Surprising findings from a comprehensive report on gun violence.

[BainsBane]

"President Obama ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess the existing research on gun violence and recommend future studies. That report, prepared by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, is now complete. Its findings won’t entirely please the Obama administration or the NRA, but all of us should consider them. Here’s a list of the 10 most salient or surprising takeaways.

1. The United States has an indisputable gun violence problem. According to the report, “the U.S. rate of firearm-related homicide is higher than that of any other industrialized country: 19.5 times higher than the rates in other high-income countries.”
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2. Most indices of crime and gun violence are getting better, not worse. “Overall crime rates have declined in the past decade, and violent crimes, including homicides specifically, have declined in the past 5 years,” the report notes. “Between 2005 and 2010, the percentage of firearm-related violent victimizations remained generally stable.” Meanwhile, “firearm-related death rates for youth ages 15 to 19 declined from 1994 to 2009.” Accidents are down, too: “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”
3. We have 300 million firearms, but only 100 million are handguns. According to the report, “In 2007, one estimate placed the total number of firearms in the country at 294 million: ‘106 million handguns, 105 million rifles, and 83 million shotguns.’ ” This translates to nearly nine guns for every 10 people, a per capita ownership rate nearly 50 percent higher than the next most armed country. But American gun ownership is concentrated, not universal: In a December 2012 Gallup poll, “43 percent of those surveyed reported having a gun in the home.”
4. Handguns are the problem. Despite being outnumbered by long guns, “Handguns are used in more than 87 percent of violent crimes,” the report notes. In 2011, “handguns comprised 72.5 percent of the firearms used in murder and non-negligent manslaughter incidents.” Why do criminals prefer handguns? One reason, according to surveys of felons, is that they’re “easily concealable.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2013/06/handguns_suicides_mass_shootings_deaths_and_self_defense_findings_from_a.html

[Scuba]

1. "Better" is, of course, a relative term.

[GreenStormCloud]

2. A very interesting study.

I have bookmarked the study itself. http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=18319&page=R1

Paragraph 7 from the article you referenced is interesting also:

7. Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,” says the report. The three million figure is probably high, “based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.” But a much lower estimate of 108,000 also seems fishy, “because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” Furthermore, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

[jimmy the one]

3. reflected glory due guncontrol states

report: Accidents are down, too: “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

Thanks in larger part to guncontrol states with safe storage laws (&/or less guns per capita), which tend to have much lower accidental firearm death & injury rates than states with no such laws, or weak such laws, or higher gunownership rates.

GStormCloud: “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

This is apparently true, on a small percent basis, something like 12% of crime victims who pull a gun in defense are injured, while ~15% of more compliant crime victims are injured when they do not pull a gun. However, when injury IS sustained during the crime, those who pulled a gun in self defense are injured far more seriously & costly, than the more compliant victims -- think bruised shoulder vs bullet in kneecap.
As well, gunowner crime victims who pull out a gun to defend themselves, are far more prone to having their gun stolen during that very crime, than those who do not have guns on them.

[Robb]

4. Or, to be clear, "as often and effectively as criminals use them."

That should give SD carriers pause.

[jimmy the one]

5. over inflated dgus

Kleck’s self-reported dgu study {~5,000 calls nationwide, with 56 TOTAL defensive gun uses, ~12 gunfirings in the whole study} finding 2.5 million defensive uses of guns per year wildly exaggerated. Kleck says guns were used to defend against 845,000 burglaries in 1992, a year in which the National Crime Victimization Survey {NCVS} says there were fewer than 6 million burglaries. NCVS- someone was known to be home in just 22% of burglaries (1.3 million), and that fewer than half of US households have firearms - pointed out that Kleck “asks us to believe that burglary victims in gun-owning households use their guns in self-defense more than 100% of the time.”

Can't stop laughing! gun studies in their nutshells!

respondents may also have a distorted view of “self-defense”—e.g., mistakenly thinking they are legally defending themselves when they draw a gun during a minor altercation.
“Guns are used to threaten and intimidate far more often than they are used in self-defense. Most self-reported self-defense gun uses may well be illegal and against the interests of society.”

NCVS report, controlling for many of the methodological problems in Kleck, finding 65,000 defensive gun uses per year (NCVS Report, 1997). Current NCVS estimates are in the 100,000 range.

..pro-gun crowd sure wants you to think so, promoting studies over the years claiming guns are used defensively thousands of times per day and that broader gun ownership makes communities safer, and repeating anecdotes in which guns are reported to have thwarted crimes ... National Research Council of the National Academies of Science found that Lott’s claims were not supported by his data. And when Lott misrepresented the report (NY Post, 12/04), NAS listing his distortions. Shooting Down the More Guns Less Crime Hypothesis (11/02), a paper by Nat Bur Economic Research, found crime actually increased in states and locales where concealed carry laws had been adopted. http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-self-defense-self-delusion/

[GreenStormCloud]

6. The study cited was requested by Obama.

If you don't like it, take it up with his administration.

Kleck hasn't been mentioned, except by you.

[billh58]

7. +100

Thanks for the truth...