We can all agree that gun violence is bad, and America does have an incredibly high rate of gun violence. However, the problem is both worse and better than it seems. This article will be an unbiased sampling of the data from well constructed research studies aimed at lowering these overall rates.

First, I want to share a little bit about my personal thoughts on this hot button issue. Gun violence is bad, and as a police officer I have seen the first hand effects that it has on individuals and families.

Secondly, I believe that the vast majority of what we read about gun violence is blatantly wrong. It is often fueled by someone arguing for a right or left wing position. I assure you I have no such leanings.

I am not a Republican nor a Democrat. I am not a member of the NRA. I do believe that the second amendment is important and laws should not be passed infringing on this right.

I am also not crazy. I don’t think people who are mentally ill, felons, or children should have access to guns. Personally I don’t think the we need a lot of change in our gun laws as we currently have quite a lot, and as you will see there is little if any data pointing to increased gun laws stopping actual crime with firearms.

With that out of the way, we can now get into the statistics of gun violence.

US Statistics on Gun Violence

From 1992 – 2013, 462,043 US citizens were killed as a result of gun violence. This is a very high number, but it alone does not tell the full story. To do that we need to examine the stats that compose this number.



Firearm fatalities during 1999 to 2013 compared by intent.

Suicide and Firearm Violence

The majority of firearm deaths are self inflicted. Normally when someone quotes that statistic they move on, effectively writing off 270,085 people’s lives.

I don’t intend to do so. While these deaths are not a result of violent crime, they are none the less a tragedy. Often times firearms are chosen because they are the most effective way to commit suicide, but this has little to do with gun control or passing new legislation. This is a mental health issue.

The only measure I think that would have any success would be an awareness campaign similar to the smoking campaigns of the 90’s. Simply recognizing the signs of suicide ideation could prevent thousands of these deaths, and rivers of heartache.

Suicide is not always easy to recognize, and even spouses and loved ones often do not see the signs until it is too late.

Gun Control Laws and Gun Violence

This is a murky area that has up until recently had little real research. In fact the Dickey Amendment was passed by Congress to specifically keep the Center for Disease Control from studying it. Incredibly asinine.

Recently there has been an uptick in research, fueled by the recent tragic shootings in Las Vegas, Newtown, and elsewhere. We will be discussing an excellent piece of research published my medical doctors that looked at overall gun violence stats from 1999-2013, comparing them to the types of gun legislation that exists in each state to see if laws actual do affect firearms violence.

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They found that states with less restrictive firearms laws did in fact have an increase in overall gun violence, but not in the way you might think.

They did observe that these states had greater female, male, White, unintentional, pediatric, and adult suicide, and overall rates of firearm violence.

Another important finding of the study is that current restrictive firearm legislation does not appear to impact either firearm homicide rates or Black firearm violence rates. There are several potential explanations for these findings. Homicides comprised nearly 40% of all firearm-related fatalities but showed no association with state firearm legislation.

When these two stats are put together and examined we can see that states with easier access to guns tend to have higher rates of gun violence, and suicide, but the homicide rate was unaffected by the passage of firearm laws.

They also found that nearly half of all firearm deaths occurred in the South for an overall annual rate of 12.6 per 100,000 compared to the national average of around 11 firearm deaths per 100,000 people.

These deaths are not evenly distributed. They found that homicide is the number 1 cause of death in Black Americans between the ages of 15 and 34, and of these, 91% are the result of firearms. Firearms violence is devastating the black community.

They found that firearms violence did not change during the three 5 year periods periods examined in the study (10.89±3.99/100,000; 10.71±3.93/100,000; 11.14±3.91/100,000; P=0.87).

Here is a good graphic that demonstrates some overall firearms violence trends. (Source)

We can see from this separate study that the overall trend of firearm violence has been decreasing; however, there are some very concrete populations where firearms violence is an on going issue.

Criminal Victims

Gun violence is dangerous, in 1 of 6 cases of criminal assault inflicting a gunshot wound, the victim dies. These victims themselves are often involved in a criminal lifestyle.

If you reference the chart above you will see that of the 511 total cases, about two thirds are gang related and roughly 15-17% are drug related. The next biggest chunk result from personal disputes 10-13%, with robberies and domestic incidents accounting for the rest.

This data is drawn from the City of Boston from 2010-2014 and is probably fairly representative of major US cities as a whole. Incredibly, these “victims” on average had been arraigned 12 times prior to them being shot. This means they had been formally charged with crimes on 12 separate occasions prior.

Now I don’t mean to suggest that they are not deserving victims. These cases should still be handled just as seriously as any other shooting, but it is telling that these victims had lengthy criminal histories prior to their shooting.

This is a chart depicting the location where they were shot.

Researches in the Boston Study found that caliber size did play a factor. Based on a simulation, replacing the medium- and large-caliber guns with small-caliber guns would have reduced gun homicides by 39.5%.

Here they classify small caliber guns as .22-.25 cal and large as anything above 9mm. So it looks like the fudds on 1911 forums might have been right after all.

The researchers also found that the caliber of the firearm did not affect the number of rounds fired in each instance, and that fatalities were often associated with more hits per victim.

Discussion

Gun violence is a complex problem, and there are no easy solutions to it. If there where then this would no longer be a problem. As responsible citizens and gun owners I think we owe it to ourselves to have an honest discussion about guns.

The data seem to support the notion that when there are more firearms, and easier access, non criminal gun violence like suicides do increase, but criminal violence does not decrease with the passage of further gun control laws.

As a police officer I would have a hard time imagining what more laws we need. In my jurisdiction they are reasonable. My state is a shall issue state and CCW is very common. You may also open carry here, even though I am personally not a fan of that.

I think there are a few things we can do to reduce the amount of suicides, and unintentional deaths, mainly locking up our guns. A recent study by John’s Hopkins found that over half of gun owners do not lock their firearms up.

This is not only stupid but criminal in many jurisdictions. Juveniles should not have unrestricted access to firearms. They should be taught the basics and safe gun handling, but they should be locked up.

Many of you are probably saying that your children know not to touch them, and to that I say this, “do your children always listen to you?” Mine don’t and all it takes one instance of showing their friend dad’s cool new gun for a tragedy to happen.

I have used this gun safe for years, and you can purchase it on Amazon for less than $50. Please secure your firearms.

Criminality and Gun Violence

I think this is going to be a harder problem to solve. Honestly I think it is more socioeconomic than anything else. In many inner city areas, young uneducated men have almost no legitimate job opportunities, and so they turn to criminality. This inevitably leads to gun violence.

I think you are going to have to spend more money on education including things like hiring more African American teachers, which has been shown to positively impact young people of color.

These are hard problems without well defined solutions, but I think we need to start making some progress. We don’t need to solve it with a snap of our fingers, but we can start to make some adjustments at the micro level that can have a nationwide impact with enough support.

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