The following facts & statistics will help you better understand the way guns are used in crime.
- America’s gun murder rate is around 20-times the average rate of other developed nations. (Pels, 2016)
- 90% of all weapons police recover from gun crimes in New York City, a state with strict gun laws, come from out of state, according to Elizabeth Avore, legal director for Everytown for Gun Safety. (Welch, 2016)
- Another investigation found 5% of stores sell 90% of the guns used in gun crimes. (CNN News, 11-12-2015)
- Wherever guns are plentiful, men commit more than 90% of killings, overwhelmingly choosing a gun as their weapon of choice. (Welch, 2016)
- More than 8,700 women were shot to death by their partners between 2000 and 2013. (Welch, 2016) Actual cases are much higher, since these are only the cases in which a killer has been identified and recorded as such in a database.
- In 2010, the FBI reported that tens of thousands of felons had tried to buy a gun and failed the background check. Only 44 of these individuals were prosecuted. (Fiorina, 2016)
It’s important to remember that these statistics, as alarming as they might be, don’t truly capture the full extent of gun crime. They don’t take into account all the times a gun was used to threaten someone, or all the shootings in which the shooter missed their target, which happens quite often. As Michael Scherer writes, “On the same day that [vice president Joe] Biden met with the gun industry [in 2013], a 16-year-old walked into his high school in southern California and fired two rounds from a shotgun, allegedly trying to kill two students he believed were bullying him. He hit one of his targets and missed the second, killing no one, so the crime will not be counted in the statistics.” (Scherer, 2013)
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