Looks like we're back to talking about Gun Violence which the Idiot Lib/STATISTS want the Government to Confiscate so we law-abiding citizens won't be able to defend ourselves and our family ...

Bunch of FACTS from when I won this argument with FACTS, FIGURES, and STATISTICS a while ago is located here -

[www.rawfoodsupport.com]

But also this is a good read that tells THE TRUTH/FACTS about Gun Violence -

Here Are 8 Stubborn Facts on Gun Violence in America

[www.heritage.org]

In the wake of the tragic murder of 17 innocent students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students, educators, politicians, and activists are searching for solutions to prevent future school shootings.

As emotions morph from grief to anger to resolve, it is vitally important to supply facts so that policymakers and professionals can fashion solutions based on objective data rather than well-intended but misguided emotional fixes.

Are there ways to reduce gun violence and school shootings? Yes, but only after objectively assessing the facts and working collaboratively to fashion commonsense solutions.

Here are eight stubborn facts to keep in mind about gun violence in America:

Violent crime is down and has been on the decline for decades.

The principal public safety concerns with respect to guns are suicides and illegally owned handguns, not mass shootings.

A small number of factors significantly increase the likelihood that a person will be a victim of a gun-related homicide.

Gun-related murders are carried out by a predictable pool of people. (Duh! Criminals)

Higher rates of gun ownership are not associated with higher rates of violent crime.

There is no clear relationship between strict gun control legislation and homicide or violent crime rates.

Legally owned firearms are used for lawful purposes much more often than they are used to commit crimes or suicide.

Concealed carry permit holders are not the problem, but they may be part of the solution.

Each of these facts is firmly based on empirical data. Here’s a deeper look.

1. America is relatively safe, and the trend is toward becoming safer.

According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, violent crime has been declining steadily since the early 1990s.

The 2011 homicide rate was almost half of the rate in 1991, and according to Pew Research, the 2013 gun-related death rate was half of the rate in 1993.

The number of non-fatal firearm crimes committed in 2011 was one-sixth the number committed in 1993.

In the past few years, there have been minor increases in certain types of violent crimes, mainly in large metropolitan areas. However, these increases are nowhere near those seen in the 1990s and are largely related to gang activity.

It should be remembered that it takes at least three to five years of data to show true trend lines. It appears that the collective homicide toll for America’s 50 largest cities decreased modestly in 2017 after two consecutive years of increases.

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Duh! Gangs are committing most of the crimes!

Gangs Blamed for 80 Percent of U.S. Crimes

Justice Dept. assessment: 1 million gang members active in all 50 states.

[abcnews.go.com]

As many as 1 million gang members are believed responsible for as much as 80 percent of crime in America -- and the gangs are spreading across the country, according to a Justice Department gang threat assessment.

"Criminal gangs commit as much as 80 percent of the crime in many communities, according to law enforcement officials throughout the nation," the report notes as part of its key findings. "Typical gang-related crimes include alien smuggling, armed robbery, assault, auto theft, drug trafficking, extortion, fraud, home invasions, identity theft, murder and weapons trafficking."

A copy of the threat assessment, prepared by the Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center and the National Drug Intelligence Center, was obtained by ABC News from U.S. law enforcement officials on Friday.

Historically, gangs have been a bigger problem for cities, but that may be changing.

"Gang migration from urban communities to suburban and rural locations, which began more than two decades ago, is a significant and growing problem in most areas of the country," the report says. "Gangs are now fully entrenched in many communities across the nation."

In a speech before the International Association of Chief of Police in November 2008, FBI Director Robert Mueller described the problem gangs pose in Chicago.

"We are working closely with law enforcement in Chicago to combat gang violence," he said. "Chicago law enforcement estimates there are at least 60,000 gang members in the community -- far outnumbering police officers. There are hundreds of homicides each year, the majority of which are gang-related."

"The FBI has, in the past, investigated gangs as criminal enterprises," Mueller said. "Our traditional approach has been to target their leadership and dismantle them from the top down. But the increase in gang violence called for a non-traditional approach. It is not enough to just gather intelligence about the violent offenders. We have to interrupt that violence."

The report notes that smaller local gangs and crews are involved in the drug trade.

"Local street gangs, or neighborhood-based street gangs, remain a significant threat because they continue to account for the largest number of gangs nationwide," the report says. "Most engage in violence in conjunction with a variety of crimes, including retail-level drug distribution."

The report notes that prison gangs are becoming more involved with drug trafficking organizations, too.

"Prison gangs exert considerable control over mid-level and retail-level drug distribution in the Southwest region and in Southern California," the report says.

The FBI houses the National Gang Intelligence Center, which helped prepare the report, and which was established by the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the U.S. Marshals. Last October, elements from the Department of Homeland Security joined the center for the first time.

If some people want to kill themselves, that's on them, not we law-abiding gun owners.

To Continue -

2. The principal public safety concerns are suicides and illegally owned handguns.

According to the Pew Research Center, almost two-thirds of America’s annual gun deaths are suicides. Since 1981, when the Centers for Disease Control began publishing data, gun suicides have outnumbered gun homicides. In 2010 alone, 19,392 Americans used guns to kill themselves.

