Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

by krg • 13 years ago

190 258 13 years ago

pewsocialtrends.org

dmix3• 13 years ago

Also ALL violent crime is down 50% since 1993.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa98FHuaU0

Fear is a powerful weapon. The media and politicians know this and selectively choose which crime stats to promote.

Emotional outrage > rational analysis when it comes to selling pageviews and building political support.

That is nothing new. Fortunately the internet is helping to temper that imbalance.

damoncali2• 13 years ago

It's also down absolutely. Not just the rate.

tbrownaw• 13 years ago

Well yeah, the size of the population would have to be changing pretty rapidly for that not to be the case.

cpursley2• 13 years ago

'Fear is a powerful weapon' - exactly.

The media and bureaucrats want you to be afraid of your own shadow, when in fact you should be afraid of McDonalds and not wearing your seatbelt.

k_kelly• 13 years ago

I don't eat McDonalds and I wear my safety belt. Other people having guns is not something I can control though, hence the justified need to control who can be given them. I don't worry about my freedom to gun people down, it's not a freedom I really want.

Terretta2• 13 years ago

> selectively choose which crime stats to promote

For example, FBI homicide stats last year show 350 killed by rifles of any kind, assault or otherwise, while 750 killed by hammers. I keep waiting for the groundswell of public support for hammer control.

jgj• 13 years ago

hammers don't kill people; contractors kill people

damoncali2• 13 years ago

I've seen estimates of death by auto-erotic asphyxiation to be in the 500-1,000 per year in the US. Whatever will they ban to stop that?

DougWebb3• 13 years ago

It's tough to kill at a distance with a hammer, unlike a rifle. I suppose that's why people fear rifles more, but honestly I think the hammer killer is more frightening. If someone decides to randomly put a bullet through my head from half a mile away, I'll never even hear it coming. But if someone decides to crush my skull with a hammer, I'm going to be around long enough to know that I'm going to die in a really stupid and wasteful manner.

corresation9• 13 years ago

750 were killed by hammers or clubs which includes any blunt force attack (vase, bat, golf club, etc. I am assuming that you're accurately quoting a number, though last I saw that number was more in the 450 range). Secondly every home has numerous objects that qualify as "clubs", many of them serving valid, functional roles (for instance to hammer, or to hit balls, etc). In many households a firearm has one single purpose, which is to kill or maim (given that hunting is rare, though I suppose that's a weird exception I make given that hunting is ultimately about killing, food pyramid and all).

So that's the first gross misrepresentation that you've made.

The second is that few argue for "rifle control", but instead want "gun control". Those guns that kill 30,000+ Americans per year (whether homicide, suicide, or accidental).

I'm a hunter (albeit here in Canada), but just as I despise misrepresentation of facts one way, it doesn't justify gross misrepresentation the other way.

jstalin8• 13 years ago

Here's the FBI source data: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/...

dsr_• 13 years ago

Which stats are you looking at? The 2012 UCR isn't out yet, and the 2011 stats show 323 by rifles, 457 by "blunt objects" which includes but is not limited to hammers. There haven't been 750 people killed in homicides by blunt objects in 2007 through 2011.

However, "firearms, type not stated" is 1587.

Source: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...

shawabawa3• 13 years ago

Deaths by handguns in US 2011: 6,220 [1]

Most people aren't really bothered by rifles (which are mostly used for hunting), but handguns (which really have no purpose except killing humans)

[1] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...

lifeisstillgood4• 13 years ago

Can you link to these stats ?

(not an evidentiary challenge, just morbid curiosity)

raccer• 13 years ago

Ban All the Hammers! PS You're awesome ;)

longone2• 13 years ago

I don't know if politicians are in on this, bit of a conspiracy that I don't want to get into. However, crime and murder sell. My mother loves to watch the 10 O'Clock news every night but luckily she reads the paper and surfs the web, otherwise I think she might lose her mind. Those nightly news programs are awful. If I only watched local or even cable news and used them as my source for staying in touch with the world I'd think we were living in a complete hell hole. I live in a major city with several local news channels and they are all the same. Just murder and crime and usually some human interest piece at the very end of the broadcast. They report the worst of the worst.

greedo4• 13 years ago

Many would be better off not watching any news or reading any newspapers. Even relying on the Internet makes things tough since there's a firehose of data, and this leads to confirmation bias having a huge affect.

hga13• 13 years ago

The saying is "if it bleeds, it leads."

Because of course people are interested in this. And it doesn't have to be a stereotypical, cowelled people meeting in caves conspiracy. Instead it's an "auto-conspiracy", simply a large group of like minded people doing things in the same direction. Not even a "conspiracy" in the usual "it's secret" sense, many if not most gun grabbers are open about what they're doing enough of the time and often about their intended end goals.

