Crime Down, Gun Ownership Up--Is Their Correlation?

Brand New FBI Stats DESTROY Liberal Gun Control Arguments

BY KIMBERLY MORIN - 44 COMMENTS · IN SECOND AMENDMENT

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Once again the FBI has released previous year statistics on violent crime in the United Sates and once again violent crime has gone down.

Gun ownership, based on NICS background data checks, is down compared to 2013 but overall still up over past years.

 

From the National Shooting Sports Foundation:

The FBI this month released the 2014 edition of Crime in the United States , and it revealed that the estimated number of reported violent crimes decreased 0.2 percent when compared with 2013. And the estimated number of property crimes decreased 4.3 percent from 2013 levels.

Homicides with firearms in 2014 were down 3.9 percent on a year-over-year basis. Consistent with previous years of this ongoing work, the vast majority of these murders were committed with handguns, although all categories of gun murders were lower. Rifles of all kinds were involved in just 3 percent of gun murders in 2014, lower than the number of deaths attributable to knives, blunt objects, and even fists or feet.

Using NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) data over a ten-year period since 2005, the best proxy we have for firearms sales, we see a 74.1 percent increase in background checks even as the violent crime fell 16.2 percent.  The 15-year trend is even more dramatic, showing an 81.8 percent increase in NICS numbers even as violent crime fell 18.2 percent.

Put simply, more firearms in the hands of the mostly law-abiding American population have not yielded an increase in crime.

You’ll never see facts like this discussed from the gun control crowd. Facts are not their friend.

The trend over the past 10 to 15 years has been a steady increase of gun ownership with a steady decrease of violent crime. How can one not believe these aren’t related?