benEzra
benEzra's JournalUmmm, the nonfatal violence stats can be found from the links I posted.
Follow them and then go to the TOC for the entire data set. If you do, you'll see that nonfatal violence also decreased for 2014, but those trends tend to track pretty closely with the homicide rate and vice versa.
IMHO, lumping suicide in with homicide as "violence" is a bit problematic, considering that if you lump murders and suicides together, the USA is a far less "violent" place than Japan, for example, and we have a comparable "violence" rate to Finland and Belgium most years. (And do you consider assisted suicide equivalent to murder?)
The FBI Uniform Crime Reports tracks violent crime, including gun violence, and Table 20 is the most comprehensive data set in existence with regard to what styles of weapons are used to kill in this country. I realize that it rather undermines the "black rifles are of the debbil" narrative, but if one is going to prioritize one's efforts, then it is certainly helpful to know that twice as many people were killed by criminals in the Chicago MSA alone as were killed by all rifles combined in the entire nation.
The full gun violence stats for 2014 are out (FBI UCR).
As always, it's helpful to compare reality with the rhetoric. The FBI murder stats for 2014:
Murder, by State and Type of Weapon, 2014 (FBI)
[font face="courier new"]Total murders...................... 11,961
Handguns............................ 5,562 (46.5%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,052 (17.2%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,610 (13.5%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,567 (13.1%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 660 (5.5%)
Shotguns.............................. 262 (2.2%)
Rifles................................ 248 (2.1%) [/font]
All the gun violence categories show a slight decrease compared to 2013. Looks like the only category that increased from 2013 to 2014 was murders using blades. Here are the 2013 figures:
Murder, by State and Type of Weapon, 2013 (FBI)
[font face="courier new"] Total murders...................... 12,253
Handguns............................ 5,782 (47.2%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,079 (17.0%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,622 (13.2%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,490 (12.2%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 687 (5.6%)
Shotguns.............................. 308 (2.5%)
Rifles................................ 285 (2.3%) [/font]
That continues a 20-year trend of declining gun violence, which is now roughly half of what it was in the early 1990s.
As usual, I'll point out that almost all "assault weapons" fall into the Rifles category, making them among the least misused of all weapons in the United States, despite their popularity.
Knives and clubs are used to murder four times as many people
as all rifles and all shotguns *combined*, including "assault weapons".
Murder, by State and Type of Weapon, 2014 (FBI)
[font face="courier new"]Total murders...................... 11,961
Handguns............................ 5,562 (46.5%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,052 (17.2%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,610 (13.5%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,567 (13.1%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 660 (5.5%)
Shotguns.............................. 262 (2.2%)
Rifles................................ 248 (2.1%) [/font]
And the trend is *down*, not up. Down by roughly 50% since the 1990s, in fact, for all categories of gun violence, despite the fact that annual gun sales have doubled over that time period. It appears that the current approach (focusing on those who actually commit crimes, and leaving the lawful and sane alone) has coincided with dramatically less violence overall.
If you personally threaten people, you motivate them to get to the polls and vote against you.
That is true whether the issue is Santorum threatening GLBT rights or contraception, Cuccinelli equating oral sex with bestiality, or Bloomberg/McAuliffe promising to outlaw the most popular guns in Virginia homes.
I and hundreds of thousands of others have been saying this exact thing since fricking 2004, and yet the Third Way still can't keep its fingers out of that light socket. Heck, they're still trotting out the "B-b-but we support hunting!!!" mantra from the '90s, as if that were relevant in a society where 80% of gun owners are nonhunters.
Keep your fingers out of people's gun safes, people. Messing around in people's bedrooms and in their gun safes are surefire recipes for a backlash.
Considering that the murder rate has declined by half as annual gun sales doubled...
it appears to me that the "more guns, more murders" mantra is a false one. Even with the blip in 2015, we are living in one of the safest times in American history, from a homicide standpoint.
Ummm, my guns are an AR-15, an 18-round competition 9mm pistol,
and a compact 9mm carry pistol. Your side is damn sure talking about banning the first two and putting a whole lot more restrictions on the third.
And the "Australian model" was confiscation of most semiautos and pump-action long guns, as well as taking handguns away from a large percentage of the gun owning population. The fact that the author of that article is profoundly ignorant of that fact doesn't make it any less disconcerting to owners of semiautos and pumps.
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