That's one of the things that's driving the "counter-revolution", the gun grabbers have let their masks slip so much, have expressed so much hatred towards gun owners, that they and many many people who were just thinking about buying a gun have been buying everything useful in sight.

E.g. Illinois FOID card applications have quadrupled; that's a absolutely solid metric of people who haven't legally owned a gun up to now.

thomasjames• 13 years ago

Yeah, it was called the crack epidemic.

kunai• 13 years ago

> Emotional outrage > rational analysis

Incredibly true, I'm afraid.

In fact, I'd also add

  advertising > rational analysis
  indoctrination > rational analysis
  political bias > rational analysis
  gratification > rational analysis

These all seem to be qualities we see in the "mass public." Whether it's consumerism, mercurial emotion, or a "save the children" mentality to politics, no one has common sense or the capacity to rationally analyze anything anymore, which is extremely sad.

I'd have to attribute this to the general attitude of ignorance that seems to infect and grow and devastate minds.

When I was in 3rd grade, I asked my teacher why the sun was an inexhaustible resource even when it would eventually collapse and implode, and she said, "Well, it's not going to collapse in our lifetime."

Again, cultivating an attitude of "Just take everything for granted and don't overthink and introspect at all," which, fortunately, I wasn't a victim of. This attitude leads to political ignorance, emotion > reason, consumerism, and also effective advertising.

If it weren't true, The "Learning" Channel, MTV, VH1, Fox News, and MSNBC would not exist today.

But they do.

learc8311• 13 years ago

If you live outside of a high crime area, and you aren't involved in criminal activity the chances, of being shot are drastically reduced below the average.

CapitalistCartr3• 13 years ago

I have many foreign friends, and most are surprised to learn I've never seen a gun used in a violent crime. They have a hard time seeing past Hollywood and the press's portrayal of America. Of course, they don't live here.

numo16• 13 years ago

Agreed. I live in Flint, MI (#1 in violent crime, 2 years running) and have yet to personally see any violent crime first hand, and I live just north of the worst part of the city.

pwenzel• 13 years ago

Others may be unaware of the shift in suicide rates by firearm:

"The sharp decline in the U.S. gun homicide rate, combined with a slower decrease in the gun suicide rate, means that gun suicides now account for six-in-ten firearms deaths, the highest share since at least 1981."

jstalin8• 13 years ago

Looks like the suicide rate has been on the decline since the 1950s as well: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779940.html

codeulike2• 13 years ago

But what about "Suicide Rates Rise Sharply in U.S. (nytimes.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5647015

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

"Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades."

So, gun crime's falling significantly slower than crime in general, which may account for the public perception.

learc8311• 13 years ago

>"Violent non-fatal crime victimization

Why are you comparing violent non-fatal crime, to gun homicides?

CapitalistCartr3• 13 years ago

He answered your question in his second line, " . . . gun crime's falling significantly lower than crime in general." Yes, he's comparing violent non-fatal crime to gun homicides. He's making a comparison of gun homicides to general crime, and the rate of change.

rajat• 13 years ago

Since you're comparing gun crimes to all crimes, doesn't that mean that non-gun crime rates are also falling lower than crime in general (includes with or without firearms)?

Public perception is being driven by a media with an anti-gun agenda.

lmm• 13 years ago

No, because he compared percentages. If gun crime has fallen by 50% and overall crime by 72%, that means non-gun crime has fallen by more than 72%, i.e. much faster than gun crime. Or to put it another way, more crime is being committed with guns than before. Reality's well-known liberal bias strikes again.

jeffdavis7• 13 years ago

Below certain numbers, it might be relatively harder to reduce some crimes than others. For instance, there might always be people who are determined to kill their spouse; but it might be easier to reduce the number of people who see stealing things as useful.

I don't really know, but it would be interesting to see some numbers. Is there some kind of minimum murder rate that can't be lowered further just with laws (i.e. some more fundamental cultural change is required)?

If so, then we might be approaching that minimum (for the current US culture/society) and that could explain why they aren't decreasing much any more.

jstalin8• 13 years ago

The drop is all the more remarkable considering that there are at least 168,000,000 more guns in circulation in the US now than when gun homicide peaked in 1993.[1]

[1] https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/1998_2013_sta...

DougWebb3• 13 years ago

Possible cause and effect? That's one of the claims of the folks who promote private gun ownership.

jstalin8• 13 years ago

While I'm a gun supporter, I think the decline in overall crime has more to do with the reduction in environmental lead: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

criley• 13 years ago

There's also 58,500,000 more human beings in the US than when gun homicide peaked in 1993.

If you're going to talk about gun inflation, it helps to also mention human inflation.

