\r\n \r\n Gun Violence
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\nHow Prevalent is Gun Violence in America?
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\nSource: https://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gun-...ce/welcome.htm
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\nSource: Bureau of Justice Statistics
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\nIn 2005, 11,346 persons were killed by firearm violence and 477,040 persons were victims of a crime committed with a firearm. Most murders in the United States are committed with firearms, especially handguns.
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\nIn 2006, firearms were used in 68 percent of murders, 42 percent of robbery offenses and 22 percent of aggravated assaults nationwide. (Weapons data are not collected for forcible rapes. See table 19 "Violent Crime," from Crime in the United States, 2006.)
\nHomicides committed with firearms peaked in 1993 at 17,075, after which the figure steadily fell, leveling off in 1999 at 10,117. Gun-related homicides have increased slightly each year since 2002.
\nFind data on homicides by weapon type from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
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\nGun-Related Homicide and Gangs
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\nSource: Bureau of Justice Statistics
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\nGun-related homicide is most prevalent among gangs and during the commission of felony crimes. In 1976, the percentage of homicides caused by firearms during arguments was about the same as from gang involvement (about 70 percent), but by 1993, nearly all gang-related homicides involved guns (97 percent), whereas the percentage of gun homicides related to arguments remained relatively constant. The percentage of gang-related homicides caused by guns fell slightly to 94 percent in 2004, but the percentage of homicides caused by firearms during the commission of a felony rose from about 60 percent to 77 percent from 1976 to 2005.
\nSee Youths, Gangs and Guns.
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\nNonfatal Firearm-Related Crime
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\nSource: Bureau of Justice Statistics
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\nNonfatal firearm-related crime has fallen significantly in recent years, from almost 1.3 million victims in 1994 to 477,040 victims in 2005.
\nAs a percentage of all violent incidents, nonfatal gun crime has fallen below 10 percent, from 11 percent in 1994 to 9 percent in 2005. These crimes include rape, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault.
\nSee Nonfatal firearm-related violent victimization rate.
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\nGo to Who Has Illegal Guns and How Are They Acquired?
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\nMeanwhile gun control in UK and Australia does not provide safety:
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\nhttps://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...pinion_LEADTop
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\nJoyce Lee Malcolm: Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control
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\nAfter a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled.
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\nBy JOYCE LEE MALCOLM
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\nAmericans are determined that massacres such as happened in Newtown, Conn., never happen again. But how? Many advocate more effective treatment of mentally-ill people or armed protection in so-called gun-free zones. Many others demand stricter control of firearms.
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\nWe aren\'t alone in facing this problem. Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.
\nIn 1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmed�as were the police�Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.
\nNine years later, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a man known to be mentally unstable, walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot 16 young children and their teacher. He wounded 10 other children and three other teachers before taking his own life.
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\nDavid Klein
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\nSince 1920, anyone in Britain wanting a handgun had to obtain a certificate from his local police stating he was fit to own a weapon and had good reason to have one. Over the years, the definition of "good reason" gradually narrowed. By 1969, self-defense was never a good reason for a permit.
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\nAfter Hungerford, the British government banned semiautomatic rifles and brought shotguns�the last type of firearm that could be purchased with a simple show of fitness�under controls similar to those in place for pistols and rifles. Magazines were limited to two shells with a third in the chamber.
\nDunblane had a more dramatic impact. Hamilton had a firearm certificate, although according to the rules he should not have been granted one. A media frenzy coupled with an emotional campaign by parents of Dunblane resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.
\nThe results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.
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\nMeanwhile, law-abiding citizens who have come into the possession of a firearm, even accidentally, have been harshly treated. In 2009 a former soldier, Paul Clarke, found a bag in his garden containing a shotgun. He brought it to the police station and was immediately handcuffed and charged with possession of the gun. At his trial the judge noted: "In law there is no dispute that Mr. Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant." Mr. Clarke was sentenced to five years in prison. A public outcry eventually won his release.
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\nIn November of this year, Danny Nightingale, member of a British special forces unit in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military prison for possession of a pistol and ammunition. Sgt. Nightingale was given the Glock pistol as a gift by Iraqi forces he had been training. It was packed up with his possessions and returned to him by colleagues in Iraq after he left the country to organize a funeral for two close friends killed in action. Mr. Nightingale pleaded guilty to avoid a five-year sentence and was in prison until an appeal and public outcry freed him on Nov. 29.
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\nSix weeks after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Martin Bryant, an Australian with a lifelong history of violence, attacked tourists at a Port Arthur prison site in Tasmania with two semiautomatic rifles. He killed 35 people and wounded 21 others.
\nAt the time, Australia\'s guns laws were stricter than the United Kingdom\'s. In lieu of the requirement in Britain that an applicant for permission to purchase a gun have a "good reason," Australia required a "genuine reason." Hunting and protecting crops from feral animals were genuine reasons�personal protection wasn\'t.
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\nWith new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.
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\nTo what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides "continued a modest decline" since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was "relatively small," with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.
\nAccording to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported "a modest reduction in the severity" of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.
\nIn 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.
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\nWhat to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven\'t made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don\'t provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.
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\nMs. Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School, is the author of several books including "Guns and Violence: The English Experience," (Harvard, 2002). \r\n

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