A Different Take on the Gun Violence Numbers

[nater99]

I'll apologize upfront if anyone has already done this at some point in time. I'm really sick and tired of the anti's throwing around the number of people hurt and killed by guns every year and the amount of violent crimes committed with a gun so I decided to look at the numbers a different way. I ended up comparing the number of guns, gun owners and types of guns owned to the violence numbers and here's what I came up with. I apologize for rambling and please let me know if this doesn't make any sense or I messed it up somewhere.

Guns and Gun Violence
Lets start with the total number of guns in the US. Most estimates put the total number of guns in the US at over 300,000,000. I'll use that number since it's nice and round. in 2010 according to the CDC there were roughly 30,000 gun deaths in the US. That works out to .01% of all guns owned in the US being involved in a gun death. If you combine the CDC's gun injury and death stats from that same year the total is just over 100,000. That works out to .03% of all guns in the US being involved in an injury or death. I had trouble finding a good number for crimes committed with a gun in US, I've seen anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000. I'll go with 450,000 since it's one I've seen and it will still make the case. Based on the numbers, .15% of guns are involved in a violent crime in any given year. If we look at the guns compared to the number of deaths and injuries from mass shootings for 2012 (roughly 150 according to Mother Jones, I know the site is crap, someone tried to argue with me over it and it have a convenient chart.) It works out to .00005% of guns being used in this type of incident in 2012.

Comparing Gun Owners and Gun Violence
Lets move on to gun owners. the NRA estimated there were 70-80 million legal gun owners in 2010. I'll use 70 to be on the fair side. Also keep in mind that this would assume that all deaths and crimes be attributed to legal gun owners, which obviously isn't the case but works for the sake of discussion. If we use the 30,000 gun deaths figure, that works out to roughly .043% of gun owners being involved in a gun death. Based on the figure of 100,000 gun injuries and deaths, .14% are involved in a gun injury or death. Using figure of 450,000 crimes committed with a crime, .64% are involved. Finally using the 150 injuries and deaths in mass shootings figure, .00021% are involved. Again, we're assuming only legal gun owners are involved so the actual percentages will be lower.

Special categories of Guns
Finally, lets look at two subcategories of guns. Handguns and "assault weapons." In 2010 the NRA estimated there were 100 million handguns in the US. The only estimate I could find for Assault weapons was 4 million. That seems low, but I'll go with it. Here again I'll assume that the deaths, injuries, and crimes are related exclusively to each category of weapon so the numbers are certainly lower and in the case of assault weapons likely drastically lower. Comparing gun related deaths comes up with .03% for handguns and .75% for assault weapons. For deaths and injuries the numbers would be .1% for handguns and 2.5% for assault weapons. For gun related crimes it jumps to .45% for handguns and 11.25% for assault weapons. Looking at the mass shooting death and injure it is .00015% for handguns and .00375% for assault weapons. So even if all the crimes committed with a gun were committed with legally owned assault weapons, only 11% of those weapons would be involved in a crime. That's also assuming that each weapon would only be involved in a single crime, which we also know isn't true when talking about guns and crime.

I don't know if this is helpful or more confusing, but one thing is for sure. The percentage of guns, and gun owners who are actually involved in gun violence and or accidents is ridiculously low. Anyway, I welcome any constructive criticism or corrections.

[wallyone]

Good research, the problem is the news just throws out the 30,000 gun deaths and that is all most people hear.

[PowerPM]

And you get stubborn idiots that say 1 death is too many.

[nater99]

And you get stubborn idiots that say 1 death is too many.

Ideally, 1 would be too many, but we don't live in an ideal world. I just think it's fair to look at the numbers from more than 1 perspective to get a really clear picture of what's going on.

[PowerPM]

Ideally, 1 would be too many, but we don't live in an ideal world. I just think it's fair to look at the numbers from more than 1 perspective to get a really clear picture of what's going on.

Agreed......