DigitalJack• 13 years ago

Fair point. As mentioned elsewhere, the gun delta is ~3x the population delta.

dmix3• 13 years ago

To keep the numbers relative, US Population:

1993: 257,746,103

2012: 315,809,000

= 58,062,897 more people since 1993.

So 2.8x as many guns than population increase.

jordan0day2• 13 years ago

Maybe it's an economic indicator? Collecting guns is a popular hobby, so perhaps a rise in gun sales correlates to a rise in the economic standing of gun collectors?

scottkduncan2• 13 years ago

"These statistics represent the number of firearm background checks initiated through the NICS. They do not represent the number of firearms sold. Based on varying state laws and purchase scenarios, a one-to-one correlation cannot be made between a firearm background check and a firearm sale."

I imagine the total's quite a bit lower than the stated figure since many of these background checks would be for transfers and sales of used weapons, not always just new guns entering the system. I also imagine some people go through the background check but then for one reason or another don't complete the sale. Still, the number of new guns in circulation is likely very large.

jstalin8• 13 years ago

Also keep in mind that one background check may represent the sale of several firearms.

One additional data point - nearly 9 million guns were manufactured or imported into the US in 2010 alone: http://www.businessinsider.com/more-gun-stores-in-america-th...

cpursley2• 13 years ago

End the drug war and it drops even more if you don't count suicides (since that's not really a homicide) and you're only left with the occasional nutter with a gun(s).

balloot• 13 years ago

In a totally and completely unrelated fact, the rate of gun ownership is also down 30% since the 1980's. It's almost as if the two may have a relationship, but that certainly cannot be the case because the NRA has spent a jillion dollars telling me otherwise!

spindritf• 13 years ago

> It's almost as if the two may have a relationship

Negative correlation would be my guess[1]. Where do I get my NRA check for telling you that?

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=10129

benihana• 13 years ago

The article seems to disagree with you:

>The number of firearms available for sale to or possessed by U.S. civilians (about 310 million in 2009, according to the Congressional Research Service) has grown in recent years, and the 2009 per capita rate of one person per gun had roughly doubled since 1968. It is not clear, though, how many U.S. households own guns or whether that share has changed over time.

jeffdavis7• 13 years ago

That's interesting, because someone else pointed out a large increase in the total number of guns. Can you provide a link for that figure?

bluedino5• 13 years ago

Less people may own guns, but the people who own them own more per person than they used to.

That said, most guns used in homicides aren't used by the/a registered owner.

zerohm2• 13 years ago

So there are more guns in circulation, but distributed amongst fewer people? This doesn't surprise me.

hga13• 13 years ago

All of those statistics that I've seen, claiming that rates of ownership are down, are based on surveys.

What do you think are common reactions from gun owners when a nosy stranger calls them on the phone and asks if they own a gun?

Might it have correlations with the Zeitgeist created by the gun grabbers, especially when they dance on the blood of victims like with Newtown?

I haven't run the numbers myself, but someone's claimed that if you mash these all together, the post-Newtown "admits to owning a firearm" + the number known to be outstanding (we have solid figures on legal production and imports) and the population, the average gun owner owns about $100K worth of firearms.

See also solid evidence like Illinois FOID application rates as I mentioned elsewhere in this topic. By definition those are from people who haven't previously legally owned guns, and they've quadrupled since Newtown.

jstalin8• 13 years ago

^ this. No one I know who is a gun owner would say "yes" if called as part of a survey and asked if they own guns.

grimtrigger• 13 years ago

Please keep the politics out of HN.

Edit: Referring to some of the comments in this thread, not the article.

CapitalistCartr3• 13 years ago

You've been around here long enough to know HN is full of political issues and has been for years.

mrchucklepants2• 13 years ago

I fail to see how review and discussion of statistical information equates to politics. Facts are not political.

davidw• 13 years ago

You really can't see that? Do you think there's the odd chance the ensuing discussion might - just might - deviate from the discussion of some numbers?

My inclination is that we will see yet another reenactment of a famous internet flame war.

bjterry2• 13 years ago

Real facts aren't political, and all facts taken together aren't political. But statistics are often biased or flat out incorrect because of political ends, and the selective dissemination of statistics is political.

Prophasi2• 13 years ago

I'd argue this is up to the folks commenting rather than the OP, which is a link to some polling that produced a bunch of data points. It can be strictly analytical without blowing up into petty arguments.

Not that it will.

btipling• 13 years ago

I am totally with you on this although meta-discussions are usually not allowed.

I hope pg and moderators find that there is more value in building a community that talks more about technology and startups than the growing group of single minded group of prolific downvote button clickers who make others want to stop participating.

kalleboo• 13 years ago

Agreed. There aren't any comments on this article that I couldn't have read on reddit. Topics like this will always generate a lot of comments and discussion since it's very easy to have an opinion on it (vs more technical topics).

spwestwood• 13 years ago

SuperFreakonomics attributed the dramatic drop in crime in the 1990s to Roe vs Wade. http://www.freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortion-and-crime-wh...

emc• 13 years ago

That's mostly likely a factor but 100% of the story. The decrease of lead in soil is another. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

jeffdavis7• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio...