Most gun-related crimes are carried out with illegally owned firearms—as much as 80 percent according to some estimates.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports prove that the overwhelming majority of gun-related homicides are perpetrated with handguns, with rifles of any kind accounting for less than 3 percent of gun-related homicides. In 2013, 5,782 murders were committed by killers who used a handgun, compared to 285 committed by killers who used a rifle. The same holds true for 2012 (6,404 to 298); 2011 (6,251 to 332); 2010 (6,115 to 367); and 2009 (6,501 to 351).

More people are stabbed to death every year than are murdered with rifles.

A person is more likely to be bludgeoned to death with a blunt object or beaten to death with hands and feet than to be murdered with a rifle.


From the Washington Post - (Admitting Violent Gun Crime is carried out by Criminals with ILLEGAL GUNS)

New evidence confirms what gun rights advocates have said for a long time about crime

(Of course, everyone already knew and knows this, but this Inconvenient Fact Doesn't Fit The Lib Narrative.)

[outline.com]

Lawful gun owners commit less than a fifth of all gun crimes, according to a novel analysis released this week by the University of Pittsburgh.

In the study, led by epidemiologist Anthony Fabio of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, researchers partnered with the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police to trace the origins of all 893 firearms that police recovered from crime scenes in the year 2008.

They found that in approximately 8 out of 10 cases, the perpetrator was not a lawful gun owner but rather in illegal possession of a weapon that belonged to someone else. The researchers were primarily interested in how these guns made their way from a legal purchase — at a firearm dealer or via a private sale — to the scene of the crime.

"All guns start out as legal guns," Fabio said in an interview. But a "huge number of them" move into illegal hands. "As a public-health person, I'd like to be able to figure out that path," he added.

More than 30 percent of the guns that ended up at crime scenes had been stolen, according to Fabio's research. But more than 40 percent of those stolen guns weren't reported by the owners as stolen until after police contacted them when the gun was used in a crime.

One of the more concerning findings in the study was that for the majority of guns recovered (62 percent), "the place where the owner lost possession of the firearm was unknown."

"We have a lot of people with a lot of guns," Fabio said, referencing statistics on the large number of guns in circulation. "And some of them aren't keeping track of them for different reasons — maybe because they have a lot of them and they don't use them that often."

A number of factors could lead to legal firearms entering the black market. Owners could misplace them, or they could be stolen — either through carelessness on the owner's part (leaving a gun in an unlocked car, for instance) or determination on the part of thieves.

It's also likely that many guns on the black market got there via straw purchases — where a person purchases a gun from a dealer without disclosing that they're buying it for someone else. This is illegal under federal law. One potential sign that straw purchasing is a factor in the Pittsburgh data: Forty-four percent of the gun owners who were identified in 2008 did not respond to police attempts to contact them.

The top-line finding of the study — that the overwhelming majority of gun crimes aren't committed by lawful gun owners — reinforces a common refrain among gun rights advocacy groups. They argue that since criminals don't follow laws, new regulations on gun ownership would only serve to burden lawful owners while doing little to combat crime.

But Fabio's research suggests that this strict dichotomy between "good guys" and "bad guys" isn't necessarily helpful for figuring out how to keep "good" guns — those purchased legally — from getting into "bad" hands. And there may be modest, non-burdensome ways to help keep guns in the hands of the good guys.

For instance, 10 states plus the District of Columbia have laws in place requiring gun owners to report the theft or loss of firearms to law enforcement, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a group that advocates for stronger firearm regulations. But in the majority of states, no such law is in place.

Additionally, past research has demonstrated that a small fraction of gun dealers are responsible for the majority of guns used in crimes in the United States. A 2000 report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that in 1998, more than 85 percent of gun dealers had no guns used in crimes trace back to them. By contrast, 1 percent of dealers accounted for nearly 6 in 10 crime gun traces that year.

The firearms bureau knows exactly who these gun dealers are — but they're not allowed to share that information with policymakers or researchers due to a law passed by Congress in 2003. As a result, solutions for stanching the flow of guns from these dealers to crime scenes remain frustratingly out of reach for public-health researchers.

"There's not much federal funding out there to do research on firearm and firearm safety," Fabio said. As a result, "there's not a lot of good research out there. The process of getting it done has been hindered by a lot of limits on academics and how they can do firearms research."

To Continue:

3. A small number of factors significantly increase the likelihood that a person will be a victim of a gun-related homicide.

Where do you live? Murders in the United States are very concentrated. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, over 50 percent of murders occur in 2 percent of the nation’s 3,142 counties. Moreover, gun-related homicides are heavily concentrated in certain neighborhoods within those counties: 54 percent of U.S. counties had zero murders in 2014.

Who is your partner? According to a recent scholarly article in the Hastings Law Journal, people recently or currently involved in an abusive intimate relationship are much more likely to be victims of gun-related homicide than is the rest of the population, especially if the abuser possesses firearms.

