U.S. gun crime plunges, though most Americans think it has risen

U.S. gun crime plunges, though most Americans think it has risen

By Ian Simpson, Reuters
Posted: 05/07/2013 04:14:13 PM PDT

WASHINGTON — Gun-related homicides and other crimes involving guns have fallen sharply over the last two decades in the United States, but most Americans believe firearms crime is higher now than 20 years ago, according to an analysis and a separate poll released on Tuesday.

Some 11,101 gun-related homicides were reported in the United States in 2011, a figure that is down 39 percent from the 1993 peak, the Justice Department reported. Nonfatal firearm crimes declined by 69 percent to 467,300 in the same period.

Amid an intense national debate about gun control - which flared anew in the wake of a December shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 26 people dead - some 56 percent of Americans believe that gun crime is higher now than it was 20 years ago, the Pew Research Center said its poll showed.

Only 12 percent of Americans realize that gun crimes have fallen, the center said in a statement. The Pew survey was based on a March 14-17 survey of 924 adults and had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.

The drop in gun crime mirrors a general fall in U.S. violent crime. The Justice Department study found that for fatal and nonfatal firearm crimes, most of the decline occurred from 1993 to 2002.

In 2011, about 70 percent of homicides and 8 percent of nonfatal violent crimes, such as rape,

sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault, were committed with a firearm, mainly a handgun.
From 2007 to 2011, about 1 percent of victims in nonfatal violent crimes reported using a firearm to defend themselves.

The Justice Department findings were based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and the Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System.



Read more: http://www.sbsun.com/breakingnews/ci_23192825/u-s-gun-crime-plunges-though-most-americans#ixzz2Sfv5rYYi

Yup. Pretty much common sense. As the media keeps giving stories of the same subject the more America is frightened. "You are what you eat".

U.S. gun crime plunges, though most Americans think it has risen

We can thank the corporate mainstream media and its deceptive reporting for producing such widespread ignorance.

There's many examples of MSM disingenuity -- the constant national coverage of Chicago gun violence and the sensationalism that accompanies it, for example.

The fact that the mainstream media fails to report that Chicago's murder rate and gun crime levels have actually plunged dramatically to nearly 50% of what it was during the peak in the early 90's, is both misleading and grossly negligent, and serves to demonstrate why every inquisitive person should be doing their own independent research on such matters.

Karl Morks wrote:Yup. Pretty much common sense. As the media keeps giving stories of the same subject the more America is frightened. "You are what you eat".

Americans are conditioned to accept everything MSM reports as absolute truth and to not question anything. They've also been conditioned to label the critical thinking individuals as "conspiracy theorist".

This is precisely why socially this country has become what it is today, because of willful ignorance and general apathy towards everything.

Here's a report on gun-crime levels in the past 20 years, and a few statistics. Between 1993 and 2011, nonfatal gun crimes plummeted 69%; from 1.5 million to 467,300. Gun-related murders dropped 40%; from 18,253 to 11,101. Gun-related murders for "black" Americans plummeted by 51%.

The report also shows that the media-created hysteria over school shootings is wildly misleading. Between '93 and '11, the murder rate in schools dropped by almost a third; from 29 to 20.

Must be a hard pill to swallow for all the gun grabbers and anti-second amendment people out there. Nothing like some cold hard facts to show that more guns means less non fatal shootings and deaths. And to think all of this downward trend started after the assault weapons ban expired.


MEDIA'S ANTI-GUN NARRATIVE DESTROYED BY JUSTICE DEPT. REPORT

These are the first statistics I like to pull out when debate this.