More Guns; Less Crime

On average, about 86 people a day are killed by firearms in America, or 31,672 per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control tally for 2010. That year, the CDC counted 19,392 gun deaths by suicide, 11,078 homicides with firearms, 606 deaths by accidental shootings and 596 with undetermined causes. A child in the United States aged 5 through 14 is about 13 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than children in Japan, Italy or other industrial countries, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. Guns are used in about seven out of 10 murders in the U.S., according to FBI statistics. When choosing a weapon guns are chosen 68% of the time, knives are chosen 13% of the time, no weapon (one’s body) is chosen 6% of the time, miscellaneous objects are also chosen 6% of the time and 7% of the time the object is unknown. But with that said the crime rate has been declining steadily for firearm crimes. In 1993 and 1994, for example, the rate was above seven firearm crimes for every 1,000 people age 12 or older. It has fallen pretty consistently to 1.8 in 2011, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Even in Chicago, which has a very strict gun control law to try and reduce crime the effect of having less guns resulted in a spike in homicides. This data is important considering that the number of killings had been declining sharply over the past 20 years. The number was consistently above 800 in the early 1990s, but fell to the 700s, to the 600s in the early 2000s, and near 500 or below for every year since 2004, according to a report by the Chicago Police Department. This evidence leads researchers to believe that more guns actually equal less crime being the high-rate of U.S. gun ownership has a direct correlation to violent crimes.

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/10/16912647-guns-in-america-the-weapon-of-choice-for-criminals-but-also-a-deterrent?lite

3/8/13 3:33pm