Looking for statistics

John_R said:

My Google-Fu is failing me, I can't seem to find the right search terms. Or Google doesn't want to give up the info I seek.

How many people in America are prohibited by ATF rules from owning firearms? Not how many denials are there, I mean people who wouldn't pass the background check if they tried, but buy guns illegally.

A different but related question, how many armed thugs are walking around in this country? That's a question impossible to answer, but maybe someone has estimated it. I figure with a high recidivism rate, violent felons that are out of prison would comprise the vast majority of this number.

The big picture I'm looking for is, let's say there's a pie chart. One part is "armed law-abiding citizens." That includes CCW holders (estimated at 5% of the adult population) and just general law-abiding good guys who happen to own guns.

One part is law-abiding citizens who don't own guns.

One part is "bad guys with guns (or knives, etc.)." There are other groups of course, like bad guys without guns, but for my purposes I'm not interested in that. Those can be a "miscellaneous" wedge of the pie chart.

I'd like to know the relative proportions of each. It would be useful when discussing how many people are affected by poorly-conceived gun laws vs. how many people will always ignore gun laws.

If the good guys outnumber the bad guys by a significant margin, then we can legitimately prove that gun laws are hopelessly and dangerously misdirected. Not that legitimate proof will ever sway an anti-gun fanatic, but at least we'll rest easy knowing the truth.

If good guys with guns are outnumbered by bad guys with guns, then we're flirting with chaos.

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I really don't think you are going to find that information. To be honest, it would scare me that the information exists. How intrusive would the govt have to be in your life for them to be able to put you in a category like you are seeking? I don't think the statistics matter alll that much. There really aren't that many people on the fence about guns. There are many that won't agree with most here until they have an incident that hits home, to make them change their mind.

Good luck in your search, I do hope it is fruitless

How many people are felons would be a start as it is a disqualifier: and here is one story about it, "The study estimates that as of 2010 there were 19 million people in the U.S. that have a felony record, including those who have been to prison, jail or on felony probation." FWIW, it was about 8 percent of the U.S. total population in 2010. Here is a digest of the study, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170928121641.htm

Now, illegal drug users which is also a disqualifier, "An estimated 24.6 million people in the United States used some kind of illicit drug in the past 30 days, according to the latest government statistics. About 9.4 percent of all persons age 12 and over are involved in the use of illegal drugs or the nonmedical use of prescription drugs." https://www.verywellmind.com/rates-of-illicit-drug-abuse-in-the-us-67027
Here is a slightly different estimate but in the same ballpartk, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ten-percent-of-americans-admit-illegal-drug-use/ putting it at about 10 percent of the population. By far, the largest category in both studies was illegal use of marijuana.

Next up, Source And Use Of Firearms Involved In Crimes: Survey Of Prison Inmates, 2016 https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6486 From the summary of the report, page 1.

" About 29% of state and 36% of federal prisoners serving time for a violent offense said they possessed or carried a frearm during the ofense. Violent offenders were much more likely to have possessed a firearm during
the offense than property (5% state, 3% federal) or drug (8% state, 12% federal) offenders."

Overall, for all offenses, about one in five (21%) carried a firearm during their illegal activities.

Next, https://www.bjs.gov/ has a large number of reports. Here is a custom one from the NCV (criminal victimization survey of U.S. population). You can run your own custom reports from 1993 to 2017 if you are interested here. https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=nvat

The NCV reports differently than the FBI run Uniform Reports as the NCV directly surveys individuals which include both reported and unreported crimes and the FBI surveys police departments for reported crimes only.

This is one example that I ran from the NCV Analysis Tool.
Victimization Type 2017
Summary total
Violent victimization 5,612,667
No weapon 3,876,655
Firearm 456,269
Knife 322,132
Other type weapon 382,647
Type weapon unknown 99,763
Do not know if offender had weapon 475,200

Broken down by category below,
Serious violent victimization 2,000,989
No weapon 638,481
Firearm 456,269
Knife 322,132
Other type weapon 382,647
Type weapon unknown 99,763
Do not know if offender had weapon 101,696

Rape/sexual assault 393,979
No weapon 337,525
Firearm 2,416 !
Knife 2,001 !
Other type weapon 17,362 !
Do not know if offender had weapon 34,676

Robbery 613,837
No weapon 235,975
Firearm 178,749
Knife 55,538
Other type weapon 56,767
Type weapon unknown 20,838 !
Do not know if offender had weapon 65,970

Aggravated assault 993,173
No weapon 64,982
Firearm 275,104
Knife 264,593
Other type weapon 308,519
Type weapon unknown 78,925
Do not know if offender had weapon 1,050 !

Simple assault 3,611,678
No weapon 3,238,173
Do not know if offender had weapon 373,505

The exclamation marks are whether or not the data is less reliable as these are estimates from the larger statistical universe.

Hope this helps. CCW numbers do not have any central reporting agency and thus are always going to be estimates.

There is some information from 2013-2015 on the FBI crime database I used a couple years ago for a small speech I did to let people understand the real numbers of violence in the US and what it is comprised of. I’ll have to find the link.

Remember, only use credible sources. They are more difficult to find and usually are not summarized like news articles are but they are trivial. If you only confirm your bias by getting information from news networks people won’t take it seriously. One discredited source taints 100 valid sources.

More and more states are making marijuana legal, but federal law still says marijuana use disqualifies one from possessing a firearm. I would guess that millions of people are disqualified on that basis, and many of them do not know it.

John_R said:

Thanks, boom-boom, that's getting somewhere. So 8% of the population are felons, and about 35-45% of the population, by some estimates, are gun owners. In that Venn diagram there would be a little overlap, but the "law abiding gun owner" pie wedge would be 5x as big as the "bad guy" wedge, but the CCW wedge would likely be smaller than the felon wedge. Food for thought...

I suspect that the figure of 9-10% of the population using drugs illegally is a low estimate, as few would admit to it.

I never mentioned government statistics, and I did mention it was impossible to know for sure and an estimate is all I ask for.

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The National Criminal Victimization survey is the one that Gary Kleck used to estimate over 2 million defensive gun usages per year. It includes charged and uncharged behavior and it is a bit less sensitive to under reporting problems. You might look up his current research which I do not know whether or not he linked any of his research with CCW possession. You will have significant overlap between drug users and criminals categories btw. The 9-10 percent comes from those who have used illegal drugs within the last 30 days or so. The percentage that has ever tried an illegal substance in their life is more like about fifty percent. https://www.drugabuse.gov/national-survey-drug-use-health Cocaine (17 pct) and psychoactive hallucinogens (16.7 pct) are a distant second to marijuana lifetime use (about half the population-47.50)