A number of people disagree with that conclusion based on seemingly reasonable scientific arguments.

nathan_long• 13 years ago

Furthermore, if it's meant to be an argument for abortion, it really has no effect on the pro-life position.

If you start with the understanding that a baby in the womb is a human, this arguments sounds like "it's good that we have legal murder because it prevents illegal murder".

TheBindingVoid• 13 years ago

Someone link this to gaming, please.

zerohm2• 13 years ago

That study was done by Pew Pew Research.

crazy1van• 13 years ago

The focus on "gun violence" or "gun homicides" instead of just violence or homicides strikes me as very strange.

jeffdavis7• 13 years ago

If you try to talk about violence, people are going to ask whether it is higher or lower than before. The fact that it is lower eliminates fear and sensationalism and the conversation dries up to little more than local police budget issues.

But if you talk about gun violence, people will generally have an opinion regardless of the facts, and won't tend to ask questions. That's why everyone has a strong opinion but few know that it's actually a declining problem.

Spooky23• 13 years ago

A big part of the perception problem is that gangs have spread out or have left the larger urban environments in favor of smaller cities and suburbs with no resources.

So people see gang activity in places like Albany, NY or Springfield, MA or some suburb in Tennessee and hear about 15 year old gang members carrying handguns. They associate that real social problem with the tools that they are carrying.

That combined with pandering politicians and advocacy group funded PR efforts that land gun related incidents on the TV everyday leads to the present situation.

bluedino5• 13 years ago

Yet, cities like Chicago and Flint are setting new records for homicide rates, and the % of those committed by guns is at an all-time high.

yoster2• 13 years ago

A lot of gangs in Chicago compared to let's say boondocks, Ohio....

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

You made this up, loosely based on the number of news stories that you've seen lately. Chicago's homicide rate is half of what it was in 1993.

ebbv4• 13 years ago

Of course it is. All violent crime is down.

That has nothing to do with the fact that kids are still accidentally getting shot.

I propose a new law; if a child (under 18) is found in possession of a gun the gun owner is fined $50,000. If the gun's ownership cannot be established, the parents or legal guardians are fined $50,000 instead.

People might be a little more serious about locking up their guns and not letting their kids play with them.

Dumb parents never seemed to be scared of their kids accidentally shooting each other but and one of them dies, maybe they'd be scared of them accidentally shooting each other and owing $50,000.

oinksoft• 13 years ago

I'm not sure you understand how common a diversion target practice (even shooting tin cans) and small-game hunting is for rural American youths.

Lexarius• 13 years ago

The Boy Scouts even have separate Rifle Shooting and Shotgun Shooting merit badges.

pdeuchler• 13 years ago

Similar policies have worked brilliantly with alcohol and tobacco, or so I hear.

learc8311• 13 years ago

>People might be a little more serious about locking up their guns and not letting their kids play with them.

People are serious about not letting their kids play with guns.

You make it seem like this happens a lot.

In 2007 there were 122 children killed accidentally by firearm.

Sugar breakfast cereal is a far greater danger to kids than guns.

Taylorious• 13 years ago

What a silly law. Why don't we fine people $50,000 every time they do anything irresponsible or dangerous. Surely that would make our society safe and responsible!

Seriously, no one is going to pay heed to this law because how would you ever get caught? No one thinks their kid is going to get into their guns, if they did they would do something to prevent it. I can't believe you actually suggest that someone would care more about a $50,000 fine than if their kid shot themself or someone else.

I don't own any guns now, but some of my earliest and fondest memories are of shooting guns with my dad. I think it started when I was seven... I was never allowed to use guns on my own, only with strict supervision with safety gear etc.

If the government was really worried about children getting into guns, they wouldn't set up a bunch of pointless fines, they would start an educational campaign (maybe even get the NRA involved) reminding people that if they have guns they should secure them and teach their children the dangers of guns etc.

Honestly its not that hard, get a cheap gun safe, lock your guns up, keep the key on your key chain. Be an actual parent and educate your children. Problem solved.

jack-r-abbit2• 13 years ago

Exactly. I grew up with guns in the house. My dad would take us out shooting all the time. But as a kid, I would never even think of going into my dad's room without permission. And if I did venture in there, I certainly would not have touched the rifle he kept under the bed or the .357 he kept in the sock drawer. It was called respect. Respect for authority. Respect for the fire arms. Respect. We have a lack of that these days.

hga13• 13 years ago

Indeed; my father started taking all of us out hunting at age 3, and if we wanted to go dove hunting at age 10 (it's a safe type where he could and would be right next to us in the beginning), started teaching me how to shoot ~ 1st grade, and I was allowed to use firearms without supervision before 18. Not a lot before 18, but such a proposed law ... well, it totally ignores rural realities, e.g. "Kill that cottonmouth NOW!"

