Violent Crime Statistics

Before we get started, we need to cover some common misunderstandings over terminology. The word “assault” for instance is often used in everyday language to mean a violent attack, such as the title of the movie “Assault on Precinct 13.” The word “violent” has similar connotations, such as a news program saying “a violent incident occurred,” where the viewer would expect an injured or murdered victim after that introduction. Furthermore, in everyday conversation, if I were to say I was a violent crime victim, you would probably assume I had been injured in that incident. Or if I said, I was a violent crime victim of aggravated assault, you would likely assume I had been severely injured.

Violent crime terminology is different. The word “assault” can mean the use of force to get what you want from a victim OR putting the victim in fear in order to get what you want. For example, imagine a road rage incident when the driver of a vehicle flashes a firearm, and the other driver is put in fear of their life. The firearm brandishing driver speeds away and nothing further happens. This act would be statistically categorized as an aggravated assault. A similar situation is true for robbery. As an example, a robber uses a firearm to place a victim in fear of their life. The robber then tells the victim to turn over their valuables or be killed. The victim does as the robber asks and the robber flees the scene with the victim’s money. These two examples, both being violent crimes, reflect respectively non-injurious aggravated assault and non-injurious robbery. The injurious forms exist as well of course, where a victim has a major injury because of an aggravated assault or a robbery.

With that out of the way, let’s briefly go through some violent crime statistics. The years examined are 2015 up to and including 2019 (pre-pandemic), which are relatively stable and recent. Here are the statistics this blog will reference:

• The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
• The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)
• The National Firearm Survey (NFS)
• Civilian Shootings

NCVS

The NCVS is a survey of crime victims. It is done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics for a few decades. The sample size of crime victims is large enough to be representative of the US population. This type of data is different than the UCR, which details crimes reported to law enforcement. If a crime is not reported, the UCR doesn’t know it exists. In contrast, the methodology of the NCVS allows information to be gathered on both reported and non-reported crimes.

Of the four violent crimes, aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder, the NCVS looks at the first three only. We know from the UCR that murder is about 1.3% of all reported violent crime (2015 – 2019). In the US, murders are reported and investigated thoroughly. Therefore, the NCVS accounts for 98.7% of violent crime in this period. Aggravated assault accounts for about 57% while robbery is about 32%. Rape is the remaining 11% or so.

Unlike the UCR, the NCVS keeps track of whether the victim was injured or not. This statistic is extremely important to understand violent crime and its circumstances. Here are a few NCVS statistics from 2015-2019:

• Aggravated assault and robbery account for 89% of violent crime in this period. 67% of the time, the victim is not injured.
• For robbery, regardless of whether the victim is injured, the most common weapon is no weapon at all.
• For rape, the victim usually knows their rapist, the rapist does not use a weapon, and the rape occurs at a place the victim feels comfortable. Women typically do not report rapes to the police and do not seek medical treatment, which vastly under counts the number of rapes.
• For the common violent crimes of aggravated assault, robbery, and rape, firearm use is very uncommon when the victim is injured.
• Firearm use is much more common when the victim is not injured (i.e., the firearm is used to intimidate or threaten the victim).
• For aggravated assault and rape, when a victim is injured, the victim usually knows the offender and it is more likely to happen at a home than non-injurious crime.
• Women are injured more often than men in violent crime due to domestic violence and rape (both reported and unreported).

NFS

The paper I will be referencing here is William English’s National Firearm Survey regarding Defensive Gun Use (DGUs). A DGU is where a firearm was used to avoid a criminal victimization by placing the offender in fear of being injured, and often having them flee in response. The NFS methodology is similar in concept to the NCVS methodology. However, the NFS samples firearm owners and goes through a process of determining DGUs. For a variety of reasons (covered in my book), the majority of DGUs are not reported to the police, hence why a survey is done.

Let’s check the NFS survey results.

• An estimated 1.67 million DGUs occur each year.
• 79.1% of DGUs occur at home or on the property of the home.
• 9.1% of DGUs occur in public.

How often do people CCF?

• 9.1% CCF always
• 6.9% CCF often
• 19% CCF sometimes
• 21.2% CCF only in dangerous circumstances

How was the firearm used to stop the victimization?

• 18.1% of the time, the gun was discharged.
• 50.9% showed the gun without discharging it..
• 31% simply told them about the gun (neither showing it nor discharging it).

Civilian Shootings

The only study I’ve seen that analyzed civilian DGUs when the firearm was discharged was done by Claude Werner and posted to The Thinking Gunfighter blog. Here is an excerpt:

• If the defender fires any shots, most likely it will be two rounds.
• The average distance between the victim and offender is a bit over arm’s length.
• Defenders frequently communicate with their attackers before shooting.
• The firearm was carried on the body of the defender in only 20% of incidents. In 80% of cases, the firearm was obtained from a place of storage, frequently in another room.
• The majority of incidents took place in the home (52%).
• Next most common locale (32%) was in a business. Incidents took place in public places in 9% of reports and 7% occurred in or around vehicles. The most common initial crimes were armed robbery (32%).

