgun. A handgun was used in about 7 in 10 firearm homicides in 2011.

In the same year, about 26 percent of robberies and 31 percent of aggravated assaults involved a firearm, such as handguns, shotguns or rifles, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Conclusions

This article is based on commentators believing that the majority of violent crime is firearm based while data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the US Department of Justice indicate otherwise.

New FBI numbers from the National Incident Based Reporting System (crimes reported to law enforcement) solidify findings from BJS. The FBI numbers have caveats that need to be taken into consideration such as the current numbers of participating agencies or multiple categories of weapon use.

Use of a firearm is a deliberate choice on the part of criminal offenders that could/should be used to judge the seriousness of the crime for sentencing purposes.

The FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)-Background

Implemented to improve the overall quality of crime data collected by law enforcement, NIBRS captures details on each single crime incident, as well as on separate offenses within the same incident, including information on victims, known offenders, relationships between victims and offenders, arrestees, and property involved in crimes. Unlike data reported through the UCR Program’s traditional Summary Reporting System, an aggregate monthly tally of crimes, NIBRS goes much deeper because of its ability to provide circumstances and context for crimes like location, time of day, and whether the incident was cleared.

As recommended by professional law enforcement organizations, the FBI has made nationwide implementation of NIBRS a top priority because NIBRS can provide more useful statistics to promote constructive discussion, measured planning, and informed policing.

The vision for NIBRS is for it to become the law enforcement community’s standard for quantifying crime, which will help law enforcement and communities around the country use resources more strategically and effectively. In 2018, approximately 44 percent of U.S. law enforcement agencies that participated in the UCR Program submitted data via NIBRS.

When used to its full potential, NIBRS identifies, with precision, when and where crime takes place, what form it takes, and the characteristics of its victims and perpetrators. Armed with such information, law enforcement can better define the resources it needs to fight crime, as well as use those resources in the most efficient and effective manner.

NIBRS, 2018, is available at FBI.

More information about the NIBRS transition is available on the NIBRS webpage at FBI.

See More

See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.

Contact

Contact us at leonardsipes@gmail.com.

My book based on thirty-five years of criminal justice public relations,” Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon

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