OldSchool• 13 years ago

Suffice to say that 99.9% of all parents value their children's lives more than any amount of money or even their own life, so a fine is a trivial persuader. That other 0.1% can't comprehend safety nor would have $50K to lose.

marknutter2• 13 years ago

I would suggest we focus on swimming pools, which are a far bigger threat to children, before we focus on gun accidents.

greedo4• 13 years ago

And kids are getting killed accidentally via a number of other methods that don't garner the anti-gun media's attention:

Selected Causes of Death, Ages 0-19, per 100,000 Population (2007) Cause Number of Deaths Mortality Rate Unintentional Injury 11,560 14.0 Motor Vehicle 6,683 8.1 Drowning 1,056 1.3 Fire/Burn 544 0.7 Poisoning 972 1.2 Suffocation/Strangulation 1,263 1.5 Firearm 138 0.2 Homicide 3,345 4.1 Firearm 2,186 2.7 Suicide 1,665 2.0 Firearm 683 0.8 Suffocation/Strangulation 739 0.9 Poisoning 133 0.2

Now this is 6 year old data. But accidental death by firearm isn't the danger that it would appear, compared to other threats.

http://www.childdeathreview.org/nationalchildmortalitydata.h...

ebbv4• 13 years ago

Yeah and all those other problems probably have solutions that could reduce the numbers too. Such as having much more stringent driving tests in the US.

Firearms are still responsible for 3,007 out of the 16570 non-natural deaths listed. Or 18%. That's not insignificant.

The solution is not to throw up your hands in the air and say "Oh well there's a bunch of reasons why kids die. Let's not bother doing anything."

bcoates• 13 years ago

It's not across-the-board illegal for a child to possess a gun in the US, although it varies by state.

Age-based gun restrictions are usually about non-parents selling or giving guns to minors, or carrying in public without adult supervision.

Firearms accidents are not a common cause of death; according to the CDC they amount to about 1% of all accidental deaths of young people.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf

Pewpewarrows2• 13 years ago

This is an awfully wrong approach. As with things like Alcohol, if you teach your children how to operate and act responsibly, they get into less trouble with it as an adult.

If you stilt their growth and don't allow them to touch a gun until they're 18, they won't have developed enough to handle it themselves without supervision.

ebbv4• 13 years ago

Wait are you advocating we lower the drinking age to produce more responsible drinkers?

I think you'll find most irresponsible drinkers started before 21 anyway.

platz3• 13 years ago

Just a sanity check: "Researchers have studied the decline in firearm crime and violent crime for many years, and though there are theories to explain the decline, there is no consensus among those who study the issue as to why it happened."

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because it's harder to get away with a gun crime now than it used to be. TV shows like CSI probably have more to do with the decline in gun violence than any other environmental factors.

platz3• 13 years ago

Assuming deterrence is the most significant factor in the decline. Additionally, I'm not sure the gang-bangers are watching CSI.

CodeCube• 13 years ago

Some have suggested that the decline in crime in the 90's was due to abortion - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_ef...

malyk• 13 years ago

It's probably a combination of things, but the correlation to the banning of lead seems to be the highest of any other single reason.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

stevewilhelm• 13 years ago

One of the factors in reducing gun homicide is we have gotten better since 1993 at keeping people alive after they have been shot.

I am interested in the change per capita of gun shot victims as a whole.

ap222132• 13 years ago

As with most things, follow the money. Who benefits the most when the public is frightened of gun violence (and also being told to arm themselves)?

Similarly, war deaths (as a portion of total death) have been decreasing incredibly. Yet, globally we keep increasing our spending on military. And, the public is frightened of war. Some would say that the spending on military has been the major deterrent to war. But, studies show the decrease is more related to rises in democracy and global trade.

pygy_• 13 years ago

It appears that gun homicide rate increased under Bush Sr. (~5.6 => 7.0) and Jr.(3.8 => 4.0), and declined under Reagan(6.6 => 5.6), Clinton (7.0 => 3.8) and Obama (4.0 =>3.6).

Numbers are in death/100,000 people, (+/-0.1 because they were read from the graph[0]).

A t-test on the yearly rate of change, yields a p-value of 0.002. (in Excel =T.TEST(A1:A12, B1:B14,1,3)).

Did the Bush have a peculiar approach regarding crime fighting?

