Firearms & Murder: Don't Blame "Assault Weapons"

If you pay attention to American politics, chances are you've noticed a large push by the Obama administration and other Democrats for gun control in various forms. Now, that alone is quite odd because according to a recent Gallup poll only 4% of Americans consider gun control to be an important issue. [1] With (according to the same poll) nearly a quarter of American's saying that that their top concern is the economy and another 18% citing unemployment, why would the embattled Obama administration continue to expend political capital to fight an uphill battle their constituents don't support?

Let's take a step back for a moment and consider what some key players are pushing. As always, Feinstein et al are trumpeting the "assault weapons" ban. For those not in the know, "assault weapon" is a vague category that is generally perceived to include any civilian variant of a military style rifle. Assuming such a ban went through, what sort of results can we expect to see in terms of impact on murder rates? Let's take a look at an excerpt of the FBI's breakdown of murder by weapon for 2012. [2]

Handguns	Rifles	Shotguns	Knives or Cutting Instrument	Blunt Objects	Hands, Fists, Feet, etc.
7,398	453	457	1,694	496	728

The differences between the categories are quite great, with pistols accounting for more than 16 times as many murders as rifles, and knives/cutting instruments accounting for 3.7 times as many. Even murders by hands, fists, etc. exceed rifles. And keep in mind this data is for all rifles, not just "assault weapons". Given data for murders by "assault weapon", the differences would be even greater. Murder by rifle is a non-issue compared to handguns or even knives, yet our policy makers ignore this because handguns fail to evoke the same emotions as evil looking rifles that are frequently depicted in movies and video games. Further, murders by firearm have declined year over year, decreasing 15% between 2007 and 2011, with murders by rifle dropping 28% in the same timeframe. [2] If "assault weapons" really were a problem, wouldn't we see an increase in murders by rifle since the 2004 Assault Weapon Ban expiration?

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/161813/few-guns-immigration-nation-top-problems.aspx

[2] http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8

Georgia's Black Homicide Problem

It is oft cited that the disparity between races in terms of violence is largely due to economic factors, but how well do the numbers align with this assertion? In the glorious age of information, there’s no need to speculate, we can work through this right now with publicly available information. Let’s take a look at homicide in the state of Georgia. Unfortunately the CDC’s data for the year of 2010 isn’t very granular, so both hispanics and non-hispanics are lumped into a single “white” category. Even so, perhaps we can glean something useful from what’s available.

The breakdown of homicide suspect by race looks something like this:

Race	Homicide Suspects	Homicide Suspects (%)
White or Hispanic	33	18.33%
Black	142	78.89%

[1]

The disparity is immediately apparent: in 2010, blacks accounted for 78.89% of homicide suspects in Georgia. Looking at a breakdown of Georgia’s population by race, the numbers become even more shocking. In 2010 the population was 9,687,653, with 59.7% (5,783,529) white or hispanic and 30.5% (2,954,734) black. [2] That’s right, blacks make up 30.5% of the people in Georgia, yet account for 78.89% of homicide suspects. Can poverty be faulted for these substantial differences?

According to the 2010 census, an estimated 660,851 blacks were below the poverty line in Georgia, compared to 859,169 whites and hispanics. [3][4][5] How could it possibly be that poverty is to blame for Georgie’s black homicide problem when in fact almost 200,000 more whites and hispanics are living below the poverty line?

[1] http://wisqars.cdc.gov:8080/nvdrs/nvdrsDisplay.jsp

[2] http://www2.census.gov/geo/maps/dc10_thematic/2010_Profile/2010_Profile_Map_Georgia.pdf

[3] http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_SF4_B17001&prodType=table

[4] http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_B17001H&prodType=table

[5] http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_B17001I&prodType=table