Are you in a gang? According to the Department of Justice’s National Gang Center, particularly in urban areas, significant percentages of gun-related homicides (15 percent to 33 percent) are linked with gang and drug activity. Gang-related homicides are more likely to involve firearms than non-gang-related homicides are.

Are you a male between 15 and 34? The majority of standard gun murder victims are men between the ages of 15 and 34. Although black men make up roughly 7 percent of the population, they account for almost two-thirds of gun murder victims every year.

Women and children are more likely to be the victims of mass shootings and homicide-suicide shootings than they are to be the victims of a “typical” gun-related homicide.

If you read no other information about Gun Violence in America, Read This Article -

Almost all murders are localized to a few locales and ARE COMMITTED BY CRIMINALS/GANGS with ILLEGAL GUNS

But that's an INCONVENIENT FACT that doesn't fit the Lib Narrative about Gun Violence in America and their Agenda of Confiscating the Law-Abiding Legal Gun-owner Citizens' Guns so we cannot protect/defend ourselves and our families
against the very Gangs/Criminals who commit most of the gun crimes with their ILLEGAL GUNS ...

Murders in US very concentrated: 54% of US counties in 2014 had zero murders, 2% of counties have 51% of the murders

[crimeresearch.org]



The Distribution of murders

The United States can really be divided up into three types of places. Places where there are no murders, places where there are a few murders, and places where murders are very common.

In 2014, the most recent year that a county-level breakdown is available, 54% of counties (with 11% of the population) have no murders. 69% of counties have no more than one murder, and about 20% of the population. These counties account for only 4% of all murders in the country.

The worst 1% of counties have 19% of the population and 37% of the murders. The worst 2% of counties contain 28% of the population and 51% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 68% of murders. But even within those counties the murders are very heavily concentrated in small areas.

Murders actually used to be even more concentrated. From 1977 to 2000, on average 73 percent of counties in any given year had zero murders. Possibly, this change is a result of the opioid epidemic’s spread to more rural areas. But that question is beyond the scope of this study. Lott’s book “More Guns, Less Crime” showed how dramatically counties within states vary dramatically with respect to murder and other violent crime rates.



Breaking down the most dangerous counties in Figure 2 shows over half the murders occur in just 2% of the counties, 37% in just the worst 1% of the counties.



Figure 1 illustrates how few counties have a significant number of murders. Figure 3 further illustrates that with a cumulative perspective. 54% of counties have zero murders, 69% have at most one murder, 76% have at most two murders, and so on. To put it differently, only the top four percent of the counties have 16 or more murders.

In 2014, the murder rate was 4.4 per 100,000 people. If the 1% of the counties with the worst number of murders somehow were to become a separate country, the murder rate in the rest of the US would have been only 3.4 in 2014. Removing the worst 2% or 5% would have reduced the US rate to just 3.06 or 2.56 per 100,000, respectively.

Even within the Counties with the murders, the murders are heavily Concentrated within those counties

When you look at individual counties with a high number of murders, you find large areas with few murders. Take Los Angeles County, with 526 murders in 2014, the most of any county in the US. The county has virtually no murders in the northwestern part of the county. There was only one murder each in Beverly Hills, Hawthorne, and Van Nuys. Clearly, different parts of the county face very different risks of murder.

The map below shows the distribution of murders in Indianapolis, with 135 murders. Although the city extends well beyond the 465 Highway that encircles downtown Indianapolis, there are only four murders outside of that loop. The northern half of the city within 465 also has relatively few murders.

Washington, DC has large areas without murders. 14th Street NW divides the eastern and western parts of the district, with murders overwhelmingly limited to the eastern half. The area around the capitol is also extremely safe.

Here are Chicago’s murders through the first 4.5 months of 2017 (there were 222 homicides by that point). One small neighborhood, Austin, accounts over 25 murders. But 23 of the 77 neighborhoods in the city have zero murders, and most of the 40 neighborhoods in orange have only one murder. Twelve of the neighborhoods have 10 or more murders.

In a study in the journal Criminology, David L. Weisburd has a paper titled “The law of crime concentration and the criminology of place” that shows for eight cities 25% of violent crime occurred on one percent of the streets and that about half occurred on five percent of the streets.

Gun Ownership

According to a 2013 PEW Research Center survey, the household gun ownership rate in rural areas was 2.11 times greater than in urban areas (“Why Own a Gun? Protection is Now Top Reason,” PEW Research Center, March 12, 2013). Suburban households are 28.6% more likely to own guns than urban households. Despite lower gun ownership, urban areas experience much higher murder rates. One should not put much weight on this purely “cross-sectional” evidence over one point in time and many factors determine murder rates, but it is still interesting to note that so much of the country has both very high gun ownership rates and zero murders.

Conclusion

This study shows how murders in the United States are heavily concentrated in very small areas. Few appreciate how much of the US has no murders each year. Murder isn’t a nationwide problem. It’s a problem in a very small set of urban areas, and any solution must reduce those murders.

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So to recap - Almost all Gun Violence in America takes place in certain localized URBAN areas - Inner Cities - and is committed by GANGS/CRIMINALS, using ILLEGAL GUNS.

All the rest is just Liberal Claptrap.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2019 08:18PM by Jennifer.