Thread: The Firearms Statistics That Gun Control Advocates Don’t Want to See

The Firearms Statistics That Gun Control Advocates Don’t Want to See

By Jason Howerton | The Blaze – Mon, May 6, 2013



Nation's Lawmakers To Take Up Gun Control Legislation DebateCredit: Getty Images

To accompany TheBlaze's coverage of the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in Houston, we figured it could be helpful to share some gun statistics pointed out to us by some of the NRA Convention attendees. Forget the talking points used by both sides in the gun control debate; we're going to be talking about verified statistics.

Gun control advocates be advised, these are not the statistics you are looking for.

According to data from the FBI's uniform crime reports, California had the highest number of gun murders in 2011 with 1,220 -- which makes up 68 percent of all murders in the state that year and equates to 3.25 murders per 100,000 people.

The irony of such a grisly distinction is evident when you look at which state was named the state with the strongest gun control laws in 2011 by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

You guessed it -- it was California.

"What is very unusual is that California also has a program by which we can remove guns, recover guns from people who have a gun and then subsequently become prohibited or dangerous," Brady Campaign spokeswoman Amanda Wilcox said at the time.

It should be noted, though, that California is also one of the biggest states in the country, with a population of about about 37 million. Therefore, it might make sense that it would have a high number of murders but its murder rate is still high as gun control has had a seemingly inconsequential impact. In comparison, Texas has a population of about 25.6 million and saw 699 total gun murders in 2011 -- nearly half that of California -- and a firearms murder rate of 2.91 per 100,000.

In 2011, Utah, the state that the Brady Campaign determined had the least gun control, experienced just 26 gun murders and a firearms murder rate of 0.97. Utah has a population 2.8 million.




gun control scorecard(Brady Campaign)

But if you look at the data another way -- murders per 100,000 people -- another gun control haven tops the list.

The FBI data also notes that Washington, D.C. had the highest murder rate per 100,000 people. The nation's capital saw 12 gun murders per 100,000 in 2011. DC also finished first in gun-related robberies per 100,000 people - with 242.56.

In 1976, the District of Columbia required all guns be registered, banned new handguns and required guns at home to be stored and dissembled or locked up. Unfortunately, the draconian measures -- which lasted more than three decades -- didn't had the desired effect.

Journalist and attorney Jeffrey Scott Shapiro explains the not-so-surprising result in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 15, 2013:

The gun ban had an unintended effect: It emboldened criminals because they knew that law-abiding District residents were unarmed and powerless to defend themselves. Violent crime increased after the law was enacted, with homicides rising to 369 in 1988, from 188 in 1976 when the ban started. By 1993, annual homicides had reached 454.
[...]

Since the gun ban was struck down, murders in the District have steadily gone down, from 186 in 2008 to 88 in 2012, the lowest number since the law was enacted in 1976.

Though it should be noted that the gun murders started decreasing in 1994.

Today, Washington, D.C. still has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. And yet again, the gun murder rate remains dramatically high, the highest in the United States in fact.
So, do the numbers indicate that gun control is the answer to gun violence? You decide.

Featured image via Getty

http://news.yahoo.com/firearms-stati...194040384.html

NEW DATA PROVES GUN CONTROL RHETORIC IS WRONG, SAYS CCRKBA BELLEVUE, WA – Newly-released data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) proves that more guns in private hands do not lead to more murders, and a Pew Research study showing widespread ignorance of this fact suggests that the public has been misled, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today. “The BJS data covers 1993 to 2011 and suggests that for almost 20 years, the gun prohibition lobby has been consistently wrong about private gun ownership and its correlation to crime,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “The Pew report suggests that the public has been essentially hoodwinked into believing otherwise.” An Associated Press report about the Pew Research revelation suggested that “intense publicity generated by recent mass shootings” may help to skew the public perception about gun-related violent crime. “The release of these reports blows holes in the gun prohibition agenda,” Gottlieb stated. “If violent crime had gone upward, gun grabbers would exploit the fact as proof that more guns in private hands lead to more violent crime. “However,” he added, “if the gun rights community argued that the BJS data proves increased gun ownership leads to lower violent crime rates, the dominant liberal media would savage the notion. Of course, this is the same anti-gun press that has sensationalized crimes while remaining silent about the actual crime data. “The BJS data shows that gun-related homicides declined by 39 percent from 1993 to 2011, and the Pew Research Center found that gun-related homicides fell from 7 per 100,000 in 1993 to 3.6 per 100,000 in 2010, a decline of 49 percent,” Gottlieb said. “The declining percentages go in the same direction. Firearms-related homicides have plummeted dramatically while more Americans bought more guns, including millions of semi-automatic modern sporting rifles. More people are licensed to carry in more states, and crime is down. “It is time for the gun control crowd to acknowledge they have been consistently and undeniably wrong,” Gottlieb concluded, “and admit that their agenda has never been about crime, but about public disarmament. They don't want to prevent gun crime, they want to prevent gun ownership.” With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States. The Citizens Committee can be reached by phone at (425) 454-4911, on the Internet at www.ccrkba.org or by email to InformationRequest@ccrkba.org.

<Please e-mail, distribute, and circulate to friends and family> Copyright © 2013 Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, All Rights Reserved. Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms James Madison Building 12500 N.E. Tenth Place Bellevue, WA 98005 Voice: 425-454-4911 Toll Free: 800-426-4302 FAX: 425-451-3959 Email: InformationRequest@ccrkba.org To ensure your alerts are delivered to your inbox (and not inadvertently diverted to a bulk or junk email folder by spam filters), be sure to add cc_alerts@liberty.seanet.com to your email address book or contact list.