Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns From: [d--a--p] at [lsid.hp.com] (Dean Payne) Subject: Re: A quick statistic Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1993 23:29:55 GMT >I offer this without comment; it's in a letter to the editor >of the Guardian (8 july 93), from Christopher Nuttall, Director of >Research and Statistics, Home Office. ... > "In the US, 1,774 of the 275,093 robberies involving > guns resulted in the death of the victim compared with > 754 of the 412,639 which did not involve firearms -- > ie the firearm homicide rate was 3.5 times the non- > firearm rate. Seventy per cent of the deaths of > robbery victims took place in robberies in which > firearms were used. U.S. gun control efforts seem to have reduced the death/attack ratio mostly by increasing the denominator, rather than decreasing the numerator. I don't consider this an improvement. Boston's Bartley-Fox law is an example. Gun assaults dropped a bit, but non-gun assaults went up much more, and overall homicides didn't change. I don't know how robbery rates changed just after New York City imposed its Sullivan law in 1911, but the rate is now 5.5 times higher than the rate in the rest of the nation. Robbery rates within the U.S. vary sharply. Gun ownership (except for handguns) also varies significantly, but not with the same pattern. Here are some raw figures to peruse: ===================================== How common is firearms ownership? [1] Large cities: 31% Rural areas and small towns: 72% ===================================== Percent of Households with Firearms, by City Size (United States, 1968) [2] Rural Town Suburbs Large Cities Handguns 19 22 16 21 Rifles 42 29 25 21 Shotguns 53 36 26 18 ===================================== Per-capita crime rates by population group (1991) [3]: popu- violent lation murders crimes robberies Group size agencies (x1000) per 100k per 100k per 100k Cities 1M+ 8 20181 31.9 2311 1189 Cities 500k-1M 17 11050 24.2 1379 663 Cities 250k-500k 37 13286 20.8 1676 674 Cities 100k-250k 125 18385 12.5 1086 386 Cities 50k-100k 317 21808 8.1 773 251 Cities 25k- 50k 604 21061 5.5 580 164 Cities 10k- 25k 1440 22777 4.1 417 93 Cities 0 - 10k 5481 19132 3.6 377 56 Suburban counties 1085 44224 6.1 470 121 Rural counties 2388 25442 5.6 214 17 Subgroups and combinations: Suburban areas 5344 87331 5.0 446 117 (suburban cities plus counties minus central cities) All cities 8029 147679 12.7 1015 403 All agencies 11502 217345 10.5 810 301 ===================================== [1] 'Guns in America: Who Owns Them' from a New York Time / CBS NEWS Poll, run as a sidebar to 'The Gun Culture...' New York Times, March 9, 1992. "Do you or any other member of your household own a handgun, rifle, shotgun or any other kind of firearm?" Based on a survey of 1281 adults nationwide conducted by telephone Jan. 22-25. [2] 'A Citizens Guide to Gun Control' by Frank Zimring. [3] FBI Uniform Crime Reports 1991, p.192-193. Dean Payne [d--a--p] at [lsid.hp.com]