[0] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/05/SDT-2013-05-gun...

mattsfrey• 13 years ago

Nobody seems to mention the reason I think accounts for a good deal of the drop, which is simply the perception that you're going to get caught is much higher. Up until the mid 90's there wasn't even DNA analysis. The world was a much simpler place, no cameras everywhere, cell phones, internet, and a myriad of other ways to be tracked. The rise of technology in law enforcement coupled with the non stop blasting of crime shows depicting criminals getting caught (e.g. CSI) has greatly increased the perception that you will not get away with murder. Today most sane people at least view it as something extremely risky and hard to get away with. Even to the destitute gun crime is not a very attractive option these days, whereas 20+ years ago it wasn't nearly as big a deal. Of course there's a handful of other factors, but I think the perceived likelihood of being caught is probably the most significant.

jttam• 13 years ago

My theory is that the advent of a popular internet itself deters people from violence. No science to back it up, of course. But people spend more time watching TV and using the internet; it leaves less time to be outside getting physically rowdy with others and creating these heated moments.

squozzer• 13 years ago

I wonder if the increase in available distractions, such as video games, has something to do with it.

And I don't know the name of the theory, but stats don't really relate well to certain events, such as taking a bullet. If took_a_bullet = false, then are you really thinking about the odds? If took_a_bullet = true, then you've got bigger problems than becoming a statistic.

buster• 13 years ago

Well.. that's not to say a rate of 3.2 is a good rate. The U.S. still is far above most western countries, which typically have something like 0.x or even 0.0x homicides per 100.000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

ap222132• 13 years ago

Interesting data. Thanks.

And, wow, look at US's suicide rate.

jstalin8• 13 years ago

That's only the suicide rate by those who use a gun. Compare actual overall suicide rates and the US is pretty average and very close to the rate in the UK, Canada, France, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...

edtechdev3• 13 years ago

Well back in 1993, almost 49% of households had a gun. Today the number is 32%. That alone is a 35% drop in gun ownership.

There are so many other factors that could play a role here. And none of them negate the need for common sense gun regulations and re-funding research on both gun and non-gun violence.

learc8311• 13 years ago

Household says nothing about the number of guns or the gun availability. Your granddad's rusty shotgun sitting your closet counts as the entire household "owning" a gun.

The average household size is smaller today than it was in 1993, meaning that it's possible that more individuals actually own guns.

hga13• 13 years ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5675330; you're talking about the number of households that admit to owning a gun, not the real number.

That's somewhere around the middle of the nationwide sweep of shall issue concealed carry regimes, now totalling 42 states and 2/3rds of the population. Such an astounding political development---there were 2-3 states when Florida opened the floodgates in 1987---wouldn't seem to correlate with lower ownership rates.

As for this so called research, would you be talking about the output of people like Dr. Mark Rosenberg, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the CDC in 1994 when he said objective was to make people see firearms as “dirty, deadly—and banned.”

Any wonder the NRA and gun owners in general were able to get the Congress to ban such "research"? And aren't you a bit disturbed by the violations of the rule of law of Obama ignoring these laws?

edtechdev3• 13 years ago

"you're talking about the number of households that admit to owning a gun, not the real number"

Looks like you either didn't read the short sentence I posted, or didn't think about it before responding, because that doesn't say anything against the evidence that there is lower gun ownership today than there was 20 years ago, only that the actual percentage back then AND now is likely higher than surveys suggest, but there is still a strong trend downward in gun ownership.

And for this "so called research", I'm talking about the NIH and CDC research into gun violence that was cut off under pressure by the NRA in 1996: http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/02/gun-violence.as...

Research for example that showed that owning a gun increases the likelihood of harm done to or by a family member or acquaintance.

wahsd• 13 years ago

Some may call me crazy, but I have a hunch that the decline in gun homicide, and crime in general, is related to gaming.

There is frequently a claim that it's the FPS and other violent games that trigger mass shootings. Although I believe that there is an negative effect, I also believe that that negative effect is essentially all but negated by other outcome positive effects of gaming. I feel like there might be net positive outcomes related to those who would in the past have been the types who felt the need to enforce their ego through violence, posturing, and domination. Additionally, because those types of people / kids would then also not have come in contact with "mentors" who would groom them, there could also be a cycle-interrupting process going on here.

platz3• 13 years ago

Might be related to pornography as well.

yoster2• 13 years ago

93' was gangster. I was a teenager around then and a lot of people were gangbanging at the time. Most of those people realized that they didn't want to go to prison for murder.

Millennium• 13 years ago

Of course they're unaware. It's harder to keep fear alive when information like this gets out.

Both sides know this. But each side is convinced that it benefits more from a fearful populace than an unafraid populace, and that the reverse is true for its opposition. And so the fearmongering continues.

lifeisstillgood4• 13 years ago

dmix is right - here in the UK the UK Peace Index [1] (a rather hippie name for respected peer reviewed sociology) shows massive drops across the board for violent crime.

