Highlights
According to the USDOJ, nine percent of violent crimes involve firearms. Non-fatal gun violence has dropped significantly. 400 million Americans own firearms. Support for a ban on handguns in the US has fallen to a near-record low. Podcasts of this article are available on Spotify or YouTube (links below).
Is it time to limit our discussions about banning handguns and move on to perpetrator accountability? Firearm offenders released from prison are far more likely to reoffend than all other offenders.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Former senior crime prevention and statistics specialist at the Ministry of Justice Clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former adjunct associate professor of criminology and public affairs at the University of Maryland, University College. Former police officer. Retired federal senior spokesperson.
Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the national media campaign “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime.” Successful media campaigns against crime produced by the state.
Thirty-five years leading award-winning (50+) public relations for state and national criminal justice agencies. Interviewed thousands of times by every national news outlet, often focusing on crime statistics and research. Created the first state and federal podcast series. Produced a unique and emulated style of proactive government public relations.
Certificate of Advanced Study – Johns Hopkins University.
Author of ”Media Success: Everything You Need to Survive Reporters and Your Organization‘ available from Amazon and other booksellers.
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Opinion
See video podcasts at Spotify or YouTube.
Gun control is not my favorite topic to write about. Millions of Americans fervently believe that gun control is in our best interests. Millions more don’t.
But the overwhelming number of violent crimes do not involve firearms, and when they do, it is 9 percent (the perpetrator possessed, displayed, or used a firearm – the vast majority were handguns). according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice. According to USDOJ research, most mass and school shootings involve handguns.
We have a new Gallup poll (below) showing that the vast majority of Americans do not support handgun control.
Many think the emphasis on gun control is hindering crime-fighting efforts. The idea is that people who use an inanimate object to commit a crime are the user’s responsibility. We don’t ban vehicles, but they are routinely used during crime. Britain has banned most gun ownership, yet it may still have a higher rate of violent crime than the US. Knife crime is common in Britain, but knives are not banned. Alcohol is often associated with violence, but sprits are legal.
There are now 400 million firearms in private hands in the United States. Collectively, the horse seems to have left the proverbial barn. Even if we banned gun ownership, it would take decades to have an impact. But the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and numerous existing court rulings would prohibit such an effort.
However, the use of weapons by criminals is still a major problem. The question is whether we should abandon the discussion about the ban on small arms and move on to other solutions.
Examples
Cleveland.Com: Statewide, more youth are incarcerated for gun possession in the post-COVID era than before.
Last year, prosecutors filed 844 gun charges in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court. In 2003 they only brought in 185. Locally, firearm charges against youth have increased, along with an increase in the number of youth charged with murder.
Last year, Cuyahoga County prosecutors charged 41 juveniles with murder, which is more than any year since 2010, according to data from the county prosecutor’s office.
As the pandemic subsided, firearm deaths have become the leading cause of death for young people in America.
COVID-19 not only took a toll on young people’s mental health, but it also came at a time when more Americans decided to purchase a firearm. including millions who had never owned guns, according to a 2021 article in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
A peer-reviewed study published in the journal Pediatrics found that between 2002 and 2019, more young people carried handguns overall. It also found that middle-class or wealthier white youth were increasingly likely to say they had carried a gun in the past year. According to the survey, Black youth in 2019 were less likely than in 2002 to say they had carried a gun in the past year.
Firearm-related deaths are more acute for black and Latino men than for deployed U.S. soldiers
A recent study found that the risk of death or injury from firearms is greater for young black and Latino men living in certain zip codes than for U.S. soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Black Americans are 12 times as likely as white Americans to die from gun homicide.
But overall, is there an explosion in gun violence?
No. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, by 2023 the percentage non-fatal gun violence rate was 2.0 victims per 1,000 persons aged 12 or older, a decrease of 72% from 7.3 per 1,000 in 1993. There are many more non-fatal shootings than homicides.
Per GallupSupport for a ban on handguns in the US has fallen to a near-record low
Americans continue to oppose a complete ban on gun ownership. In fact, the 20% of American adults who support a law banning the ownership of handguns except by police and other authorized individuals has fallen by seven percentage points. from last year and statistically linked to the record low of 19% in the 65-year trend.
Conclusions
Violent crime is up 44 percent in 2022, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Violent crime continued at a similar pace in 2023 (latest data), so the largest increase in violence in the country is actually continuing, according to the USDOJ’s National Crime Victimization Survey.
The number of crimes reported to law enforcement is down (especially homicides), but the vast majority of what we call crime goes unreported to law enforcement and the FBI.
According to Gallup, the fear of crime is at an all-time high. Movement from urban areas continues (but not at the pace seen during the pandemic).
As mentioned, there has been a massive increase in firearm ownership, along with a record increase in the number of security equipment purchased. Americans are clearly concerned about crime through their beliefs and actions. The question is how to address gun violence and the 9 percent of violent crimes involving firearms.
According to Gallup, the majority of Americans remain in favor of stricter gun laws and a ban on assault weapons in the US, but the public remains largely opposed to a ban on handguns. A stable 56% of American adults support stricter laws regarding firearm sales in general, while 33% prefer the laws to be kept as they are now and 10% want them to be less strict .
But if we ban assault weapons, can they easily be replaced by multi-magazine semi-automatic shotguns? The answer is yes.
Can red flag laws that involve a court order to remove firearms from a mentally ill or criminal person be effective? Possibly, but they are very labor intensive, while at the same time we have lost thousands of police officers. It would be a huge undertaking with far fewer police officers.
Some forms of gun control could benefit the 56% of American adults who support stricter laws. A waiting period or banning purchases or mandates for purchases of firearms under the age of 21 or increasing funding to improve the quality of background check data or banning ghost guns and parts or requiring background checks for all firearms purchases” can” have a positive impact. I say this while understanding that most criminals possess firearms illegally.
The fundamental question, however, is whether the enormous amount of time and effort spent on restricting firearm ownership could be counterproductive when we consider that only 9 percent of violent crimes involve firearms. More often than not, the courts seem to rule in favor of gun advocates. There are approximately 400 million firearms in private hands.
Yes, if my child were killed or injured by a gun-related crime, I might feel differently.
But we have a problem with violence in the United States, and in Britain’s experience, a ban on firearms does not necessarily mean less violence. Knife crime is a major problem in Britain.
Perhaps it is time to shift our focus to those who use firearms while committing violent crimes. Maybe it’s time to hold them accountable for their actions.
According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission firearm offenders released from prison are more likely to reoffend than all other offenders. More than two-thirds (69.0%) of firearm offenders were rearrested for a new crime during the eight-year follow-up period, compared with less than half of all other offenders (45.1%). Firearms offenders and all other offenders who reoffended were rearrested for similar crimes.
Violent offenders reoffend more often than non-violent offenders. Over an eight-year follow-up period, almost two-thirds (63.8%) of violent offenders released in 2010 were rearrested, compared to over a third (38.4%) of non-violent offenders.
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