There’s a downside with the time period “gun violence.” Not simply the time period itself, however the entire concept that firearm-related accidents and deaths are qualitatively completely different or particular. Violence is violence whatever the weapon or technique used.
Gun violence is a useful bogeyman for gun management and different teams advancing related agenda. By lumping homicides, suicides, and accidents collectively, gun grabbers of each stripe can use this family-sized illusion to alarm the general public. Even higher, it may be used to make quite a lot of claims because the overwhelming share of Individuals received’t verify the underlying numbers.
Gun management addicts use this to confidently declare there’s an “epidemic” of gun violence. In June 2024, Vivek Murthy, Joe Biden’s surgeon basic, declared “firearm” violence was a public well being disaster. Murthy went on to suggest the adoption of the gun-grabbers’ want record although none of these measures have been proven to be efficient primarily based on outcomes reported by the U.S. authorities.
When most individuals hear the phrase “violence” they affiliate it with one particular person intentionally utilizing power to hurt one other particular person, i.e. assault or homicide. It’s additionally the kind of violence most alarming to the general public. Supporters of 2A restrictions focus their rhetoric and “treatments” on exploiting this worry.
However there’s a downside with this: Removed from being a looming menace, the U.S. murder price has been declining.
FBI statistics for the 65 years from 1960 to 2024 show this. The last decade from 2010 to 2019 had a decrease common homicide price than any comparable interval going again to the final 12 months of Eisenhower’s time period. In truth, the 2010-2019 common was 12% decrease than within the earlier decade.
COVID-19 and widespread civil unrest in 2020 produced a pointy spike within the price that peaked in 2021. Nonetheless, the speed fell in 2022 and has continued to fall. The FBI’s estimated murder price for 2024 was 5.00 per 100,000, the identical as the speed in 2019. As well as, the 2024 price was 51% decrease than the height price of 10.29 per 100,000 reported in 1980.
42^ There’s a actual public well being disaster: Suicide. Earlier than the purple flag brigade will get too excited, this isn’t the bonanza you’ve dreamed about. The disaster is the 33% leap within the whole U.S. suicide price over the 20-year interval from 2004 to 2023. Over that interval, weapons have been utilized in about 52% of suicides. Put one other method, throughout these years, a median of 21,484 folks ended ther lives with a firearm annually; 20,191 used another technique. Twenty thousand folks is lots to disregard however that’s what the gun-grabbers do yearly. They don’t even supply ideas and prayers.
Over the twenty years from 2004 to 2023, homicides and suicides accounted for 61% of firearm-related deaths and 37% of violent deaths. However that’s about the place their propaganda worth ends.
Murder and suicide are essentially completely different acts. Even their major influence is on completely different demographics: Males ages 15 to 34 have murder victimization charges roughly twice these of the overall inhabitants. Nonetheless, specializing in firearm homicides, the speed for non-Hispanic White males is 20.42 per 100,000; the speed for non-Hispanic, city Black males is 94.58 per 100,000, 4.6 occasions the White price.
As talked about earlier, suicides rose 33% within the 20 12 months from 2004 to 2023. Firearm suicides outpaced that development, rising 42%. Even the group of states with purple flag legal guidelines had the next share of suicides carried out with firearms.
The important thing demographic in suicide is aged White males, particularly these aged 70-plus. They make up lower than 5% of the inhabitants however the variety of firearm suicides on this group is the same as about 10% of the whole variety of U.S. suicides in 2023, whatever the technique or mechanism used.
In murder, one has to contemplate social pressures and different socioeconomic components; firearm regulation; casual channels for weapon distribution and acquisition; bias in prosecution and the courts — and that’s the brief record.
Suicides are all the time a matter of why; the how is usually irrelevant. In 2023, the CDC listed 14 strategies Individuals used to finish their lives. If the query of why isn’t addressed, there’s an abundance of selections to anwer the query of how.
These are every massive issues however they don’t have a typical resolution. There is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” resolution, even when Gabby Giffords’ “Weapons gone” fantasy got here true.
The gun management zombies and Democrats wave their blow-up bogeymen and shed oceans of crocodile tears whereas shrieking “Gun Violence” and pushing the identical previous dog-eared, moth-eaten, simple-minded gun management legal guidelines they’ve been pushing for many years.
“Gun violence” isn’t about public security or saving lives. If it was, they’d be pushing a really completely different agenda and maybe then their outcomes wouldn’t be fairly so abysmal.
As it’s, we want to withstand not solely extra vigorously, however extra successfully. George Patton famously stated: “No person ever efficiently defended something, there’s solely assault and assault and assault some extra.”
[Note: All statistics sourced from publicly-available information released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of investigation.]
About Invoice Cawthon
Invoice Cawthon first grew to become a gun proprietor 55 years in the past. He has been an energetic advocate for Individuals’ civil liberties for greater than a decade. He’s the knowledge director for the Second Modification Society of Texas.
