As President Obama prepares to lecture the American public about guns yet again, the statistics say that “gun violence” is on the decline and has been for some time — even as private firearm ownership has soared:
Premeditated mass shootings in public places are happening more often, some researchers say, plunging towns and cities into grief and riveting the attention of a horrified nation. In general, though, fewer Americans are dying as a result of gun violence — a shift that began about two decades ago.
In 1993, there were seven homicides by firearm for every 100,000 Americans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By 2013, that figure had fallen by nearly half, to 3.6 — a total of 11,208 firearm homicides. The number of victims of crimes involving guns that did not result in death (such as robberies) declined even more precipitously, from 725 per 100,000 people in 1993 to 175 in 2013.
Older data suggests that gun violence might have been even more widespread previously. The rate of murder and manslaughter excluding negligence reached an apex in 1980, according to the FBI. That year, there were 10.8 willful killings per 100,000 people. Although not a perfect measure of the overall rate of gun violence, the decline in the rate of murder and manslaughter is suggestive: Two in three homicides these days are committed with guns.
This decline in gun violence is part of an overall decline in violent crime. According to the FBI’s data, the national rate of violent crime has decreased 49 percent since its apex in 1991. Even as a certain type of mass shooting is apparently becoming more frequent, America has become a much less violent place.
As has been noted repeatedly, throw out the “gun violence” of the largely Democrat big cities , such as Rahm Emanuel’s violent and corrupt Chicago, and you have a nearly non-existent problem. What’s likely to be on the rise are Islamic attacks on the homeland by Muslim terrorists (it doesn’t matter whether they are “home grown” or imported). So, naturally, the Left wants to disarm law-abiding Americans.
Tells you whose side these people are on, doesn’t it?
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