The Majority of Violence in the US does not involve Firearms, but the Majority of Murders do

In the previous posts I was just looking at how firearms were involved in murder, I found it hard to see a link between gun laws and firearms, although it was clear that firearms were a big component of violence that ended in murder.  I decided to go see how firearms were involved in violent crime in general, so I looked at the statistics for aggravated assault.

The main things the data suggest are:

1. Violent crime is involves a very small part of the population
2. Murder is a very small part of violent crime
3. Firearms are a small part of violent crime
4. Firearms are a big part of murder
5. If you look really, really hard there might be a link between lower gun violence and tougher gun laws.
6. You are more likely to be killed in/by a car than with a gun of any type

If you look at the chart for weapon type as a percent of total violent crime (totals of aggravated assault and murder, I did not include other stats such as rape, etc), the reason it looks so much like the chart that just looks at aggravated assault, is that most violent crime involves aggravated assault.

So when people attack each other they do so with many weapons and firearms are not the main weapon types used, however, when those attacks end in murder, then most of the time firearms are used.

As for the effect of gun laws on the use of firearms?  I suspect a much more involved study than the ones I do is required to look at that.  I did try something just out of curiosity and I did get a correlation although I am not sure it is a very strong one.

What I did was take all the data I had (FBI - Violent Crime), and sort it by firearm related assaults, total assaults and so on.  Then I looked at the average Brady ratings for the 25 states with the higher crime rates and lower crime rates for that particular sorting.   What I found was that if you sorted by total murder, or by total aggravated assault, there really was no difference in the average Brady rating, however when I sorted by firearm related crime for both murder and aggravated assault, the 25 states with the highest levels of firearm related crime had a lower (laxer gun laws) average Brady rating.  The reverse was true if you looked at knife related aggravated assault, but was similar if you looked at the use of personal weapons used in aggravated assaults (fists, legs etc).

Make what you will of this data :)

One thing to keep in mind, you are much more likely to be killed or injured in/by a car, than by any kind of violence, even that involving firearms.

Thoughts and prayers as always with those who have lost loved ones to violence of any kind.