If more guns caused more crime, we would know it.
BLUF:
The violent crime rate fell by about 38 percent over two decades while the number of guns sold each year almost doubled. The implied number of gun owners also doubled. If anything, this data shows that firearms sales cause a decrease in violent crime.
Gun Ownership versus Crime in the US 2000-2019
I’ve seen analysis that relates guns and crime. In particular, the data looks at the growing number of firearms in civilian hands in the United States. It compares gun ownership with the rate of violent crime across the country. Unfortunately, that data is a few years old. It is easy to get raw numbers, but it is very hard to get good data. This is what I found.
Rates of Crime-
The easiest information to get are the raw numbers of violent crimes committed in the United States each year. That data is collected in the same manner year after year. We use the rate of crime rather than the number of crimes since populations change over long decades. That is good, but it isn’t perfect.
That data tells us about the people who were arrested, charged, and convicted of a violent crime. The data on the number of victims is harder to get. A criminal can be charged with several violent crimes that he committed during a single violent act. In that sense, we’re asking the data to also give us some information about the severity of the crime.
For example, robbing several people at gunpoint is worse than robbing a single individual. Robbery and aggravated assault are worse than robbery alone. When we look at the data, it is hard to tell if we’re seeing fewer incidents of criminal activity, crimes of less severity, or if prosecutors are simply bargaining away more charges. Each is a factor and I don’t know how to re-normalize the data and correct for those effects over decades.
That is the bad news. Fortunately, we can still use the crime data to reliably see large trends over the long-term. The good news is that it looks like the rate of violent crime is going down.
Gun Ownership-
It is harder to get reliable data on gun ownership in the US. Many of us are reluctant to answer questions about the guns we own, or don’t own. Consider if you would tell a stranger on the phone if you had guns in your home, or if your family was disarmed. There are valid reasons to be cautious with either answer. Also, times change. With online surveys becoming prevalent, we are now reluctant to answer questions and have our data harvested and sold to politicians and online marketers.
We have other sources of information. Many states require a background check when a firearm is sold. The federal government also collects data on the number of background checks it runs. As you might expect, that data is imperfect as well.
Half of the states let citizens use their concealed carry permits to buy a gun since that carry permit shows the buyer has recently passed an FBI background check. That means the number of National Instant Background Checks, NICS checks for short, undercounts the number of firearms transactions. What isn’t well known is that a single background check can cover multiple sales. A firearms seller could transfer an entire firearms collection to a buyer at one time with a single NICS check performed by the FBI. That further undercounts the number of guns sold as recorded in the NICS system.
What we don’t know is how many of these guns are new guns moving into civilian ownership. In theory, a million gun-sales-a-year could mean that two people traded a single firearm back and forth a million times. That is an absurd example and most of us hold our firearms for decades if not for a lifetime. I mention that example simply to show that each NICS transaction does not necessarily indicate a new forearm entering civilian ownership. We do know that the sale of domestically produced and imported firearms is at a record high and gun inventories are at a record low.
We have a number of sources to estimate firearms ownership. Some states register each firearms owner. One such state is California. California is one of the most difficult states in which to buy a gun. Many firearms models commonly owned in the rest of the Unites States are outlawed for civilians in California. Gun purchases are slow and cumbersome. We saw the number of gun owners in California more than double from 2008 to 2018 despite those obstacles. That amazing growth in new gun owners in an anti-gun state strongly contradicts the claim that gun ownership has remained flat across the United States.
The international small arms survey, the NICS data, state registration data, and several online surveys combine to bracket gun ownership in the United States to between 300 to 400 million firearms mostly owned by 80 to 100+ million adult firearms owners.
Again, we can use the annual NICS data to give us broad trends in the change of firearm ownership. More gun sales indicate that more individuals became gun owners.
Results-
The violent crime rate fell by about 38 percent over two decades while the number of guns sold each year almost doubled. The implied number of gun owners also doubled. If anything, this data shows that firearms sales cause a decrease in violent crime.
Let’s be realistic. Life is more complex than two lines on a graph. A number of factors contribute to the rate of violent crime. That said, one of the factors that deter criminal activity is the behavior of armed victims.