A disturbing trend is present in a couple of governmental agencies. The National Safety Council (NSC) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) list firearm violence statistics divorced from intent. Furthermore, the CDC seems to be heading in the direction of combining firearm injuries and fatalities into a single category: firearm injuries (fatal and non-fatal). You can see my previous posts on the CDC and firearm suicides for more information.
Why is it wrong to divorce intent from statistics? First, you can’t solve problems. If you simply present firearm violence statistics without intent, you are simply trying to say “firearms bad.” As I explain in my book, 98.7 percent of injurious violent crime has limited firearm use (less than 15 percent for aggravated assault and robbery and almost non-existent for rape). Secondly, much of injurious violent crime has a disturbing trend – the victim knows the offender, and the crime happens at the home or near the home. Even for murder/non-negligent homicide being 1.3 percent of all violent crime from 2015 to 2019, 40 percent of that involved people that know each other. The other 60 percent is “relationship unknown” between the victim and offender.
What is the conclusion from these statistics around firearm violence? Well, we know that suicide is around 55 percent of firearm fatalities. I discuss this issue in depth in my post on suicides and firearms. I want to focus in on the remaining 45 percent.
What is the perception about this 45 percent? I would argue that the perception is that it is this 45 percent is the domain of mass shooters and violent criminals targeting civilians. However, this cannot be correct as mass shooter fatalities don’t add up to this 45 percent figure. When we look at the 60 percent “relationship unknown” of the 1.3 percent of murder/non-negligent homicide, we begin to get a clue. Injurious violent crime has key circumstances for civilians where, primarily, the victim knows the offender and the crime occurs at home or near the home. These facts mean that law enforcement would likely know who killed the victim.
What happens when law enforcement doesn’t know who killed the victim? Well, I would speculate these are criminals targeting other criminals, primarily due to the buying, selling, and distribution of illegal drugs (similar historically to alcohol prohibition). Of course, other statistics contribute to this 45 percent, such as accidents, justified homicides, and mass shootings, but these values are quite low in comparison. While I’m only talking about fatalities here, the same would apply to injuries. Law enforcement can figure out firearm injuries with civilians due to the circumstances involving injurious violent crime. They are not going to know anything about firearm injuries between criminals. If a criminal is wounded and goes to the emergency room, they most certainly won’t be detailing their criminal behavior to law enforcement.
For the Uniform Crime Reports, which would involve law enforcement in fatalities and emergency room firearm injuries, we need to have additional data gathered. Why this data is not currently gathered is beyond me (as law enforcement should have this data), but the following data would be a good start:
- Was the victim injured?
- Did the victim have a violent criminal record?
- Did the offender, if known, have a violent criminal record?
- Did the victim have an active justice status (probation, parole, bail)?
- Did the offender have an active justice status?
- What was the toxicity report on the victim?
- What was the toxicity report on the offender?
- In the law enforcement officer’s opinion, were the victim and offender engaged in criminal activity when the crime occurred?
Intent matters because if these crimes are committed by criminals targeting other criminals, gun regulation is going to be about as useful as drug regulation.