Putting These Statistics to Work

The statistics covered here is all fine and good, but what are the take-aways? I would suggest improving your self-defense tactics based on the most common circumstances. Our perception of civilian violent crime is often drives our preparation, which is fine assuming our perception matches reality. I’m going to argue that our perception does not match reality.

The media often drives this perception. The leading story on the 5pm news program is usually about a violent incident, typically an injury or a murder. As they say, “if it bleeds, it leads.” Your favorite news website often has headlines describing some horrific violent crime. Of course, these crimes happen but they are not the norm. It is just the news is pulling from a nation of 330 million people and selecting what it thinks will keep viewers engaged. In my book, I call this the “Engagement Bias.” The important point is that what keeps you watching, listening, or reading, isn’t necessarily probable.

Then, if we become concerned over the news, we can take a self-defense class to help us improve our defensive skills. These classes are usually run by former law enforcement officers, often with considerable experience dealing with violent criminals. At first blush, this may seem to be exactly what we want. However, we should look at some more statistics.

The UCR keeps track of law enforcement officers killed or assaulted (LEOKA). Turns out, most of the people that kill law enforcement officers have been previously arrested for a violent crime and/or are on active justice status, such as bail or parole. Firearms are the primary weapon used to kill law enforcement officers. In short, a law enforcement officer’s most dire threat is a stranger who is an armed violent criminal. Civilian self-defense training is often based on law enforcement training. Consequently, civilians are trained to deal with the primary threat of law enforcement officers. As we have seen, civilian violent crime circumstances are not usually the same as those of law enforcement, so there is a mismatch. None of this should be construed as criticism of law enforcement. I’m simply pointing out that civilian threats are usually different than law enforcement threats.

What about concealed carry and tactical periodicals? Don’t they have plenty of stories of justified homicides? Yes, that is true. However, the number of justified homicides by private citizens doesn’t reach 500 a year (UCR). We have millions of concealed carriers and a US population since 2015 that is well over 300 million (around 330 million as I type this blog). In comparison, civilian defensive gun uses are estimated to be 1.67 million per year. You could triple the number of justified homicides by private citizens and still not be in the same zip code as DGUs. As we have seen, many DGUs happen at home, the firearm is not discharged, and the police are not called.

Fundamentally, improving your self-defense tactics is about improving your knowledge of probable circumstances. Once you know the probable circumstances, your training needs can be formalized. Today, it feels like most self-defense training is about spending 100 percent of your time training for circumstances that happen 10 percent of the time and not spending any training time on the other 90 percent of circumstances. Let’s look at the skills we should develop based on these statistics.

• Non-Injurious Aggravated Assault. The most common violent crime and around two-thirds of the time, the victim is not injured. If we were up against a hardened violent criminal, we would expect to be injured. Who are we usually up against in these types of crimes? Usually another civilian who has lost their cool and brandishes a weapon. Being able to keep our cool and keep a situation from becoming a violent crime is a great asset to any training. De-escalation training should be a top priority for anyone concerned about self-defense. If you have a tendency to lose your cool, anger management classes, or the equivalent, may be in order as well.
• Injurious Aggravated Assault. Are civilians dealing with hardened violent criminals in this situation? Possibly. However, looking at the statistics, injurious aggravated assault looks more like domestic violence. An important point is that the marital status of “Never Married” is by far the most popular marital status for violent crime. In short, don’t believe that domestic violence only takes place between married couples or divorced couples. Once it occurs, domestic violence is a hard problem to solve. The best solution is for women to trust their instincts about men they may be interested in and recognize that any hints of violence should be deal breakers in a potential relationship.
• Robbery – All Forms. Robbery is the crime where a civilian is most likely to run into a violent criminal. Luckily, the places robberies occur are common, such as parking lots, alleyways, and streets. These are usually areas you traverse going to and from your car. For example, going to see a ball game (or concert, or any place that doesn’t allow weapons). You’ll park in a parking lot or garage and then walk to the event. Getting rides from friends, family, or rideshares is a much better choice as avoiding the circumstances of robbery is the best defense against it.
• Rape. Contrary to popular perceptions, rape doesn’t often involve strangers and public places. It most often occurs at a home and the offender is someone a women knows. While rape can be about a man physically overpowering a women, in modern times it seems more about consent. Recognize that consent can be made ambiguous by voluntary intoxication or involuntary intoxication (i.e., date rape drug). Rape resembles a betrayal by someone you know in a safe location more than it resembles an attack from a stranger in public. Simply knowing this difference allows women to take better precautions against it.

I hope you find these observations interesting. In my book, I show how to implement these changes. If you are interested, you can buy it from all the online retailers. Links are here. In addition, I have my own store for electronic copies – with an inexpensive PDF format being the most popular. Enjoy!