[1] http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/U...

hga13• 13 years ago

That's not what the national crime survey says! And I think the police statistics as well (those can and are often fudged).

tokenadult• 13 years ago

The article "In Medical Triumph, Homicides Fall Despite Soaring Gun Violence"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732471250457813...

from December 8, 2012 provides some perspective on falling absolute numbers (and thus a falling rate) of gunshot deaths.

"Crime experts who attribute the drop in killings to better policing or an aging population fail to square the image of a more tranquil nation with this statistic: The reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half.

. . . .

"After a steady decline through the 1990s, the annual number of homicides zigzagged before resuming a decline in 2007, falling from 16,929 that year to an estimated 14,722 in 2010, according to FBI crime data.

"At the same time, medical data and other surveys in the U.S. show a rising number of serious injuries from assaults with guns and knives. The estimated number of people wounded seriously enough by gunshots to require a hospital stay, rather than treatment and release, rose 47% to 30,759 in 2011 from 20,844 in 2001, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program. The CDC estimates showed the number of people injured in serious stabbings rose to 23,550 from 22,047 over the same period."

Emergency medicine for gunshot victims has improved enormously in the last twenty years, and many people who are shot by criminals now survive for a lifetime of permanent disability rather dying on the street. A crime can only be classified as a "homicide" by the uniform statistical methods if someone dies, but a crime can still be very serious and harmful to the victim if it involves a gunshot by a criminal.

jsonne2• 13 years ago

Is it possible that the rise from 2001 to 2011 has to do with the recession rather than a general upward trend? Would it be possible to see statistics from 2001 to say 2007 instead? Or even better the last 20 years.

jeffdavis7• 13 years ago

There's a graph of "non-fatal violent firearm crime" right in the article. It looks flat to me between 2001 and 2011.

Are both true somehow? Those facts seem to be in conflict.

saraid2163• 13 years ago

The one you really want is the third one: "All non-fatal violent crime".

Basically, all crime is down from its 1993 peak, and it so happens that firearm-related crimes are a subset of that. I don't have the time to run numbers to see what the percentage change is, but it'd probably be enlightening.

bjterry2• 13 years ago

First, the quoted WSJ data is stated on an absolute basis (inflating/sensationalizing the numbers, obviously), while the graph in this article is stated on a relative basis. This still leaves an apparent discrepancy. Other real causes for the discrepancy could be improvements in emergency response in areas with gun violence. This could cause in increase in hospitalizations based on people not dying before getting to the hospital, but this doesn't seem like a large factor. This leaves quality of data as the more likely culprit. The article goes on to say after the portion tokenadult quoted:

> Criminologists say they are cautious about using such medical statistics to draw conclusions because of year-to-year inconsistencies in the number of medical institutions reporting data. The FBI collects annual homicide and aggravated assault statistics but doesn't have reliable numbers for gun and knife attacks.

> Jens Ludwig, a law professor and the director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, said he was leery of any number beyond reported homicides.

> "Homicide is the one thing we're measuring well," he said. "Everything else is subject to much more uncertainty," including varying numbers of emergency departments contributing data, as well as differences in how injuries are classified.

So basically, take your pre-existing political biases and use that as a guide to choose which data you believe, just like everyone else does.

ellyagg• 13 years ago

As usual, you post an authoritative sounding reference that confirms a popular slant--in this case "gun violence is as bad as ever or even getting worse!"--and it gets voted to the top of the comments where it stays visible just long enough to protect the confirmation biases of those who agree with it, then falls off the front page before it can be refuted.

Your link is behind a pay wall for me and I don't have time to completely analyze how they're justifying their spin, but according to the Bureau of Justice, non-fatal firearm crimes have indeed been falling for the last 20 years, so, no, it's not just a product of improving treatment of gunshot wounds:

    Nonfatal firearm violence declined from 1993 through
    2004 before fluctuating in the mid- to late 2000s.

[http://bjs.gov/content/pub/press/fv9311pr.cfm]

As this is a well-known trend, I'm pretty sure anyone who wants to can find lots and lots of citations.

Moreover, this should be obvious to anyone who has participated in public society for the last 20 years. Decreasing crime statistics, including gun crime, aren't fool's gold. Crime is down. Society is getting gentler.

Twenty years ago I was 15. Gang violence dominated the news. Hard gangsta rap infused pop culture and music and it carried with it a true dangerous edge. Now culture is changing. Electronic music is popular. NBA basketball players dress up to look like Carleton Banks for press conferences. Internet culture, reddit culture is taking over. Kids spend all their time watching silly YouTube videos and playing iPhone games. There is far less free time for roving bands of aimless punks to get up to mischief. My teen-age son and his friends are incredibly nerdy and gentle and I've noticed this throughout the generation.

Prophasi2• 13 years ago

Most gun stats blithely show aggregate rates of gun ownership and gun-related homicides, and the public reacts in fear; who wants to live in a country like that?

But criminal-on-criminal violence is a disproportionate share. Are we supposed to think that the presence of guns is what drives the violence, or is it possibly that you've got millions of young men with no jobs and nothing constructive to do, with parents who don't care to bring them up right (or who can't control them), running drugs and fighting turf wars, cooking up ways to make bank? There's an argument that for some people, access to guns creates an opportunity; but there's a lot more at work here than that.

There's a social rot underneath it all -- and I'd venture that gun violence in the US is a symptom of the rot rather than guns being a cause. It seems remarkably dangerous to me to demonize the mechanism by which someone murders another person in the name of progress; politicians feel like they're accomplishing something, even though we still have a bunch of people willing to kill someone, if only they had the means.

There's significant collective cognitive dissonance in American society on this topic, I think.

schoper• 13 years ago

Whatever drives violent crime in the U.S. does not seem to be the presence or absence of guns.

The white murder rate in America is about the same as it is in Europe/Canada, etc. The black murder rate is about the same as it is in parts of Africa. (Something like 10x the white rate.)

First look here to get a rough idea of the murder rate in different parts of the globe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

Take a look here for the murder rate in different American states:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-...

Notice how this is a very similar list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African-...

With some corrections for urbanization, the correlation is even more extreme.

Also see the discussion and figures here: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/hispanic.htm

quantumstate2• 13 years ago

Your Wikipedia link shows that the US murder rate is 4.8, the rates for Western, Southern and Northern Europe are 1.0, 1.4 and 1.5 respectively. Eastern Europe has a higher rate of 6.4. If you are looking at economic similarity Western, Northern and some of Southern Europe are comparable to the US. So the murder rates are very different.

RyanMcGreal• 13 years ago

Please, please do yourself a favour and read Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined - a breathtaking tour-de-force backed by strong, robust, varied evidence.

grey-area2• 13 years ago

Homicide rates in the US are still significantly higher than other developed nations, so there's a long way to go:

    US 4.8 per 100,000 in 2012
    UK 1.2
    France 1.1
    Germany 0.8
    Japan 0.4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona...

I wonder why this paper doesn't use the statistics from 2012, which show an uptick to 4.8?

joshuahedlund• 13 years ago

It's unfair to compare the best state-sized countries with the entire United States, which has several states 7+ but also several 2 and under. It would be better to compare the US to the closer-sized Europe, which is 3.5. Still a legitimate difference, but not nearly as stark.

quantumstate2• 13 years ago

Why are you comparing based on size? Surely it is sensible to try and compare economically similar. Western and Northern Europe is probably the best comparison, with a combined population of something like 280 Million, not too far from the US. The murder rates are 1.0 and 1.5 respectively, far lower than the US. The whole of Europe includes Eastern Europe which is much less similar to the US and has a higher murder rate.

grey-area2• 13 years ago

The figures are adjusted for population, so I don't see why size would affect the figures, and as the other poster said comparing recently joined Eastern European states with the US is not very useful as they are at a very different stage of development. If you break it down by states almost every US state has statistics far worse than Western Europe, to which they should be fairly comparable.

There are lots of variables here, including varying gun ownership, gun control, and states like Switzerland show you can have ownership without high rates of killing (though they restrict ammo), but widespread private ownership for self-defence in the US does seem to correlate with high rates of homicide (inc. suicide), and other countries with tighter restrictions and a different attitude to guns have far lower rates of death associated with firearms.

brianbreslin• 13 years ago

I didn't read the article, but am going to make a commentary anyway. I take from this declining violent crime stat, that we still have a long way to go in eradicating violent crimes (both gun and non gun related). /soapbox

joyeuse6701• 13 years ago

I'm surprised no one here has made mention of the correlation between led in the atmosphere and violent crime.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-li...

mixmastamyk• 13 years ago

There are a few theories (I've not seen mentioned here) as to why crime is down so much. Not certain how valid they are but are food for thought. Some external reasons crime may be down:

- The ban on lead in gasoline and other products, the contamination of which tended to create dumber and more impulsive people.

- The legalization of abortion, resulting in fewer unwanted, unsupervised children.

tayllargardner• 13 years ago

If gun homicide is truly down 49% then why so much controversy over wether or not they should be allowed and what not. This will constantly be an ongoing battle for years to come over gun control. Why blame the gun for random acts of violence when violence is truly uncontrolable. Before there were guns people still committed horrendous crimes. It's the corrupted mind not the weapon.

lifeguard• 13 years ago

There are still over 90 people killed by accident EVERY DAY in the USA.

Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware

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